Advice from my Son

So I showed my new blog to my 23-year-old son, and he had lots of advice for me. He also showed me the dozens of blogs he keeps up with. He is a D&D addict! So he likes to read the usual gaming sites, personal opinions and advice columns on gaming, but in this family we also like to read political opinions and columnists like from TownHall.com and talk about them. My son says "flame wars" can be fun. Yikes. Too stressful. He just laughed.

Son's advice:
Give your readers something more than a journal or a diary.
Give your readers something to think about, something to chew on.
Be controversial.
Express opinions.
Invite dialogue.
Be relevant to other people's lives and interests.

Sounds like good advice for a blogger. And good advice for a writer of children's books, too.

Sixteen years ago in November, 1989, I heard Richard Peck, the Newbery winning novelist, give a talk at a writing conference in Santa Fe (before he was a Newbery winning novelist). The conference was called, "The Courage To Write For Children." Peck said that the book you are attempting to write should not be about you. Your story should be about your reader. Kids don't want to read about you - the boring *old* grown-up. (There's that word *old* again - sheesh!). Kids want to read about themselves - or they want to read about their friends. Their life is the interesting one, the one they care about the most. You're just the author, some name on the jacket cover. A nobody to a teenager.

There you go , all you bloggers and writers. Good advice - from my son and Richard. Take it or leave it. And have a good one.

I'm off to finish rewriting, The Healing Spell, one of my latest projects, and eat some chocolate.