Sherri Cornelius

Printing out a novel for editing uses a lot of paper. Combine that with the kids' 2-hour-long scribbling sessions, and it makes perfect sense to use my old manuscripts as scrap paper. I mean, it's still good on one side, and though the kids can read, there's nothing OMG-terrible in BVA; it doesn't have sex scenes, per se, but the MC does think about sex in a flippant, jaded way, and there is colorful language. Still, nobody cares about the pieces of story on the other side of the page. The occasional cussword would go unnoticed.

So I thought.

I forgot my 11-year-old is a voracious reader with a vocabulary as big as mine. She wants to read all kinds of inappropriate books, as I did at her age, just because she's already read everything appropriate in the house. Last night she told me she'd been reading the backs of these scrap papers, because BVA was "awesome." She said sometimes she even gets several consecutive pages so she can read a bigger chunk at a time.

It's hard to turn down someone who's dying to read my work, and who will undoubtedly be complimentary. So after she begged me a while, I told her I would edit out the objectionable parts and let her read it. She's already bugged me about it twice more this morning.

So now I'm wondering, will this affect how and what I write? I want to write things my kids will love. The hubs doesn't read fiction anymore, so he doesn't factor in. Sex scenes embarrass me. It seems like a no-brainer to stick with Middle Grade or Young Adult. BVA is going to YA editors, I think.

Something to think about.