I’ve got a manuscript written for a new children’s book; however, there is one line in it that I don’t think works for the age range the book is to be targeted at. I wrote the project two years ago, but because the one line has me ‘stuck,’ I put it away and thought I’d re-visit it in the future. Well, the time has come and I’m no further along with that one line than I was two years ago. It reads out-loud well, but I feel the word is too challenging for kids to grasp, so I’ve been trying to come to terms with relinquishing the entire line and coming up with something different. The text is rhyming text, so ‘just replacing it with a new word from the thesaurus’ won’t do. The word? Fruition.

The rest of the manuscript is solid. It has a pleasant rhythm. It tells a funny story with a moral theme that isn’t preachy. It’s just that one word that seems it may cause a potential publisher to pass on it.