I had a ridiculously happy childhood with my parents and little brother on Long Island. Gatherings have always been so important to us. We'd have Thanksgiving and Hanukah, and if someone couldn't make it then rather than go ahead without them, we'd simply move the feast so everyone could be there. I grew up knowing that the celebration times in life were meant to be with your family, and I've always held with that.

My grandmother and my mother were teachers and their influence was tremendously important. My grandmother has always had an astonishing amount of energy and an incredible drive – at 95, she still volunteers for good causes four days a week. She taught me how much you can fit into a life. And from my mother I learned what you can achieve if you're organised: my mother is so organised that if you go to stay with her, your itinerary is faxed to you ahead of your arrival.

My sense of busyness came from both of them too. I'm always aware of how important it is to use time, to keep on going even when it's tough: I was writing books in 15-minute bursts when my children were babies. Now they're teenagers, I'm up at 5am, I do a three-mile hike before getting their breakfast, then work between 9am and 3pm while they're at school.

I want my kids to have a sense of passion about what they do. My eldest son, Kyle, is 17 and he's just got a place to study Egyptology at Yale, but people keep saying: how's he going to make a job out of Egyptology? And I say: if he loves it, it doesn't matter. He'll write about it, he'll teach it.

I have a wonderful life. I know how lucky we are and I think the reason I write about the dark stuff in family life is partly because I have this superstitious thing where I think: if I've written about it, it's not going to happen to us. We talk about anything and everything in our family, often linked to what I'm writing about. When my daughter was eight we were discussing date rape around the kitchen table. The important thing is for your kids to know they can discuss anything.

My daughter Sammy, who's 13, has been saying she wants to be a surgeon, but I've always known that she, like me, is a writer at heart. And now I'm so excited because she's just called me to say she's had a great idea for a book that we could write together for children. I'm really looking forward to collaborating on it – I think it's going to be a whole new chapter, for both of us.

Sometimes I say to my husband, Tim, that our kids were great raw material, but that we put the right ingredients into them too. My family has got a great deal – we've been given a lot – and if you're in that position you have a responsibility to do a lot for others, too. My children have big hearts, and that's the thing I'm most proud of.

• Jodi Picoult's new novel is Handle with Care (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99)