Alison Croggon wrote:
> Good luck, Bob. I think the secret of writing for readers (something
> that I confess I've never thought about for poetry) is to write
> something that you want to read yourself. If it works, it gathers its
> own energy. I've "proved" this theory to my own satisfaction at least
> twice.
>
I did that with my plays, children's books and sci fi novel. There are
problems, though, for someone who loves to read about ideas, especially
unpopular ones--and someone whose sense of humor makes it hard for him
not constantly to offend people.
> Could the thing about being "too advanced" be an American thing? I'm
> thinking of books like Fungus the Bogeyman, say, one of the best
> children's books ever, and of things I've heard about US publishers
> who will tend to censor their editions of children's books for being
> (for example) too rude, even though children _are_ rude and the books
> have done very well here.
>
>
I really don't know. Except that schools have a strong say as heavy
buyers of children's and young adults' book, and they have all kinds of
goofy rules--like what level a vocabulary should be at.
Anyway, I'm going to give my children's books another go--after hearing
back from a publisher that the editors loved my sense of humor and if I
redid it, maybe I could try to make the illustrations are little less
crazy so they wouldn't put readers out to sea. The idea of the book is
that a book-inspector wants to close it down, partly because its
illustrations make no sense.
I also hope to finish my final revision of my sci fi novel, which is
really exactly what I've always wanted to read.
--Bob
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