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I've gotten as far as Heinlein's #3, at least with fiction. (I have published non-fiction.) It's excellent advice, but the first few rejection slips sure are discouraging!
I understand Heinlein's point of view about Podkayne, but I think he was a bit confused himself about who his audience was. As I understand it, he took the challenge to write a book "for girls," but then wanted a moral that was really aimed at parents who don't take time to raise their children. I've always felt that both endings left doubt as to who the main character really was-- Heinlein seems to have focused an awful lot on Clark at the end, in a way that re-interprets much of the rest of the story. I can't recall any of his other YA books ending with the main character dying/comatose and someone else taking over the narrative. For that matter, Friday has a ridiculously "happy" ending compared to Podkayne-- almost exactly the ending Heinlein refused to write for Podkayne. All this makes me wonder what was going on in the Grand Master's life at the time to make him so bitter about the prospects of young women growing up to manage both careers and families.
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