A few days ago the wonderful Abi Elphinstone posted this on Twitter:
Wanted to say a few things for those writers who find themselves ‘looking sideways’ on Twitter & feeling a bit pants pic.twitter.com/QyFNxroRUm
— Abi Elphinstone (@moontrug) March 20, 2016
So much about this rang true, though I am a fair few steps behind Abi in this process. It’s sometimes hard to focus on what really matters: writing. And why does the writing matter? Because I want to tell stories. I write for children because that’s when I became a reader – I think there are few things more important than literacy, and books can be a formative part of growing up (they were for me!) So when I saw this review on Goodreads, I realised that this is why I wrote THE GIRL OF INK AND STARS.
This temporarily salved the worry about my social media presence, about prize lists or book sales. This cancels out all the people asking when I’m going to write a ‘proper’ book, or why I write for children when I could be telling grown up stories. I want to write an ‘adult’ book someday, but it certainly won’t be any more ‘proper’ than my books for children. Stories, and the telling of them, are important no matter who they’re for – and reviews like this keep me focussed on that, and keep me writing them.