June Rousso's Blog: Writing Inspirations

How a Book Came to Be

In my mind a written story is a projection of who you are and therefore comes the heart. I have wondered from time to time why I wrote, We All Live On This Planet Together. It is a book for children, but hardly limited to a child audience. The book focuses on how the love we feel for ourselves and toward the wonders of the world can fade behind our everyday worries.

I can recall the very moment sitting alone in my home feeling isolated from the world and consumed with worry from everything from our changing climate to fears about my own safety in the world. There clearly was a heaviness to my worries.

As the fears swelled up inside what I liked about myself and loved about the world were no where to be found. These joys appeared to shrink before my eyes.

Suddenly from nowhere a creative surge took over and the positive thoughts poured out. What I learned as a writer was not to put breaks on the thoughts.

What fascinated me was how they all came out in rhyme and continued until the end of my story. I chuckled, being reminded how my father wrote poems for me as a child, something that I felt I could never do on my own. It was his voice then and I still remember the words decades later. But it feels so good to finally have a voice of my own and to have his words as a memory along side of mine. That is part of the joy that I find in writing - to express my voice - and inspire readers. We All Live On This Planet Together is a start.

Character Development

One focus of my writing has been on character development, but it likely is not what you are thinking. In We All Live On This Planet Together, the characters appear in illustrations, but you are not told anything specifically about them. That being said, I am not developing characters in the book as much as focusing on the importance of developing our own inner character strengths. There is definitely a difference here.

There are so many character strengths that we can draw upon in life - kindness, curiosity, honesty, love of learning, spirituality, sense of humor- just to name a few. As we work to develop them we evolve to better human beings, using our best selves for ourself and for others.

I would imagine that in future writing with traditional character development it would be these inner strengths that I would draw upon to show the depth of someone's personality. For now it is making people aware of character strengths and the role that they take in our everyday lives.