Open Doors

I try to write with the door shut, and only mention that I write in passing to my students, but once in a while, their inquiries unravel the knots I create and can't undo easily.  This feels like murky waters, ethically, on one hand, but like really great teaching moments on the other.  This morning, a 10 minute conversation took my first period 6th graders to places like when irony stretches the readers suspension of disbelief and which tone is more appropriate for the piece.  Their comments and inquiries were what I've been trying to pull out of them with Kipling, Cisneros, and Collins.  I wonder: how to get them to see written works as malleable and debatable as works in progress.  Letters to the author halfway through with suggestions?  Are they intimidated by the permanance of a published work or are they simply uncomfortable arguing with adults they  don't know.  Either way, how do I ethically recreate these conversations without bringing in my writings for their parsing?