Finding My Inner Child in My Writing

I didn’t plan to take a 3-month hiatus from writing; it just happened. Really.

Yeah, right.

Those who know me know I began counting down the days until the 2013/2014 school year almost immediately following the conclusion of the 2012/2013 school year. It’s not that I don’t cherish the unstructured, homework-free time I get to spend with my daughters; It’s that attending to these estrogen samplings isn’t conducive to a serious writing schedule. Why else do you think Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters and Virginia Woolf all remained childless?

But yesterday, I had a thought. What if my line of reasoning is too short-sighted? What if the time I spend with my daughters can inspire and improve my writing? After all, writing instructors are always telling us to write from our inner child—what if I wrote from my daughters’ inner children? Could I evoke more wonder, more pathos, more beauty?

So, for my back-to-school post, this is exactly what I will attempt to do. Please accept the following vignettes as a random sampling of the multitude of ways in which my daughters enriched and enlarged my world view this summer: 

• 104-days of summer vacation is, like, WAY too long. Phineas and Ferb should totally move to Fairfax County. We only have 76-days of summer vacation before school comes along to end it.

• Do you think the Disney Channel thinks that women like me—mothers in the 18-49 age demographic, the most coveted by advertisers—will watch Sophia the First just because they cast and created Baileywick, Sophia’s butler, in Tim Gunn’s likeness? DUH! Also? I’m so there.

• Why isn’t Toby in the opening credits for Good Luck Charlie? Do you think that Mia Talerico got all diva on his ass?

• Wait, you mean that Liv and Maddie, the twin characters on the new show, Liv & Maddie, are actually the played by the same actress? OMG. Nobody has tried that stunt since Lindsay Lohan in 1998’s Parent Trap. So yeah, good luck with that Dove Cameron…

• Teen Beach Movie. No words, people. Except maybe AWESOME.

• I don’t care how much the Ross family is paying her, there is NO WAY anyone taking care of 4 kids and a lizard has time to look that well-dressed and well-coiffed every day. Plus, I don’t like her. Yeah, I said it; get over it.

• You guyz? Bridgit Mendler is soooooo right—We can. We can. We can change the world.

• I ♥ Dez.

You know, now that I read this back over, maybe keeping my writing life separate isn’t such a bad idea after all…

See you in October.