precocious

My daughter got an assignment from her 8th grade Language Arts teacher to write a new final chapter for Steinbeck's The Pearl. She wrote this chapter in only a couple of hours and showed it to me. I was pretty much stunned--it was elegantly written, true to the character and voice of the novel, thematically unified. How can a 14-year-old pull this off, I ask myself. She always writes so smoothly, effortlessly beautifully. She weaves dialogue, description, commentary. She makes the rarest of obscure errors in syntax, punctuation, diction.

She won a prize from her teacher for this writing, not surprisingly, and she read it to an audience of students and parents at an 8th grade symposium the following week. Sitting on the edge of her bed in the shadows later that night, I asked her if she felt a little as though the writing had written itelf, almost as though she herself as a conscious creator had little to do with it. I think she was relieved that I described it that way--I think she feels almost guilty that she could create a text like that without even trying very hard. She must compare herself with her peers at school. She has seen lots of my students' papers. She must know that what she can do is so different that there is almost no comparing. If she didn't know it before she channeled this chapter for Steinbeck, she knows it now.

I didn't help her write her chapter, and I almost never do anything directly related to her writing at all. I stay out of her way, let her find her own moments. If she gives me something to read, I give her a little praise and and a little criticism, but I feel that it would be a mistake for me to impose any kind of agenda on her artistic expressions or even to use my suggestions / approval / disapproval to try to shape her efforts more subtly. I have seen parents do damage this way. But I also wonder if I am missing opportunities that I could offer her.

I was relieved recently when she asked me if she could do a pottery camp this summer, because I have been feeling guilty for not working harder to get her into art classes and that sort of thing. Here, at least, was something SHE asked for to develop her art. But I don't know what to do about the writing. For now I am doing nothing. I think it is too easy to hastily do the wrong thing, and the matter seems delicate for some reason.