This is a guest post I wrote for primary school children on the Libraries ACT Blog.
Never Trust an Author
I’m an author with a confession to make. I lie. I cheat. And I steal. You should never trust an author. Let me explain.
1. I lie
Of course I lie. I make up stories all of the time. That’s what authors do. One of my books is titled My Dad Thinks He’s Funny but my own dad doesn’t even tell very many jokes. He prefers to share stories. To write that book I used jokes from my husband, his dad and my sister in law but I thought a book called My Husband, His Dad and My Sister in Law Think They’re Funny didn’t sound very catchy. So I lied. I pretended the book was about one dad.
2. I cheat.
All of the words in my books are spelled perfectly but in fact I’m terrible at spelling. Just ask any one of my school teachers or even my university lecturers. Spelling is something I’ve never found easy and so I cheat. I find ways to check my spelling before anyone even notices how many errors I‘ve made. I have a dictionary on my desk. I use the spell check on my computer. I have a spell checker on my phone and I ask my husband to check words for me. You don’t have to be a fabulous speller to be an author. You just need to know how to cheat.
3. I steal.
I’ve already told you that the jokes in my book My Dad Thinks He’s Funny are from my husband, his dad and my sister in law. I stole their jokes to write a book. Whenever I heard one of them say something funny I wrote it down until finally I had enough gags for a book. Authors do this all the time. They watch people and listen carefully to find writing ideas. We steal all our best story ideas from other people’s lives.
So now you know. Authors lie. Authors cheat and authors steal. Maybe you could be an author too?
