RIDING ON A KEYBOARD
By Whitney Stewart

As my character, 13-year-old guitarist Eric Wieman, says, "your art can take you places, mind places and real places."

That's what writing does for me; that's why I love it. It takes me way inside my center and connects me with the rest of the world. And writing connects me on the outside too. I travel across continents to gather stories. I write to understand people, to understand cultures, to understand just how everything in the world is unified even if we don't see the strings attached.

In writing biographies for children, I interview some of the most fascinating people on earth. And I can ask them anything I want. I can learn their inner secrets: the Dalai Lama smacks his lips for bread with hardened cream; Aung San Suu Kyi used to be afraid of the dark; Sir Edmund Hillary regularly stayed up past his bed time, reading under the covers with a flashlight. Hearing these stories makes my own life fuller.

And in writing fiction, I can give my characters any personality traits that amuse me. I can shape people, and settings, and story lines until they say something, until they echo with meaning. I can take a moment from real life and mold it into another moment of literary life. My own brother could be reborn as a banjo whiz. The girl down the street might become an Olympic gymnast. My high school history teacher might reincarnate as a blind cellist.

I never know before it happens. That's the fun of it. That's writing.