Definitely an interesting experience writing for 8 to 12 year olds.  So many things to consider.  So many pitfalls.  Plenty of other bloggy people have very kindly posted their notes from the CBBC Q&A session (and now the Writersroom people have posted the transcript) and I’ve desperately tried to subsume them all.

I’m concerned that I’ve failed pitifully at doing so.

See, the thing is, writing for kids is, in some ways, really easy and, in other, myriad ways, really, really, bastard-hard.  My biggest concern is that the tone of my story is a bit too dark for the kiddies.  Scaring the crap out of 8-year olds is probably not the best way forward.  Still, I fondly remember when I was a kid, sitting, wearing a wide-eyed rictus as I watched some piss-poor rubber monster on Doctor Who.  Perhaps scaring children is the way to go.  Or perhaps Richard Littlejohn is right and the namby-pamby-politically-correct-health-and-safety-couldn’t-make-it-up-equal-opportunities-brigade have taken over the BBC and sanitised children’s TV in an attempt to molly-coddle our kids and probably help immigrants or something.

Lets hope not. If for no other reason, than the fact that a world where Richard Littlejohn is right about anything would be a very grim world indeed.