I Was Just Thinking About This, Too

In yesterday's Read Roger Roger Sutton said that he was "interested in how children's book people negotiate differences in taste--not just with their loved ones, but with their colleagues and with the young people they serve, either as individuals or in the aggregate, in a day to day situation or in the abstract or at a remove."

This struck home because just yesterday one of my relatives accused me of being high-brow. I know, I know. If only he read this blog, he would never dream of suggesting such a thing.

Professionally, though, I'd have to say there is no negotiating taste. I just have to accept that I will never get Ida B. and all her many sisters and brothers, which appear to be so dearly loved by my kidlit colleagues. Really, those things are a total mystery to me.

How I Spent My Saturday

Working! I spent most of January and February preparing presentations for the writers' retreat at Whispering Pines and a teachers' conference this coming Wednesday. I thought the presentation for the teachers' conference was in pretty good shape, so the week before last I got started on a new writing project and did a few other things. Then I realized that the presentation was too long. I spent all last week cutting and cutting. Then today I did a big revision. I did it by hand, which is unlike me, but we're having word processor problems of various types. The original on the hard drive needs to have the changes typed in, and I need to practice the thing like mad. All in the next forty-eight hours or so because Tuesday is a travel day.

Geez.