During school visits, students
often ask me why I write nonfiction. And my answer is that while fiction
writers enjoy inventing characters and creating worlds, for me, the natural
world is so amazing, so magical, that I feel driven to share its beauty and wonder with other people. I tell my
young audience that if one of my books inspires
them to lift up a rock and see what’s underneath or to chase after a butterfly
just to see where it’s going, then my job is done.

For me, writing is
sharing. While I wrote for myself long before I was published and continue to
do so today, writers generally crave more than an audience of one. That’s one
of the reasons I’ve maintained this blog for 11 years.

I often use this blog as
a way of working out my own ideas about the world and the craft of nonfiction
writing. Some posts don’t get much of an audience, but some of my most popular posts have received more than 100,000 hits and one received 500,000. Clearly, the ideas I threw out into the world those
day resonated with my audience, and I should keep pursing them. So far, ideas
that started on this blog have turned into four books for educators, and
perhaps there will be more in the future.

So why is any of this relevant
to you, my audience of teachers, librarians, and writers? Because young writers
are no different from me. They want to be seen and heard and understood, and we
need to show them that writing can be a powerful way to do that. How? By giving
them an authentic audience. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Share a final draft with
a small group of classmates. This is less intimidating than doing an oral
presentation for the whole class. Encourage listeners to discuss the writer’s
ideas but not to critique the writing.