In my so-called "spare time," I try to do some creative writing. To be specific, I aspire to someday become a published children's author.

At a recent kid lit conference, I attended a workshop on developing characters with depth. Harper Children's Editor Molly O'Neill, who led the session, handed each of us an old photo of a child and asked us a series of questions to help us develop a persona for him or her.

The teenage girl in my sepia-toned photograph had sad, distant eyes, and so I found myself creating a melancholy character by the name of Matilda, who had a difficult home life and few friends. What struck me most about my character was not my answers to the questions about her past or her present, but my "predictions" about her future. In particular, Molly asked us the following:

• What will your character's epitaph say?
• What would your character have wanted his or her epitaph to say?

In Matilda's case, I wrote that her epitaph would say, "Loving wife and mother." However, she would have wanted her epitaph to say, "Beloved wife and mother."

Poor Matilda's frustrated childhood need for acceptance, love and devotion would follow her to the grave.

Now, I believe in the value of preplanning, but in Matilda's case, prearranging her own epitaph would not have changed her reality (or fictional reality, as the case may be). Nothing she could do in designating her final wishes could have made her "beloved." The most she could do was to be "loving" and hope the sentiment would be returned.

What will your epitaph say? What would you want it to say? What can you do to make sure the answer to the first question is the same as the answer to the second?