Proposing a Collaboration
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Today is my father’s seventieth birthday. He’s fit and healthy but a little bit sad because all his friends keep dying. Last year, it was his cousin, Ray, from a massive heart attack. The year before, it was Steve, the best man from his marriage to my mother and his best friend, and Lindsay, a work colleague and subsequent lifelong friend. This year, he already knows there will be more. These are all people he spent lots of time with over the years.
On Saturday, my sisters, their husbands and children, and I are gathering at Dad’s house for a low-key celebration. I hope he has a wonderful day.
While I’m there, I am planning to propose a collaboration. I’m a little nervous. I don’t do a lot of collaborations. And I don’t know what the response will be.
A little background… I’m nearly finished my third book about the writing process. I was so sure it was going to be my last. After all, how much can one person write about the same thing? But after having conversations with my niece and nephew over Christmas and my sister’s birthday in January, I realised there was something really missing from all my writing about writing. And that was a focus on children’s writing and children writers. The very start of the process of learning to write.
My nephew is a voracious reader. My niece is a voracious reader and wants to be a writer. So as a follow-up to Project December: A Book About Writing, Project January: A Sequel About Writing and Project June: A Trilogy About Writing, I want the three of us to write Project September: A Book About Writing for Kids and by Kids. I already have an outline written, I’ve come up with about half the topics needed for the chapters and now all I need to do is ask them to do it with me.
I hope they’ll be as enthused about the idea as I am and particularly about being published authors at the age of twelve. It’s the kind of marketing gimmick that few people ever get to capitalise on. I should know. I have no gimmick.
Fingers crossed. I’ll let you know how it goes.
