No More Misses Nice Writer

Not long ago, I wrote a post about Writers and Censorship.

One of my short stories had been accepted by a magazine for school kids, which had me doing cartwheels and bouncing off the walls. But then the editor wanted some changes, and they weren’t just minor.

“Welcome to the world of professional writing,” one of my writing colleagues told me. She qualified this by saying that censorship in the education market is particularly rife. In fact, the do’s and don’ts are so numerous, that a lot of writers stay away from this field.

Now I know why.

As I mentioned in my last post, I adhered to the first request to “water down” my story. I made a couple of changes, removing the “violence” (the normal argy bargy between brothers and sisters), and made my burglar get caught by the police. I wasn’t too upset by the changes - the tone hadn’t altered at all, and the story was still funny.

But if I thought that would be the end of it, I was very wrong.

A follow-up request arrived from the magazine editor. This time, the list of changes and the attitudes that backed up the need for the changes staggered me.

I wasn’t allowed to let the brother call his sister by a name he’d made up as, heaven help us, what parent in their right mind would allow such a thing! (Note to reader: niether parent appears in the story.) They were still unhappy about the brother’s treatment of his sister, but weren’t at all concerned that the sister was a pretty rough character and gave as good as she got. Oh, and my gripping opening had to be changed completely: goodness me, you couldn’t expose children to a brother giving his sister’s doll a haircut, now could you?

I sat back and had a good long hard think about what I was being asked to do - after I’d ranted and raved at the computer screen. If I went ahead with the requested alterations, my story would lose so much. It wouldn’t be funny anymore, there’d be no engaging interaction between brother and sister, and the tone would be lost. In fact, there would be no story.

I imagined any kid sitting and reading my story in the magazine. What would he or she say at the end of it? “Boring…”

And how would I feel about my name being printed on such a boring story?

That was it, the answer. I replied to the editor, explaining how ridiculous these changes were - in a very nice way, of course.

The result is that the story has been withdrawn.

Immediately, I felt enormous relief. As a writer, I like to write gripping and interesting stories for kids. I want to find a different angle, something that stands out. And I want to show real life situations, like brothers and sisters arguing with one another.

This experience has made me wiser. Perhaps writing fiction for the education market isn’t for me.

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