When I see the photos of the young people killed this week in Boston, I feel despair. As a mother of three, I can only imagine their families' anguish and the "what ifs" that surely haunt them. What if their daughter or son hadn't been in Copley Square, in that particular spot, on that particular day?

When I see the photos of the killer who still lives, the boy with the curly dark hair and the black-brown eyes, the student that a teacher described as a "lovely, lovely kid," I feel anger and dismay, yes, but also, strongest of all, compassion. There it is, unbidden. Maybe it's because he's about the same age as my sons and looks a bit like them. I find myself talking to him in my mind. Somehow I'm there with him in the days before he goes through with it. 

"Tell me what you're thinking," I plead. "Tell me what you're feeling. Talk to me. Talk to us. Talk to the other boy, the 8-year-old who will die. He is not a nationality. He is not an enemy. He is not a symbol of anything. He is a boy with black-brown eyes."

There will be those who say that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed no compassion and deserves none in return, especially now that it's "too late." My mind understands this stance, yet my heart still lurches for him.  I just keep thinking...the disaffected young men who decide to wield guns or bombs or knives in heinous acts of violence were boys, are boys. And whenever I see a child, I see someone whom we as a society are collectively responsible for.

In Dzhokhar, I see a boy who needed us.

In my writers' group, we sometimes talk about audience. As in, "Who are you writing this piece for?"

Often, writers don't know. They're writing what they want to say. And they're hoping that if they say it well enough, an editor will like it, it will get published, and the audience will be the publication's problem.

On the one hand, I admire this stance. It's the "I'm creating what my muse inspires me to create" position, and I'm sure it has resulted in some of the most compelling art ever made.

On the other hand, I don't buy it. The author comes to the page with a worldview, and whether she is aware of it or not, she is creating through the lens of that worldview. Embedded in every sentence, then, are assumptions—about what the reader already knows, about the language that will touch her, about what she finds thrilling or sad or puzzling.

In beginning writers, lack of audience awareness typically results in mechanical problems like disjointed prose; their writing may make sense to them, but it doesn't hold together for their reader. And I've noticed that experienced writers who eschew audience often disappoint. They follow their muse into plot dead ends or long digressions, unaware that they lost their reader's attention long ago.

Plus, isn't being published for being published's sake a sort of empty proposition?

Me, I write to connect, mostly with kids. I write for them, not for myself. I care about reaching them.

The Aldo Zelnick series' audience is 7 to 12 years old or so, is familiar with American pop culture, and can relate to a suburban middle-class life. I'm conscious of this as I write. The stories are told in Aldo's voice, so it's through him that I talk to this audience. They're Aldo's peers. Kids just like him. Kids like McKaiden (pictured above).

I write for the McKaidens (and the McKaylas) of today. Who do you write for?

I don't know any good writers who aren't also good—and usually voracious—readers.

In the wheelhouse of writer as reader, a "good reader" means you read deeply within the genre and form in which you want to write. You also read widely, across genres, to learn what you can from them.

As you're reading, you're appreciating, yes (or bemoaning, as the case may be), but you're also analyzing for form and technique. Why does this first chapter work so well? How does this character's voice differ from that one, and why? How is this novel (or short story or essay) structured? Why is this scene so compelling or so flat?

I've been part of a writers' group for 20 years. I've also edited for hire, taught college composition classes, ghostwritten, and reviewed hundreds of submissions for Bailiwick Press. So I've done oodles of critiquing as well as "here, give-me-that" deep revision/rewriting of others' drafts.

New writers almost always stink at form and technique. Of course they do! How did the first meal you ever cooked turn out?  What about your first vegetable garden or your first weld or your first watercolor?

Make no mistake: Writing is craft. It takes years of practice (I more or less ascribe to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule) as well as study of the medium, which is words strung together in an effective way, a.k.a. good writing.

When I do school visits, I tell kids there are two secrets to becoming an author. The first secret is to practice, just as you would need to do to master the cello or become a soccer phenom. The second secret is reading. Lots and lots of reading.

The thing I don't tell them, because they don't need to know this until they're older, is that eventually they'll need to learn to read as a writer, with a curiosity about and passion for form and technique.

I've seen many pre-published or published-a-little-but-often-rejected writers get stuck because they don't do this. Their craft doesn't improve beyond a certain point because they never learn to (stoop to? take the time to? think they have to?)  hold up their work against the best writing in their genre—not to tell which is "better," but to understand how—sentence by sentence, page by page, chapter by chapter—they compare in form and technique.

I'm not talking about reading for pleasure, because this kind of analytical reading-for-writers does take some of the fun away. But I think that learning to pull aside the curtain on good writing is also a kick. Because when you look really closely, the best writing will reveal its secrets to you. Learning how to apply those secrets to your own work...that's another matter, one that counts toward your 10,000 hours.

I've had "start a blog" on my to-do list for...years, probably. Before I started writing the Aldo Zelnick series, I also had "write a children's book" on my to-do list for an embarrassing number of years.

In both cases, the biggest hurdle between me and the doing of those things wasn't busyness. Sure I was busy...but busyness is like a gas...it dissipates or condenses as needed to make your days seem full regardless. No, the biggest hurdle was fear.

In their excellent book Art & Fear, which I highly recommend, David Bayle and Ted Orland write:

“To require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do – away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes.”

Yes, to not write a blog is to not make a fool of myself. But if there's anything that writing the Aldo Zelnick series has taught me, it's that putting yourself—your truest self—out there is the only way to really connect with others and make a difference, even if now and then you do make a fool of yourself.

So here goes nothing...and everything!