Sorry I missed posting last Tuesday. My fellow Shenanigator Nicole Givens Kurtz and I were honored to participate in a career Fair at a local facility for at-risk kids. These are the children that society seems determined to give up on, the ones who’ve been in and out of foster homes, on and off the streets, and who are on the brink of jail. Some people might say there was no point in us talking with them, because children like that don’t even want a career other than criminal. Why bother wasting our time, right?
The thing is, we didn’t spend the morning in a room full of reprobates. We saw class after class of excited, polite, engaged young people. Most of them were extremely interested in what we had to say, whether they were readers, writers, or both. We met a young man who’s been co-writing a fantasy series with his siblings, and another who lost a 300 page manuscript when his home flooded, but he was doing his best to start over and write it all down again. A couple of the young women bubbled over at meeting actual authors – they’d always looked at author bios at the ends of books and wondered what real authors were like. We talked with poets and lyricists and creators of all kinds, children in the worst circumstances who were just not ready to quit on themselves. It was all over much too soon.
Lately writing has been extra-hard for all of us. The world is on fire, rocks are falling from the sky, and nobody’s buying our books anyway, so putting words on the page seems like the least important thing we can possibly do. After meeting those children, and seeing the excitement and interest in their eyes, I finally remember why I create. Books are our best and surest way of safeguarding tomorrow. In stories, the wisdom of ages is passed on to the next generation so they can build an even brighter future on that foundation. If even one person reads what I write, I’ve succeeded. If even one of those amazing children takes a brave step in the right direction because we helped them feel worthy of a real career, then the least I can do is finish writing my books. Someone may be waiting on them, and I can’t let them down.