barnaby holmes

February 28, 2014

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,
You are a longtime favorite author of mine. Some years ago I determined to write a young adult novel, inspired by your own style, in which a major plot point involves the protagonist hearing voices in his head. Several years later but now also some years ago, I picked up your book "Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl", and read up until the very point where the protagonist mentions the voices in her head. I put the book down, never to pick it up again and also dropped my own plans for writing. If I were to pick up only one of these things, which would you recommend?
PS ~ I am not through with you entirely. I did read Mrs. Noodlekugel, with relish.

I don't understand.  Why would you put the book down?  Why would you stop writing your book?  Do you have the idea that only totally new and original things, uninfluenced by anything else, should be written, or if you see an idea in a book, you can't have the same idea in a book of your own?  That's not the way things work.  They work in the opposite way.  If I read something I like, I am likely to write it--and plenty of stuff of mine appears in books by other writers...some of them happily admit it, and I am flattered.