uh...

[cleolinda]

So. Once again I have procrastinated mightily, and have saved two weeks' work until the last five hours. In my defense, I was working on the Golden Globes features all weekend, which were a rousing success thanks to you guys. As for the ten days prior to that... I had more interesting things to do. Shut up, I did.

So I have to write two children's articles, fiction and nonfiction. I am bending the rules of the assignment slightly and writing a nonfiction poem, because Ladybug is my chosen magazine, and I have yet to see an actual nonfiction article, though they say they accept them, and shut up, it will take a lot less time. So. I decided to pick a holiday to write about. Groundhog Day is pretty soon. Kids like groundhogs. Sure they do. Now, realistically, this wouldn't be anything I could send in to get published, because the train has sailed for Groundhog Day material--I'd be much better off working on something summery. But the truth is, I just want to have something to take to workshop tonight. Groundhogs it is.

So I'm writing my poem. Working on rhymes. Rhymes are big for children's magazines. In fact, I would say that you judge children's poems rather differently than you judge adult poetry. It's more about coming up with rhythms and rhymes that children will enjoy reading rather than reinventing the wheel. So I have "found fog" or maybe "sound fog" as a rhyme for groundhog. That's pretty awesome. And then... this is where the problem occurs. Groundhog is basically another name for "woodchuck." And what do I have as a rhyme for "woodchuck"? Why, the only one I could think of:

"Good fuck."

I really don't think I need to write for children.

Comments

[thelxepeiakat.livejournal.com]

hahaha. How about "good luck?" Of course, "good fuck" is much more entertaining. If you used that, I have a feeling many children would go running to their mothers' skirts to show the dirty word in their magazines. That's if the publishers had a sense of dark humor.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

"Good luck." Trust me to bypass the obvious in favor of the dirty.

Workshop was really interesting tonight--I'll have to post what Crunk said about the "very tight format" of children's picture books.

[thelxepeiakat.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'd love to know anything I can about writing for children. I'm actually thinking of transferring in order to get adequate classes; Samford offers little more than the basics of anything, unless you're in grad school.