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I met Mary Lee Adler in Miami. She was (in her smart, loving, embracing way) overseeing the young writers of the National YoungArts program. Making sure they were heard. Making sure they were seen. Making sure they were experiencing all that week-long program had to give them.

But here's the thing: If those YoungArts writers did nothing more than meet Mary Lee, their week in the Miami sun would have been worth it. I've rarely enjoyed conversation as much as I enjoyed my conversation with this reader/maker/doer. I've rarely felt so privileged.

A Vanderbilt graduate with an English degree, a woman who has traveled the world, a woman who doesn't give up on love or its possibilities, Mary Lee is also a sculptor—a maker of exquisite urns, among other things.

Today I'm celebrating Mary Lee and her artful renditions of the everlasting. Please visit her web site to learn more.

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In my fourth book, Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World, I wondered out loud about what might happen if we stopped competing with and through our children. If we gave them time to become themselves, to work together to build ideas and worlds that are never judged, prized, awarded.

Seeing Past Z was based on the many years I spent teaching children in my home and at a local garden. It was about the beauty of just being together, imagining together, writing together, and not mailing our poems, songs, stories out into the world for "greater" validation. I never re-wrote the children's work, never rewrote the work of my son. What they created they created. They took the pride of ownership. They gained.

From the opening pages of Seeing Past Z:

I want to raise my son to pursue wisdom over winning. I want him to channel his passions and talents and personal politics into rivers of his own choosing. I'd like to take the chance that I feel it is my right to take on contentment over credentials, imagination over conquest, the idiosyncratic point of view over the standard-issue one. I'd like to live in a world where that's okay.

Some call this folly. Some make a point of reminding me of all the most relevant data: That the imagination has lost its standing in classrooms and families nationwide. That storytelling is for those with too much time. That winning early is one bet-hedging path toward winning later on. That there isn't time, as there once was time, for a child's inner life. That a mother who eschews competition for conversation is a mother who places her son at risk for second-class citizenry.

The book was ahead of its time. It sold but a few thousand copies, was remaindered quickly. A few years later the slow parenting movement rolled in. Books about the importance of play and the dangers of the parent-governed resume grabbed headlines. Helicopter parenting was caught in the snare. The family counselors, the social scientists, the psychiatrists sat on the talk-show couches and asked, What have we done to our young?

Yesterday The Atlantic ran an important story by Jen Karetnick titled "Behind the Scenes of Teenage Writing Competitions." The story reminds us of the damage that can get done when teens (and those who oversee their paths to glory) write to win, write to build their resumes. The work is shaped (not always by the teens themselves) to beat the odds. The resumes grow, often at the expense of less-privileged children who don't have writing mentors and editors at their side. And programs designed to help these young people step toward the light are compromised by work that may or may not be the students' own. From the story:

This destruction of self-esteem and erasing of voice is exactly what Nora Raleigh Baskin, author of the new book Ruby on the Outside, fears. Having taught for almost 15 years at organizations including Gotham Writers Workshop, Raleigh Baskin has seen those mindsets trending. She refuses to critique manuscripts to send off to literary magazines or to judge competitions on the grounds that budding writers’ voices shouldn’t be “held up against a random opinion. This is the time for exploration and for encouragement … Writing is all about process and setting these arbitrary achievements takes away from that.”

For some young writers, that pressure can be far more insidious than the pain of rejection. The competitive spirit may persuade parents to hire well-known writers to tutor, edit, or even rewrite their children’s work. It may even lead minors down the path of plagiarism.

As parents and teachers, as writers and people with more than a few wrinkles by their eyes, let us do what is right by our young people. Let us not rewrite their stories. Let us not allow them to think that winning is more important than knowing. Let us remind them that honesty, authenticity, goodness is the ultimate aim, not stars or unearned privilege. Let them find out who they are.

When, for example, I asked my young people to create a character, I gave out no stars. When I served as the Master Writing Teacher at the National YoungArts Foundation a few years ago, I did not go to upgrade the students' work; I went to provoke them with new prompts, new readings, new conversations, to encourage them to dig deeper within their own souls. And at Penn, where I teach a single course once each year, I am not rewriting my students' work, not rewriting their essays. I am pressing them to take each idea and every line farther—for their own sake. I am rewarding hard work and careful thought. I am rewarding personal growth. I am disappointed by those who take short cuts. Because it only hurts them.

One last word on this. Lately I have been going through many boxes from my youth. Reading, with a terrible blush in my cheeks, my early poems. People, they were awful. They were worse than awful. They showed no promise.

But they were mine. Never rewritten, never edited, never smoothed out. It took time time time for me to find my own way, and I'm still struggling. Having never taken formal creative writing classes, having taught myself through the books I've read and the friends I've made, I may still be behind the curve, but I am me behind that curve.

Let the young be themselves. Their breakthroughs will have more meaning.

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I had the pleasure of watching this HBO special last evening—the YoungArts Master Class with John Guare, in Rome. Catch the whole if you can. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer.

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I'm not actually done talking about those fabulous YoungArts writers yet. Indeed, for the past several weeks, I've been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Hairography, the book my husband and I created to celebrate the work of these super novas. Bill took the gorgeous portraits; he designed the book. I encouraged and prodded. The National YoungArts Foundation made the publication possible.

Today Hairography arrives in the students' mailboxes. I am immeasurably happy about that. This, above, is Miss Shelley Hucks, whose beautiful words close the book. And here are some of my words, from the preface:
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The thing about being a “master” teacher in the National YoungArts Foundation program is that there are no rules. You are invited to come to Miami in early January, to stand among the finalists of a rigorous national contest, and to divulge (perhaps) who you’ve been, where you’ve traveled, what you’ve learned, what failure taught you, what the dream looks like on the opposite side of the moon. As a writer who has experimented with all genres and published in most, as a person who takes greatest pleasure from watching others soar, as a woman more inclined to listen than to speak, I chose to invite the two dozen bright lights to see themselves new and to report back on their adventures. 

Hairography I called it. What does the stuff on the top of your head have to say?How will it say it? What is the mood, the tone, the diction, the lexiconical reach? How does the hair manage to think when it is perpetually leaving itself behind?Is it at peace? Can it know peace? Find the pronoun, name the gender, consider plurals and singulars, tense and tone, or don’t. Write the autobiography of your hair.

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I'm kinda tired and I'm kinda cold, but I'm not settling down on the couch beneath a blanket with my mug of warm apple cider and my memoir of the week before I post this photograph, taken at the end of a Saturday at Penn.

The highlights: Sharing the campus with my brother, sister-in-law, and super smart nephew Owen. Buying my beautiful son a quick lunch, a hot chocolate, and two party-colored pretzels. Meeting Julia Elizabeth Hogan and Peter LaBerge of National YoungArts Foundation fame for a quickish tour, a too-short conversation, and some hummus. Getting to know Julia's mom (who took this expert photo at the door to the building where I currently teach) and dad, despite the small radial arrangements in the restaurant.

And: Seeing Jamie-Lee Josselyn, associate director of recruitment and instructor in the creative writing program at Penn, at work at the Kelly Writers House. Jamie-Lee has a plan for Penn, and that plan is simply this: Let the best young writers in the world know about this university of ours, about this unique creation that is Kelly Writers House, about the gathering of word-hungry souls around the hearth. Creative, loving, persistent, Jamie-Lee crisscrosses the country, tells students the truth, and brings them to the campus for a look see. She'll even come to Manayunk on a wet day to meet the teen writers I pull together for a workshop and festival; she'll stay and chat. It's because of Jamie-Lee's efforts that I had the pleasure of seeing Julia and Peter again today. It's because of her that I have brilliant young writers entering my classroom.

To the day. To the snow that wants to fall. To the mug of cider I have earned and the book that I will read.

To continuity and friendship.

Oh, and by the way, Miss Mary Lee Adler: We did some talking about you, oh yes we did. We all love you. Hugely.

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My experience with the National YoungArts Foundation program yielded many moments of joy, new friendships (I'll be seeing two of the young writers this weekend at Penn!), and some encounters with astonishing work.

This short film took my breath away, left my face wet with tears. Written, directed, and edited by a young man named Cameron Covell, starring Nick Lopez and Analisa Gutierrez, and already the winner of the LACHSA 2012 Moon Dance Best Film Award and Best Actor Award, this is what you must do in advance of Valentine's Day. You must watch this.

Thank you, Julia Elizabeth Hogan, for returning this to me. I can't wait to see you and Peter LaBerge this weekend on my ole Ivy League campus.

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Years ago, I wrote a book in the voice of a river—Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River—and felt it to be my truest book—my least defended, my most vulnerable.  I was speaking in the voice of another, and so I was speaking with undiluted honesty about how I lived lonesomeness, forsakenness, slow faith, trust, and love.

Ever since Flow, I have encouraged my students to write in the voice of another so that they might better see themselves.  Autobiographies of the inanimate have ensued.  Autobiographies of the comb, the toothbrush, the flashlight.  Autobiographies of the ID card, the pink sweater, the dandelion-tattooed iPhone case, the glass horse, the pipe, the yellow post-it (one year old).  While in Miami with the two dozen YoungArts writers, we talked hairography—the pieces I'd asked them to write in the voice of their hair.  We reviewed questions of gender, tense, knowledge, research.  We talked, specifically, about empathy—about how, forced to see one's own self through the eyes of a constant, silent witness, we grow.  Our language changes.  Our understanding steeps.

And so:  Choose an object or a thing that is always nearby.  Imagine yourself into its perspective.  See what it teaches you. 

Here, for example, is my own hairography.  It is speaking to the twenty-four.  It is speaking to you.

Hairography

 

Language like fumes.  Language particulate and strange—the caper of a thought, cleaved.  Here are some words:  Efflorescence.  Interjacent.  Lagniappe.  Rune.  Here is the vast task of my existence:  to listen.  I am electrostatic frizz, I am frump, I am inconvenient.  I am fallen, twisted, clawed, resisted, shamed.  There are one hundred thousand of me.  But in the spaces in between, I breathe.

         What I’ve learned (we):

         Language is larger than words.  Language is song and pace, hurry and pause; take it one shivering um at a time.  Language wants to participate and it is afraid and it waits for a sign.  Language bends, and any sentence studied might be a poem.  Make the poem.  Defy the easy tease of ordinary-ness.  Live language large.  Look at me hanging here, desperate here, curling.  Appease me.

         You will have noticed some things:  In the making of the new there will be consequences.  In the struggle to know there will be pain.  In the urge to emerge there will be casual disregard.  In the arsenal of punctuation, on the snowbanked page, in the sudden silence, answers will be found.  Against chemistry, machines, mongers, fads, grandiose insensitivities, and regrettable excess wage war.  

         Corrugated, coruscated, unfit:  Your eyes, through the years, have accused me.  Brittle, broken, lied to, lied for, left to wind and winter, smoke and cure, delusion, bedsheets:  I yet remain.  (We.)  I grow old.  I wait.

         Language like fumes—did you hear me?  Language particulate and strange.  If my gift is how I listen, your gift must be how you talk into the page.  How you tunnel through—cuticle to follicle to brain blood heart.  How you—somehow—remain.

         What did you say?

For more thoughts on memoir making and prompt exercises, please visit my dedicated Handling the Truth page.

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In Miami, during the National YoungArts Foundation program week, teens selected for their talent in nine different disciplines had the opportunity to share their work on major stages.  The work itself was extraordinary, of course.  But what most deeply touched me was the spontaneous nature of the anticipatory crowds. 

Here we are, ahead of the readings by the young writers.  The musicians had carried their instruments with them, as they always did, and had broken out into some song.  The dancers, hearing the strands of melody, took the music upon themselves—half impulse, half something they might have done before. 

I want to live like that.

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This is but one of the remarkable twenty-four who read in Miami during YoungArts week.  Her name is Victoria White.  Listen, and you'll never forget her.  Find the others.  Listen to them, too.

Our literary future.

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These are the months when I never sleep.  The annual report months, the news magazine months, the teaching months, the cold ache in the bones.  I would say that I woke to the frost this morning, but that would imply that I had slept. 

Still, beneath two blankets and one burning bulb I read the work of students and was not alone through the dark.  I was taking one final look, for example, at Hairography, the book that my husband and I have created on behalf of the YoungArts writers—the students' work in response to a prompt I gave them, their faces and hair as Bill so magically captured both on a windswept day in Miami.  It's a beautiful book.  How could it not be?  And it will be in the hands of these young writers soon.

Later in the night I began to read the first "official" work of my sixteen Penn students.  They were writing about a journal I had asked them to keep, reflecting on a Joan Didion essay I'd asked them to read.  What is the value of the words you write in the heat of a moment?  What will they teach you about now, sometime in the distant when?  Who do your words tell you you are, and who do they tell you you can be?

I was reading their thoughts through the dark, closing my eyes to think after each essay was marked.  At one point I looked up and the sun was near.  A text message revealed that my son had arrived, in plenty of time, for his first (brisk and early) interview of this day.

It's all about the young for me these days.  It's why I don't regret my age, perhaps—or don't regret it too severely.  

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I have ignored many things this week, but that has to be okay.  I'll get caught up.  I always do.

My heart and mind and thoughts were here, with the fabulous YoungArts writing finalists of 2013.

While away, Serena Agusto-Cox whispered word of this goodness into my virtual ear.  I can't tell you how much it means to me to know that Small Damages continues to find its generous readership.

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with the 24 young writers who have kept me company through these winter days with their wild and teach-worthy responses to three prompts I'd sent out just before Christmas on behalf of the National YoungArts Foundation.  The young writers will be in Miami starting Sunday; their workshops will begin the next day.   By the time I arrive on Wednesday night there will be a lit revolution stirring.

I want to be there for the revolution.

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I made my way to Body Combat early this morning.  The snow began to fall just as I left.  I allow myself to be lazy after workouts like that.  To lie on a couch and dream a novel forward. 

I write so slowly now.  But I never mind the time I make to dream a novel forward.

In between I read the astonishing work being sent to me by the YoungArts writers; our literary future, ladies and gentlemen, is in excellent hands.  I read, as well, Katrina Kenison's glorious new book, Magical Journey, of which I wrote not long ago.  Look for a chance to win your own copy here, on New Year's Day.  All you'll need to do is tell me what makes you quietly glad, and your name will be put into the hat.

Finally, I discovered, thanks to a little white-winged bird, that A.A. Omer, a reader of discerning tastes (in my humble opinion), placed Small Damages number one in her five-book list of the year's best writing.  It joins the work of David Levithan, Moira Young, Ilsa Bick, and Wynne Channing.  It is an act of greatest kindness.  Thank you.

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This year the National YoungArts Foundation received some 10,000 applications for its extraordinary program celebrating emerging artists in the visual, literary, and performing arts fields.  The teen finalists—152 of them—are now just a few weeks away from participating in YoungArts Week in Miami, a program designed to celebrate their talents, to extend their reach, and to engage them in conversation and exercises that will hopefully shape their way of seeing and doing for years to come.

As the Master Teacher for the 24 young writers who were selected for the program (writing being just one of nine celebrated disciplines), I am blessed.  I'll be teaching in the city's botanical gardens.  I'll be asking the students to come prepared with a brief autobiography of their hair, a declaration about the books that have changed their perception of both story and language, and a photograph of themselves that firmly divides a Before from an After.  We'll explore the garden in search of telling details, weatherscapes, and invisible, essential forces.  We will write bird song and water rush.  We will assimilate and empathize.

I am eager to meet the young writers. I am eager to learn from the program's other master teachers and presenters—Marisa Tomei, Bobby McFerrin, Bill T. Jones, Debbie Allen, Joshua Bell, and Adrian Grenier, among others.  I am eager to spend some time in Miami.

But first things first.  Today I officially welcome my students, who will be arriving from San Francisco, Birmingham, Holladay, Boonton, and all manner of places in between.

Congratulations, and welcome:

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