From: Lisa Peters <lwpeters>
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 12:14:53 -0500

Megan, What a complicated set of questions. I think in general, that must be true, that my own hunger for information helps me to convey wonder when I sit down to write. But I also think that conveying wonder is just part of my job. If I can't pull that off, I should find something else to do. Most scientists, who are intimately familiar with their subjects, still have plenty of wonder about what they're doing, but they're not trained to convey that wonder in a text for children. A few of them have the writing skills to pull it off, but not very many.

With the volcano manuscript, I had written heaps of earlier versions, prose versions, and when I finally settled on the idea of poems, I just indulged myself and started writing without a direction or plan. First I wanted to get words on paper and not worry about anything else. This isn't a very efficient way to write, but it allows for more discovery and that's half the reason I write -- to discover things. Later I recognized the adult tone. But I also recognized patterns in the poems that helped me shape the manuscript. Then I was able to take everything -- the language, the narrative flow, the voice -- to a more child-friendly level.

Does this make any sense?

I did none of this, by the way, for a couple of nonfiction books I wrote early in my career. They were written for two series published by Crestwood House. I was given about a month to write one (a book about condors) and about three months to write the other (a book about the Serengeti). I never saw a condor, and I never visited the Serengeti. The editor gave me the format, I followed it, and that was it. There was no discovery, and in my opinion, no life to the manuscripts.

Lisa
Received on Wed 06 Jul 2005 12:14:53 PM CDT