MEMOIR
Their Times and Ours
I am no longer waiting to be compared to James Thurber
I once attended a nature writing workshop that involved some time outdoors with my fellow writers. When the man I was walking with learned that I had published children’s books, he told me that he’d found an illustrator for the picture book he was working on and planning to submit to a publisher. I suggested, in a totally positive way, I swear, that his book might have a better chance of acceptance, if he took it there alone.
Publishers like to find their own illustrators, sometimes pairing a new writer with an illustrator with some experience and name recognition. Then the illustrator can bring attention to the new writer’s work. “But Charles Dickens worked with his illustrators himself,” my companion told me. Dickens! Surely a new writer couldn’t have a better model for his work than Dickens!
“Charles Dickens isn’t writing much these days,” I might have said. But I didn’t, because I couldn’t think of a totally positive way to put it. Truthfully, I can’t recall much of the conversation after that. I was a little fixated on the whole Charles Dickens thing. That was a long way into the past for a writer to go for a guide. I, myself, hadn’t gone anywhere near as far for what might be called a mentor author. And still the metaphorical…
