Listening to successful children?s book writer Patrick Jennings during an interview with him for ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life,? I realized again how much authors of books for young readers have to teach all of us who write. Listen to my recent interview with Patrick, in which he reads from his work and addresses the writing craft. If you are writing for children or have been wishing, too, you?ll learn what makes a children?s book different than a story Grandma or Grandpa tells. If you write for adult readers, you?ll realize again the importance of the direct use of images for evoking experience.

After you?ve listened to Patrick, try the writing exercises our talk inspired. Again, whether you write for adults or for children, you?ll benefit from the practice of allowing your readers to be in an experience rather than being told by the author about it:

Writing Idea #1

In the interview, Patrick describes what he does as a visiting author addressing children who have read his books.

Imagine yourself speaking before an audience of those who have read your writing. What would you focus on in your talk? Why? What valued and surprising questions would you wish to take from the audience? What would you answer?

You can write this as a play with the dialogue of whomever you choose to introduce you to the audience, your talk, and the Q&A.

Writing Idea #2

Patrick reads from one of his books in which his narrator is a talking dog.

Take a turn writing about your writing life using an improbable narrator: your pet, your telephone, your car?s steering wheel, or a perfume bottle on your dresser.

As you recount your life via the persona you have adopted, maintain its point of view. Whatever the object or animal is, remember that it can only share what it would have witnessed or been involved in or heard about and readers need to know where the persona was and what it saw and heard and felt.

Writing Idea #3

During the interview, Patrick reminds us that children are exacting readers and ask good questions of an author. One of those for him was a question about how a doorbell in his story could work when the electricity had gone out earlier in the story.

How could Patrick have explained this incongruity? Batteries? Magic? That the power went back on momentarily? What would have to have happened in the story for his explanation to be valid?

Has a reader questioned something in one of your pieces of writing? Write an explanation about it. You might address the person fancifully, pragmatically, or even defensively as you experiment with tone.

Writing Idea #4

If someone asked you how you get inspiration for your writing, what would you answer? Write a page with examples.

If someone asked you what you don?t do to inspire ideas, what would you answer? Write a page about that.

If someone asked you what you do not do for inspiration but wish you did do, what would you answer? Write a page about that.

The writing you generate with these four writing ideas might become one or more personal essays or several essays in a series, the title of which might be something like ?My Life in Authoring.?

For more interviews with writers, check the Writing It Real archives of ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life,? programs in which writers address their writing and writing lives.