Sunday, June 19, 2011

Raising a Writer

For as long as I can remember, my daughter has been telling me that she's not a writer. I have a friend who believes that she is; she asks Tori about her writing and Tori says, "I'm not a writer." My friend laughs because she is herself a writer who wishes she weren't, and also because she's a little bit psychic and she believes otherwise.

The thing is, writer or not, she's got words in her head. Not just words, either, but paragraphs, chapters, characters' entire lives.

Each morning, she shares her plan for the day. And every morning, it begins, "I'm going to write until noon, and then..." This evening, she wrote her first guest post for one of my blogs, though she already has a couple of blogs of her own. She's got the bug, whether she wants it or not.

This makes me wonder whether having words in your brain is genetic, or a function of all that early reading, or grows out of the way you relate to language in childhood or something else I haven't thought of. Somehow, I created a writer, but I have no idea whether I did it by reading to her or talking to her or teaching her to print at three or simply by sharing my DNA.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Re-Made in the USA

If there's one thing readers of this blog know about my writing, it's that it's eclectic: fiction, legal analysis, parenting articles, music bios, local newspaper reporting--for me, it's all about the words. Sometimes, though, it's also about the message.

Last fall, I had the amazing opportunity to work with author and international businessman Todd Lipscomb on his book Re-Made in the USA: How We Can Restore Jobs, Retool Manufacturing, and Compete With the World.

I will admit that before I started reading Todd's drafts and talking with him about the issues addressed in his book, I didn't give the trade deficit much thought. Sure, I knew it was a problem, but it was a problem that seemed a bit far removed from day-to-day life and the more immediate issues confronting the society I lived in. I couldn't have been more wrong about that disconnect, and I came out of this book truly wishing every American would read it before it's too late.

Wiley & Sons will release the book on April 12, and I couldn't be more excited. Work like this really drives home the fact that we're all given our talents for a reason, and there's nothing better than being able to put our natural abilities and acquired skills to work in service of a good cause. That's what the author did when he left a lucrative career to found a business selling only goods made in America, and I'm delighted to have had the privilege of helping him get the word out.