For a very long time now, I’ve been an undercover writer. Protected from the outside world, I’ve written middle grade novels, little books and even a young adult novel. Why? I love to write! I scribble on envelopes and paper towels, receipts and concert tickets. Anything laying around has my handwriting on it! My journals, and I have many, are filled with thoughts and ideas, reactions and small stories. I write about the things I’m curious about and the things I think I know something about. I save things in my writer’s notebook too. Like a beautiful ribbon that was wrapped around a package left anonymously at my front door, my notebooks too are my own little secret world.

But all this time, through all my writing days…up at 5:00 to slip into the dreamworld of writing, I have not put any of my books or stories or poems out in the world. Well, that’s not completely true. I have been a part of a writing group, I’ve taken classes and shared my work with Patricia Reilly Giff, my long time mentor and friend. I’ve gone to conferences and received feedback from agents and editors. I’ve blogged and written for a local newspaper and for a beautiful magazine, The Newtowner.

But, when it comes to making my work widely public and following the path that authors do toward publication, I’ve been hiding under the covers. Watching friends, my dear writing friends, find their way to publication, I pulled back and shied away. I was a teacher, living in a world of kids and their ideas, helping them find their voice and putting their words on a page. Are my ideas worthy of the outside world? Or did I secretly not want them out there? That was a question asked of me one day. Stopped me in my tracks. Was I writing to only entertain myself?

So, now I am reaching out from under those covers. Good story requires us, as writers to author our work. We are the authority, and we need the confidence to make one simple decision. Who will be our audience? And what will we write? I am a writer of mostly middle grade stories. Stories designed for ages nine to twelve. I love those ages because I have incredible lived memories of them in both my own middle grade experience and in the experiences of the kids whose lives and stories filled mine in my own teaching years.
A nine- to twelve-year-old can imagine themselves into all sorts of situations. They can move and breathe in the depths of a problem. They cloud up and storm away, pout and project and worry. They have huge hearts that are terrified of what is happening in the peer group that surrounds them. Clothes and boy/girl problems abound. But, they also have the capacity to be champions. They are wildly interested in the world around them, can jump on a bandwagon and support a mighty cause. Whether it’s water wells in Africa or food scarcity in our American cities. They care and that caring runs deep. They have big thoughts and brave feelings about their own problems and the problems of those around them.

So this, dear writer, is the audience I hope to make my work public for. That means when I’m writing, I must slip into their skin, look around and be ten or twelve on the page! I must also become hopeful, imagining my words out there on an open stage. Are you hopeful? Do you have a hint of belief in yourself, your writing, your dreams? Those are the most important components of all!