Great Expectations
11 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in General Info Tags: children's novels, children's writers, writing books, writing for children
Maggie the Basset Hound, who now watches me pretend to write
I know–it’s been MONTHS since I last posted. But when I don’t have anything to say, I don’t say anything. But what was I doing all of that time, you ask? To steal a line from author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is judging Round 6 of Public Radio’s Three-Minute Fiction Contest, I was pretending to write a novel.
Host Guy Raz was taken aback, I believe, and he asked why Adichie had responded like that when he asked what she was currently working on. After all, Adichie is an award-winning author. Certainly she must be working on some epic literary endeavor. Adichie said when you tell people you are working on a novel, they expect to see a finished product in a defined amount of time. So she has decided to tell people she is pretending to write to relieve expectations.
But it’s not just “people” who expect a finished product pronto. We authors put great expectations on ourselves all of the time. And when we don’t finish in the time frame we expected because of self-doubt, incessant self-revisions, or the inevitable interruptions of life, we feel defeated. We see authors who are able to ignore life’s roadblocks and write and publish no matter what, and think there is something wrong with us. I have decided, however, that there is nothing wrong with the way I write: it’s just different from the way Laurie Halse Anderson or J.K. Rowling writes. (And I bet neither of them had to care for their fading 15-year-old collie last year, then had the cat bite and infect their leg, followed by a broken foot.)
So I am pretending to write a novel. Let me know if you’re pretending, too.
