Wednesday, January 30, 2008

If You Could Be Any Genre...

Okay, I quit sulking and got to work, which was a major victory for me. It doesn't usually happen that way when I'm feeling anxious and tired. I did as much writing as I could make myself do and then took a short reading nap until my son woke up from his nap.

Made myself a small pot of coffee, put on a movie for him because it's one of those days and really cold outside to boot, and started musing. Something that Deanna Raybourn said in an interview by Material Witness struck me. She said she worked for fourteen years writing manuscripts and not getting published. Then her agent told her to take a year and just read. So she did. She read only what she loved, which often turned out to be historical and British. The result: she decided to write what she loved to read and was published. I finished recently her Silent in the Grave, a fun and surprising Victorian-era murder mystery, and I applaud her decision.

What I mused on this afternoon was this: I read children's novels all the time. The slight majority of the books I own are children's or young adult books. In the last month, I've borrowed these books from the library: The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Little House in the Big Woods, Swallows and Amazons, The Amber Spyglass, and Little House on the Prairie. Two months ago I re-read for the tenth time The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At the moment, I'm reading All of A Kind Family. Hmmm. What do I love to read?

Yes, I just finished a draft of a children's novel. But I wrote that because I had an idea about gnomes and I didn't picture it going over well for the adult audience. I thought it was going to be an exception for me. Maybe it shouldn't be.

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