One thing about writing for kids and teens is, you don’t get to forget what being in school–elementary school, middle school, high school–felt like. There were some good times, growing up, but there were also some hard times, and sometimes, when I’m digging deep, I wonder how I made it through. How anyone ever makes it through.
Lots of things help. I could write a whole post just about the importance of supportive adults in a kids’ life, because while we adults have less power than we’d like, we do have more than we think.
Socially, school was rough for me; I was the outcast kid who even the outcast kids didn’t want to hang with. But–how to explain this–I’m proud of that. Proud of finding my way through to the other side and to my adult life. I admire that kid who got me here, tremendously. Sometimes I think maybe she’s still out there, somewhere, and I whisper my thanks to her down through the years. And sometimes I think the reason I found a way through was simply because I read and read and read. Like many of us, I always had my nose in one book or another. I learned how stories worked, though I couldn’t have explained what I knew at the time. But because I knew how stories worked–I knew it was all going to be all right in the end. I knew the way through had to exist, even if I couldn’t see it for myself. Those supportive adults helped, simply by telling me, over and over again, that things really do get better once you graduate, that school wasn’t forever. But the books I read also helped, because they showed how the act of finding your way through actually looked. Menolly found music and fire lizards and friends who appreciated her talents. Harimad-sol found horses and power and a world in which she belonged. Meg Murray hung on to her rough edges and fell in love and went to college and got on with the business of living, but didn’t forget how to hear unicorns. I didn’t really expect fire lizards or magic horses or unicorns. But I did expect a world in which I belonged. By high school, I understood that my life was a story, too, and I was willing to wait for my happy ending, because I knew it was out there, somewhere. I might not get there quickly or painlessly or entirely without cost, but I don’t know that I ever doubted back then there was someplace to get to. I don’t know where that strength of belief came from. A gift, a bit of luck, an act of grace. Only as an adult do I understand just how lucky I was–and am. Especially since I’ve managed to do many of the things the heroes of my books did: fall in love, discover a land that spoke to me, pursue work that I care about, and so on. There’s an awful lot of luck and grace in all that, too. But it isn’t all luck. Because stories–stories are powerful stuff. I’m still undecided on whether stories can change the world. But I know they can change individual lives, and maybe that’s one of the few ways the world gets for real in the end anyway.