I recently watched an interview with one of my writing heroes, Canadian folk musician Gordon Lightfoot. He said that he never heard anyone do a cover of one of his songs that he didn’t like. “Every time someone covers one of your songs, they’re doing you a favor,” he said.
I suppose an arrogant or insecure musician might believe that no one else could do justice to his work, yet Lightfoot’s comment makes a kind of fundamental sense. If someone else chooses to pick up your work and do they own thing with it, it’s because your work has touched that person. In the case of a song, they wouldn’t cover it unless they had tapped into the power and feeling and meaning of it for themselves. Their cover is a testament to that fact.
Writing a sequel to someone else’s story has its challenges. Diving into a world created by a team of writers and visionaries multiplies those challenges. But as I’ve worked with the Children of the Wells staff and read their writing, I’ve admired their perspective on faith and imagination. I consider them to have an approach to storytelling that is richer than the perspective many of my writing teachers have had. (more…)
