"If he is a writer of fiction, he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whiskey than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it."
- Extract from Roald Dahl's Boy.
I am no expert on the genre of children's writing and my memories of reading Dahl are from my own experiences of reading as a child but I have always admired the way, as I perceive it, he didn't lie to children or try and protect them unnecessarily from the realities of the world that they were living in. Not everybody that you come across in life is nice, or especially nice to you, and you need to be able to rationalise, understand and deal with this. I think Dahl knew that this was important. You may be interested in the recent debate on the topic of 'sick-lit' and the views of some people that children's/teen's books shouldn't feature upsetting themes such as death, abuse and terminal illness.
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