CHILDREN WRITE LIFE

"How can you sit down to write until you have stood up to live?" (Thoreau)

I was going through some of my journals today and came across this story I had written from some book I am sure (which one I didn't make note of) I must have been reading at the time:

A poor woman living in the projects could not give her children a room of their own. But she did give each of them a blank spiral notebook. She told each child it was his very own; he owned it. The only thing she asked was that they write in that "book" each day. She didn't read them, letting them know they were free to write what they wanted. ***

Can you imagine what stories those notebooks contained? Did they write from their imagination? Did they tell the stories of the last soccer game, where they could have made the goal, but didn't--or did? Did they write poetry? Or letters to each other, a relative, to that mother? Or did they begin a memoir, painting a picture of what their life was like in that project, including the dreams, hopes, plans they had for gettng out of there?

You have that opportunity. Can you do less than these children? Write today, write in a spiral notebook, on the computer, on your hand--just write. Get your stories out there.