Q&A: Does your family help you write your books?

In many dif­fer­ent ways, yes.

When I feel that a book I am writ­ing has reached a cer­tain lev­el of quality—after about sev­en months—I read the man­u­script to my wife.

She knows, gen­er­al­ly, what I have been writ­ing about, but I have not shared specifics.

Not only is my wife excep­tion­al­ly well read, she is a good lis­ten­er, and a sharp crit­ic. Indeed, she is my tough­est crit­ic. But don’t think she is always com­ple­men­tary. “This isn’t work­ing,” she has said. “Your edi­tor won’t like this.” Even, “I don’t like it.” But when she does like a work—“This is good,” as she said just last night when I read a new work to her–I am great­ly, well, relieved.

When I read to her I do so with pen in hand. I always find things I want to change and mark the man­u­script accord­ing­ly. It may be as sim­ple as an over­looked com­ma, or a whole para­graph that I real­ize I don’t need. As I read the text, I may notice that I have left out some­thing in the plot, or that I have not explained or shown some­thing clear­ly. I may even note a bad­ly writ­ten section.

The point is, when I read the book aloud, I trans­form myself into a read­er and there­by expe­ri­ence my work in a dif­fer­ent way. It is one of the most nec­es­sary steps in my writ­ing process.

Writ­ing is also a busi­ness, the way I make my liv­ing. When prob­lems or ques­tions come about, I talk things out with my wife. That’s both use­ful and helpful.

Regard­ing oth­er fam­i­ly, when my kids were much younger, I read the books to them. They were won­der­ful­ly blunt about what they liked or did not like. “Keep read­ing,” was obvi­ous­ly a good sign. “Can I go out and play?” was not.

There have been bits and pieces in my children’s lives that I have used in books. A Place Called Ugly, was one such book. No More Mag­ic, The Good Dog, and Per­loo the Bold are oth­ers. But none of my books are about my family.

When the books are pub­lished, all my (now adult) kids get a copy, but I don’t ask if they’ve read them. If they vol­un­teer that they have, I don’t put them on the spot by ask­ing for a reac­tion. The last time I did that, and inquired what my daugh­ter thought of such and such a book, she said, “It’s cute.” That’s all she would say. Not helpful.

 Most­ly, the most use­ful aspect of fam­i­ly sup­port is their under­stand­ing that writ­ing is what I do, that it takes a lot of time (at home), and more often than not I am un-com­mu­nica­tive about how I spend my time hour after hour, day after day.

 In short, they know what it means to be a writer. That’s a major help.