The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford was once asked for his 10 rules for writing. Rule No. 2: “Don’t have children.”
Of course, there are plenty of other successful authors who’ve had kids.
There’s also another way: Write with your children.
That’s what Ty Thompson has been doing since November 2022. He and his 14-year-old daughter, Vaughn, who live in Lake View, have just finished book II of their fantasy series, “Daniel the Different & the Unfinished Prophecy.”
And theirs might be one solution for parents looking to both bond with a teen and cobble together an itinerary for the looming summer break.
“I had thought that if we write a few chapters and she gets bored with it and wants to stop, then we’ll stop,” said Vaughn’s dad, chatting in the kitchen of their sunlight-flooded home. “We were having so much fun writing it that we kept going.”
Ty Thompson, 45, isn’t a writer. He’s in sales, but he recognized early on his daughter’s love of reading and writing.
“I love to read a lot of things, but fantasy is the thing that I always come back to,” Vaughn said, breaking into a grin revealing a full set of braces.
“At bedtime, she just blurted out, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to write a story about a boy who falls asleep and wakes up in this dream world and then when he falls asleep in the dream world, he wakes up back in the real world?’” he recalled from a conversation with his daughter when she was 10 and in fourth grade.
And so they began telling the tale of “Everworld,” where Daniel, the protagonist, encounters dogs with four heads, cats with nine tails, a candy store fluttering with flying chocolate bars and an ominous green cloud that threatens to destroy the dream world.
After Vaughn blurted out a story idea at bedtime when she was 10, she and her father, Ty, began telling the tale of “Everworld,” where Daniel, the protagonist, encounters dogs with four heads, cats with nine tails, a candy store fluttering with flying chocolate bars and a
