As a mother, I’m curious about your experience as a mother and a writer. Were you a mother, for example, when you wrote Out of the Dust? And are there ways in which you can identify how your experience as a mother has informed and shaped your writing?

I was, indeed, a mother when I wrote OUT OF THE DUST. My entire body of work for children has been written since the birth of my first child. Writing and mothering are two overwhelmingly demanding jobs. They both require regular creative problem solving and they jealously compete with each other for attention. I ended up writing at night while my children slept until they were both in school full time. I imagine just the act of writing at night (for someone who is not a night owl) had an impact on the writing as well as my health. Yet I needed to write as much as I needed to eat or breathe. And so I managed.

Both mothering and writing require digging deep. Being present for my children as well as my characters (and myself and my poor husband) took its toll at times. I was committed to doing both parenting and writing as honestly and respectfully as possible. Mothering and writing stretched me, fascinated me, filled me, and exhausted me.

It helped that I often carried several children in my car, transporting them to activities. I was invisible to them which allowed me to listen: to their conversations, their interests, their concerns, their humor. Though I never used any of my children’s issues (nor the issues of their friends) in my books, it helped enormously to hear their rhythms, their reasoning, their laughter, their perspectives.

I suspect I would not have been the writer I became if not for the lessons I learned from parenting, and I suspect I would not have been the parent I became if not for the lessons I learned from the writing. I learned to be attentive, patient, disciplined in my use of time, to feel my children’s and my characters’ joys and sorrows without confusing them with my own joys and sorrows while still holding those joys and sorrows respectfully and deeply.

The above photo is of me with my first grandchild. I think you can see the joy grandparenting has brought me. This is an entirely different experience from parenting and my book GRANNY AND BEAN reflects that, I think.