My husband and I didn’t plan or push for our
children to be writers, yet they are. Apparently we watered the right garden.
Our two sons write professionally. One is
a screenwriter and the other is a copywriter, and they’ve both written books. After
working for a time in the publishing field, our daughter, who has a master’s degree
in comparative literature, is now a dedicated homeschooling mom who teaches her
children writing as they move through each grade level.
We nurtured writers without even realizing
it. That nurturing doesn’t have to come from family, of course, but our accidental
nurturing might demonstrate some ways we can all nurture other writers intentionally, no matter their age or where they are in their writing journey.
Encourage Reading
My husband and I are daily readers. As I grew
up, trips to the library were exciting, and discovering a friend had every
single Nancy Drew book for me to borrow was glorious. Oh, how I wanted my children
to be readers, too, and they were. They are. Introducing my daughter to my
favorite book to this day, Anne of Green Gables,
was fun, and today she reads both fiction and nonfiction every chance she
gets. Like a lot of boys, my sons read comic books, but they soon moved on, and
today some of their heavy-duty reading choices just about put me to shame. Reading words
informs their writing words.
How can you inspire aspiring writers to read?
Encourage “Viewing”
Although our screenwriter son takes
first place, we all like movies in our family. The earliest live-action film I
can remember my kids adoring was The
NeverEnding Story, which hooked them on
story forevermore. Story in film is delivered with dialogue as well as image. I’m
intrigued by how the dialogue can be honed until it shines and
communicates exactly what the filmmakers want for their audiences. And who can’t
repeat a favorite line from a favorite movie? Stellar film dialogue can inform
stellar dialogue in any writing, and I think the magic of movies nurtured my
children’s love of words. Live theater works too!
What films or theater productions with stellar dialogue can you recommend to other writers?
Encourage Discussing
One day my older son said, “Other families
sit around the table and talk about sports or politics. Our family debates word
choices.” (This is the same son who now routinely defeats me at Scrabble.) Of
course, to the degree our three were interested in other topics, we discussed those,
too, but our being a wordy-nerdy family is what struck him as unique. I’m not
sure how we got that way, but there we were. Today their vocabularies far
exceed mine. Really. They do.
When and where can you discuss the creative process of writing with other writers?
Not every writer comes from a breeding-ground-for-writers
family, whether that ground was watered intentionally or not. And families can't take all the credit anyway; God hands out gifts, and their recipients must develop them. But ask yourself, Where has my writing been nurtured by others? In a family of relatives, perhaps
before I even realized I had the writing bug? In a family of friends, encouragers, teachers,
or mentors? And how did they nurture my writing?
Why ask yourself these questions? Because realizing how our writing has been nurtured can help us know how to intentionally nurture other writers.
Jean Kavich Bloom is a freelance editor and writer for Christian publishers and ministries (Bloom in Words Editorial Services), with more than thirty years of experience in the book publishing world. She is a regular contributor to The Glorious Table, a blog for women of all ages. An aspiring novelist, her published books are Bible Promises for God's Precious Princess and Bible Promises for God's Treasured Boy. She and her husband, Cal, live in central Indiana. They have three children (plus two who married in) and five grandchildren.photo credit: https://publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=211016&picture=gardeners-pride
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