Talk About Tough Love - They Gave me Both Barrels!

[Nick Cross]

How quickly my own words come back to haunt me. I road-tested a children's story at my non-SCBWI writing group last night and was quickly put to rights about its commercial viability. "I can't imagine any child would find that interesting" was the opening salvo and others quickly piled in to tell me how far I had sailed past the market. I did get one lone voice of support, but that couldn't save me from crashing in flames.

Actually, though, I think they were right, and perhaps I'd let myself in for it by voicing my own doubts about the story's market before I started reading. Looking at it in the light of the new day, I can see where I might be able to salvage things and bring it a little more "on message".

All of this did make me think how much more structure is imposed upon us as children's writers. With adult fiction, nobody would claim to know all of the possible reader profiles and markets, but we all have a much clearer idea of what constitutes a children's story. Knowing how far we can innovate within that framework and what rules we can break is both a challenge and our chance to step away from the herd.

[Miriam Halahmy]

I have had a similar experience with an adult groups in relation to writing for children and teens. Some of the comments were useful, but some, such as , Surely children's books don't have epigraphs, were way off beam. We all need good critique but we also need colleagues who understand our audience.

[Jeannette Towey]

OMG How right you are. I have a beautifully crafted, well-written, blah, blah, blah MG novel set in fifteenth century Venice sitting unpublished on my shelves. Everyone who's seen it thinks it's great but they all agree - absolutely no market! Wish I'd known that before I researched and wrote it.

Still we live and learn and I'm sure I honed a few writing skills on it if nothing else.