Roald Dahl is one of my absolute favorite authors, and I honestly feel lucky to have had a childhood where his books were in my life. (I even wrote a letter to him when I was ten years old telling him I wanted to be a writer, shortly before he died).
So I was especially pleased to come across this incredible video where he talks about his process and about what it means to write for children.
I’m not going to do the video any further justice by describing it, so just give it a watch!
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In 1972, I sent Roald Dhal a story I wrote. He not only sent me back a postcard about how much he liked it (which through some miracle I still have), he actually showed it to his editor, who contacted me to ask if she could publish it in a publisher sponsored magazine called Puffin Post.
That’s amazing!! I also wrote a letter to him when I was younger but sadly he died right around the time I sent it: https://www.instagram.com/p/BtJ-bMFFU4x/
Many thanks, Nathan, for this great video about a great writer who was not always so great otherwise. Dahl was notoriously anti-Semitic, bullied ordinary workers in publishing, among others, cheated on his wife, evaded tax, and generally seems more like his villains than his protagonists. He wouldn’t have lasted long in today’s Cancel Culture. Indeed, I won’t be surprised if he is eventually ‘canceled’ even three decades after his death. So maybe now’s a good time to buy his books…
Incidentally, Dahl’s writing space is somewhat like mine, except mine’s even more cluttered and I don’t have a goat.