Smack Dab in the Middle

Luck (or lack thereof) ~ Joan Holub / March Theme

2012-03-01T02:00:00.003-06:00

On a recent road trip to Charleston, SC, a friend brought along a travel game called Table Topics. The way you play is simply to choose a card and read the printed question on it aloud. Then everyone in the car answers in turn. One of the questions was: Are you a lucky person?

To my surprise, the other three women in the car (ages ranging from ages 27 to 49) all said no.

I’ve known these friends forever, and know the ups and downs of their lives. I don’t consider them unlucky at all. I think they’re lucky people that unlucky things sometimes happen to. Just like me.

I immediately began citing all the reasons I think they are lucky. They countered with a short list of unlucky things that have happened to them. And to me.

Huh? Sure, I wasn’t so lucky that night I tripped over my suitcase and nearly got a concussion. Which meant I had to cancel a trip to Seattle to visit dear friends. But I was lucky my glasses didn’t break or poke my eyes out, right?

It’s not that I’m not super-annoyingly optimistic. But I sincerely believe a person can make something happen if they want it enough, think smart enough, work hard for it, and refuse to give up. That’s making your own luck (said my friends), not being innately lucky.

They’re right of course. No matter how much I wanted that cute guy in high school to like me, it didn’t happen. My theory doesn’t hold when it comes to love.

But in my publishing life, it has often seemed to me that there is something almost magical at work. A positive energy that descends from the ether to bind all that hard work, hope, thought, and determination together into this thing called luck.

So now I’m passing that Table Topics card on to you. Are you a lucky person?

~ Joan Holub

Joan Holub & Suzanne Williams are the co-authors of the Goddess Girls series (Aladdin)

http://series.simonandschuster.com/Goddess-Girls

Eleven Bookish Things I Love: February Theme (Jen Cervantes)

2012-02-29T07:54:00.005-06:00

1.Beautifully written books with characters that stay
with me long after I turn the last page.
2.Assertive characters that talk me to me at three
a.m. and insist on page time
3.Thoughtful smart, savvy agents, like the amazing
Holly Root
4.The beginning
5.Typing The End
6.Breaking rules
7.School visits
8.My writer friends who "get it" and provide support, humor, and
sanity in equal measure
9.My Kindle Fire
10.The Dictionary
11. Odd Numbers and lists (I know that’s two, but I
love breaking rules, remember?)

February Theme: I Love the Duck Man and So Can You...

2012-02-28T00:42:00.003-06:00

When I was a little boy I loved reading Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books.

Why?

Because they were filled with exotic treasure hunting adventures galore!

And?

And marvelous mysteries!

And?

And naughty evil villains and monumental chases!

And?

And plenty of mundane situations!

Mundane Situations?

Yes, but even the mundane situations would always quickly devolve into hilarious insanity.

These Disney Duck stories sound like they would be easy to love.

They are and I love them all, just not equally. I love some Disney Duck stories more than others...

What do these stories you love the most have in common?

They were all written and illustrated by the great Carl Barks!

This Carl Barks sounds like an amazing man!

He was. He was beloved by millions (including Steven Spielberg and George Lucas!

He sounds dead.

He is but his work lives on! In fact, Fantagraphic Books has just begun reprinting the complete Carl Barks library and I just got volume one in the mail!

Was this volume beautifully designed and thoughtfully compiled?

Yes it was!

Do you work for Fantagraphics?

Sadly, I do not.

The End

by Michael Townsend

February Theme: I Love Research!

2012-02-24T10:55:00.000-06:00

by
Stephanie J. Blake

I should have majored in history. I love it. I could look at black and white photos for hours, imagining what kind of lives people had "back then." I love reading historical novels and discovering all of the details that make the setting so real. I love historical movies, and don't get me started on Downton Abbey. It's really no surprise that my debut is a historical.

I've been working on three very different manuscripts off and on for a couple of years, but none of them are truly working in "real time." The problem is, I've failed to fully commit to the kind of story I want to tell. I've been hit with too many ideas at once.

I have realized something important this week. I should be writing another middle grade historical. Thus, I need to do a ton of research. (Good thing I'm in love with it!)

Yesterday, in the history section of my local library, I found myself filling my arms with books and couldn't stop. I could barely carry the bag to the car and came home with several fun books.

Four of the books are about the 1980's. Three are about the roaring 1920's. Two of them are about Telluride, Colorado. One is about the 1970's. One is about prominent women in the history of Colorado.

I have a hankering to write a middle grade about Butch Cassidy and the gold rush in Telluride in the 1880's. I'm in love with the roaring twenties and would love to do a noir. I want to explore a character with a mom who starts marching for women's lib in the 1970's. I have an angsty teen character in mind for a story set in the 1980's.

Whoa, Nelly! So many ideas, so little time. My agent would like an outline sometime in the near future--like before spring break. So, here's the plan. I'm going to read all of these books and pick ONE idea and run with it.

Looks like I'll be doing a ton of reading this weekend.

STICKIN' WITH IT (February Theme) by Holly Schindler

2012-02-21T19:31:00.003-06:00

I completely agree with the other Smack Dabbers who have already said that one of the coolest things about the writing gig is the fact that it’s so incredibly hard for a writer to whittle what they love most about writing down to a single favorite. No—not just hard. Impossible.

For me, it’s all incredible: That initial, thrilling spark of inspiration. Outlining the entirety of a new book. The first few rounds of exploratory writing that introduce me to my characters.

While I’ve often said that a first draft—especially the middle—isn’t necessarily one of my favorite parts, I can’t say that I completely dislike drafting, either. There’s just something about getting through the first draft that feels—well—triumphant.

And, as I’ve often said—I adore revising. Revision is when my book inevitably becomes three-dimensional.

I even love the letter that comes from an editor, and the excitement of looking at the book from another’s eyes—brainstorming how to make my current work come together, using that editor’s suggestions.

As geeky as it sounds, I really do love the entire process—and beyond. I anticipate release dates, and treasure the relationships I’ve forged with my readers through the blogosphere.

To the outsider, writing probably looks like a dull occupation—one that pits a face and a computer screen against each other for hours on end. Inside, though, it becomes a grand adventure. And I can’t imagine doing anything else.

But beyond the process itself, one of the most rewarding parts of my journey has been sticking with a dream long enough to see that dream begin to pay off. I don’t care what the dream is—to become a singer, actor, writer, artist…There’s going to be a time, in the pursuit of that fantasy, when it feels like the dream is kicking your butt, a little. I’ve talked often about my long and winding road to publication—how it took seven and a half years of full-time effort to get the first book deal. Nothing could have been sweeter than inking that first deal…and then seeing that first book hit the shelves a year and a half later.

Whatever your dream may be, there will be a point at which you’ll look at yourself and wonder what you’re doing. There will be giant obstacles—a class that feels impossible, or a time commitment, or a monetary commitment…life’s obligations will try to block you from your ultimate goal. But trust me—there’s just nothing like seeing the sweat of hard work begin to pay off…

Below: my dog "advertising" my two published books

February Theme: What I Love (Alan Gratz)

2012-02-21T15:54:00.004-06:00

What I love: getting a big box of books with my name on them! Fantasy Baseball (Dial 2011) is now available in paperback!

Interview with an Agent: Stephen Barbara of Foundry (plus a giveaway!)

2012-02-20T06:00:00.001-06:00

Today I am thrilled to welcome to the blog Stephen Barbara, an agent at Foundry Literary + Media (who just so happens to be my agent). Despite the approximately one-bajillion things Stephen has to do in a day, he graciously agreed to stop by and give us a peek into his life as an agent. He's also offering a giveaway of a fantastic-looking middle grade book. So welcome, Stephen! Shall we get started?

Lisa Graff: Okay, the first one's an easy one! How long have you been an agent?

Stephen Barbara: I got into publishing in 2004-2005, and sort of stumbled into a few early jobs—editorial assistant at HarperCollins, intern at an agency, and later assistant at a literary agency. But I wasn’t really an agent myself until 2006, when I joined the Donald Maass Agency as Contracts Director and began building my own client list. So you could say I’ve been an agent for six years now, and counting.

LG: How would you say the industry, and your role as an agent, have changed since you got into the business?

SB: I think a lot has changed. For one, there is more pressure on agents. People were just waking up to the commercial possibilities of YA and middle-grade in the mid-2000s, and it wasn’t yet the all-out craze for blockbusters it is today. There was maybe more of an exploratory, speculative mood. You would find a good project over the transom, sign it up, and send it out to a few editors, and someone would call you a couple of weeks later and say, “It needs a lot of work, but will you take $15,000 for it?” That would never happen now. Agents are expected to do a lot of development work prior to a submission, and most editors would be too nervous to bring a half-baked manuscript to their acquisitions board.

There’s more of an emphasis on performance, on finding books that will sell and meet financial expectations. Children’s publishing has become a lot like adult publishing, basically. You look at Bookscan numbers, obsess over the first week sales, the bestseller lists, the first printing, the publicity and marketing plans, the social media presence, all things that perhaps weren’t scrutinized as carefully before.

The other change we’ve had to adapt to is the rise of e-books. Publishing has been caught in the cross-hairs of these giant technology companies—Amazon, Apple, Google, and so on—who are changing the way Americans consume and read books, and agents have had to figure out how to protect their authors’ interests in the midst of this upheaval. On the whole, the agent community has not done a very good job. The current e-book royalty rate authors are getting from publishers, 25% of net proceeds, is a scandal. So there are these pressures, these major changes, agents are dealing with now.

LG: I feel like (from my experience as a former editor) there's always such a push and pull in the publishing world, between wanting to latch on to a "sure thing," something that fits in with our idea of what will always sell, and wanting to be the "next great thing," something that will blow everyone's minds with its inventiveness and then take off on its own terms. Where would you say you fall on that scale, in terms of the projects you chose to take on? Do you simply pick things that speak to you artistically, or is it somehow a more calculated process than that?

SB: One reason I might take on a new client is that their writing speaks to me so strongly I just have to represent them. That’s the easiest case, when I know someone fits my taste perfectly and that there’s going to be a good match. But often there are other factors at play as we consider new clients. It’s so important for me, and for all of the agents at Foundry, to be selective with who we sign up and to have a client list where writers have the space to be special, and to get the level of attention they deserve. Sometimes a good project comes in and I might like it, but I’ll worry about if it’s different enough, if it’s fresh enough, if it competes with other projects here. For instance, you have all these trends now in YA—dystopian, dead girl, post-apocalyptic, and so on. How many dystopian series should an agent represent? How many books should you represent on the same topic? These questions come up a lot. And we don’t feel like we have to represent every work in every category. We’re not volume agents, we’re very careful in what we take on.

The other thing now is that you have to be clear on how you’re going to talk about a book. It’s not enough to like it and think you might be able to sell it. How will you position it? Who are the best editors for it? You sort of need an idea of where the book fits in the world, whether it’s a bestseller, an award winner, something with a chance to be a backlist success, a critical success, or whether it’s just so delightfully weird and offbeat that you want to take a chance on it. The world is full of talented people, but talent isn’t necessarily a decisive thing in our business. There are street basketball players who can do the same thing Kobe Bryant can do with a basketball—but can they do it at the Staples Center, before a TV audience of millions? That’s the challenge for an agent, to figure out how to take a talented person and make their talent effective in the world. So that’s a big part of our thinking—where does this new writer fit on our list, in the marketplace? Do we have an idea how we can help him or her succeed? That kind of thing.

LG: What are a few of the projects you're working on right now who you have especially high hopes for? Was there anything specific about those books that drew you in?

SB: There are a lot of great books coming out from our authors in 2012. Lauren Oliver’s PANDEMONIUM, the sequel to her New York Times bestseller DELIRIUM, comes out the end of this month. She also has a truly creepy middle-grade coming in the fall I’m excited about, THE SPINDLERS. It’s my favorite book of hers so far. Laura Amy Schlitz, who is an exquisite writer, has a sort of magnum opus later this year—SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS, a big Victorian Gothic she spent six years writing. Lots of exciting debuts, too: Kate Ellison’s THE BUTTERFLY CLUES, a literary thriller which already has two starred reviews; former Penguin editor Jess Rothenberg’s THE CATASTROPHIC HISTORY OF YOU & ME, a novel about a girl who dies of a broken heart and finds love in the afterlife, is a Spring ’12 top ten Indie Next pick. And lots of middle-grade, too: M.E. Castle’s hilarious POPULAR CLONE. Jack Ferraiolo’s sequel to his Edgar Award nominee THE BIG SPLASH, THE QUICK FIX; Lisa Graff’s adorable DOUBLE DOG DARE, in April [Ed note: Yay!]; and this fall, F.T. Bradley’s DOUBLE VISION, an action/ adventure debut which Harper is publishing.

I guess you could say I have a lot of client books I’m excited about this year. There are others, and I haven’t mentioned any of the great YA projects my colleagues here have coming out, either, like Gen Albin’s debut fantasy CREWEL, which Mollie Glick represents and FSG is publishing, or Aimee Agresti’s ILLUMINATE, which my colleague Stéphanie Abou represents, soon out from HMH. Foundry is only four and a half years old, and I hope I’m not bragging here, but we really have a lot of great stuff—lots of lead titles, lots of books getting attention, making bestseller lists, getting foreign sales, and so on. And it’s great to be at a place where there’s so much excitement.

LG: It sounds like you have a lot of authors with a lot of books to celebrate! Speaking of authors with many books, do you think it benefits an author to write across a variety of age groups and/or mediums (e.g. an author of funny picture books who also writes chick-lit YA), to reach a wider fanbase? Or do you think this has the potential to hurt an author's career, to dilute his or her "brand," so to speak?

SB: I think that most writers, judged by their actions, probably aren’t looking at their careers in strategic terms. They want to write what they want to write, and they try to piece together a living doing it, and at the end of the day some of their books were good and others maybe not so much. I’m fine with that. It’s your career, of course. Certainly, we would never tell anyone to not follow their passions or inclinations.

But I do think if you want to have a great career, there are some options available to you, some things you might try. It helps to have a good agent, someone who is connected to the best editors and who can handle your subsidiary rights and other important minutiae. It helps to be a house author—to have one publisher totally invested in you. In some ways, success is really all about this one thing, consistency, which is not something that’s seen as being very sexy. It’s working with the same people, regularly producing books that are satisfying to your audience, practicing, fine-tuning, constantly studying what works and what doesn’t work and learning through observation. Success is boring, you could say. From the outside, it seems amazing and glamorous to be a repeat New York Times bestseller. But what’s that writer’s life like? It’s a lot of the same. It’s grueling. It’s hard to be on top for a long time and to sustain the demands of a big career. But does that kind of commitment make a difference? Yes.

LG: I think you make consistency sound very glamorous! Okay, last question: If you weren't an agent, what career do you think you would have chosen for yourself?

SB: Probably I would be like Gabrielle Marcotti or Simon Kuper, living in some city like Paris or Rome and writing about European soccer for a newspaper. I did a little bit of sports writing for the Wall Street Journal after college and that was fun. But then of course I got into publishing. And I do love it now. But there’s a passage from J.D. Salinger I think about a lot: “Sentimentality is loving something more than God loves it.” You could say that I love my clients even more than God loves them. But publishing, editors? Just as much—but probably not more.

LG: Thank you so much for visiting with us, Stephen! I feel like I've learned a lot.

Stephen is graciously hosting a book giveaway, but before we get to the details, I have a question for our readers. In the past few months I've been interviewing various professionals from the children's publishing world (such as publicists, designers, and quite a few editors), and I'd like to know what interviews you all would like to see next. Are you interested in hearing from librarians? copyeditors? something I haven't thought of yet? Or are you sick of interviews all together? Please let me know in the comments section! (P.S. I have an interview lined up for next month which I'm super excited about, but I'm going to keep it a secret for the time-being, in the name of suspense!) Okay, that is all. Now on to our giveaway...

***

BOOK GIVEAWAY DETAILS

Stephen is giving one copy of M. E. Castle's POPULAR CLONE to a very lucky blog reader! Here's a synopsis, via Amazon:

Meet Fisher Bas: 12 years-old, growth-stunted, a geeky science genius, and son of the Nobel Prize-winning creators of the Bas-Hermaphrodite-Sea-Slug-Hypothesis. No surprise: Fisher isn't exactly the most popular kid in his middle-school, tormented daily by the beefy, overgrown goons he calls The Vikings. But he senses relief when he comes upon the idea of cloning himself--creating a second Fisher to go to school each day while he stays at home playing video games and eating cheetos with ketchup. It's an ingenious plan that works brilliantly, until Fisher's clone turns out to be more popular than him--and soon after gets clone-napped by the evil scientist Dr. Xander.

Um, I super want to read this one (so if you guys don't snap it up, I will!). To enter the giveaway, simply send me an email at graff [dot] lisa [at] yahoo [dot] com with the subject line "POPULAR CLONE." The winner will be chosen at random on March 1st.

February Theme: Ten Fantasy Books I Love by Christine Brodien-Jones

2012-02-19T06:03:00.001-06:00

Here are ten fantasy books I fell in love with over the years. Each one of them influenced my dystopian middle-grade novel The Owl Keeper in different ways:

1. The Alchemyst by Michael Scott ~ A cracking adventure/fantasy that mixes myth and legend with the present day. Shortly after twins Sophie and Josh meet the immortal alchemist Nichola Flamel, an ancient book is lost, unleashing mythical beasts such as the Egyptian cat-goddess Bastet, the Morrigan, and the three-faced Greek Hekate. A wild, magical ride.

2. The City of Ember by Jeanne Du Prau ~ In Ember, an underground post-apocalyptic city, supplies are scarce and blackouts are frequent. Two friends, Lina and Doon, team up to decipher an ancient message and find a way to save the citizens of this dying city. Brilliantly original.

3. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper ~ Eerie and atmospheric, set in rural England in the dark of winter. When Will discovers his true heritage, life turns strange and wonderful as he learns of his role in the battle against the Dark. Menacing, with supremely evil beings and surprise twists.

4. Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick ~ In the watery landscape of a future England, where the sea is rising, a girl named Zoe sets off to find her lost parents in this tale of courage and determination. The scenes of submerged lands are mesmerizing, as is the chaos amid a gang of kids seeking shelter on an island.

5. The Giver by Lois Lowry ~ Jonas lives in a futuristic society where there is no poverty, crime, illness or unemployment. Training to become the Receiver of memories, he slowly grows aware of dark undercurrents, and the hypocrisy that rules his world. This book chilled me to the bones.

6. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman ~ No reader can help but fall in love with Lyra, the book's tough, sassy, street-wise heroine. Drawn into a terrifying struggle - missing children, secret experiments, witch clans and armored bears - she travels with her daemon to the far North. I never wanted Lyra's epic journey to end, and found myself longing for a daemon of my own.

7. The Navigator by Eoin McNamee ~ Owen, an outsider of a boy, is unexpectedly thrown out of his world and into another: when time flows backward his family and familiar places vanish. Owen must stop an ancient enemy, the Harsh, or everything he knows will disappear. Dazzling, heart-stopping; I was intrigued by the creepy Harsh, whose breath freezes humans.

8. Skellig by David Almond ~ A mystical gem of a book that blends the supernatural and the ordinary when ten-year-old Michael discovers a strange being in the shadows of his garage. What is Skellig? Man, bird, angel - or a beast he's never seen before? I loved how Michael and his friend Mina dared to carry this unearthly creature out into the light.

9. The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo ~ A haunting, lyrical tale of a grieving young boy, Rob, who discovers a caged tiger and meets a feisty girl named Sistine, all on the same extraordinary day. Rob and Sistine stayed with me long after the book was finished.

10. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin ~ A stunning tale of wizards, dragons and shadows. Sparrowhawk, a student of magic, meddles with dangerous powers, setting loose a terrible evil. From the first page I was caught in the spell of this imaginary world, watching as the shadow-beast hunted Sparrowhawk to the far corners of Earthsea.

February Theme: I Love Libraries (Sarah Dooley)

2012-02-17T16:27:00.002-06:00

You know what I love?

I love libraries. With their shelves upon shelves upon shelves of books I haven’t read yet, so many books on so many subjects that by the time I get them all read, there will be shelves upon shelves of new books at the ready.

I love libraries, with their librarians, who can sort out exactly what book my student is asking for when all he gives them to go on is “no driving, bird!” – and in his hands appears Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, by Mo Willems.

I love libraries, with their meeting rooms, where some of my favorite kids come dashing in every Thursday, trailing chewed-up pen caps and loose leaf paper, ready to tackle a new type of poetry or weave another chapter about beloved characters.

I love libraries, with their classes on everything under the sun, from knitting to taxes to cooking to computers, offered free to anyone who wants to learn.

I love the library I grew up in – above the police station, hot and stuffy, where I read Nancy Drew and Danger on Panther Peek and every Dr. Seuss book there was – and I love the library I frequent now, with a WHOLE ENTIRE FLOOR DEVOTED TO CHILDREN’S BOOKS – so I can still read Nancy Drew and Danger on Panther Peek and every Dr. Seuss book there ever was – and also The Hunger Games and the Clementine books and Harry Potter.

I love that no matter where I live -- no matter how many times I pack up my own books and everything else I can carry into boxes and move to a new space that isn't yet familiar –- there is always a place in the nearest town that smells like books and feels like home.

February Theme: What I Love (Stephanie Burgis)

2012-02-16T10:15:00.004-06:00

Every day, this list changes..but here is my list of what I love right now:

Reading Mercer Mayer's Professor Wormbog in Search for the Zipperumpazoo to my three-year-old son and listening to him laugh and laugh with pure delight, just like I laughed over it 31 years ago - and like I laugh over it now, with him;

Reading a completely new book that utterly delights me, makes me want to skip meals and sleep and everything but reading, and reminds me why I wanted to write MG fiction in the first place;

Talking about writing with my husband (also a writer), being challenged and inspired by his ideas;

Fighting with a scene, being certain that I just can't get it right, feeling all the despair of realizing that I'm just not up to the task - and then finally, FINALLY finding the right turn of phrase that makes it all fall into place, and thinking: YES. I am a writer, really truly, after all;

Getting to celebrate with a dear friend when her wonderful, wonderful new book comes out at last, after years of hard work and waiting;

Realizing that I am part of a community, now, of writers and readers who care desperately about books - that this fact about myself doesn't make me feel weird anymore, not singular or odd or lonely - that in fact, there are SO MANY of us, and it's the best community I can imagine.

What about you guys? What do you love this week, today?

February Theme: Books I Love and Would Hate to See Fade Away by Bob Krech

2012-02-15T00:01:00.003-06:00

I’ve been eyeing my bookshelves recently. I know I have to pare back. I still have all of the books I used when I taught reading and writing in first, second, third, and fourth grades. And I stopped doing that ten years ago! I even have multiple copies for group reading! Now almost all of my daily teaching is focused on math and I have plenty of math/literature connection books as well. Plus my own kids are both in college, so I’m not using them there. Even my nephews and nieces are in middle school or higher.

The thing is—I love these books. I am having a very hard time letting them go. My favorites are probably the short chapter books I used for read-alouds with my classes. Every day brought another chapter and took us deeper into the story. It was a delight to hear the moans, groans, and pleading to just hear a little more, and even better when students would hunt down their own copies to that they could read on their own.

Some of these great books I fear will disappear. I just don’t see them on the bookstore shelves, on reading lists, or in classrooms anymore, yet they are as good, if not better (in my humble opinion) than some Newberry and Caldecott winners. So for today’s blog, I thought maybe I could mention a book I love, that I hope you will hunt down and read, if you don’t know it already. It’s one of those books we can learn from as writers and enjoy as readers and just plain humans.

From a writer’s viewpoint, it is a book with no wasted words. It has incredible economy. The story moves from page to page with a building tension and excitement. The characters are well drawn, their motivations totally believable and understandable. The writing seems effortless and the writer’s presence is never noticed, something Elmore Leonard mentioned as his acid test for whether he has to rewrite or not.

The book is A Toad for Tuesday by Russell E. Erickson with illustrations by Lawrence DiFiori. It was first published in 1974. This is a chapter book that is a great read-aloud from 1st to 4th grade and a good independent read for a second or third grader.

It's the story of Wharton the toad, who is captured by a fearsome owl. The owl brings Wharton to his home in a tree trunk and informs him that he will be eating Wharton the following Tuesday. Wharton tries to devise a means of escape while at the same time learning about who this owl really is. There is excitement and humor and very realistic detail both in the setting and in the habits and actions of the characters. It is a fantastic story of bravery and friendship. As one reviewer stated, it is a story where “intelligence, kindness, and compassion win the day.” And you have to love a story like that.

February Theme: I Love the Epiphany (by Tracy Barrett)

2012-02-13T06:00:00.043-06:00

ἐπιϕάνεια: A manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being.

I used to think that epiphanies happened like this:

You know, you're sitting at your computer (or holding your snazzy red book), pondering where to go next, how to fix some awkward dialog, how to pick up the pace, where to insert that crucial scene, and lo! from out of nowhere the solution arrives.

That's what it can feel like, anyway.

But now that I've been at this a while, I recognize that an epiphany—that out-of-the-blue thought, idea, realization—is a more subtle process.

I also recognize that when I'm stuck, there's no point in pushing. I'm not one of those 2,000-word-a-day writers. If I wrote 2,000 words in a day, I'd wind up deleting 1,950 of them the next day. I'd rather write 200 solid words than 1,950 crappy ones. There are people who can write 2,000 solid words in a day, but I'm not one of them.

So when I'm stuck, I stop writing. And I've come to realize that what I'm doing in those days—sometimes weeks—is preparing the ground for the ideas that will spring from the seemingly barren dirt. I have to lay myself open to the new ideas.

My latest epiphany occurred a few weeks ago. I was facing several seemingly unrelated problems in my work in progress, and every fix I made to one made the others worse. So I quit, and went to the SCBWI Midwinter Conference.

The title of a session in the conference program caught my attention. Something clicked in my mind, and I recognized the click: A puzzle-piece had slid into place (okay, I'm leaving the fallow field analogy now). I didn't know where it fit, or even what it meant. I didn't probe. I didn't even attend that session.

A few days later, while reading Octavian Nothing, I felt another click. A small episode in that amazing book added another piece to the puzzle, and when I stood back and looked at it, I saw a smooth and cohesive scene in the puzzle where before there had been a hole.

If I didn't understand and accept my own writing process, and if I hadn't been paying attention, I wouldn't have known why that hole in the puzzle had suddenly filled in.

I still don't know if this will be the solution to the WiP's problems. But if it isn't, I can always hope for that angel.

School Love (February Theme; Jody Feldman)

2012-02-11T04:28:00.000-06:00

There are those moments you don’t forget. This one came when I was still pre-published, still raw from a particularly heart-wrenching rejection. I was on my daily cardio-walk past an elementary school filled with sounds you can only hear in a schoolyard. “If only,” I thought in regard to my book on submission. “If only I could go into schools and talk to kids.”

In a less emotional state, that might have had me figuring out a way to be a touring motivational speaker. But no. I wanted something more specific than I’d voiced. I wanted to be invited into schools because I’d written a book kids and teachers and media specialists wanted to talk about, wanted me to talk about.

Sometimes you throw things out into the universe and they do stick. And sometimes you should be careful what you wish for.

Not too much later I got my “yes,” had my first novel published, and scheduled my first school visit. But then reality struck. I needed to go into that school and talk. I got a bit terrified. What should I say? How could I entertain these kids and bring something worthwhile to this school? Like many authors, I’m inherently shy. Would they see through me? Would I blank out? Would I survive? Ahhhhh!!!

It turned out that my wish to go into schools and talking to students – from elementary through college – was something worth wishing for. I love the moment before they’ve heard my voice, wondering if the sounds and words match their expectations. I love all the hands that shoot up when it’s time for questions. I love the challenge of being asked something new, something off the wall, something they maybe shouldn’t ask.

I love going into schools. And I love the reason I get to.

What I LOVE about writing! (by Tyler Whitesides)

2012-02-10T13:03:00.002-06:00

People often ask me why I like writing. What is it about the process that keeps me going and self-motivated? The answer is completely different for every person, but I'd like to share what I love about writing.

Like most writers, I have a very active imagination. I love picturing a scene in great clarity and detail. But the challenge comes in trying to portray that scene through writing. If it exists only in my head, then I am the only person that can enjoy it. I love the task of taking something from my mind and putting it on paper so everyone who reads it can enjoy the thing I imagined.

That said, my favorite part of the writing process is the first draft. I love to see the story unfold as I write action-packed adventure scenes for the first time. I love to see characters develop as I write conversations for the first time. The initial draft of a manuscript is raw and unrefined creation to me. A bit of drudgery comes in the necessary months of revising and editing, but it's all worth it!

There is so much that I love about writing! I am so grateful to have a book published and excited to share the future volumes of the Janitors series.

February Theme: Books I Love -- Lewis Carroll, by Platte F. Clark

2012-02-09T17:32:00.001-06:00

Alice in Wonderland first came to life for me as a cartoon. Thank you Walt Disney. And while I'll admit I didn't understand why the strange characters and story were a bit orthogonal to the big-eared elephants, singing bears, and rampaging Saturday morning exploits of cat vs. mouse, there was something about it that was just . . . odd. But compelling, too. It was hard to put your finger on it. It wasn't until my undergrad years in Philosophy that I entered the world of the Alice via the printed word, and found a magical and brilliant work.

I had just begun my studies in logic, and based on my previous experiences with Alice I had no idea what I was in for:

"'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted her.
'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that -- '

'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't you see, child -- ' here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation."

Wait, there's a logic formula in there!

"It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they Always purr. 'If they would only purr for "yes" and mew for "no," or any rule of that sort,' she had said, 'so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?'"

Even existential questions were deftly handled with logical fun:

"'Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!'

'Well, now that we have seen each other,' said the unicorn, 'if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.'"

I love the fact that Carroll came at children with more than just a fantastical story to tell. There was a truth to it, many truths, actually, to be uncovered and discovered. Alice does more than entertain, she teaches. Not always on a conscious level (any child can learn, if nothing else, terrific manners from Alice), but it's there nonetheless.

There is certainly joy in writing something that entertains. But when we can touch upon the truths of the world as well . . . now that's something special.

February Theme: BOOKS I LOVE FROM 2011 by John Claude Bemis

2012-02-08T06:30:00.001-06:00

This time of year is awards season, from the announcement of the Newbery winners to the upcoming Academy Awards. I’ll take this post to declare my love for a variety of books from last year. While not all are middle-grade, I hope all will appeal to fans of children’s literature.

Nothing Like a Puffin by Sue Soltis and Bob Kolar was my favorite picture book from 2011. Funny and philosophical, this book beautifully considers what makes a puffin a puffin and not something else, essentially leading young readers through a playful logic puzzle to understand what makes us all unique. I’ve used this book in so many early elementary classrooms, and it’s an unequivocal hit.

Hopefully you have already discovered Tom Angleberger’s runaway hit The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda. If not, don’t wait another day. Last year brought not only the sequel, Darth Paper Strikes Back, but also a bonus Angleberger book Horton Halfpott Or, The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor; or, The Loosening of M'Lady Luggertuck's Corset.

Angleberger masterfully pulls off pee-stain-on-the-pants humor as well as unsentimental heart-string tugging, often in the same chapter. Horton Halfpott had me choking with laughter with its Downton Abbey-esque story that at times is hilariously bizarre and still keeps the Angleberger secret weapon for having characters with tons of heart.

While Brian Selznick’s graphic novel-novel hybrids have been a revelation for older readers, Eric Wight is working similar magic for a younger audience with his Frankie Pickle series. Last year brought the third, Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace, of Wight’s comic book-early reader hybrids. Wight’s books blend the fantastical with the ordinary, as well as dynamic drawings of Frankie’s adventures through his own imagination with hilarious storytelling. I’m not sure who loves these books more - my four-year old daughter or me! She’s now convinced there’s such a thing as a “dryer sheet fairy.”

Another amazing middle-grade from last year was The Death of Yorik Mortwell by Stephen Messer. Messer’s macabre and funny story of a ghost caught up in a battle of cosmic proportions is at times Edward Gorey, at times Neil Gaiman, but mostly Messer’s own stunningly original style. The books have the added appeal of illustrations (why aren’t there more in middle-grade books!?) by Gris Grimly. As he proved in his debut Windblowne, Messer weaves tight, edge-of-your-seat stories of clever underdogs facing world-shaking forces.

The final book in the Everlost trilogy by Neil Shusterman, Everfound, came out last year. Don’t you love when you discover a great series when all the books are out and you can enjoy them all in frenzy? I don’t know why this trilogy isn’t buzzed about more. To me, Everlost is on par with fantasy epics like His Dark Materials and The Dark Is Rising. Officially labeled “young adult,” these felt completely and wonderfully middle-grade to me. Set in a limbo world between life and death, the complex characters and rich world-building left me wanting nothing more than to start back over at the first book and enter Everlost again.

Since I’m already breaking from the Smack-Dab format and hyping children’s books across age ranges, let me end with my favorite young adult novel from last year, This Girl Is Different by J.J. Johnson. Although I’m a fantasy author, I love realistic fiction. And the best young adult novels strike readers as a call-to-arms. This Girl Is Different begins with a homeschooled teen deciding to finish her senior year in a public high school as an experiment and grows into revolution against bureaucratic complacency and the everyday abuses teens face. Beautiful and inspiring!

Full disclosure, I know or have met all the above authors. While this might have led to my reading their books, it is my happy fortune to have discovered my 2011 favorite books in this way. I hope in them you discover some new favorites as well.

February Theme: Ode to Laura Ruby (Naomi Kinsman)

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000-06:00

Have you ever felt like writing up a wanted ad, when you’re browsing the shelves of your local library or independent bookstore? Something like:

Wanted: A wild tale of adventure that will make take my breath away, surprise me, astonish me, terrify me, cause me to shed a few tears, and above all, make me laugh so hard my sides ache.

Sometimes I have a hard time finding this book. And of course, I don’t need every book to cause me to feel the entire spectrum of human emotion. Still, I have to admit, when a book can totally entertain me, while also tugging on my heartstrings, I can’t help but fall in love.

Humor gets me, especially. I think this is because I’m not naturally a funny writer. Also, as my MFA colleague Peter Pearson would say, humor offsets pain in fiction. Often, where there is humor, there is also deep feeling. So, when I stumble across a book that makes me laugh, and makes me feel, I want to read it over and over, both for the experience as a reader, and for what I can learn as a writer.

Which brings me to Laura Ruby’s books, The Wall and the Wing and The Chaos King. I love these books. First of all, they are twisty-turny fantasies that delight me as a reader because I never know what’s coming. Secondly, Laura’s clever use of the absurd, and of specific, unexpected details is hilarious. But underneath all that, the characters are deeply felt individuals, with joy and pain and who face real challenges and grow through the books.

I learn something about writing every time I read Laura's books. And at the same time, I feel like I’ve taken a magic carpet ride through a world I could only hope to dream up.

Read them. I promise you’ll fall in love.

Feb. Theme: Falling in Love with Your Characters by Trudi Trueit

2012-02-05T00:00:00.000-06:00

When I started thinking about the things that make writingso delectably fun, my mind was flooded! I love coming up with a fresh, new idea.I love writing first lines. I love ever-so-carefully building a plot. I love itwhen I’m struggling with a passage and then—boom—everything clicks into place. Ilove fan letters and meeting readers and holding workshops. But the thing I love most?

Characters!

I adore the process of creating each of my characters,even the minor ones, like Mr. Quigley the lunchroom monitor, who carries 187 pictures of his cat, Clawed Monet, in a fold-out wallet. I must admit, there are a lot of folks roaming around insidemy head. Like a cast of jittery actors backstage, each waits for his turn inthe spotlight.

My novel may germinate from an idea, but it’s the characterswho make it blossom. I keep lists of potential character names, always adding new ones as I hearthem. I can’t start writing my book until I have settled on the full namesof my primary characters. Then I’ll do a quick sketch of each character—and I’mno fancy artist—just so I can get some of their physical attributes from myhead onto the page.

Now, here is where it gets a little weird . . .

I talk to mycharacters. Because I used to be a journalist and if I’m not asking questions Iam not breathing, I like to interview them. I will inquire about their favoritefoods, music, hobbies, pet peeves, issues with their siblings, struggles atschool - anything to find out what makes them tick. In the case of Scab McNally, mymischievous fourth-grade inventor in Secrets of a Lab Rat, I asked him to empty his pockets. That’swhere I got the idea for his dead bug collection. For my miserablemiddle-child, Julep O’Toole, I asked her to write her feelings down in ajournal. Some of her entries made it into the final book.

I know this may sound extreme, but in order for me to make a character convincing on the page, I haveto believe she is real. When I am at my best, when I know that characterfrom head to toe, I can sit back and let her drive the story. She communicates herwants and needs, in her own words. I merely dictate. In those times when Ihave tried to push the story in the direction I wanted it to go, to force thecharacter to do something against her conscience, she will stop me cold. I can’twrite a word.

I am grateful to my husband, Bill, who has, up til now, refrained from summoning the mental health professionals. When we are out and about he is used to hearing memutter things like, “Cooper would break his leg trying that,” and “Julep wouldlove this tee shirt.” Truth be told, Bill is my enabler. When I finished theJulep series, and was feeling a little blue,Bill presented me with a plastic, laser-cut-out figure of her for my desk. This year,upon completion of the Secrets of a Lab Rat series, I got a Scab figure, too!

Of course, when you get attached to your characters, sayinggoodbye is never easy. But, sadly, it must be done. There are new stories to be told and newcharacters waiting to be born. Like this one . . .

She'll be arriving this fall. Sheis a modern-day, middle-school Robin Hood, stealing popularity for the mean girls and givingit to the misfits. Her name is Coco Sherwood. She was a delight to get to know and yes, I already miss her.

So here's to breathing life into your characters! Make them real. Make them shine. And they won’t disappoint you.

Julep just whispered in my ear. She is not thrilled aboutsharing shelf space with an arm-farting fourth-grader.

Characters. You can't help but love ‘em.

February Theme: DISCOVERING THE WORLD by Irene Latham

2012-02-03T06:00:00.004-06:00

What I love best about writing is that I could have written a dozen posts for this month's theme. And all those posts would have at least one major element in common:

DISCOVERY

1. Discovery in research. The writing journey has taken me to 1932 Gee's Bend, Alabama, to the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelee on the island of Martinique, into the future of a world called Inbetweenland, into the bowels of a shipwreck, behind-the scenes of a contemporary zoo in my next novel DON'T FEED THE BOY, and currently into the world of rock-n-roll. I love spending time in museums and poring over pages of notes and photographs.

2. Discovery of other people. I love how writing a book is like starting a conversation. Being an author allows me to connect with other authors and book-lovers and quilt-lovers and history-lovers and everyday people like the UPS man. And I get to hear their stories about quilts and family and disaster and dreams and encounters with wildlife and all sorts of ordinary life experiences that are somehow not ordinary at all, but special, and sacred, and completely a gift in this world.

3. Discovery of myself. I love how the writing process ferrets the corners of my heart and reveals myself to me. I get a peek inside that girl who's still a mystery, that woman who knows things she doesn't even know she knows! Somehow, through writing, I learn more about myself than anything else. And being an introspective, soul-full kind of person, it's like meditation, massage, therapy. FOR FREE.

Wishing all you wonderful discoveries as you continue your journey, writing or otherwise!

Feb Theme: What I Love Most About What I Do (Joan Holub)

2012-02-01T00:01:00.001-06:00

It seems fitting that I begin our February theme with the thing I probably love most about writing. The beginning. The creative spark. A spark that in the beginning, I just know will make a good book.

Each time I come up with a book idea, it’s a thrill. I want to begin work on it now, today, this minute. Usually I can’t because I’m already working on another book that began as a spark months or years ago.

And sometimes it’s best to let an idea sit for a while.

Because some ideas need to time to ripen. They get better given more time to grow. Other ideas should be left to shrivel away and be relegated to the compost pile because they were rotten from the start. But when I first get an idea I am so excited about it, that it can be hard to see that the idea isn’t necessarily viable.

To test an idea, I tell my husband, a friend, a crit partner. Their feedback helps me hone and shape that initial spark. It gives me direction. I start a folder for the book idea and fill it with scraps of paper I scribble on in the car, in a waiting room, while watching TV, in the middle of the night.

I carve out a block of time when I can get to that idea. I am full of energy, eager to start. My great idea is just waiting there in its file. Waiting to fulfill the promise of the book that’s shaping up in my head. Waiting to blossom on the page. And one day, at last, it’s finally time to start.

To begin.

~ Joan Holub

Zero the Hero / Zero the Hero animated book trailer

Goddess Girls Facebook

When I FIRST knew I Was a Writer: January Theme (J. Cervantes)

2012-01-29T10:00:00.007-06:00

I can still remember the innocent joy I felt when I began writing. I wrote for pleasure. I wrote to see where the story went next. I wrote to understand. There were no agent voices, no editor voices—nothing but the welcomed silence of my imagination excavating a story bit by bit. I know I will never go back to that voiceless place where there was nothing to fear. But I also realize that this is part of the writer’s journey. I realize the fear is what moves us forward, what gets us in the chair, what asks us to take the risks that help us grow.

And during the early part of my journey, I never had the audacity to call myself a writer. I was tinkering, playing, having fun with words. Even after the publication of my first book, I questioned whether I was a “real” writer. Or had I fooled everyone? Was it a fluke? Was I a counterfeit?

I can still remember the FIRST time it hit me. The first time I tried on the “Writer” title and it fit. It was long after TORTILA SUN was published. But it had nothing to do with holding a book with my name scrolled neatly on the cover. It had nothing to do with reviews, accolades, or awards. It had everything to do with a quiet sense of remembering why I write. It had everything to do with my desire to stay in the ring, to stay focused on the writing and to let the rest come as it may. Steven Pressfield (The War of Art) says that the battle is in our own heads. That we are programmed to feel rejection deep within and that our fear of this manifests itself in our thoughts which will always keep us from the writing.

I had my share of rejections, challenging moments, and tough times. I had often let these moments interrupt the art.

No more.

I know the resistance when I see it and I send it on its way.

No more do I fret over where the story wants to go or what the market looks like.

No more do I fret when I am out on submission, worrying whether an editor will
fall in love or not. You know why? Because there is always another idea percolating, another story demanding to be told. And as a writer I am focused on that.

Not that the other doesn’t matter; of course, we all want to
continue being published, finding readers to connect with etc. but when the
desire for this trumps the desire to tell the story, to spill our hearts on the
page…then we’ve lost our way.

Steven Pressfield writes “The artist committing
himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He
will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt,
despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”

Wow! Who would sign up for that?

The writer. A real writer. Because a true writer has no choice
but to write.

A true writer knows that there is also joy in the arena and
being in the arena is better than standing on the sidelines.

The Nightmare Factory Cover Reveal!!!

2012-01-26T05:58:00.011-06:00

Ok, so as we're doing the theme 'firsts' this month, I thought it would be the perfect time to reveal my first ever book cover!!! Due out 3rd May 2012!

Front and back (Click on image to see larger version)

Front

When I received the proofs for The Nightmare Factory cover through my letterbox, I actually screamed. This was the big moment which made everything feel REAL. I was actually going to have a book published!!! I started imagining it on shelves and in shop windows. The first thing I did (after doing a happy dance all over the house of course) was to fold one up and put it around an actual book. You know, just to see what it was going to look like!

I had been told by my agent and other authors that Orchard Books always created amazing covers, but I still had no idea what to expect with my own cover. What if I hated it? What if I didn’t think they’d got the characters right? I’d seen an earlier version and had asked them to brighten the colours. What if they were still too dull? There were so many worries. Thankfully, I LOVE it with a capital L. The colours, the design, the font, everything. But maybe I’m slightly biased, what do you guys think?

Midwinter Recap

2012-01-25T11:07:00.003-06:00

I spent the past five days in Dallas, working at the Flux booth for the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference. I love going to ALA conferences. Absolutely love them. I know that BEA is the trade show that most bookish people treat as the grail of book shows. I’ve been to BEA once and found it meh.* I’m told the timbre has changed over the past few years, as more bloggers and librarians attend. But overall, I find it to be very cold and businessy, which is fine (as that’s ultimately the purpose, I suppose).

But ALA is the place to go if you want to talk about books. I mean, really talk about books. Like, with people who’ve, you know, read them. I have the best conversations at ALA, largely with young adult librarians who have their fingers on the pulse of their patrons and can tell you exactly which person they’re going to give a specific ARC that they pick up. You often hear that librarians are gatekeepers. I prefer to think of them as champions. A librarian with fire in their heart and the mouth to back it up can be the best promotion a book can receive.

Some takeaways:

--Librarians are cool.

--They like their drama at the Youth Media Awards. You can feel the temperature in the room drop as an “ooooh” ripples through the crowd at the announcement that the Schneider Award Committee declined to name a picture book winner or that there would be only two Newbery Honor books.

--At the same time, it’s so awesome to hear the people assembled at the Awards get worked up in support of books they dearly loved.

--I can't imagine how hard it must be to serve on the committees that choose the award winning books. Lots of lots of work.

--If you ever get a chance to sit in on the teen feedback session where they discuss Best Fiction for Young Adults, do it. Just do it. The opinions are wide and varied and always very smart.

--I spoke to some publishers who were concerned that so many ARCs were being taken by bloggers, rather than librarians. All publishers love working with bloggers but the point of the show is to reach librarians. I wouldn’t be surprised if this concern turns into some sort of measurable policy in the future.

--In some ways, my favorite part of the show (besides meeting and talking to the cool librarians) is when the teen reading groups wander the floor in their matching t-shirts. These guys are amazing. They're so enthusiastic and intelligent.

The show felt a bit smaller this year but the energy was still good. I haven't missed an ALA for about three years now (well, let's not talk about New Orleans last year...)** and I hope to keep going for the foreseeable future. I'm telling you: ALA is where it's at.

*=I promise my feelings toward BEA were not at all influenced by the fact that I got food poisoning via room service on the first night and spent the rest of the show sick as a dog.

**=No, really, I don't want to talk about it.

January Theme: First rejections

2012-01-24T10:25:00.004-06:00

by Stephanie J. Blake

I've heard that galleys for my debut, THE MARBLE QUEEN, will be ready soon. I'm pretty excited because the book is going on five years in the making. I finished writing it in late 2007 and started querying right before the holidays. (Rookie mistake). I had 13 rejections before the book sold in June of 2010. And I had one critique at the 2007 SCBWI conference in LA.

And I've used every single piece of feedback from each rejection to make the story stronger.

Some of the rejections are from editors and only a handful are from agents. I have five form letters (snail mail--on actual paper!) Most of the rejections were personal letters with actual paragraphs. And boy do I treasure them! I worked on the novel for one editor for almost a year. In the end, it was rejected. I was sad, but knew the book was stronger for it.

The book sat in the slush at Marshall Cavendish for almost a year before my editor emailed to ask if it was still available. I revised for her. She offered. The rest, as they say, is history!

I'd like to share my very first rejection. It's from an agent. He was the first agent I queried, and he asked for a full, which I sent just before Thanksgiving. I waited on pins and needles until...December 17, 2007.

Hi Stephanie--

Thanks so much for letting me consider THE MARBLE QUEEN OF IDAHO FALLS. I think this is such an endearing and wonderful story with many great qualities. Freedom's voice is uniquely engaging, and the way you've structured the novel makes it completely accessible to young readers as well as old(er) ones.

While I admire all of MARBLE QUEEN's strong qualities, in all honesty, colloquial language has never been a favorite of mine, and I tend to like stories with more central conflict. MARBLE QUEEN is a "quiet" novel, in my opinion, and while there is certainly a market for this type of literary middle grade (award winners!), the short length combined with a historical setting will make this a tough sell for an agent who isn't 150% behind it.

Ultimately I don't think I'm the right person for this project, Stephanie, but I know that for another agent, this will be a perfect match. Sorry for the disappointing news, but I truly do appreciate the opportunity to consider your work and wish you the best of luck and all success. (And Happy Holidays, too!)

Agent x

This letter made my heart sing! I knew I had written something special. I realized early on that an agent wouldn't be interested in my little book. I had to target publishers on my own and kept at it.

THE MARBLE QUEEN has been through 12 revisions since 2007. It's still a quiet, literary story, but it's full of heart. I can't wait to share it with the world this fall.

January Theme: Firsts Prevent Extinction by Dia Calhoun

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-06:00

Writing is along series of firsts—if you are learning, pushing your craft and yourself. The first inspiration, the first draft, thefirst critique group, the first writer’s conference, the first rejection, thefirst acceptance!

In Firegold,my first published novel, I felt my way through the novel, reading books oncraft, joining SCBWI, attending workshops. I kept writing Jonathon into the tunnels inthe caves inside Kalivi Mountain—and couldn’t to get him out. So I started overand over—getting him into the caves a little later in each draft. I wasessentially wandering blind in a dark cave myself.

Another first—learninghow to do a visual outline on long sheets of continuous dot matrix computerprinter paper.

Anotherfirst—working with an editor.

Anotherfirst—a dinner given by my publisher for my book.

Anotherfirst—a starred review.

Anotherfirst—an award.

Anotherfirst— breaking out of fantasy and into middle grade verse in my forthcomingbook Eva of the Farm.

Another first—writing a YA fantasy in four voices.What a challenge that was. I think it is one of my best ever books, but no onewants to publish it—it has no vampires, zombies, werewolves, or post-apocalypticmarketing hooks. Just plain old fantasy.

Anotherfirst—breaking out of fantasy and into middle grade verse in my forthcomingbook Eva of the Farm.

Anotherfirst—reading Robert McKee’s book STORY. This book sharpened my story- telling skills immensely. I hope that is reflected in Eva of the Farm and itscompanion novel.

My nextfirst? Scriveners—the writing software program is at last available for PC.

Who knows whatmy next first will be? I only know that if I want to stay alive as a writer,and not become extinct before I die, there must be many more firsts.

The Scariest First Ever (January Theme) by Holly Schindler

2012-01-22T08:05:00.000-06:00

While many of the firsts in my own life carried with them a swirl of different emotions—excitement and joy and uncertainty and confusion and elation—one first has the power, even as I think back on it today, to bring back only one emotion: pure, 100% terror.

The first day of junior high.

Sure, it can sound a little goofy, now, to call it one of my all-time most frightening experiences. And, to be fair, I certainly faced firsts, as I grew older, during which I had more to risk, had more at stake, than I did facing my first day of junior high. But I’ve never been quite as frightened by anything. Never.

In some respects, I shouldn’t have been scared at all—my junior high was actually an extension of my elementary school. I was going to the same building where I’d been a student for seven years by the time I started junior high. But…my closest friend had moved away the summer before; we’d been friends since the second grade, and of course I felt a bit lost going into junior high without her. I was also just incredibly shy, and my heart would race at the mere idea of being in the midst of so many new faces, strangers, in such a new environment—sure, the building was the same, but lockers? Fighting hallway traffic every hour? Changing clothes for PE? It was all uncharted territory.

Gonna Party Like It's 1987:

Far right: me (in the penguin T-shirt) and my closest elementary-school friend (in the pink shorts) at my brother's birthday party.

Thinking back on it, I can still feel the nervous sweat breaking out and my legs going weak as I rounded the corner to East Hall that first morning, toward the science classes (my first class was biology). I remember what I was wearing (purple shirt, vest, shorts), and how I literally thought I would faint before I got to that classroom.

Long story short, I made it. No fainting. I even made it through lunch.

Surviving junior high is just one example of a first that makes me certain, as an adult, that I’ll figure my way out of tough or scary situations. Back when I was twelve, though, I didn’t have that certainty. I hadn’t maneuvered on my own enough to know that I could trust myself. And that’s what made that first day so frightening.

It takes serious guts to be the kids we write for. Because every single day, one of them is facing some first that terrifies them the same way the first day of junior high terrified me. And they don’t have enough triumphs in their lives yet to know for sure they’ll figure their way out. They’re just taking the plunge…

I so admire those kids we write for, as MG authors. And I feel so privileged to be writing for such an incredibly brave bunch.

January Theme: Firsts (Alan Gratz)

2012-01-21T12:51:00.002-06:00

The first outline I ever wrote for a book was for Samurai Shortstop. I'm not Japanese, I had never been to Japan, and I didn't even have any Japanese friends--so as you can imagine, I had to do a lot of research. I read about thirty books about Japan, everything from general histories to diaries of travelers from the Meiji Period, the time I was writing about, and when I was finished I had an inch-thick notebook full of historical details I wanted to use. But how to organize them? I knew I couldn't be flipping back through that notebook looking for this bit of information, or that bit. When you're writing, you want to be putting together beautiful words, sentences, and paragraphs. You want to be focused on metaphors and allusions and beats and plot points.

So for the very first time, I created an outline. I broke the story down by chapter, writing a paragraph-long summary of each chapter on a different page in a Word document. Then I went back through my notes one line at a time, and every time I came across a bit of research that told me, for example, what a shinto shrine looked like, I moved that bit to my chapter one page, which takes place in a shinto shrine. A bit about what the Japanese ate for breakfast? I moved that to the breakfast scene in chapter seven. And so on, and so on. When I was finished, I had a notebook full of chapters telling me exactly what happened, followed by all the historical research I needed to tell just that part of the story. When the time came to actually write the novel, I was able to open my notebook in the morning, turn to the next chapter, read what was going to happen, and then start writing.

Separating what happens from how to tell it--that is, separating the story-planning process from the writing process--has been the biggest technical leap forward in my career. Those are two very different processes, but most writers try to tackle them both at the same time. For me, doing both at the same time was the root of all my writer's block. I still sit at my computer, banging my head on the keyboard as I try to figure out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, but that's the outline phase. I'm not expecting to come out of my office with seven pages written that day, and therefore don't come away thinking I've wasted my time.

Samurai Shortstop was the first book I created an outline for, and the first book I sold. I've used an outline ever since!

Interview with a Designer: Jay Colvin of Macmillan Children's (plus a giveaway!)

2012-01-20T09:25:00.023-06:00

Today we are joined by my friend, Jay Colvin, a fabulous designer at Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, whom I had the pleasure of working with for many years when I was an editor there. Jay is also offering a giveaway of a pretty spectacular book, so be sure to enter to win!

(Side note: As evidence that Jay is a kick-ass designer, let's all take a gander at one of my favorite books he designed. Which is, uh, mine. Plug for Lisa's book!)

(Seriously, though, it's super awesome, right?? I told you Jay was fabulous!)

Okay, enough dilly-dally. Let's get started with our interview . . .

What is the name of your publishing house/imprint and what is your official title?

I work at Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers and Roaring Brook Press, which are both imprints of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. My title is senior designer.

What does a typical day look like for you?

Well, they’re never quite the same. It all varies depending on whether there’s a jacket meeting or a production meeting, or illustrators coming in to go over dummies or art that day [Ed note: for those of you who don't know what picture book dummies are, check out this amazing article by FSG author/illustrator Uri Shulevitz]. Some days are completely crazy and some days you can really just sort of Zen out and get totally absorbed in working on an interior text design. Also you can pretty much count on random requests for jacket jpegs or pdfs of picture book interiors.

What made you decide to become a book designer? What was your career path?

I went to school for graphic design at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). We had a co-op program where after your sophomore year you worked somewhere every other quarter. You had to send out portfolios and interview, wherever you wanted to work, just like a real job. I had been to New York when I was 19, when the Airwalk shoe company paid for me to come to the city and skateboard as part of a promotional campaign, and I was just hooked right away, especially for the skating. So for my first co-op job I went for a New York design studio, Gerstman and Myers, that specialized in packaging, lots of Proctor & Gamble stuff. I learned to make perfect comps with silk gloves on.

After that I worked for a small studio in Philadelphia called Hemman Design, working on some animation and internet stuff, and then at some more traditional corporate identity and packaging places. When I graduated and moved to New York I bounced around for a bit freelancing for a few design studios, still doing packaging stuff, before taking a fulltime job working for American Photo Magazine. I’d always wanted to do books, but every place wanted you to have experience designing books. I eventually got my foot in the door at FSG thanks to some generous and kind people who took a chance on me even though I had no professional book experience. I’ve been here ever since, going on nine years.

When most people think about book designers, they tend to focus on them as jacket (or cover) designers. What else does a designer’s job entail?

With kids books we design the whole thing—jacket, interior, case, etc—so you’re constantly shifting back and forth between different modes of thinking. The good thing is that when you work on the whole thing, the design of the entire book as an object is coherent. Also, picture books are totally different. With those, you could be working on the same book for years before it’s printed. I've just gotten final art in for a book I started working on about five years ago.

What, if anything, is different about designing a middle-grade book (as opposed to, say, a YA novel or an easy-reader)?

The easiest answer is that sales always wants a photographic treatment for YA stuff, and an illustrative one for middle-grade. Aside from that, with the middle-grade stuff you have to get used to designing with bigger type and figuring out how to make that look not like crap. Other than those things, with the younger stuff you’ll often have illustrations thoughout the interior, so factoring those in is part of the fun.

What aspect of your job do you find the most challenging?

None at all. It’s all easy for me. Like taking candy from a baby.

Are there any titles that you’ve worked on that you’re particularly proud of?

Sophie Simon was a good one. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter Cameron, was interesting because it was paperbacked by Picador [the imprint for adult books at FSG] and they used the design I did for the YA publication, which I’m still surprised I got away with since it’s farther on the sophistiated side than I’m normally allowed to go. It’s the only time one of my designs has been used on an “adult” cover. That book was published a few years ago, but for some reason it's been getting a good bit of well deserved attention lately. I’m proud of everything though, in all honestly. A great thing about FSG and RBP is that we do really good books that are easy to be proud of.

Can you give us a general idea of the process of conceptualizing and creating a book jacket? For example, who is involved in the process, and how many stages does a book jacket generally go through before it is finished?

I’d like to put forward this extract from an interview between Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni. Substitute “book jacket” for “film” and “music.”

TOM WAITS: Because film and music are expeditions and sometimes you have no map. You just go drifting, and you go many days without water or food. When I am making music, I don't change my clothes for two full months.
ROBERTO BENIGNI: You know who did this, too? Michelangelo. He painted the Sistine Chapel. He never washed himself, he never changed clothes, especially shoes and socks.

TOM WAITS: Yeah?

ROBERTO BENIGNI: Michelangelo tried to take the socks off and skin came off with the socks. He never changed his clothes until he was finished, and was completely revolting.

TOM WAITS: Sometimes when you finish, you take the clothes and you put them in a pile, and you burn them. You make a fire of all your clothes. Sometimes to be a leader you must be a child, you must be a stinking idiot.

ROBERTO BENIGNI: Absolutely. You must be a stinking idiot.

That sounds about right. It’s all a balancing act where the author has to be happy, editorial has to be happy, and sales has to be happy. Sometimes getting there is easy, other times, not so much.

How closely do you generally work with an author or an illustrator on his or her book?

It varies. There are a fair number of authors that I’ve designed multiple books for over the years. Charlie Price for example, I’ve done three jackets for him now. I think the closer you work with them the better. These are things that they’ve been working on for some time, and it’s nice to be able to give them the attention to make sure the thing ends up being what it should be.

Lastly (and most important), if you were forced to live next door to either a ukulele player or a bagpipe player (bagpipist?), which would you choose and why?

I’m going with a steel drum player. Self explanatory.

Thanks for taking the time to visit with us, Jay. This has been a very enlightening interview!

***

**GALLEY GIVEAWAY DETAILS**

~~Jay is offering one lucky blog reader a copy of Peter Cameron's stupendous YA novel,~~ Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (which Lorrie Morre called, in The New York Review of Books, "a bravura performance" and "a stunning little book." So there you go.). To enter the giveaway, simply email me at graff [dot] lisa [at] yahoo [dot] com with the subject line "SOMEDAY THIS PAIN." The winner will be chosen at random on February 1st.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to our winner, Irene!

January Theme: Firsts (Sarah Dooley)

2012-01-17T15:15:00.002-06:00

One winter day, I trudged out of the school building and cut a path through shouting crowds and deepening snow toward the waiting bus, which would take me across town to our current rental. I was 16, and I had been writing as long as I could remember, but everything I wrote came from a brainstorming session: "What can I write about? What should happen first? What should happen next?" Lately, that hadn't seemed good enough.

I was feeling distant from my classmates, distant from my family, distant even from the snow I usually loved. As I climbed aboard the bus and took my seat, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why was I so distracted lately? Why did I have this feeling that something was about to happen, that something was supposed to happen -- that I was supposed to make something happen?

As the bus rumbled to life, I leaned my forehead against the glass, gazing out at filthy tire tracks in the snow.

Seconds later I sat up straight, so quickly that my backpack fell to the floor and the contents scattered. Ignoring the snickering students around me, I dove for the nearest form of paper and a writing utensil -- a chemistry notebook and a blue Bic. I hunched over the notebook and started pouring something onto the page that I hadn't so much as thought about beforehand. I didn't know the characters. I didn't know the setting. I didn't know the plot. All I knew was that something had been forming, in my heart and in my pen, for days, and it was time to let it loose on the page.

By the time the bus reached my stop, I had written three pages. Six weeks later, I had written a novel.

It was not my first novel-length piece of writing -- I'd written that a year or two before. (Something about flying horses? I can't remember.) Nor was it the first novel I would take seriously enough to revise and prepare for publication -- I wouldn't write that until my late twenties (that would be Livvie Owen Lived Here). But it was the first novel that wrote itself, the first novel that arrived fully-formed in my pen without ever stopping to consult my head. It was the first time a piece of writing swept me away.

That novel is an example of every type of writing mistake. It's a mess, but I love it dearly. It lives on my desk as a reminder that there are stories out there waiting to be told, and we writers need to keep our pens at the ready.

January Theme: Firsts (Stephanie Burgis)

2012-01-16T04:55:00.011-06:00

Everyone knows how important first lines are in novels...so maybe it's not surprising that I agonize a lot over them as a writer.

Every so often, a first line comes to me like a gift from the writing gods. That happened with my book Kat, Incorrigible, where the first two lines ("I was twelve years of age when I chopped off my hair, dressed as a boy, and set off to save my family from impending ruin. I made it almost to the end of my front garden...") popped into my head out of nowhere one day, and gave me the whole novel.

Wow, I love it when it happens that way. But I have to say, it doesn't happen often for me.

With my second book, Renegade Magic, I struggled for ages to find the right first line. First of all, once I'd finished the first draft, I realized I was going to have to rewrite the whole opening of the novel. Sigh. That does happen a lot for me, unfortunately! Being an organic writer, I usually do have to write the whole book before I can figure out how it really should have started in the first place.

Here was the original first line, back when I was starting the book with Kat feeling antsy about her oldest sister's upcoming wedding:

It’s one thing to know for an absolute fact that your oldest sister is the prissiest female in all England. But it’s quite another thing to be left behind by her.

Well. Kat is an incredibly proactive girl. She's extremely physical, she's impulsive, and she does not sit around angsting, ever. She's the kind of girl who always DOES something when she feels upset (even if it's the wrong thing) to relieve that emotional discomfort. It was completely wrong for her to start the book by sitting around feeling ambivalent. That's so not Kat! So that whole opening was trashed, without regrets.

Luckily, I finally figured out the right opening. Instead of sitting around thinking about her feelings, she does something about them: she gets up before the crack of dawn, drags her older brother out of bed, and forces him to give her a secret (forbidden and unladylike) wrestling lesson, to give her a physical outlet and distraction from her feelings. That is very Kat!

But what about the first line?

Well, here's where it gets complicated. The book is being published in two different countries, the US and the UK. In the UK, it was published last August as A Tangle of Magicks; in the US, it's being published this April as Renegade Magic. So, it's got different titles, different covers...

...and, as it turns out, different first lines. They were both first lines that I thought up and wrote myself in different drafts of the book, but each of my two editors picked a different favorite version. In the UK, the opening paragraph is:

My brother Charles was a hopeless gamester, a ridiculous over-sleeper and the one sibling too lazy to take part in any family arguments, no matter how exasperating our sisters might have been (and usually were). But he had one shining virtue as an older brother: he was infinitely persuadable.

Whereas in the US, it's:

It was a truth universally acknowledged that my brother, Charles was a hopeless gamester, a ridiculous oversleeper, and the one sibling too lazy to take part in any family arguments, no matter how exasperating our sisters might have been (and usually were).

But he had one shining virtue as an older brother: He was infinitely persuadable.

Both of my editors are really smart women whose opinions I deeply respect - and they know their target audiences very well, in the two different countries. My US editor felt strongly that the Jane Austen overtone at the beginning was a definite positive for my Regency-era fantasy; my UK editor felt it was safer to do without that because so many ten-year-olds wouldn't recognize the line I was referencing.

What do you think? Which version do you prefer?

And what's your favorite first line in a book?

(Note: if you want to read the final version of the opening of Renegade Magic - with the UK version of the first line! - you can read the full first three chapters on my website.)

The Reverse Fresh Air Fund (January Theme: Firsts) Bob Krech

2012-01-15T00:01:00.001-06:00

In 1989 I returned to the United States from six years teaching overseas. My first teaching job back in New Jersey required that I attend a series of trainings on teaching reading and writing. In the writing workshop I was part of, the teacher asked that we write a piece about something in our childhood and use the five senses to describe the time and place. I began writing about an unusual arrangement my parents put together for me when I was about nine years old. They were both from Jersey City, a very urban environment. When my father, a state trooper, was stationed farther south, he and my mother moved to the suburbs. I grew up in Lawrenceville, a far cry from Jersey City. My parents felt it was important that I get to know what life in the city was like and so every summer I would go to live in Jersey City with my grandparents for two weeks, sometimes a month. And so the Reverse-Fresh-Air-Fund was born. Take the suburban kid and move him into the city for a few weeks during the summer. A novel idea and one I enjoyed immensely.

Jersey City, NJ

Lawrenceville, NJ

As I wrote about the sweet soapy smells that come with living in an apartment on the same block as The Colgate Palmolive Company, the sounds of tugboats on the Hudson River and sirens on the boulevard, the feel of a broomstick in your hand playing stickball, the view from the fire escape out the back window of the kitchen where improbably there was a cherry tree in the little yard, the sweet, sour, tangy taste of lemon ice from the food carts that supplied the kids and Colgate factory workers, I gradually finished up a piece I titled, "The Reverse-Fresh-Air-Fund." My instructor read it and suggested that I submit it for publication. The only magazine I knew that might have an interest something like this would be New Jersey Monthly. So I sent it off with very little hope of seeing it published, but pretty pleased that the teacher thought it good enough to submit.

Three weeks later I was in the kitchen helping get dinner together when the phone rang. It was an editor from New Jersey Monthly saying they'd like to publish my story. I was excited! My first call from a real editor. And then she offered me money!! Hundreds of dollars!!! (Okay, three of them.)

I'd never been paid for my writing before. I was happy enough just to see something of mine in print. Months later the piece appeared in the magazine on the last page. They had re-titled it, the more politically correct, "Summer in the City." And then soon after, I got it. My first check for writing! My initial crazy impulse was to frame it, which was totally out of the realm of the possible, so instead I think I photocopied it while the real thing went toward something pretty practical. Probably baby furniture. Or maybe the electric bill. The money is long gone, but the memory of that first feeling of an editor thinking that something I wrote was good enough to pay for-- that still makes me smile a little.

Evolution of a Blog Header... (Guest Post from Kathleen Higgins)

2012-01-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

When I (the "I" here being Holly Schindler, administrator of Smack Dab) received a blog header in my inbox, I was thrilled. To know that a follower is so invested in the blog that she redesigns the banner is high praise indeed, I think. (How many times have you loved a blog so much that you spent time redesigning its header?)

Plus, I just happened to love the header. I put it up right away, sent it to my own web designer to have it included in the Links page on my author website, and asked the creator, Kathleen Higgins, to write up a guest post about the header design:

"I’m Kate Higgins. I redesigned Smack-Dab’s header…up there...just imagine an arrow pointing up. I am a graphic designer by day and an author/illustrator of hopefully someday published picture books and middle grade fiction the rest of the time. I’m literally smack dab in the middle of pictures and words, which is also the title of my own blog.

When Holly Schindler first mentioned the creation of a new middle grade blog, I was excited to visit Smack-Dab in the Middle. I often read middle grade books and author interviews to learn more about writing the halfway world between the little kid and teen phase. It’s truly one of my favorite stages of a child’s life. Eight to twelve year old middle graders are always open and honest (except when they’re not). What other age enthusiastically tells you their ages in fractions; “I’ll be 9 and half in two months!” That’s nine and four twelfths or more precisely 9 1/3.

When I saw the initial blog header I knew something was missing. The middle.

And I knew I could make it more…well…middle-er. The idea gnawed on me and I waited for the header to miraculously change. It didn’t.

You know that itch on the bottom of your right foot as you are driving? The one you can’t scratch and try to forget about it but you just can't? That’s how it felt until I finally sat down and created a blog header that closely resembled the original one and hopefully didn’t offend the original creator and solved my little itchy middle problem.

I meekly sent it to Holly (and the rest of the authors) as a holiday gift with apologies and my fingers crossed that I didn’t come across as some graphic design wacko perfectionist and get tossed into the middle of nowhere.

Then guess what? I clicked open Smack-Dab for an update and my new version was right there on top…the blog header that scratched my itch…Smack-Dab in the middle…right where it belongs.

Middle is good."

...On behalf of everyone at Smack Dab, thanks to Kathleen for the header...and for loving our blog!

The Last First Day

2012-01-13T06:00:00.011-06:00

I’ve been a college professor for twenty-eight years. That sounds like a long time (and it is) but it sounds even longer if I say 56 semesters.

I’ve had 56 first days. Fifty-six times I’ve adjusted to a new schedule, new classes, new students, new colleagues, new textbooks. (I’m blogging about my last year of teaching at Goodbye, Day Job!)

The first day of the semester is always exciting and a little scary. Will my students be eager and curious and hard-working? Will there be one student—sometimes two, never more, in my experience—who will make me wish for a nice, long case of mono, nothing fatal, but something that will keep that student out of my class for a while to give me a break? Will my assignments get them excited, or will they be frustrated/bored/indifferent?

Last Monday was my last first day of the semester, and the last time I’ll face those questions. I’m retiring from teaching in May so I can devote myself to writing, traveling, and the ever-more-time-consuming activity of book promotion.

I’m hoping I’ll write more and promote more effectively, but I’m riddled with doubts. It’s scary and exciting, all at the same time.

I wonder how I’ll feel next fall when all my colleagues and former students are having their own first day and I won’t. I hope I’ll be so busy I won’t even notice it, that I won’t feel a pang of regret that they will be having those scary and exciting first days while I’m sitting in my home office.

I’ll let you know!

The First that Started Last Year (January's Theme Post fromJody Feldman)

2012-01-11T04:49:00.001-06:00

This is me.

Yes, I’m a plunger. I think about a new book – envision main characters, bits of setting, plot possibilities, etc. – and when the excitement is about to blow steam from every pore of my being, I open a new document and plunge right in. No outline, no synopsis. Just a few notes I have jotted down to avoid the plagued, “What was that brilliant idea I had last Thursday!?!” That steam continues to power me through 2-3 months and a first draft.

A few months ago, though, I had my plunger’s license revoked. Or I revoked it myself. Sorry to be so cryptic, but I had reason to outline. Not just notes, but a full-fledged ...

I. Blah-blah-blah

A. Blah-blah-blah-blah
B. Blah-blah-blah-blah

1. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah
2. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah

II. Blah-blah-blah
... and so on.

The fact is, I’d written one of those before. About a thousand decades ago, I entered some competition which required entrants to submit the first however-many pages plus an outline. When it came time to write the rest of the book (the plan was to forge ahead while I waited for that rejection as well), I was too bored to continue. It wasn’t until years later that I actually finished the book (one of my practice novels), but I could only stand to work on it again because I took it in a new direction.

But back to today, to this year. Chances are high, I’ve been told, that I will need to follow through and actually write the story I’ve outlined. This will be a first for me. It will be a big challenge. I need to keep reminding myself that the milestones I’ve laid out are only checkpoints. The vast question marks that lie between are the possibilities, the steam, that will power me though 2-3 months and a first draft ... if I let them.

First Writers Conference (by Tyler Whitesides)

2012-01-10T12:22:00.003-06:00

As I became more serious about writing to publish, I kept hearing the same advice from everyone. "Go to a writers conference or event. You'll be able to network and improve your craft." Of course, I ignored this counsel for a good long while before I finally decided to buck up, pay the money and go.

It was early autumn. The conference was located in a beautiful little valley in Utah. I didn't know a soul in attendance, but I went armed with query letters, sample chapters, and my best attitude. I felt like a genuine author, walking around the resort with my laptop bag, meeting new people that shared the joy of writing.

I had reserved a time slot to pitch my manuscript to an agent. Oh how I remember that first pitch. The agent kept saying, "take a deep breath, Tyler. Just calm down and tell me about your story." Even though he decided not to represent me, I gained valuable courage and experience for the future.

I returned to that little valley just a few weeks ago to spend some family time for the holidays. I had a smile on my face as I thought about how much had happened since that first conference - I'd acquired an agent, my book was published, and I'd been on a national book tour. It was wonderful to reflect back to the beginning and see all the little decisions and experiences that led up to where I am today.

May the new year be full of new firsts for many of you!
- Tyler Whitesides (author of JANITORS)

January Theme: A Roller Coaster of Firsts (Platte Clark)

2012-01-09T12:24:00.001-06:00

As a new author I have the thrill and anxiety of everything being a first. The process is very much like a roller coaster ride, starting with that long climb of getting your book completed, to that very first drop called the query letter process. I still have my first response:

“I’m sorry to say that in this instance I am going to pass on your work. The children’s and YA market is very competitive, as you may well know, and I have to feel a very high degree of confidence in a particular story to take it on. While yours certainly has its merits, I’m just not quite convinced it’s one for me.”

Ouch. Then on the heels of that came my first request:

“Thanks for your query. I’d be pleased to consider The Codex…Can you kindly send the full manuscript as a word doc. attachment via e-mail?”

Others followed. And then came the fear, anxiety, excitement, and joy from the high speed twists and turns of getting an agent, a deal, and working through the publishing process. I suppose I have the advantage (and maybe disadvantage) of everything being a first at this stage. Like many, I just took a seat in the coaster car and pulled the arm down, not really knowing what I was in for. Maybe there's some advantage to being a little naive about it all.

At the moment I’m working with my first editor at S&S Aladdin, and I can say I've already learned a few things:

Adding an unprompted 20,000 words to your rewrite is not necessarily a good thing. Apparently it messes up all kinds of profit and loss spreadsheets and it's harder to carry the pages around the office.
The passive voice is not much loved.
Don’t get too attached to titles.
If your editor is from Texas, he or she will be delighted with any and all Jackalope references you can throw in.

So here’s to a new year with many great firsts, a few wiser seconds, and perhaps even a handful of well-informed thirds! But what I hope is that although the line may be long, the scaffolding a bit aged, and the seat not always ideal, the old publishing coaster will still be full of all the thrills and promise as the first time around. I suppose the only way to find out is to turn around and ride it again.

January Theme: MY FIRST FAN LETTER by John Claude Bemis

2012-01-08T05:10:00.000-06:00

Writing for young readers brings special rewards. Getting that email from a parent who says that your book turned their “non-reader” into a rabid reader. Visiting a school and seeing projects and skits based on your novels. Having a kid excited to meet you and get your autograph at a book signing.

I won’t deny it. It’s the best!

I’ve gotten some wonderful and humbling fan letters over the years. The one I’ll always remember and treasure with special importance was the very first fan letter I got. It came not a week after my first book The Nine Pound Hammer was released. Here it is…

September 1st, 2009

Dear John Claude Bemis,

I have recently finished your newest book The Nine Pound Hammer, the first book in your Clockwork Dark Series. I loved the book! I was lucky enough to get to see you at your book signing and Medicine Show debut in Hillsborough NC and you signed my book. Now I am craving more! You are the author of my favorite book! I can hardly explain to you how much of an impact this book had on my schedule. All I did was read. I would get home from school and do my homework then read until time to take a shower. Then I would finish getting ready for the next day and read some more! I do not have another SUPER book to read so I am pleading with you…PLEASE write your next book fast! I need it!

Sincerely,

Evan

I know what it feels like to rush through a shower to get back to my newly discovered favorite book. I became a writer for young readers because of that thrill of finishing a SUPER book and dying for the next one to come out.

If all I ever do is have the kind of “impact” on some kid’s “schedule” like I did for Evan, then I consider myself a happy writer.

Happy 2012, all!

The Courage of Firsts (January Theme by Naomi Kinsman)

2012-01-07T07:30:00.000-06:00

Today I am at the first day of the January low-residency MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Hamline University. I'm one of the graduate assistants, having been a graduate of the program for a year now.

I'm thinking a lot about firsts today, actually, watching this incoming class of ten start the program fresh. I remember my first day about three years ago. So much of writing is about starting. Starting a new book. Starting to revise. Starting a new manuscript. Starting a new graduate program. Starting a membership at SCBWI. And on and on. The list never seems to end. As writers, we are consumate beginners.

I'm reminded today, watching new students start a two year journey in which they are committing to passionately putting everything on the line to develop their skill and craft as writers, that starting takes so much courage. By starting, making these commitments to ourselves, we risk embarassment, failure, emotional pain. We know we will be challenged. We know nothing will ever be the same. Once we commit everything to our dream, the dream of being the best writer we can be, we know we won't ever be able to whisper to ourselves in the dark anymore... I didn't really try. If I REALLY tried, of course, I'd be brilliant. But what I've done isn't everything I can do. I can do more than this. If only the world could see what's inside my brain.

When you put all your creative cards on the table and honestly push yourself to do the very best work you can, there's a bittersweet quality to the experience. You find out exactly how much you can do, today. And often, the critic inside you throws a fit. "Not good enough!" she shouts. No. Maybe the work I can do today isn't the most brilliant work I will ever do. Still, the choice remains. Do I have the courage to at least work, regardless of the quality? Regardless of what people think of me? Regardless of the outcome?

Do I have the courage to try, with every last ounce of my heart?

Tonight, my answer is the same as it was three years ago: I hope so.

I hope that no matter what, I will always have the courage to admit I don't know everything, that there is always something new to learn. I hope there will always be room in my creative life for me to place myself under the guidance of wise mentors who can help me push through to the next level in my work. I hope I will never become comfortable with what I can already do. I hope I will always want to challenge myself to grow.

Bob Dylan says, "If you're not busy being born, you're busy dying." Yes. So live. Challenge yourself. Take risks. Be courageous.

January Theme: An Author By Any Other Name by Trudi Strain Trueit

2012-01-05T00:00:00.000-06:00

My editor at Scholastic was on the other end of the phone. We were going over a few final revisions for my first set of nonfiction books. “Oh, and by the way," she said, "how do you want your name to appear on the cover?”

“My name? I, uh . . . uh . . . ”

I didn’t know how to answer.

I had long imagined the day when, at last, I’d see MY name on the cover of a book. But now, I had two names—maiden and married—and I wasn’t sure which one(s) to use on my very first books. Sensing my dilemma, my editor told me to think it over and get back to her in a couple of days.

As a kid, I liked my uniquely spelled first name. Even if it did rhyme with Fruity (to aid the boys in teasing me). My last name was all right, too, even if it did rhyme with Brain (also most helpful in the teasing arena given I was a straight-A student). Other than that, I had never much thought about what my name signified until that day when my editor asked me who I wanted to be.

Who did I want to be?

The easiest solution would be to use my married name, Trudi Trueit. But would people think I had made it up? I got routinely quizzed about it at the grocery store, the post office, the bank, etc. “Is that your real name?” I'd get the cocked eyebrow. Maybe I should just go with my maiden name. Or how about both maiden and married names? Were three names on the cover too much? Maybe I should do something different, like initials, except they always reminded me of one of those shady, personal injury lawyers.

Were you injured in a car accident? Don’t sign anything until you talk to T.S. Trueit.

It was a momentous decision and it kept me tossing for the next two nights. Whatever name I chose would follow me for the remainder of my writing career, that is, if I had a writing career beyond the four-book, weather series Scholastic had contracted me to write. “You will,” said my mother with comforting assurance. My parents have always been my greatest champions. Despite the visions issues I was born with, they never stopped reminding me I could accomplish anything I wanted; I was only limited in life by my own fears. And then there was my husband, Bill, who let me cry on his shoulder after each manuscript rejection (and there were so many), dried my eyes, and told me to try again. These people, these wonderful people, had faith far beyond my own.

My mom, Shirley, holding me not long after my eye surgery

I had made my decision. I e-mailed my editor that I would be Trudi Strain Trueit. If I was getting on this new, exciting, crazy ride called publishing, Mom, Dad, and Bill - my own personal cheerleaders - were coming with me.

And that was that.

In every nonfiction book I have published (74, so far) I was, and will always be, Trudi Strain Trueit. When I published my first fiction book in 2005, I decided to go with Trudi Trueit on the cover so young readers could more easily find me. But look inside any of my fiction and you will find Trudi Strain Trueit on the title pages.

I know my name isn’t flashy or romance-novel worthy. For that I would need to be Giselle Fairchild or Chandra St. Claire. But it is a reflection of where I came from and the ones who have loved me. It is my unique and glorious history. Looking back, I now see that the question I was really pondering about my name on my first book cover wasn't, who do I want to be but rather, who am I? And that's a much better question for a writer, or anyone, to answer, don't you think?

p.s. For the sake of brevity my website is www.truditrueit.com, but log on and notice what appears at the top of every web page.

Who Was Babe Ruth? Celebrating a new release!

2012-01-04T00:01:00.021-06:00

When I was in elementary school, I read every biography in the school library. I'm still a huge biography fan. I watch the Biography Channel. And I also write for Grosset & Dunlap's "Who Was" series. Also known as the "big head" biography chapter book series because of the books' strikingly illustrated covers. Barnes & Noble stores usually have a nice display of assorted Who Was titles in the children's section, face out.

Today I'm celebrating the release of Who Was Babe Ruth?, the 4th title I've written for the series.

Babe Ruth was a fascinating guy, even when he was a kid. He came from a poor Baltimore family and he was a handful almost from day one. It was at a reform school that he discovered his talent for baseball, and by the age of nineteen, he was on his way to becoming a sports legend. Babe was often out of shape and even more often out on the town, but he had a big heart and an even bigger swing! Kids will learn all about the Home Run King in this rags-to-riches sports biography. With black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Drop a comment here at Smack Dab or on my home blog for a chance to win an autographed copy! Winner will be announced on my blog on or about January 19th.

My titles in the "Who Was" series for ages 7-11:
Who Was Johnny Appleseed?
Who Was Marco Polo?
Who Was Jim Henson?
Who Was Babe Ruth?

~ Joan

January Theme: MY FIRST PUBLISHED POEM FOR CHILDREN (Irene Latham)

2012-01-03T06:00:00.011-06:00

I love writing novels, but my passion is poetry. And while I have two collections of poetry for adults, it wasn't until 2011 that I sold my first poems in the children's market. And one of them -- "You Cannot Measure Courage" -- appears this month in Scholastic's Scope magazine. (It's not the first one I sold, but it's the first one to appear in print!)

The poem was written in response to the documentary film TOUCHING THE VOID, about two climbers on a remote mountain in Peru. After my poem was accepted for publication, the editor asked if I might do a video explaining my approach to the subject. In other words, how does a writer get from point A: raw information, to point B: creative work?

Here's what it's like for me:

And here's the poem:

You Cannot Measure Courage
by Irene Latham

And you cannot

hold

one life

above another.

But what if you must?

Click to read the complete poem.

Writers: how do you get from point A to point B?

January Theme: Collaborating on Goddess Girls (Writing Firsts)

2012-01-01T00:01:00.014-06:00

Writing is a solitary endeavor, yet authors are always collaborating with others in the creation of every book. Crit groups, illustrators, designers, and editors play an important role. But how about writing with a partner?

In 2005, I asked Suzanne Williams if she'd like to try writing a tween chapter book series with me. Seemed like a good plan. She already had several easy reader and younger chapter book series in publication, and so did I. We both like to write humor and we have good work habits.

Artemis the Loyal, book #7 of the series we chose to write--Goddess Girls--is now on bookstore shelves, and our contract with Aladdin paperbacks has been extended to 12 books. We're writing numbers 9 and 10 right now, and the writing is just as much fun for me as the first book was.

Still, looking back, I realize that we've been lucky. Many things could have gone wrong on the way to publication. Our egos could have gotten in the way; one of us might not have pulled our weight in the writing endeavor; the topic we chose might not have caught on with readers; or our writing styles might not have meshed. It could have been a disaster. For instance, we didn't really know how we would distribute the work. Would one of us write book 1 and the other write book 2? We figured we'd sweat those details later, if the books were picked up by a publisher.

I had tried writing picture books with several friends over the years, but it hadn't worked out. Our writing styles, working styles, and/or ideas just never meshed for some reason. Goddess Girls was the first time that I'd tried writing a series of longer books with a partner. Maybe the longer format is just a better fit for a partnership. More importantly, I think I found the right partner. I totally lucked out. In fact, we're writing another series together that will debut in summer 2012.

As we head into the new year, I wish you all the best of luck in your working partnerships, writing or otherwise! xox

~ Joan Holub

December Theme: The Gift of Books by Christine Brodien-Jones

2011-12-30T06:00:00.000-06:00

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."

~Jorge Luis Borges

I can think of no better gift than a book. Over the years, I've spent seemingly endless hours in libraries, which are truly a gift to all of us. The following is a guest blog I wrote for The Picnic Basket during National Library Week 2010 in honor of my hometown library in LeRoy, New York.

As with the mysterious libraries of Borges' fiction, my hometown library still haunts my dreams: an elegant structure of shadowy interiors, labyrinthine halls and spiral staircases. There was an upstairs room that in my dreams was always hard to find, its windows painted shut, shelves overflowing with odd fragile books. For me, the library was a world unlike any other. At the front desk, whispery librarians stamped our library cards. Downstairs was the Children's Room, where we sat in circles and stories were read. Magical times. Out front grew an old copper beech with low branches: a perfect climbing tree where I could sit and read the afternoons away, fantasies like Edward Eager's delightful time-travel books.

A few summers ago I visited my home town and noticed a book sale on the library's front lawn. There, among the jumble of discarded books, I spotted three familiar covers: Edgard Eager 's "Knight's Castle," "The Time Garden," and "Magic by the Lake." I examined each book, breathing in the smell of moldy pages, marveling at N. M. Bodecker 's light-hearted illustrations. These books, I knew, were the same ones I'd checked out of the library and read all those years ago. I paid for them and walked off smiling, the books clasped to my chest. To be reunited with them was, well, paradise.

December Theme: An Unexpected Gift! Jennifer Cervantes

2011-12-28T22:50:00.007-06:00

Last month TORTILLA SUN won the New Mexico Book Award! I couldn't have been more thrilled. As a writer you hope to find an audience to read and enjoy your work, to touch the reader in some way. Tortilla Sun has been a gift in my life in more ways than I could possibly ever articulate (I know I'm a writer so I should be able to, but sometimes words come up short). And so it seems fitting that as 2011 comes to an end, I celebrate not only this honor, but all the gifts that I have revceived because I am a writer! Here's looking forward to the unexpected gifts of 2012 for us all.

December Theme: The Gift of the Book Machine?

2011-12-28T00:46:00.002-06:00

A few months ago the bloggers of 'Smack Dab in the Middle' played around with the topic of Digital Books and the Future... (or something like that). Yesterday, I came across this blog (posted below). It contained some interesting thoughts on the future of books...

http://blog.speculist.com/scenarios/the-coffee-shop-take-over.html

And it also contained this video...

Could this be the future for those of us who still desire a physical book?

Future Mom- When I was your age we used to go to a place called a book store. It was filled with endless rows of books on shelves. We would walk around for hours just looking at them...

Future Son- You mean you didn't have e-books or Book Machines? And why would you walk around? Didn't you have robo scooters back then?

This has been a lazy post by somebody who is very behind on his current deadline.

Mike 'Not a Book Machine' Townsend

December Theme: The gift of Imagination

2011-12-26T09:27:00.003-06:00

By Lucy Jones.

When we were young, we could hold tea parties with our friends without any tea or even cups. Try doing that now and you’d have a lot of guests thinking you were very mad. But back then, we were more than happy to pretend. Teddy bears were really alive, Santa Claus lived in the North Pole, and there actually was a possibility that a magical land exsisted behind each and every child’s wardrobe.
I remember one of my favourite games was gathering a pile of sticks together and ‘cooking by fire’, because I was stranded in the wilderness and the only way to survive was to collect berries and firewood. It didn’t matter that there were houses surrounding me left right and centre, or the fact that my mum kept on coming outside to check if I was OK, because my imagination ignored all the logical adult thoughts of ‘This isn’t possible’ and let me drift into the make believe world where anything could happen.

I had about a million Barbie dolls too, and created an entire town for them over my parent’s living room floor. Card board boxes came in very handy for making stables, beds, houses and cars. If only living costs could be that economical today...

So please Santa, what I really want for Christmas is my childhood imagination back. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to hang onto it as much as possible over the years, and I think I’m doing a pretty good job so far, but I would love to re-visit the ‘five year old me’ where absolutely anything was possible...

The gift that keeps on giving

2011-12-25T07:28:00.003-06:00

When I first moved out of my parents’ house (mumble, mumble) years ago, I asked my mom to write down some of my favorite recipes so I could sustain myself in the wild. Mock chop suey, pasty, porcupine meatballs… Though I was happy to have my independence, the most powerful reminder of home that I carried with me would be the food I grew up.

Mom bought a special recipe book filled with sleeves that held note cards on which she’d written her recipes for everything I’d requested. Some were recipes that had been handed down from her grandmother, others were things she’d discovered in magazines and appropriated as her own. But all my favorite soups, entrees, and desserts were present and accounted for.

My efforts to replicate my favorite dishes yielded spotty success at the best. Initially, nothing turned out right. At first, I thought I was a failure at cooking. Then, I suspected Mom had intentionally sabotaged the recipes so that I would always be forced to return to her for the “real thing.” At one point, I bought duplicate sets of ingredients, took the recipe book, and went to Mom’s house, demanding we make side-by-side batches so I could see what I was doing wrong.

While making porcupine meatballs, I matched Mom’s every move… until she reached up into the cupboard, grabbed a couple packets of gravy mix, and added it.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “That’s not in the recipe.”

Mom stared blankly at me. “Well, I always do this.”

In using the recipes she’d given me, I hadn’t taken one fact into account: like her own mother, Mom played fast and loose with recipes. She often improvised each meal, adding a dash of this or a smidgen of that but never following any direction exactly. She hadn’t tried to sabotage the recipe collection. She just didn’t stop to think about all the riffing she did. (She would later admit that there were several meals in my recipe book for which no recipe existed; she made them all up and actually had to cook the meal once in order to write down a semblance of a recipe for the book.)

Once I knew this secret, I began experimenting with the recipes myself, eventually getting them to taste more and more like Mom’s meals. To this day, it only takes opening up that old recipe book and scanning the note cards in Mom’s old-fashioned script to take me back to the comfort food I had as a boy in central Wisconsin.

This is our second Christmas without Mom.

With my father coming to visit my husband and I for the holidays, I asked Dad what kind of treats he wanted me to have on hand. His answer was the same I would have given if asked: Great Grandma Farrey’s Chocolate Drop Cookies.

Every time I read this recipe, I smile. It’s SO Mom. “1/2 cup softened shortening part butter” What the hell does that mean?! “Frosting. Tablespoon or so of butter softened. Powdered sugar.” How much powdered sugar, Mom? A tablespoon? A gallon? A cruise ship full?

But I go with it. I improvise. I’ll be honest: I don’t think that’s something Mom set out to teach me. But in working the way she did in the kitchen and seeing how great things turned out, I’ve never once been afraid to just do my thang and see what happens. An unusual gift, to be sure, but one that’s served me well.

When I go through these recipes, it’s like she’s back. Her unique handwriting is enough for me to summon a very clear picture in my mind, hear her laugh, and even smell her cookies. Of course, the cookies that I made this year aren’t as good as Mom’s. Oh, Dad will tell me they are. But they aren’t. And I’m OK with that. Eventually, I’ll massage the recipe enough to make it my own. They won’t be Mom’s cookies. They won’t even be Great Grandma Farrey’s cookies. They’ll be mine.

How awesome is that?

December Theme: Holiday Gifting

2011-12-24T05:00:00.004-06:00

by Stephanie J. Blake

When I was little, it seemed it took forever for Christmas to arrive. My father is crazy for Christmas and always made it magical. As we counted down the days, I would search the house for hidden gifts whenever my parents were out. They were very good at hiding presents, and I never had an inkling that Santa wasn't real. We never even saw rolls of wrapping paper!

Every Christmas Eve, after we had slept for a few hours, my brother would wake me up. "Santa came," he would whisper. We would creep from our rooms, and huddle on the stairs, sharing a blanket, marveling at the lights of our Christmas tree and counting all the presents, peeking inside our stockings. We would sit patiently by the tree, waiting for the dark sky to give way to morning, so we could wake up our parents.

Somehow, my father always knew what I wanted.

Now that I'm a grown up, I'm finding it's better to give than to receive. Still, I've been given a few precious writing gifts this year.

1. A new laptop!
2. A patient editor who helped me get my revisions just right.
3. Three smart authors who jumped at the chance to read my book and give a blurb.

All I really want for Christmas is a peek at my cover! (And a Kindle Fire).

Happy holidays!

December Theme: The Gift of Presence by Dia Calhoun

2011-12-23T00:00:00.000-06:00

One of the greatest gifts I have ever received was a happy childhood. I tried on the world in joy—reading books, drawing—I loved drawing costumes from the encyclopedia. I spent endless hours telling stories with my dolls in the doll house my father made and my mother furnished, and I supplemented with my imagination—did you know a shiny gold lid makes a perfect table? Once a week I had a ballet lesson and a piano lesson. My first secret friend was the towering fir tree in our yard.

Not overly scheduled, I had lots of free time that I spent making things, pretending things. I believe I had a direct connection to the present moment.

When the teen years came, many things changed for me. It was as though I was wrenched from that happy childhood.

As a grownup, I now feel the direct connection to the present moment most strongly when I am outside, or when I am writing. (No wonder I love to write outside!) I have turned to middle grade fiction for three reasons: First, because I loved that time in my own life. Second, because I would love to live with that kind of presence. And third,

Because I would like to return the precious gift that was given to me. I would like to write books that connect kids to their own pure joy.

I wish you a Happy New Year.

DECEMBER THEME: WRITING GIFTS (Holly Schindler)

2011-12-22T07:45:00.001-06:00

I’ve talked about it often: my long road to publication, that is. Took seven and a half years to reach that first acceptance. And let me tell you, seven and a half years is an excruciatingly long time—especially when you have multiple close calls but not a single deal, and you have no idea when the hunt for that first acceptance will end. When you’re in the midst of the hunt for the first book deal, that hunt starts to feel endless…

Enter the holiday season of ’08. That’s when my YA, A BLUE SO DARK, was under submission at Flux. I spoke to Brian (Farrey, acquisitions editor at Flux) for the first time just before Thanksgiving, and though I tried to play it cool, I spent Christmas on pins and needles, tied up in knots, hoping that finally the acceptance I’d been working toward for so long would appear.

Appear it did, just a few days after the new year. And literally two hours—I swear it’s true—two hours after I accepted the offer from Flux, the phone rang. On the other end of the line was an agent who was raving about a middle grade book I’d sent earlier that fall. With an offer of representation.

I accepted (Deborah Warren later sold my debut MG, THE JUNCTION OF SUNSHINE AND LUCKY, to Dial, and is still my agent). After that initial phone call, though, in the winter of ’09, I just stood in my kitchen, dazed, wondering how it could have happened. Seven and a half years I’d been seeking a book deal, seeking representation. And in the course of two hours in one day, I had both.

Needless to say, I’ll never forget what the holidays brought that year...

But the thing is, you never know what’s just around the corner. One moment, I was a writer trying desperately to just get started. The next, I looked down and found my pinky toe in the door of the publishing world. It’s pretty cool, how that happens…

Here’s wishing all of you equally fabulous gifts from Santa!

—Holly

December Theme: The Gift I Most Want (Alan Gratz)

2011-12-21T00:07:00.000-06:00

TIME. That is the gift I most want.

More time to write, more time to read, more time with my family.

The answer to this problem is very simple: don't sleep anymore.

We spend a third of our lives asleep! Think of all that time we're wasting. If I had that time to write, I could spend the rest of my day reading and hanging out with my family. But of course our bodies need sleep.

The answer to THAT problem is also very simple: I need a dolphin brain.

Dolphins have to be awake to breathe, so they never go fully to sleep. To compensate, one half of a dolphin's brain sleeps while the other half remains awake. Genius!

So I guess the gift I really want this holiday season is the brain of a dolphin.

December Theme: A Gift to Give Myself (by Lisa Graff)

2011-12-20T12:37:00.004-06:00

This month we're talking about writing gifts, both physical and intangible. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I'd like to receive this year, and I decided that the one gift I need and would appreciate most is one that I can actually give to myself:

Patience.

I am by nature a very impatient person. If the bus won't come for ten minutes, I will walk to my destination, even if it takes me thirty minutes to get there. I'm impatient with people, too, if they're taking a long time to call me back or read something I've asked them to. But over all I am impatient with myself. Impatient and thoroughly unrealistic.

For example, I like to think that I can write a rough draft of a book in two months (I cannot; it usually takes me seven). I like to think that when revising, I can successfully rewrite three chapters a day (I cannot; a good chapter revision usually takes me anywhere from two to ten days). And I like to think that, if I really put my mind to it, I can write two novels, a picture book, and three short stories in one single year (I cannot, I cannot, I cannot). I plan to do all these things -- put them on my to-do list and everything. And when I don't achieve them, I am frustrated with myself. Instead of celebrating all I have done in an hour or a day or a year, I focus on what I haven't.

It can be hard to be patient with yourself when you're a writer who's full of ideas for future projects. Or even just a writer who wants to do so many things: make an awesome book trailer, seek out more school visits, start writing that picture book she's always meant to work on . . . Life is short, and there's so much I want to do in it.

But I know, when I'm having one of my more sane moments, that I won't do anything well unless I give myself the time to do it. Unless I'm patient with myself, and allow myself to move at the speed I actually work at (as opposed to the speed my crazy imagination thinks I should work at). Writing is not something to be rushed.

And so, Lisa Graff, as 2011 comes to an end, I give you the gift of patience. Please, do me a favor and actually use it.

December Theme: Gifts (Sarah Dooley)

2011-12-17T09:50:00.001-06:00

When I write, the first thing I do is let myself float. I fix on one thing – an idea, a song, a scent, or, say, a monthly blog theme – and I float through memories and sensory impressions until a few specific words disentangle themselves from the haze and give me a place to start.

When I began to reflect on this month’s theme – gifts, in their many forms – I kept coming back to a snowy doorstep in 1986. I felt the crunch of snow under my sneakers. Saw the puff of my breath blurring the twinkling lights from other trailers. I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to have the door open.

That was the year that presents appeared like magic on the doorstep. I know now that they must have come from some church or charity, and even then, at five, I knew it was people and cars, not elves and reindeer, who had brought them. At the time I only knew that they hadn’t come from Mom and Dad, and I felt a weight in the room, one I didn’t recognize.

That Christmas, we sat at the kitchen table with my grandma, my mom’s mom, who would only be with us another Christmas or two. She showed us how to paint walnuts to look like strawberries. I wasn’t sure why anyone would do such a thing, but the paintbrush felt good in my hands and doing something with food besides eating it seemed like a luxury. I sat at the table with my grandmother, whose love I could feel in every brushstroke she showed me, and created something totally pointless just for the sake of it.

Gifts. This is the time of year where everything is wrapped and tied with a bow and lit with softness and color against a backdrop of snow. Surreal. Nothing is quite what it seems and you never know what’s inside the boxes with the bows.

What was inside the gift I was given by being born where, and when, and to who I was? By growing up in a family in which walnuts were a luxury, and presents were left on the doorstep?

And what does this all have to do with writing?

When I write, I tell a story. But before the story, I find the setting. Often, my stories begin with things that feel a lot like snowy doorsteps and clumsy paintbrushes, the sound of church vans fading into the night, the tight expressions of parents who put aside their own feelings so there are packages for the little ones to open. When I drift – in that moment before the words come – I feel as if I know the scene from every vantage point – the well-meaning folks placing presents by the door, hoping they will bring a smile to a child’s face – the parents bringing in the presents to place next to their own, not caring which one brings a smile to the child’s face as long as one of them does – the child, not recognizing the weight in the room for what it is, opening the door to see if it escapes like a puff of breath against the snow --

I have been given the gift of setting, and my characters know how to love. This is one of the many presents I continue to unwrap.

December Theme: Gifts (Stephanie Burgis)

2011-12-16T10:47:00.008-06:00

This spring, my first book (Kat, Incorrigible) finally came out in America, where I was born and lived for the first 24 years of my life. I've been living in the UK for ten years now, and I was absolutely thrilled to see my book on shelves over here (as A Most Improper Magick) last August...

...but yes. I may be a dual citizen now, but some things are ingrained too deeply in childhood to ever change. Legally, I am both American AND British, but I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, with one specific image symbolizing my biggest dream: to see my books on the shelves of bookstores and libraries in my hometown.

Now here's the frustrating part: when it finally happened, I couldn't actually see it. I'd planned to come home to visit for at least three weeks around the publication date, so that I could have a wonderful book launch at my favorite independent book store (Schuler Books) and sign copies at Barnes & Noble and elsewhere. I was going to visit my old schools to talk to the kids there who want to be writers. I was going to celebrate my book's publication surrounded by my family and friends from childhood, who had always cheered me on.

It was a wonderful fantasy - a fantasy built on all those years of dreaming, from the time I was seven years old onward. Unfortunately, reality got in the way. The truth is, I have a chronic illness, ME/CFS, which hit when I was 28, over six years ago. Travel is very, very hard. I also have a toddler. And when you put together the fact that my ME/CFS was getting worse and worse this spring, while my son (and my writing) still needed energy and attention...

...yeah. That dream was just not practical.

I hated having to admit it. I cried a lot. I wrote one of the hardest emails of my life to my family, telling them I wouldn't be able to come, and the second-hardest to my editor and publicist, canceling our plans for in-person book promotion.

My family understood. They visited me instead. My editor phoned me immediately after reading my email to reassure me that she and the publishing house were completely in support of me and my decision. I was so grateful that everyone understood, and no one blamed me for having to cancel all our plans.

But there was one thing I didn't expect...the biggest gift I got this year, over and over again: I got to see my book on the shelves after all.

Photos came in from my family, showing my book in East Lansing, at Schuler Books and B&N and, maybe most meaningfully of all, at the East Lansing public library, where I'd spent so much of my childhood. But the photos didn't stop there. Friends from twitter and livejournal and readers I'd never met before went out to take more and more photos of my book on the shelves, really, truly there just like I'd always dreamed, in bookstores all the way from Massachusetts to Mississippi to California.

Every time a new photo arrived in my inbox, Facebook or TweetDeck, I gasped out loud with pure wonder. I've cried over almost every picture - but this time, only happy tears. Tears of wonder and tears of gratitude.

Even though I had to cancel all my plans - even though I was an ocean's-width away from home - I still had my lifelong fantasy made true:

I got to see my book on the shelves, just like I'd always dreamed, and that experience was given to me through the generosity of so many people I'd never even met.

I can't even imagine a better gift.

December Theme: The Gift by Bob Krech

2011-12-15T00:06:00.188-06:00

The trigger for my first YA novel was a breakfast conversation I had with high school students during a series of meetings about the future of the school district where I worked as a teacher. We talked a lot that morning about school, diversity, race, opportunity, and sports. Some of my favorite subjects. It was interesting to hear how some things had changed since I was in high school and how some things hadn't.

It made me reflect back to my own high school experience as a basketball player and how sports and the interaction of different groups of athletes helped me growing up. On the drive home I thought about an incident I was part of from a basketball game long ago. When I got home I wrote it down, changed it up some, and as I wrote two characters emerged. I began to think about those characters and who they were and what they wanted. I was thinking, maybe this could be a book.

Over the next weeks and months of writing, a story took shape as I moved my characters forward. Things were happening on the page. Events and scenes developed. But, in the back of my head a little bothersome voice, began to say, "Sure, this is nice. But, where is it heading? You know, you don't even have an ending."

Now, I have a personal pet peeve about books having a satisfying ending. I hate investing a ton of time reading a story only to come to the end and find myself thinking, "That's it? That's the end?" I hate stories that just peter out or leave things unresolved. And it is hard to write a good ending! To me the ride is not enough. I want a great ending destination. When I was a teenager I almost gave up on writing because I couldn't craft what I considered a good ending. I managed to get past that and keep writing, but it's always been an issue with me. Now, how could I put a book of my own out there without having an ending I personally considered satisfying. Frankly, I was very worried. Okay. Scared.

A couple of times during the writing of REBOUND I attempted to plot out an ending and think through what a logical and satisfying outcome would be. Nothing came. Or what came was so artificial it made me cringe. I would just have to keep writing to see where it would lead me. As I wrote and revised I came to know my characters better. I could begin to see where things were leading. A terrible climax was emerging. The ensuing conflict was inevitable, but I didn't see any resolution let alone that "killer ending" I hoped for.

I loved this story. I loved these characters. I wanted to give them what they deserved. So I kept writing. I had been told to trust the process and it didn't seem like there was any alternative than to do just that. Or quit.

Then after about a year of writing, working late at night during the winter when the temperature was dropping outside and I was in sweats huddled near the computer, a little something happened. The corners of the room were dark. The house was quiet. Everyone else asleep. I should have been asleep. I was revising a chapter for probably the fifteenth time, bleary eyed, tired, when -- Bam! It just dropped into my lap. A gift!

It was the ending. I saw it like a movie rolling in front of me, everything being played out just the way it should be. I typed furiously until I got the whole thing down. Ten pages just like they were dictated to me from above. You may say it was the inevitable result on spending all that time with my characters, revising those scenes, putting in the hours, or maybe just being cold and delirious, but I'll tell you, that ending sure did feel like a gift to me. One I'll always treasure. And I hope my readers will too.

December Theme: A Gift

2011-12-13T06:00:00.000-06:00

The dedication in my next-to-most-recent book reads: For my parents, who said “Wonderful!” and not “How do you expect to make a living at that?” when I declared a major in classics

Since 1984, I’ve been teaching at a university that regularly makes it to those lists of “Top 20 colleges in the United States.” Parents rightly expect a lot from the kids whose expensive educations they are funding. Still, I sometimes wonder at their priorities. I’ve had more than one student tell me that their parents will pay their tuition only if they take pre-med courses, or if they major in something “practical,” like engineering, and if they really love art history—well, that’s what minors are for.

When I hear these stories I can offer only my sympathy. If my parents had made those restrictions, I don’t know where I would have wound up. I probably would have made more money than I have over 27 years of teaching and 18 of writing for young readers, but I'm sure I would have been miserable. And I don’t think I would have become a writer. Everything I learned in my classes helped fashion the kind of writer I am and the kind of writing I do—not only the historical fiction set in the classical world, but the nonfiction, the mysteries set in the current time, everything.

The gift of a liberal-arts education was costly, but it was one my parents were happy to make. And I’ll be forever grateful.

My Writing Wish List ... December Theme from Jody Feldman

2011-12-11T04:57:00.000-06:00

We’re talking blue-sky writing wish list here, and I have just one item: Two all-expenses paid weeks in a luxury beach resort villa, the kind with a couple bedrooms, living area and small kitchen. It doesn’t need to be that extravagant (though above would be nice). I would love to settle in and write, no cares in the world.

But therein lies the catch. My corollary wish would need to include:
A. No cares in the world which, itself, includes but is not limited to ...
1. No responsibilities except to myself and my writing
2. No funky germs to throw me off my game
3. Perfect weather; though rain for an hour or so a day is fine, even welcome
4. Everyone in my life, healthy and happy

And that would also mean:
B. My family would be there (a person gets lonely by herself) with the following rules ...
1. They are to disappear between 8:00am and 3:00pm
2. They are to be totally self-sufficient
3. They are not to ask me about my work
4. But I can bounce ideas off them if I’m so inclined
C. I have all the writing tools I need including ...
1. My thesaurus, my baby name book, colored gel pens, 17"x11" sheets of paper, desktop computer, Internet access
2. Good ideas
3. A readiness to roll

And yeah. That’s not happening. But truly, all I need is A.4. The rest is icing. I wish you all A.4. now and in the coming year. Happy holidays.

December Theme: A GIFT TO YOU, WRITERS by John Claude Bemis

2011-12-08T04:16:00.001-06:00

Writers are often looking for good advice. I’m going to share some of the best advice I ever received. It begins with Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite writers. In his book Zen and the Art of Writing, he has a wonderful essay discussing how he one day began to make a list of possible titles. He didn’t know what the stories were. He simply made a list of titles that captured his imagination.

The Lake. The Skeleton. The Attic. The Carousel. And so on…

Years later upon uncovering the list in a journal, Bradbury was surprised by how many of the titles actually became stories although he never consciously used the list as a reference.

When I read this essay, it reminded me how when I began writing The Nine Pound Hammer, I wrote lists also. I wanted that book—as well as the entire Clockwork Dark trilogy— to be a fantasy adventure based on American history and folklore, rather than rooted in the usual European archetypes common in fantasy.

My list included types of characters, settings, and set-pieces that I hoped would capture the feel of a mythical America: trains, swamps, cowboys, hoodoo magic, John Henry, bottle trees, mermaids, steamboat outlaws, crows, a rabbit’s foot, traveling medicine shows.

These were all elements that to me would make the perfect book. The book I always wanted to read, but frankly nobody else had written. If I was going to enjoy an epic adventure set to America’s myths, I was going to have to be the one to write it.

This led me to a discovery. You (I’m talking to you, writers!) have your own unique list—what I’ve come to think of as “Magnetic Nouns.” These are the things your imagination is drawn to. Your list of Magnetic Nouns is rooted in your experiences, your interests, your passions. To write about them unleashes the creative excitement you hold for these nouns. They infuse your story with imaginative energy. And ultimately, it’s what makes your story uniquely yours, the story only you could possibly write.

The legendary children’s book editor Ursula Nordstrom in a letter to Maurice Sendak, when Sendak early in his career was feeling discouraged about his story subjects, said, “You may not be Tolstoy, but Tolstoy wasn’t Sendak either.”

Here is my gift to you, writers: the best advice I’ve ever gotten by way of Ray Bradbury and Ursula Nordstorm. Write the story that only you can write. Nobody else! Not J.K. Rowling or Suzanne Collins or Leo Tolstoy. What is your imagination magnetically drawn to? What is your list? Write the story that nobody else could possibly ever write.

I’ve tried to follow that advice. So far it’s served me well.

Happy holidays and happy writing.

December Theme: Writing Gifts (Naomi Kinsman)

2011-12-06T23:47:00.001-06:00

For Christmas a few years ago, my best friend gave me a clock with an extra hour. She said, "I knew the very best thing I could give you was more time."

It was sort of a joke. But also, not really a joke at all. I do need more time. Lots of it.

The gifts that mean the most to me are the ones I could never buy for myself. So, it isn't very surprising that the writing gift that has meant the most to me, over time, is honesty.

And wow, honesty hurts. Over and over in this past year, I have been given the gift of honesty, from fellow writers, from editors, from teachers, from my agent. That first glance at critique notes, or the first teeny-tiny suggestion that likely means you will have to rewrite your entire book, can't help but sting. My heart screams "Why didn't I see that?" and "But can't you see that I meant to..." and "I spent hours and hours and hours on it." And if you fight through all your objections, you end up in this scary place, like stepping into a huge cavern in a cave, where your voice only echoes weakly and your ideas only light up the smallest bit of the darkness. And in that place, you have to make a decision. Will you move on? Will you stick with the story, even if it means picking your way through the dark?

I've been in the opposite shoes a lot recently, too, giving feedback to others on their work. Surprisingly, the risk of honesty is even harder to give than to recieve. Why tell someone the difficult truth when you could easily gloss over all that and tell them, "It's good enough?"

This is why honesty is such a gift, and why I am so grateful for those people in my life who give it to me. When someone takes the risk of telling me the truth, not glossing over the difficult parts, challenging me to push myself, they do so because they believe in me, and in my story. They don't think I ought to write a "good enough" story. They want me to write a story that reaches into my own heart, and into my readers' hearts. And their belief is what lights my way through the revision, until in the end, I've written a book that is far beyond what I knew I could write.

I hope I can always be brave enough to listen to the truth when people are generous enough to give it to me. And I also hope I will always be brave enough to tell the truth myself.

December Theme: The Gift of Song (Sorry, No Returns) by Trudi Trueit

2011-12-05T00:00:00.000-06:00

When I was young, my best friend and I spent countless hours trying to make each other giggle with horrendous poetry and goofy rhymes. We were known in class for our elaborate rebus puzzles that could take up whole pages (a rebus is when you link symbols or pictures to create phrases; remember the game show Concentration?).

Another favorite pastime was coming up with silly lyrics to familiar songs. So in the spirit of the season, I’m taking a break from untangling an enormous ball of Christmas lights (that aren’t going to work when I plug them in anyway) to pen my version of The Twelve Days of Christmas (for writers, of course). So gather 'round the fossilized fruitcake and sing along. You know the melody …

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:

a movie deal with Martin Scorsese.

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me:

two creepy fans,

and a movie deal with Martin Scorsese.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me:

three plot threads,

two creepy fans,

and a movie deal with Martin Scorsese.

Shall we skip to the last verse? After all, I've got figgy pudding burning in the oven …

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
12 agents-a-bidding,

11 critics-a-sniping,

10 editors-a-editing,

9 shallow characters,
8 rejection letters,

7 'likes' on Facebook,

6 works in progress,

5 chapters to be cut!
4 urgent deadlines,

3 plot threads,

2 creepy fans,

And a movie deal with Martin Scorsese!

Next year?

I'm thinking Hark! The Herald Angels E-Read ...
Happy Holidays to you and yours!

December Theme: CHRISTMAS LIST FOR WRITERS (Irene Latham)

2011-12-03T06:00:00.001-06:00

Dear Santa,

I don't want a lot for Christmas -- there's not a thing I really need. But I do like to dream. And I do like to make lists, same as you. So here are a few things the dreaming writer in me would really appreciate this year:

1. an e-reader. Because there are books ONLY AVAILABLE electronically. So it’s beyond desire now. It’s a necessity.

2. EVERY THING ON IT by Shel Silverstein. There are some books I simply must hold. This is one of them.

3. a “Life is Good” sticker for my van. Because it helps to remember that on those inevitable Black Cloud Days.

4. a pocket projector. Have you seen these things? With all the school visits I do, wouldn’t this save so much hassle? I could just bring my own! I love the idea of self-sufficiency…. and it would allow me to present powerpoint in all sorts of situations I have not been able to in the past.

C Courage. Sorry, Santa. I know you hate it when you get a kid like me on your lap. But it’s what I want MORE THAN ANYTHING. Courage to write the book I know I need to write. I keep starting and stopping, and starting and stopping… I want to finish.

6. Patience. And Impatience. That’s right. Now you’re seeing how high-maintenance I really am. It’s just, this writing life is HARD. And unpredictable. And sometimes the roller coaster really does make me woozy. Which is why I want to start a Prayer for Waiting, in the vein of the Serenity Prayer:

Grant me the patience

to wait with grace,

the impatience to ACT

when it’s called for,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

7. Grace. You may remember that I have a new book coming in 2012. Soon I will be plunged into that Neverland of Criticism: reviews! interviews! questions! about the controversial issues in my book, i.e. animals in captivity vs. animal rights, homeschooling vs. traditional schooling. I’ll need help navigating those tidal waters.

8. a nice supply of Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips, a.k.a Creativity Fuel.

9. one of those souped-up treadmills for writers. Because I totally write better when I’m moving. Also, see above item.

notecards. Yep, thought I’d close with something easy. I've just run out of these Gee's Bend quilt cards and would love a new batch to use them to write hellos and how-are-yous and thank-yous. (Really, is there anything better than a handwritten note?)

Gratefully,

Irene Latham

Writing Gifts (December Theme) by Joan Holub

2011-12-01T00:01:00.000-06:00

Who’s afraid of the big bad e-reader? My mom. I bought her a Kindle last year, and she returned it. She said she prefers traditional books. I do, too.

But, really, are traditional books all that great? Or are they just what I’m accustomed to? Traditional books use up trees, they’re tiring to keep propped open, and the reading experience of a poorly printed mass market paperback can be worse than an e-book read. I wonder if it’s just a matter of getting used to a new technology. A technology that’s in transition, hasn’t yet been perfected, and is expensive.

This year, I’ve been in Target looking at Kindles again. I like the Kindle Touch because of the touchscreen. I like the Kindle Fire because it’s color and has a bigger screen. My Goddess Girls writing partner, SuzanneWilliams, just purchased her first Kindle.

And I just bought my first e-reader--an iPad. A used one (the first version) from a friend, who is an early-adopter and has already moved on to the iPad 2. I like the fact that I can dim or lighten the iPad screen in numerous increments as opposed to the Kindle Fire’s limited three choices: white-on-black, black-on-white, or sepia. And, after viewing a picture book on KF’s small screen, I prefer the iPad’s bigger screen.

So this year an iPad was my gift to myself. A reading gift. A gift that will help with my writing, since books are essential to authors. My first e-book buy was our newest title, Goddess Girls #7: Artemis the Loyal, because I wanted to celebrate its December 6th release and to see how it looks in e-format. Fun!

Best wishes to you all for happy holidays and wonderful gifts--traditional or e-otherwise!

~ Joan Holub

Note from Holly Schindler, blog administrator:

Goddess Girls #7: Artemis the Loyal will be in stores on December 6^th.

To celebrate, Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams are giving away a copy if this newest addition to their popular Goddess Girls series.

To enter the giveaway, simply email Suzanne at sw at suzanne-williams dot com with the subject line "Artemis the Loyal Smack Dab Giveaway." The winner be chosen at random on December 16th.

About the book:

It's time for the annual Olympic Games, and the four goddessgirls are not happy--especially Artemis. Even though she's better at sports than most of the godboys, she can't compete because rules say the Games are boys-only. No fair!

Led by Artemis, Athena, Persphone and Aphrodite, the ladies of Mount Olympus hatch a plan to get Zeus to open up the games to everyone. Will they succeed--or end up watching from the sidelines again?