Category: Writing Daze

Just out of college, I published with a very small religious press, two books. They were, in a word or two, stunningly dreadful, but I was, as I said, just out of college, and not brilliant at anything but being twenty-one and regurgitating facts to get grades. I was lacking life experience, but what I had, I was (alarmingly) willing to share. These books were rather moral-of-the-story tales where everyone was either safely and stultifying good or they were bad and justly punished, and all lived happily ever after. I like to think they weren’t that predictable, but I know for sure the narrator’s voice was wrong — the wrong character was speaking because I was too fearful to let the boldest character take over the story; too afraid to let things get that out of control. (This is a tendency I hope to avoid in the future!)

I remember just after the books were released having an acquaintance ask “Don’t you want to write something else? I mean, something better than just writing for kids?” To his mind, the combination of publishing both a slightly religious book and a book for children was just the kiss of death. I mean, no Nobel Prizes here, no borrowed glory in which he might bask. I was, of course, offended…



But then the idea took hold. Couldn’t I do better than this? Shouldn’t I? Were series the thing? Didn’t Little House get read forever? What about Make Way for Ducklings or Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Shouldn’t I be writing a Classic?

The books faded quietly out of print, and after a bit more life and a bit more school and a lot more practice and thinking, I’ve got another chance.

Now Read Roger has asked The Question again: “Is there a mountain a writer is expected to climb? Do you feel the need to write a Big Book?”

What is a Big Book? Catcher in the Rye, which I kind of hate? Or something close to Judy Blume’s Forever? Do we have to write The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? Something that gets film optioned or picked up by a television studio? What does “Big Book” mean to you? A series? An award-winner?

I could wimp out and say that I’m too new to the game to have any answers but all I can say for sure is that no matter the metaphorical size of the book, the fact that I’m able to share what I write is still a gift. Sure, I want to sell books, justify my school bills and all, maybe even one day write a Big Book, some Magnum Opus that garners me a National Book Award and a lot of flashbulbs, but in all honesty, the idea of that gives me hives. The gift to me is the ability to write — that someone is allowing me publication is still a major thrill. I’ll worry about Big Books — the next Chris Crutcher/Rob Thomas/Catcher in the Rye/Forever amalgamation — maybe next week…

‘Til further notice,
I’m in-between
From where I’m standing,
My grass is green.

Many writers spend a lot of time wondering what publishers want. Dutton has answered that question by coming up with the Dutton Writers’ Room, which includes guidelines and writer’s tips to help authors give them what they need for their various publishing lines.

Also, there is an interesting Guide to Literary Agents on the web now, put out by F&W Publications. You can sign up for their free newsletter, and they have a place specifically to talk about children’s book agents, too.

Many writers spend a lot of time wondering what publishers want. Dutton has answered that question by coming up with the Dutton Writers’ Room, which includes guidelines and writer’s tips to help authors give them what they need for their various publishing lines.

Also, there is an interesting Guide to Literary Agents on the web now, put out by F&W Publications. You can sign up for their free newsletter, and they have a place specifically to talk about children’s book agents, too.

When I have a bit of story being looked over by my stalwart writing group, I at times have a rare “Aha!” moment that I am spending a lot of my time explaining my plot to my compatriots. That’s a key moment for me to realize that obviously I didn’t write what I meant.

Though I hate it when my editor says it, the Show-Don’t-Tell school of writing rules state that you allow readers to see what you have to say, and gather meaning from the array of options you’ve given them. In this way, the reading is interactive, and the reader brings something to the book. If you don’t allow your readers this connection, you’ve generally written a very predictable, dull book that will be put down halfway through the first chapter because credible storylines don’t spring to life just because the narrator tells us they’re credible. Our intellect has to engage and convince us to suspend our disbelief, and enter into the plot.

Which brings me to my picture, taken the first week I was in the UK. I took this with my camera phone, standing on an island in the middle of the street. “Oh, look,” I gushed. “A little book maker. Is that how they do independent press here? I wonder if they print poetry chapbooks.” Snap.

Um, no. Bookmaking: as in gambling. Welcome, oh, wet-behind-the-ears-one, to the UK…

I don’t know what the moral of my story is except that what works in writing (hey – I was extrapolating meaning, here!) doesn’t always work in life.

Jules posed a “brief and burning question“ to writers about the nature of process. Does it exist? Apparently, Rosemary Wells says that any good writer will tell you that process doesn’t exist.

Hm.
This strikes me as a little funny because when I was speaking to undergraduates at my alma mater, my professor asked me to talk to the students about process. Swaggering fresh from my… um, folly? after my first publication, I said confidently (disingenuously!)that really, process didn’t exist. That I didn’t write everyday. That I didn’t do all of the proscribed things that other authors did. And look! I sold stuff! Wasn’t I smart? Sadly, no. I was delusional, and I wanted everyone to believe I was brilliant, and I was terrified — and quite sure — that I was not.

Fact: There is not ONE process that exists that everyone has to use — we know that from listening to the way Tamora Pierce says she worked, or Walter Dean Meyers said he worked this summer at the SCBWI L.A. Conference. I couldn’t work the way either one of them works, but the way I work… works for me. Therefore: there IS such a thing as process. But it changes daily, and it differs wildly. And when you add a readers, in the form of a writing group and/or an editor, it shifts again. Your process has to work for you for the particular piece you’re working on, the particular tone you’re going for, etc. etc. etc. — or it’s worthless. And you cannot hold onto a process that is a tried-and-true work of art for Mr. Meyers or Lady Pierce, or Our Jane or anybody else — your process has to be for you, and it’s not something to shine up and show off. It’s a work thing, a work ethic, and it’s kind of …personal.

Those are my £.02 centavos.

Speaking of Our Jane (and also thanks to Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast for this), she’s chatting with Anne Levy at BookBuds about judging a contest where kids write their own alphabet books (take THAT Steve Martin). Go ye.

The Cybils nominations continue (and if you haven’t dropped by to nominate a single book in each category, what’s stopping you?). I’m looking forward to reading Extras, the newest Scott Westerfeld. Via Original Content, I’ve discovered a great piece on Westerfeld, and on the dystopian novel plot being increasingly accepted as upcoming reality. Teens interviewed remark on the artificiality and surreality of the society in which they live, and discuss the rise of the famous-for-being-famous tribe. Some interesting stuff.

Today’s writing thought, sent to me by my thoughtful friend, L.:

“I have found that I’m not as good as I thought or as bad as I feared. I am not heroine or villain. I am living with my actual self and seeing what that is. Neither idealizing nor being idealized. It is more painful than I had imagined.

Also more dimensional. I find myself stumbling hand in hand with forgiveness as a much closer entity.” – Sark

Usually I find Sark pretty (painfully) airy, but this quote really brings home to me how writing – for any age group – has to be done from a place of honest and feet-on-the-ground centeredness. Good luck with that today…

Finally.
I used to be appalled at how long authors said it took to get a book from start to finish. Now I know myself to be lucky that it only took a little less than a year. Thanks, A.F., for going over and over and over and over it, until it was done.

And now, while I sit here and think, “What now!?” a word from Our Jane:

A writer has many successes:

Each new word captured.
Each completed sentence.
Each rounded paragraph leading into the next.
Each idea that sustains and then develops.
Each character who, like a wayward adolescent, leaves home and finds a life.
Each new metaphor that, like the exact error it is, some how works.
Each new book that ends–and so begins.

Selling the piece is only an exclamation point, a spot of punctuation.

© 2000 by Jane Yolen

I just got a note from my editor – she’s put my galleys in the mail today.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought of all of my kidlit buddies yesterday, as Wicked Cool Overlooked Books day came… and then I recalled that we weren’t doing that sort of thing right on the heels of our kidlitpalooza of overlooked books, our Under Radar Recommendations, but be sure that I have a real favorite picked out for next month. Of course, next month is also the advent of the evocatively named October Country, and I can’t wait to play around with some words and images on that score.

Funny how being without consistent internet makes one feel a bit lost from home. Though I’m working on being awake for the last, oh, twenty-two hours? I’m feeling pretty good being back in touch with you.

Some thoughts: Dublin, which my friend Donal, who lives there, calls ‘the filthy city’ isn’t really all that bad, at least not at the airport, and airports are usually the bottom of the barrel. Ireland and Scotland are green, green (foggy, nippy, and downright boot-inspiring) jewels. I look forward to unearthing more stories here, finding a decent bookstore, and a pair of tights… not necessarily in that order. Our reservation has been shifted from one hotel to another, and we’re walking asleep, but news of a more bookish sort will emerge shortly… for lo, I have been to Waterstones…

Cheers!

Yeah, baby!

With less than ten minutes to spare, the last run to the Post Office run was made this afternoon. The rest of the country might be dancing because of a hottie named Harry but I am longing for my dancing shoes because my manuscript has shot off across the continent toward New York. It’s done, Done, DONE.

And now I can spend all my leisure time organizing garage sales and vacuuming the air out of my possessions. (Vacuum packing clothes: Way more fun than it should be.)

My GOODNESS I’m going to look back on this year one day and just spin! I’ve sold a novel (though technically that was last October), finished two novels (though again, technically, the first of that duet requires a major overhaul, since it won’t sell), am speaking at a Conference (though technically, it’s not really “speaking” speaking if you’re only doing an hour long panel – it’s more like facilitating a conversation); I am moving to the UK (and technically, again, that’s not about me, but about Mac), and — and — I AM GOING TO BE INTERVIEWED BY JULES AND EISHA!!!

And quite honestly? That’s the most exciting part (even if it’s – technically – not about me).

The only thing about all of this whirlwind that makes me a tiny bit, slightly, marginally sad is… my… printer.

You know how great amateur cooks get all excited over their cooking, and eventually sidle up, break down and stop lusting over a shiny red Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but actually agonize over prices, and save their pennies and …buy one? And they paint flames and stuff on the sides of them, and get all sentimental about them, and maybe even name them? (Or is that only Alton Brown?) Well… I’m a little bit like that with what I call my Gray Rhino. My printer is …huge. It’s a HP Color Laserjet 2820. It’s a printer, scanner and copier. It can print out an entire 283 page manuscript in about seven minutes, and ask why there aren’t a few hundred more pages. It is my dream printer, and so big a step up from what I was doing before that it’s scary. I bought it used — obviously, it’s a huge, expensive office-sized machine — and I love it, love it, love it. I can now act like I don’t know what a Kinko’s is, and ignore all the slacker clerks at Paper Tiger (which is admittedly an awesome name for a copy shop, despite their general slacker-y-ness). I can send the requisite TWO COPIES of final manuscript to my agent, I can print back-to-front like my editor likes things, I can print things in color, I can print things at 3:46 a.m., and it makes me VERY happy.

And I can’t take it to Glasgow.

Which just sucks.

Himself firmly promises me that I am to have another one — just like it — that will not have to be shipped. He swears that HP is an international company, and it will be an easy thing to find another one, just as soon as we are settled. He tells me I can name it the same thing. He spins all sorts of pretty lies… er, prevarications, to make me feel better.

And I guess I’ll get over it.
After all, he has to (!) leave behind his Kitchen Aid.

Still, I can’t help but dance. It’s one down, and three hundred forty seven million things to go.