Riddle
Lots of times life throws riddles at me and sends me running to the nearest bookshelf. Does it do that to you? The latest riddle I’ve been working through has to do with parenting. I won’t get into it here, as it has nothing to do with writing, and it’s also a really personal decision. So lets suffice it to say I feel like I’m being faced with a rather huge decision that will affect the rest of both mine and Super Spawn’s life.
Whoa, right? That’s big stuff.
For the last week or so I’ve been throwing around terms like “Parenting Philosophy” a lot, and I’ve been reading non stop on the subject. (Thus no book recs for you guys, sorry. Non-Fiction has had my attention lately.) The point here is learning about these different parenting approaches has really given me a depth of knowledge for crafting parents in my writing.
Parenting styles are so diverse, and they each create their own “right” version of their children. And when you sit down to write as the teenage daughter of a Tiger Mom, well, you’ve got to know what that household dynamic would be like in real life. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my reading, it’s that the outside actions of both parents and kids don’t always tell the whole story. And I think knowing what kind of parent the teen you’re writing comes from can give you a real sense of them as a person.
This is just another reminder that to write well, you need to read well. 
I’d have never thought a bunch of non-fiction books on parenting would give me greater insight to my writing. But, well, they did! Do you ever get surprised by what inspires your stories?
