Saturday, June 20, 2009

Let's Give em Something to Talk About

Our I.N.K. Authors want YOU to give them something to talk about. Do you have any questions for our bloggers? Are there any topics or issues regarding nonfiction that you'd like them to ponder?

Here's your chance!

Please post your questions/topics/issues in the comments. On Monday and Tuesday, June 29th and 30th, our bloggers will post their thoughts and responses. Everything should, of course, relate in some way to interesting nonfiction for kids. Please post your comments here throughout the month.

While your thinking up some hot topics, here's a little Bonnie Raitt to sing along to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04r_tlWdRs

6 comments:

Melody said...

Gretchen Woelfle's comment about the riches of African-American history (on the June 5 post) has me wondering: How closely do you need to connect with your subject matter to write about it? Do you need to be female to write about amazing women? An environmentalist to write about Rachel Carson? Do you lose all your credibility if you're writing about African-Americans and you're not African-American?

Anita D. said...

What advice do you have for writers interested in breaking into this field?

Unknown said...

How about... what are your main reasons for choosing a topic to write about?

Linda Zajac said...

How do you folks orchestrate working on multiple books for multiple publishers and meeting deadlines? Is there some kind of courtesy given by one editor to another if you're currently working on a project or are the deadlines roomier then they are for magazine articles or do you set your own deadlines?

Michael Ayers said...

Hello,

I recently completed a 40-month, 86-thousand kilometer bicycle tour of the southern hemisphere. Many people have said to me: "You should write a book," but I never thought much of that idea because: a) there are plenty of travel books available already, and, b) everything I want to say is available on my Web site right now (a rather huge site.)

However, before I finished, I became taken by the idea of producing some sort of educational content for schools, or school-age people. The general topic would be based on my experiences, and how they relate to some of my favorite topics: geography/geology/natural history/environment/sustainable cultures, etc. I would not think this would be anything like a textbook, but rather, more like the types of works listed on this blog.

My questions are: What age group would you think such topics would be of interest to? Would I be likely to get a good response from educational publishers, or would the trade market be more appropriate? Do schools still use this sort of thing at all (under normal, non-melting-down conditions, I mean?)

Thanks, and sorry for the long post. My Web site is the url attached to this post.

Cheers,
Mike Ayers

Mark Herr said...

I know there is no "right answer" to this, but in your opinions, how much research is enough research before you start putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard)?