Back from a 3-day stay at The Bancroft School in New England, where I was invited to be the keynote speaker at their young writer’s conference. It was an awe-inspiring, humbling, and hugely wonderful experience, complete with fifty kids straining at the bit to write their hearts out, four other writing mentors who kept me laughing and eased my pre-speech jitters, and the most gracious host family I have ever come across.

The keynote was sort of the “big” thing of the event. Or at least that was what everything had been leading up to. I was prepared, had practiced the speech at least 6 or 7 times, and stood up behind that podium after being introduced feeling fairly confident. Except that nothing that I had practiced, nothing that I had written down on that paper came out of my mouth. Instead, as I looked out at all of those kids, most of whom I had spent the last two days with talking intensely about writing and reading and Twilight and what it feels like to be in a room with a hundred other kids and feel like you are completely alone, something completely different began to come out of me. It may have been my maternal instinct kicking in. Or maybe I saw myself in those kids, the way I had been when I was 15 and 16, struggling to come to terms with the world around me. And so instead of talking to them about writing and revising and trying to find inspiration, I began to talk about how important they were. I told them that they all had a voice, and that when they found that voice, it was their job, their duty, to use it. I told them to sing out. I told them to be brave. I told them to tell the truth - even when it hurt. I told them to speak up when they saw something wrong, and to speak up again when they saw something right.

At one point - and to my absolute horror - my voice cracked as I spoke to them. But I couldn’t have prevented it, even if I had tried. I knew that they were listening to me and that all these years later, standing up in front of a room full of kids trying to understand, I was listening too - maybe for the first time.

It felt good. It felt right.

Afterwards, they asked me to come back next year.

I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Onward.

CG

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