A letter to Makena from her dad

Hello sweetheart Makena,

Books.

Aren't they wonderful? Faster than the fastest airplane can they transport you to wonderful places that either never existed,are long gone, still exist or will only come into being in the future.

I love books. I know you do too. They say, "you are reader first and a writer second", so if you read enough books at some point you will start wanting to write books yourself! But first you have to feed your mind with many, many stories, live many stories yourself and then wonderful stories will flow out of you as well.

Let me show you something. This is my magic book. The first real book I read.

It is obviously in Danish. Translated into English it would be called something like "Towards Unknown Places - Forgotten and Hidden Worlds". It is about 400 pages long and quite a grown-up book to read for a little boy, who had only just learned to piece letters together into words. The topic can best be described as history mixed with geography and anthropology (which is the science of how human beings live and behave - particular in the past or in tribes living in far away places). Basically the book is a collection of explorers writing about their adventures travelling to faraway and dangerous places on all the continents. Your auntie Mette, my sister of course, was at the time working at a library and because of that, she would bring all kinds of mixed books home, thinking it might be something the different members of our family would like. This I certainly did like. I absolutely fell in love with it - both the amazing adventures on its pages, but also all the knowledge of foreign places, people and times it was full of. And so my love of books began...

What about you? I know you love Jaqueline Wilson books - among many others. What was your magic book? The one where it just snapped and all of a sudden you couldn't stop reading...


Remember when you told me that actually you don't do so much practise with writing stories? Yes, writing a book can be quite daunting. But you can only read a word at a time, a page at a time. So how about writing like that? Can you write one word? Of course you can. Can you write one page? Of course you can. Start like that. Write your story one page at a time.

Right now, I have three books in progress with a fourth I would like to also write - but I still don't quite have the knowledge to write that one yet. Of  the three, I have simply picked the easiest or simplest to start with. I figure, once I have finished one book, even if it was an easy book, the next one will be a lot easier to write. Finishing something makes you more confident and more experienced. So the next one will be a lot easier.

So to make it simple for ourselves, we write our book, one page at a time.

Next, to make it believable for others who read it, we write about what we know. If you try to dream up a whole new world, which you have never been to, or maybe doesn't exist, you need to put a lot of work into the details, or else it just doesn't come across as believable. It can be done, but if you write about what you know, you already know very well how everything fits together and work in your world. And all those little details is what makes it interesting for people to read. It just adds life to the whole story.

But the other day I came across this, and thought of you:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/125/risk-taking/survival-guides/ruzo-boiling-point/

National Geographic is this world famous society of explorers, who travel the world and bring back stories from some of the most dangerous, remote or fantastical places on Earth. They had a couple of their people write about some of the most incredible things that ever happened to them. Like this guy finding himself trapped by a boiling river - and without being able to see where he was going!

I thought, "Interesting, that might find its way into a story of mine one day. Better pay close attention to the details so I can write about it in a believable way!" There are other stories there, about people being held hostage and escaping, people being stung by scorpions and more. I read such stories and carefully keep them in my mind. Should I one day need to write about something more than what I know and have experienced myself, then I can dip into such stories and use them for my purpose.

Keep reading, and keep writing, sweetheart!

Baba

A letter to Makena from her dad

My dear Makena,

Have you ever noticed how your teacher first tells some things to the whole class, and then later comes and speaks to everybody individually in the class? Also as a parent, some things I need to tell all my children, some things are only for that individual child. Does that make sense? Do you think your teacher is less sincere because she tells some things to the whole class and some things to only you? Do you think your teacher is less sincere if she tells the same things to several different students? Maybe all of them needed to hear what that was. Is that "shameful"?

Makena, I mean you no harm; I am not out to offend you or insult you. Please, can't you see that? Do you think I am out to hurt you? Or maybe trick you? Lie to you? Or fool you? No. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Do you think you are less to me than Jamila? You and Jamila cannot be compared. You are completely different people. Also to me, you are. Some things of course are the same. You share a lot of similar circumstances: same parents, same gender, living in the same place, going to the same school (okay Jamila doesn't go to your school anymore, but you get the idea) and so on. But in terms of personality you are very different in most respects; in terms of history you are also different even if both of you have shared a lot of the same experiences. By that I mean that a lot of the things Jamila has done, you haven't. A lot of the things that are just so Makena, Jamila has never done. Does that mean that one of you is better than the other? No. You are both great - just different. What is better? Custard or ricepudding? Pistachio or white chocolate icecream? Both are pretty good, but nothing like the other. Can we agree on that? I love you very much Makena. I also love Jamila very much. That is just how it is. Is that okay?

Your Baba

PS. As for Jamila's passport, Jamila is old enough to take care of that. Leave that to Jamila. What she does with her things, is her business.