I love, love, love this blog post by my agency sister Kate SeRine. It goes through signs you've got a budding writer in your household.
My daughter is constantly hard at work on a novel or two. She fills notebook after notebook with enviable ideas. My favorite is "Dream Walkers," about a group of kids who realize they can walk through other people's dreams. They have to come together to take on the sinister Lord of Feeling, another dreamwalker who plans to plunge the world into a constant waking nightmare. How awesome is that!
(Honesty alert here, I was a little nervous when she brought this book to her third-grade teacher the first week of class. I was sure that a "Please see me for a conference" note would be in my girl's bookbag that afternoon. Instead, the gem of a teacher wrote my daughter a note of praise that will forever live in her treasure box.)
Just yesterday, she asked me what I was planning to write next. "If you need any ideas, let me know," she chirped. "I've got tons!"
But her sharing sometimes backfires.
Recently, my girl gave me a notebook and asked me read a story she wrote in it. I did a few things around the house and then sat down to read the story. It begins: "Dear Diary, I am so mad at Mom!" And then there's a picture of me with "blah, blah, blah" coming out of my mouth and one of her thinking "STOP."
I pointed that out to her. She flipped over the notebook and said, "Oh! One side of the notebook is my diary. The story's on the other side."
Ouch.