I was picking up my granddaughter Ruby from her house, and my son in law mentioned reading my recent substack in which I quoted Ruby. As I am wont to do. And Ruby looked up from putting on her shoes.

“Wait. You write about me?” she said.

She is six. She knows I write about her because she made me open the advanced reading copy of my new book and read her the part she’s in and she was delighted. But on this day she wasn’t delighted. I could see her thinking it through. Nana having a box of books that mention her is different than Nana writing something that her father reads on a screen. While it pleases me no end that my son in law reads what I write, this doesn’t please her.

I wonder for a moment if she thought publishing my new book meant only the copies in the box in my house, as if getting the box is the end of it. She is in kindergarten.

A while later, as we were driving, she said very seriously, “You should ask me before you write about me.”

“I will,” I said, “I will ask you if it’s ok before I write about you.”

“I might say it’s ok. I might not,” she said.

“I will ask you,” I said.

Writers are often portrayed as plunderers of the lives around them, stealing the experiences and emotions of their family and friends like so many items on a grocery store shelf, tossing them into the cart of their art with little regard for the consequences.

Writers have always been hard up for content, and more so since social media, always looking for something to throw onto the hungry page. When do you have to stop and ask permission? What should you not write? I have always tried to protect my friends and family, keep their secrets, to only write the good stuff, to ask permission if I’m not sure how something would land. It feels like the kind of courtesy where you don’t post picture of your nieces and nephews on social media until you check with their parents.

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