Now I’m reading a book called Families Writing by Peter R. Stillman. I picked up the book at Half-Price Books when I went there today to get over a fit of total frustration with myself as a parent. I got the book hoping that it would help me with a class I’m planning for the spring in co-op. However, as I read it, I got more and more ideas for our own family. One of those ideas was to start a blog for the family and get everybody writing in it. Maybe it’ll be fun.
From the book:

“Have you ever thought about paying a youngster to write? While that may sound like the very kind of bribery you and every other right-minded parent should oppose, think again: Writrs get paid to write, don’t they? And aren’t we attempting to get family members old and young to perceive themselves as writers? . . . Toby Fulwiller, a friend and college professor well known for his contributions to the teaching of writing, and Laura, his wife, came up with notion that to induce their eleven year old daughter into the habit of regular writing they’d make her an offer she couldn’t possibly refuse: a half hour daily at the word processor, 15 minutes to be spent practicing typing and the other 15 minutes to be devoted to writing about something that happened in her day. Both parents would respond to Anna’s entries. The incentive was money–a raise in allowance from two to four dollars a week. (Had my father thought to offer me a deal like that I’d have written the Great American Novel before I was sixteen.)”

Anyone ready to write a novel?