Is it Friday yet?

The more I read Non Sequitur, the more I just love it. It may be too small for you to read, but the signs say Meet the Author vs. Meet An Actor Who Plays A Minor Role In The Film Adaptation Of The Book.

You can see who has the longer line.
Ah, the glamour of writing. Sigh.

A discussion on one of SCBWI's boards recently dealt with how much, if anything, children's lit/YA writers should charge for doing presentations for schools and other venues, and it was almost embarrassing how little we as a group respected ourselves. Overall, people seemed to feel that the more books they had published, the more of a right they had to not only charge, but to speak. Judging from some of the people I've met at Conferences and just the fact of human nature that some people really like to claim expert status when they know nothing, maybe that's a good rule of thumb for some people to sort of wait awhile before they start talking about their craft. On the other hand, there were a bunch of people who had been writing for years, had had a few poems or articles published, had taken myriad writing classes and still felt unworthy.

Creative work is so hard to quantify, and it's so difficult to find self respect and motivation in it that any time someone offers to take us seriously, perhaps we should make it more of a business arrangement. Should we give something for nothing until we "pay our dues?" Who makes the rules in this kind of thing?

Today I got an email from Secret Agent Man, who casually suggested I remove an entire element from my novel. It was like, "Oh, and I thought you might actually consider killing off one of the major characters." It wasn't exactly that, but it was close.

Why does today feel so much like Monday?