A Word with Doug Wilhelm

I had an email this week from Sue Owen, a sixth-grade language arts and literature teacher at Bettendorf (Iowa) Middle School. Sue said her students have just finished reading The Revealers, “which we loved” — and they want to know if the stars of the story, Russell, Elliot and Catalina, win the Creative Science Fair that culminates the story. Although their exhibit appears to be the best, the book doesn’t say whether they win. In this way, it’s true, The Revealers leaves the reader hanging.

When I visit schools to talk with young readers, I often get this question. I think it’s a good one, because it invites us to reflect on what a realistic story is trying to do. So here is the answer I sent to Sue and her students:

I wanted The Revealers to feel like real life. Everything isn’t wrapped up totally neatly at the end; in fact, there isn’t really “the end.” The kids will come back to school tomorrow, and they’ll have to deal with each other. Everyone won’t be all nicely perfected now, any more than people are in reality. I think we can assume that much, because life goes on. I wanted the story of these characters to feel that way, at the same time that it also (I hope) feels, at the end, like it has come to a good place to end the telling of the tale.

I thought that to end by saying who won the science fair would feel wrong, because it would conclude this experience by suggesting that what some adults felt about it was the most important thing. To Russell and Elliot and Catalina, I don’t think it was. I think what mattered most to them was getting the respect of the other kids back, and they did get that. If the story had ended by saying whether they also got a blue ribbon or not, to me that would have suggested that it mattered more what those judges thought than what the kids thought. I think that for middle schoolers, this isn’t true. What usually matters most is what your peers think, whether you have respect and are “somebody” among them.

I myself kind of liked the way the story ended with Russell and Elliot, who had been under some pressure lately, being able to be kids again. I liked that they played. Remember? They play with the empty root-beer bottle. That felt good to me — they knew they had achieved something meaningful, something that was a mature achievement, and now for these few minutes they could be kidlike again and play. To me, that felt like the right way to end. You may well disagree! And you have every right to. After all, once you have read the story, it’s your story every bit as much as it is mine.

I just finished reading a fine new YA novel, Write Naked, by Peter Gould (FSG 2008). Peter lives in Vermont, as I do, and he’s one of the most creative people we’ve got. For years, he performed hilarious and thought-provoking theater pieces, all around the world, and these days he runs a Shakespeare camp called “Get Thee to the Funnery” and directs plays at the New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro. Peter is one of the people in the world who are making a life out of doing original creative work — and Write Naked is, in some ways, about doing that. It’s also about discovering your true self, about the interesting tensions between teenage boys and teenage girls, about hippie communes and the state of today’s planet … and, yes, it’s about writing naked. Which you can try literally, or in spirit.

In my personal case, the the desk where I do most of my writing faces both the street and the house next door. (It’s in a corner of my living room, with two windows.) So I should definitely stick to writing nakedly in spirit. But this is something to think about, for sure. Peter thought about it; then he then wrote a unique and deep story about it. Like his theater work, Write Naked is meaningful and thought-provoking. You might check it out.

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I visit a lot of schools where young adults read my books, especially The Revealers, and sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get a sense of what young adults are talking about. I noticed recently (and sure, I remember this that a lot of kids talk about immaturity. “That’s so immature,” or “You’re so immature.” There’s a lot of fear, at this age, of being immature.

But what is immaturity? Is it so bad?

I decided today that immaturity is expecting to be protected from consequences. That’s what it is. If you are facing up to the consequences of your own actions and choices in the world, then you’re not immature — no matter how your own spirit moves you to act, or what somebody else thinks or says about that. To a lot of young people, I think “being mature” means acting like somebody else — either a specific person they think is mature or cool, or some such thing, or like some vague notion of grownupedness. I say, Let it go. Accept the consequences of what you do and say, face them straight up, and then you are free. You can be your actual self. I actually think it’s this simple.

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Sometimes people offer me story ideas. Sometimes I ask people for story ideas! A middle schooler named James, whose school I visited last week in Hingham, Mass., says he is thinking about an idea for a followup novel to The Revealers. If he sends it, I will think about it. I always do. To a person doing creative work, ideas are the most vital thing. Writers write their ideas down; musicians record theirs; artists sketch theirs. I think what separates a person who does creative work from someone who doesn’t is not, at heart, having ideas. Everyone has ideas! It’s honoring your ideas. It’s giving them importance, giving them value. It’s writing them down.

I notice, myself, that ideas are a lot like dreams. When you have one, it’s vivid in the moment and you always think you’ll remember it — then, an hour later, it’s gone. But if you write down your idea, as with a dream you’ve just had, then you won‘t forget it. And then you can feed your idea, and it has the chance to grow into something more. This is how stories and other creative works begin. This is how they start to take form.

So yesterday, two seventh-grade boys gave me this idea. If you like it, maybe you can do something with it. I liked it a lot! It’s this: The Hardly Boys.

“See, there’s these two boys, and they’re always trying to solve mysteries, but they’re really bad at it,” one boy told me.

I think that’s great. You might have some copyright issues with whoever published the Hardy Boys series … but it’s an idea with a lot of energy. Don’t you think?