Yeah, once, sometimes when I do school visits I’ll bring in drafts of my work and you’ll see markup, my markup, my editor’s markup. And one time a child said you made all those mistakes? And that’s when I explained it’s a process because you’ve got to deal with so many things in writing. You’ve got to get the information down; you’ve got to present it in an engaging way.
As I said, Toni Morrison said “I don’t have color, I don’t have music, I have to use words to make color, to make music.” You’ve got to look at sentence structure and do you have the same sentence structure; oh we have to mix that up. You have to know, and one thing I tell children is that the reason that you need to really pay attention to what your teachers are teaching you about grammar and transitions and all of that, the mechanics so that you get, you know them so well then you can break the rules.
I say so now I can use sentence fragments and it’s effective and no one is going to ding me for it because I know how to use it. And of course there’s the famous analogy with classical music and jazz. Many jazz artists started out as classical musicians. So you know when children also ask me is writing hard work? And I say well I don’t think that anything worth achieving in life is easy.
And I also told them that compared to chopping cotton in the Delta or sugar cane in the Delta, writing is not difficult.
But when you do what you love you, you don’t mind, I mean sometimes yes I do get frustrated and it’s like I want to be out of this book. But it’s what I love and so I take a deep breath and say I want to do the best job I can do and also again writing for young people is a tremendous responsibility and honor.
So I can’t give them schlock because what they learn about Frederick Douglass or DuBois may be their introduction. May in a way stamp what they believe so I have to give them an objective, honest, the best book that I can because I’m shaping a young mind.