So wrote Mary Oliver in her now-so-relevant poem "Don't Hesitate."
I'm happy to report: I've spent many a day this summer giving in to
Joy, thanks to the writers who helped me make my life more "wild
and precious."
In June, self-proclaimed Joy Seeker and debut author Jamie
Freedlund launched her original picture book Finding Joy,
illustrated by her daughter Reese and Natalie Seaton.
As the book's back flap shares, Jamie's the founder of Mattea's Joy,
a non-profit organization that helps families with hospitalized kids
find joy in their journey. Created to honor the memory of her
daughter Mattea, Mattea's Joy provides care, connection and
community for anyone navigating the challenge of having a
hospitalized child.
Jamie donates a book to a Children's Hospital with each book
purchased.
Writing this children's book was Jamie's childhood dream come
true.
Helping Jamie learn the picture book format, grow her story, revise her story, then guiding her as she took on the responsibility of independently publishing and marketing the book still has me dancing The Happy Dance.
The book's back cover declares, "Finding Joy is easy...if you know where to look!"
How true because...
...here I am in July, seated with my returning Manuscript
Workshop writers at the Landgrove Inn in Landgrove, Vermont,
enjoying yet another 5-star meal in a Joy-filled week.
I've facilitated this Workshop since 2016, honored to continue
its founder Barbara Seuling's unswerving commitment to
helping children's book creators tell their stories.
As always, by week's end my waistline expands (exponentially)
but more importantly, as always, so does my heart.
It gladdens me so, to see the writers I've loved seeding and
feeding continue to grow and thus blossom - digging deeper,
revising and fine-tuning, so their singular stories connect
with their intended Young Readers.
In Finding Joy, Jamie Freedlund's Mattea learns: you find Joy
when you give Joy.
Prior to the Workshop, I gifted each writer with a copy of
It's hard to believe that summer is already waning here in the northern hemisphere and students and teachers will soon be returning to classrooms. Today, I'm closing out our latest TeachingAuthors series. At the end of this post, I also share one of my poems and a link to this week's Poetry Friday roundup.
I've enjoyed reading all my fellow TeachingAuthors' responses to the prompt: "Share a question you often get from your students or readers." I must admit, though, that the post that most resonated with me was April's, in which she talks about someone approaching her with an idea and asking her to write the book. I, too, have received that request many times, not only from my students, but also from strangers I've met at social functions and even via email from random people who found me online.
But there's another question I've heard far more frequently from those same sources: "How do you get a book published?" In fact, when I first started teaching classes in writing for children and teens over 25 years ago, the question was frequently worded as "How much does it cost to get a children's book published?" Back before self-publishing became prevalent, many people assumed you simply paid a book publisher like Scholastic or Random House to publish your book. These same people also typically assumed that if you were a writer and not an artist, you had to hire someone to illustrate your picture book before submitting to that publisher.
If the person asking the question was not a student in one of my classes, I simply directed them to the Frequently Asked Questions page of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) website. But over the years, the answer has gotten increasingly more complicated, and the SCBWI FAQ page isn't as helpful as it used to be. Thankfully, Jane Freidman has a great resource: "Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published," that covers publishing books for adults as well as for children. The post describes three publishing paths: traditional publishing, hiring a company to publish for you, and self-publishing, and she updates the information periodically.
How about you, Readers? Do you have any questions we haven't addressed in this series? If so, please let us know in the comments.
Now for the poem I promised. Earlier this summer, I had the honor of having two poems accepted for publication at The Dirigible Balloon, a UK-based online magazine that publishes poetry for children--my first time being featured there! Here's one of them, which you can also see on their site here:
On the Launchpad (An Etheree) by Carmela A. Martino
Preparing for takeoff! I fuel up on determination so I can blast past expectations and climb skyward, higher and higher— beyond the stratosphere— to where earthly fears won’t weigh me down. Here I go— THREE, TWO, ONE …
I understand. (who's not drowning in emails these days?) But please consider taking a small bite of the article before deciding to abandon it by the side of the road.
Because if you're just now dipping your toes into picture book planet, or if you're a longtimer, hungry for a review, the article may just
blow your
mind.
She just read the article. (image by JalalSheikh21 from Pixabay)
So, first, I'll share a poem and then a drawing, illustrating what it feels like when someone says:
“I HAVE A STORY IDEA FOR YOU!”
by April Halprin Wayland
I say, “How nice. Would you like to come inside?”
Then I walk her up the concrete steps of my brain, open the door and move ten heavy boxes, pass piles of Federal Express packages, shove aside bulging brown bags with string.
We make our way to the back bedroom where I stick a butterfly net out the balcony door and catch a few more ideas as they fly past.
In the kitchen, cases of canned ideas line the worn wood floor, unpacked sacks of fresh-picked ones, smelling slightly salty, are piled on the counter.
We hold onto the paint-chipped banister to walk down the wobbly stairs of the cold, cement basement. The sulfur smell surprises. I strike a match.
“Where is there room for your idea between those wooden tennis rackets, the rusty bird cage, folded music stands and trunks of family stories?” I ask.
Crouching behind a trunk is the one that creeps upstairs at night slinking along the hallway to my bedroom. This is the one I am working on now.
“Would you be kind enough to take your idea to my storage locker downtown, near the pier?” I say, handing her a tiny tin key. “Perhaps you'll find room there.
Best to stand back as you roll up the aluminum door.”
poem (c)April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.
drawing (c) April Halprin Wayland
Reminder: the link to Poetry Friday's host
is at the very end of this post.
For 25 years, I taught a quarter-long class called Writing the Children's Picture Book. But since the pandemic, I decided to reserve a big piece of me to help heal our world...
"We can do this!" (c) April Halprin Wayland
...and another piece of me to focus on my own writing.
envelope drawing, "Yes I can!" (c) April Halprin Wayland
And guess what? Most of UCLA Extension's 3-hour one-off classes are FREE! (And yes, they still pay us to teach).
I alternate each quarter between two classes. A few weeks ago I taught Introduction to Children's Picture Books ~ a workshop for absolute beginner; my next PB class will be in early 2026. On September 24th, I'm teaching Introduction to Writing Children's Poetry for the Big-Hearted, Brave, and Curious(my title, not necessarily UCLA's). Click on that title for more info.
So...back to the question: What is the NUMBER ONE question I get in my classes?
"This weekend I came up with an incredible picture book idea which I think--no, I know--will become an instant classic. And I'm going to let you write it! When it's written, give me the name of your agent and your editor, okay?"
Do I answer this directly? No.
Instead, I redirect them. I offer my students the following article to read.
Is it long?
Yes.
Will you be a changed reader and/or writer after reading it?
Absolutely.
Note: The Horn Book has graciously given me permission to share this article. (Unfortunately, the original article is now behind a paywall. It includes images of the books it mentions, for subscribers only. I've been given permission to offer you the article itself, minus the pictures. You might want to look the books up online or watch someone read them on YouTube as you read this article)
HALF THE STORY - TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION IN PICTURE BOOKS
(Yes, it was written many years ago, but it's still very much worth reading)
The two oldest forms of storytelling — words and images — meet and merge in picture books. A well-placed word can leave you elated or it can break your heart. Pictures can evoke peals of laughter or cries of outrage. A fundamental, some would argue inherent, understanding of both of these methods of telling stories is hardwired into our humanity. And when the two forms come together, as they do in picture books, the whole is so very much greater than the sum of the parts. At its best and most successful, the skillful joining of words and pictures is nothing short of magical.
Most picture books begin with the writer’s words, but if you take the text of a picture book out of the equation, there is still a lot to discuss. As an editor of picture books, I stand in the balance between the inspiration of the author and the inspiration of the artist. I am privileged. If these books are indeed magic, I am in the position to watch the spell being created, to see the pieces come together, and to witness the merging of two visions into one book.
Artistic style is like fingerprints, individual and revealing. No two people bring exactly the same skills or exactly the same baggage to their creative work. No text can be illustrated the same way twice, not even by the same artist.
Mother Goose rhymes are a case in point. These familiar texts are popular subjects for illustrators, in part because they are in the public domain and in effect are free for the taking.
Consider:
Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
and down he run
Hickory dickory dock
These five lines, two of which consist of nonsense words, describe one action and open a world of possible interpretations. Think about how to represent these lines pictorially, and a flood of questions pours forth. We are told that a mouse ran up a clock. What kind of clock? A wall clock? A cuckoo clock? Is it digital? This is the twenty-first century, after all.
And then, what kind of mouse? A white one? Black one? Spotted? Anthropomorphized? One that has had its tail cut off with a carving knife?
The clock struck one. Well, one what? One mouse? The hour of one? If so, is that one o’clock in the morning? Or one o’clock in the afternoon?
And this is barely the beginning. There are also questions of technique. Do these lines call out for watercolor? Scratchboard? Melted wax? Is one panel sufficient to encapsulate the action, or do you need separate panels to show the mouse running up the clock, the clock striking one, and the mouse running down again? How do you illustrate the meaningless words hickory dickory dock?
What about the questions of the artist’s intent — or mood? Should this verse be illustrated in a conventional and pleasingly predictable manner to soothe readers by meeting their expectations? Should the clock face be melting, Dalí-esque, to give young children their first taste of surrealism? Or perhaps the mouse is a stand-in for the downtrodden proletariat forced to scurry up and down by running-dog clock makers.
Many artists have interpreted these lines, with a wide variety of results. In the hands of Rosemary Wells, this rhyme describes the bright, cozy living room of a snoozing cat wrapped in a dressing gown. He is seated in an overstuffed chair next to a grandfather clock. In this single frame, the mouse has already run onto the floor and is eating cheese while another mouse, wearing a cheery yellow frock, watches from the top of the clock.
Meanwhile, in the hands of Charles Addams, the setting is a gloomy night, out of doors. The first panel shows a dark clock tower, a pillar roughly the same shape and imposing size as the Washington Monument, located miles away from the distant town. A page turn brings us to the second panel, where the mouse who runs down the clock, just ready to leap onto the ground at the feet of a wide-eyed family, is roughly three times the size of the children that a concerned mother reaches to pull close . . .
Same text. Yet illustrations with different moods, impact, and implications. What has gone into each interpretation is the temperament, tastes, particular skills, whims, and personalities of each artist. They asked themselves the same questions and came up with vastly different answers. And there are, of course, many more options for how these same words could be, and have been, put into pictures. The variety comes from artists investing themselves in the work, reaching into their personal creativity — the unique combination of their conscious skills and unconscious ways of viewing the world.
This is a substantial part of the glory of picture books, that they inspire visual artists to share an intimately personal worldview with the audience through the lens of a particular set of words. The same sorts of questions artists ask about Mother Goose rhymes are asked about traditional picture book texts, and they evoke the same variety of responses. Even a fairly obvious text like Goodnight Moon leaves a lot of room for an illustrator. There are certain reasonable expectations about what should be depicted pictorially to accompany lines such as “Goodnight kittens / And goodnight mittens.” We may anticipate that the artist will draw kittens and mittens. But how many kittens, and how many mittens? Are the kittens asleep? Are the mittens asleep? How do you show sleeping mittens? Perhaps the kittens are sleeping on the mittens, or playing with them. Or eating them.
The choices are still there, even with the most straightforward of texts.
And illustrators are good at weighing these choices and making decisions. They rise to the challenge of creating fully realized and nuanced worlds to correspond with the writer’s words. All and all, it is a good thing they are such skilled interpreters as they are sometimes faced with a text that is less than straightforward. The experience an artist has in drawing inspiration from words can come in handy when a text contains fewer obvious illustration cues. Take the words in a spread from Ruth Krauss’s immortal A Very Special House —
MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE MORE
—blop blop blop—
MORE MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE MORE
NOBODY ever says stop stop stop
— a book for which illustrator Maurice Sendak received a Caldecott Honor.
Returning to Goodnight Moon, if someone other than Clement Hurd had illustrated Goodnight Moon’s great green room, we may justly suppose that the room would still have been green. But any other similarities or differences are a matter of pure speculation. And the odds of anyone choosing to illustrate the words “more more more more more more” the same way Maurice Sendak did (even with a prompting Ruth Krauss at his elbow) are slim. All picture books are branded with the personalities of their illustrators. Those personalities, as reflected in the art, are a vital and inseparable part of the experience of a picture book, and the more inspired the artist is, the more excited, the more involved in bringing a text to life an artist is, the better the book will be.
Because you don’t read a picture book. You look at a picture book. And this leads to the great inequity of the genre: a wordless picture book is still a picture book. But a pictureless picture book is a poem or a short story. And a picture book text that can be spoken aloud with no reference to the illustrations and that does not, on such a reading, lose a jot of nuance or of meaning, is not a successful picture book text. In book form, it may be an illustrated short story. And it may be wonderful, but it isn’t magic.
So, how does the writer cast her part of the spell? How does she invite an artist in? How does she create a text that allows the illustrator to invest herself in the finished book? It’s partially a matter of attitude. Even as the writer struggles for the perfect words, the awareness must be there, on some level, that once the text is out of her hands, the book is no longer solely her own. Nor is it primarily her own. Nor is it primarily anyone else’s: a picture book belongs equally to the author and the illustrator — which is why, contractually speaking, the proceeds are split evenly between the two. Because while an illustrator’s vision is crucial to the finished product, and while no two illustrators will create the same book from the same text, without that text, without the writer, there is nothing.
Obviously, the picture book author hopes her text will entice and inspire the artist. And there are a couple things she keeps in mind when creating a manuscript. First, the text must be illustratable, one that an artist can bring her vision to and enrich with visual storytelling. This means, in part, leaving room for the art to help convey the story. There are some obvious implications to this, such as not getting carried away with descriptions. It’s one thing to say,
Harry was a white dog with black spots
who liked everything,
except . . . getting a bath
and it’s quite another thing to say,
Stretched across the upper part of the doorway was a big spiderweb, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a large grey spider. She was about the size of a gumdrop. She had eight legs, and she was waving one of them at Wilbur in friendly greeting.
The first of these two descriptions, written by Gene Zion, leaves many questions open. We know there is a dog and we know something about his coloring, but that’s about it. We know he has black spots — two spots? Three spots? Are we talking about a Dalmatian here? A mutt? A big dog, a little dog? Long hair, short hair? The artist asks all of these questions, and Harry the Dirty Dog comes to life in Margaret Bloy Graham’s illustrations because he is the particular canine she wished to draw. Created by the author, Harry’s visual appearance convinces the reader because the illustrator has invested her own creativity and heart in him.
In comparison, E. B. White’s description of the spider Charlotte leaves much less to interpretation. We know what she looks like — the size of a gray gumdrop with eight legs. We know where she is — in a large web in the doorway. And even what position she is in — head down, one leg waving in a manner we should regard as friendly. E. B. White was writing a novel, and he understood it as part of his job to provide images through his words. He gives us the specific details we need to picture his characters and their actions. Garth Williams’s black-and-white art for Charlotte’s Web is inspired, but it is not what brings these beloved characters to life.
Meanwhile, Zion was writing a picture book. In his single, unadorned sentence of description, he tells us two definitive things: Harry has black spots, and he doesn’t like baths. The crucial second fact, an internal attitude rather than an external detail of appearance or action, is one that is hard to illustrate and can be most concisely captured with words.
But of course leaving room — or better yet, creating room — for an illustrator goes beyond not tying visual details into the narrative. Good picture book texts are often compared to poetry. The words must be chipped away and chipped away so that only the essential few needed to carry the narrative forward and give it its unique flavor remain. The writer’s job is to pare a story or experience down until the essence remains, spare and shining. The writer distills. The illustrator expands. The writer tells us there is a white dog with black spots. The illustrator shows us he has short legs, a long body, stumpy tail, pointy ears — one black, one white — woolly fur, a big black nose, and an impish look in his eyes as he schemes to avoid the dreaded bath.
While it’s easy to discuss avoiding excess description, the same sort of restraint needs to be applied across the board to every aspect of a picture book manuscript—in the depiction of actions, reactions, interactions, everything. In the course of a picture book there may well be key moments of action and emotion when the text stops and the pictures carry the reader forward with a force that is more immediate, powerful, and transcendent than a thousand words. The great balancing act of creating a picture book comes in recognizing this and understanding that it may not be clear from the text alone where the pictures need to dominate. It may not be known until the artist has dummied the book out, going through the initial sketches and fine-tuning the pacing and visual impact of the story. A picture book text is not truly finished until the picture book art is finished. It is an organic process, and the very words that inspire and inform an illustrator may become superfluous once the artist has internalized the text and returned it as drawings.
This is why writing picture books is an act of generosity and of faith. The writer is offering her work up to the rewards of collaboration, accepting that this book she has worked so hard on is about to become, for a space of time, someone else’s baby. She has to sit idly by, hopefully occupying herself profitably with other projects, for a time span that can seem to go on forever. It can be two years or more from the time an illustrator is signed up to when a book is finally published. During this time, the book is as alive for the artist and for the publisher as it was for the writer when she created it. But it is out of her hands. And it is being shaped by someone else’s vision. When the text is returned, finally, with the art in place, there is the potential for the original vision to appear altered, maybe even for the better.
And this, in turn, is why the hardest part of editing a picture book — that is to say, the scariest part of editing a picture book — is commissioning the illustrator. Editors and art directors are not naive about the importance of finding artists who resonate to an author’s text. We look hard and consider not only who has an appropriate style, but who has the right heart. We are not looking for artists who will subvert the meaning or intent of the author’s careful words. It is our charge to take the text and pair it with a visual storyteller who is moved to tell the same story through her related but different skills. We are hoping to find the artist who wants to illustrate the manuscript not because she kind of likes it and needs the money but because she takes the text to heart — as the author did when she wrote it, and as the editor did when she acquired it. We know that the best artist, the one who will make the best book, is the illustrator who brings her whole creative self to bear and is ready to interpret and expand the text in ways — and this is crucial — that are sympathetic to the author’s vision. This is not an easy task, and it is not one that any editor takes lightly.
In some ways, it is less nerve-wracking to work with authors who illustrate their own work. And many of the very best picture books are the product of a single imagination. Author-illustrators would appear to have the upper hand in this genre. They don’t have to worry so much about whether the words and pictures will end up in perfect sync — the matter, after all, is firmly under their own control — and they certainly have the ability to put aside concerns about excess wording. They may know full well what will and will not be conveyed in the art from the outset, and they are also free to adjust both aspects as they go.
But there are very few people who are equally as skilled with words as they are with pictures. William Steig was one, James Marshall was another, as is Kevin Henkes. And illustrators, by and large, are aware of this. As pictorial storytellers, artists are generally very respectful of words and of the skill of authors. They recognize that writing is an art different from their own, and that their creative strengths lie in the visual rather than the verbal.
It is vital that the writer extends the same respect to the illustrator. It doesn’t work for a writer — or an editor — to attempt to compensate for not being a skilled draftsman by telling the artist what to do. It indicates a lack of faith in the artist, and even worse a lack of respect, to pepper a manuscript with instructions for how a scene is to be conceived of and executed visually. For an author, it is comparable to the experience of being approached by a neighbor’s uncle who has discovered she writes children’s books, and who has come bounding over to share his own great idea for a picture book — only he’s not a writer, so he’ll tell it to the author, and all she has do is write it. Golly, what a wonderful opportunity! How thrilled the writer must be to be invited to use her talent and carefully honed skills to be the stenographer for someone else’s great idea. Undoubtedly the writer will be inspired to reach into her soul for her best effort for that one.
Much more effective than trying to tell an artist what to do is striving to present manuscripts that allow an artist to tap into her deepest creativity and bring everything she has to bear on the project at hand. The joy of working in picture books is the joy of discovery, the delight that comes from witnessing an artist’s original, personal, and recognizably perfect interpretations. The expert illustrator has a visual vocabulary that goes beyond anything that can be articulated or guessed at in words. She positions two figures conversing in a way that informs us of their feelings for each other, or uses an unexpected close-up of a minor character to tell us the impact a piece of news has on a community, or she gives such animation to a cottage in the woods that it becomes as welcome a sanctuary for the reader as it is for the hero. Great books come from creative freedom for both the author and the illustrator.
This can be unnerving for an author, and understandably so. When I have the chance to give frank advice to authors of picture books, this is what I say. If you are not comfortable letting an artist (and face it, we’re talking about a stranger) bring a different vision — one that you can neither predict nor control — to the book, don’t write picture books. Some people thrive on collaboration, and some don’t, just as compromise comes more easily to some than to others. There is no moral superiority on either side. As a writer, you work very hard for your words and you have a distinct and hard-won vision. It’s up to you to decide whether and how much to share. But if you love picture books and are committed to this unique, powerful, and deeply rewarding genre, I entreat you to remember how essential the artist’s wholehearted cooperation is to casting the picture book’s spell, and I encourage you to strive for magic.
Anne Hoppe is executive editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books. Her article is adapted from a talk delivered at the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program at Vermont College on July 26, 2003.
From the January/February 2004 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
You read it! Yay, you! I'd love to hear what you learned from it!
Thank you, Jan, for hosting Poetry Friday atBookseedstudio
written with love by April Halprin Wayland
with a help from our zoo: our baby tortoises: Meredith and Derek,
our red-eared slider pond turtles: Lily and Little Lyle,
our 60-lb 1 1/2 year old puppy, Sadie,
and her big sister, our 8-lb 5 year old cat, Kitty,
In my MFA classes, I am constantly asked about voice.
What is it, how to find it, how to make it stand out, and how to make it
unique, and what is an "authentic" voice.
On one hand, a writer’s “voice” refers to the rhetorical
blend of word choice, tone, point of view, and syntax that create phrases,
sentences, and paragraphs to flow in a particular manner. This voice comes
through in two main ways: through omniscient narration or through
the character’s point of view. For example, Tony Morrison and Nathaniel
Hawthorne tell their stories through an omniscient third person narration.
However, both authors have a unique voice, set by the tone, word choice, organization
of paragraphs and chapters, and pacing that set each novel apart.
A writer’s voice often refers to the overall theme expressed
within the pages of a novel, highlighting the book’s mood and worldview. For
example, in discussing the books of Margaret Atwood, readers might note themes,
character types and writing style that demonstrate a distinctive
voice even as it transcends individual works.
On the other hand, a character’s voice is the unique tone a
writer imbues upon different characters. It encompasses the language and syntax
of the character, their personal worldview, and often comes wrapped in an
accent that relates to the setting and status. For example, a novel’s main
character might be affable and loquacious so much so that words spill from
their mouth to the annoyance of the other characters. Or, perhaps a
novel’s main character suffers from PTSD and is full of youthful angst and quirky
observations. Or perhaps a character is self-effacing. Or perhaps the character
is a gentle giant, at once friendly and fierce-looking.
The challenge becomes when the writer’s voice becomes so
intrusive that a character fades into the shadows. When the writer takes
centerstage, the story is lost.
Two books I’ve enjoyed recently excel in reflecting both a
writer’s voice and a character’s voice. The challenge in writing
historical fiction is, given the depiction of another time and place, the
writer needs to keep the voice authentic yet accessible to the modern reader.
Too much of an accent and the character is reduced to a stereotype. But too
much of a modern sensibility and the story feels inauthentic. And if
the story takes place in ancient times, the challenge becomes all the more
interesting.
I’ve really enjoyed Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom (2004).
The story takes place during the nineth century, using first person POV. Uhtred
of Bebbanburg, the son of a Saxon noble, recounts his kidnapping by Danish
Vikings to find a home with a powerful warlord and ultimately embraces Viking
traditions. As a young man, he is torn between his Viking family and the
growing conflict with King Alfred of Wessex. His primary motivation becomes
reclaiming his ancestral land and his inheritance. Cornwell navigates the
clashing of two cultures and worldviews through the perspective of one caught
in the middle. The tension is palatable. Destiny is all.
Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s book, Werewolf Hamlet (2025),
is another great study in first person POV. Not really a historical
fiction, the connection to history offers an interesting juxtaposition. No one
has a more timeless, spirited voice than Shakespeare. Unless it’s a werewolf
citing Hamlet.
Ten-year-old Angus navigates a family in crisis. The setting
of Los Angeles sets the stage for a clashing of two worlds: the gritty world of
drugs against the glamorous world of the rich and famous. Here, the world
of make-believe, in which Iron Man breaks up dueling Spider-Mans, Princess Leia
drinks a smoothie and Charlie Chaplin waddles along the street, collides
with reality. About to lose their home, the family struggles as Liam, the older
brother, spirals out of control because of substance abuse and addiction. To
cope with his anxiety, Angus speaks to Hollywood’s legendary icons, Charlie
Chaplin, Harry Houdini and Buster Keaton. First person POV is further explored
in chapters set apart, much like reading a script for a play, depicting
conversations with Liam and revealing Angus' anger and fear for his
brother. He flings Shakespearean insults at his older brother: "Thou
art a ragged wart!"
For his fifth-grade project, Angus decides to write a play,
Werewolf Hamlet, in which Hamlet turns into a werewolf whenever he becomes
enraged. A deft blend of humor and poignancy, the book explores the devasting
effects of addiction on a family and the resulting strained relationships but
who are ultimately connected by love.
I'm TA #3 to weigh in on my most frequently asked question as an author. Even though I teach both adults and children, the question is the same from both groups. And that is...
"Where do get your ideas?"
99% of my stories come from my own family. As a writer, I couldn't be luckier to have the family I do. We're all storytellers, both sides of the family. Even my father-in-law loved to share tales about his life and family history. It's not that my relatives were famous or did anything historic. They just liked to tell stories about their childhoods and their own ancestors. I was that rare kid who loved to listen to them. Thanks to the Rodmans, Smiths and Downings, I have enough raw material to keep me going forever.
Once I've answered question #1, the second most asked question is "So do the people you write about recognize themselves in your stories?" The answer for everywriter should be "no." There is a disclaimer in the front pages of every novel that says "This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental." There is a good reason for this. No one wants to get hauled into court for defamation of character, especially not if the complainants are your cousins or in-laws. The storytellers of my childhood are no longer alive, but their children and grandchildren are.
My ideas, the story seeds, come from real life. They come from events that happened to real people in real cities. However, once I start writing, the characters are no longer my parents or aunts or uncles. They have different names, appearances and personality traits. Halfway through a first draft they become people who are very real, but a product of my own imagination. The geographic location stays real; location is as important as the characters and action. However, the neighborhoods and schools are composites. I draw maps for these fictional neighborhoods so I can keep the locations straight in my head.
I think I've done a pretty good job in turning real people into fictional people. When I began writing in elementary school, my mom typed my stories for magazine and contest submissions. Every time there was a mother in the story, she would ask "Is that mom supposed to be me? I'm not like that at all." In those early stories the mother was never even remotely based on Mom. If the character was the least bit unpleasant, Mom would take it very, very personally, never convinced I wasn't writing about her.But I wasn't.
Fast forward thirty years. Yankee Girl is published. Although the parents in the book are relatively minor characters, they are, straight on, my parents. The narrator is Alice Ann Moxley, who is pretty much eleven-year-old me. My parents loved the book. I kept waiting for Mom to say something about the mother character. (My dad would never say anything, one way or the other.)
Crickets.
Almost two years later, Mom called me late at night. My parents nevercalled after 8pm, not even if someone was dying. This had to be important.
I only managed to get out a "hello" before Mom barged right on.
"Is the mom in Yankee Girl me?"
Uh oh. Busted. Gulp. "Yeah."
After a moment, Mom continued.
"I was re-reading it tonight, and I realized that you were writing about yourself and all your worries at that time...and I didn't know about any of it. And neither did the mother in the book. Was I that clueless?"
That led to a long discussion about how terribly stressed and worried our whole family was at that time, each of us keeping our fears to ourselves so as not to upset anyone else. It wasn't a matter of being clueless; it was everyone trying to be strong and pretending that whatever was happening in the wider world, our family was safe. (We really weren't.)
Looking back, it's funny that the one time I wrote clearly recognizable characters (to me at least), those people didn't realize it until years later.
Surprise Soup was based on my husband's childhood as a bratty little brother. By the time the book came out his character was a bratty little bear. I had to tell him it was him. My Best Friend and First Grade Stinks were based on things that happened to my daughter. She completely disavows both books. She remembers things much differently. And so she should, because while something she said or did was the story seed, the events, characters and outcomes of the story are very different.
I am delighted to kick off our next TA series on the topic: "Answer a writing question I often get from readers or my students." I have done very few author visits since I am in the classroom with my own 4 and 5-year-old students during the school day. So, I asked my students if they had any author questions for me. Here’s what they said:
-How do you make the pictures? How do you make the words?
-How hard does it take?
-How long does it take to write the words of a book?
-How long does it take to make the whole outside of the book
and how was the outside of the book made?
-How long does it take to make all of the pages?
-How do you write the words like this?
-How do you write a whole book? Would it take 20 hours?
-Does the illustrator and the writer have to draw what looks
like the writer wrote?
-So, what stories do you do on those books?
Overwhelmingly, the students asked about process and more importantly about the amount of time it takes to write and/or create a book.
Interestingly, I think many writing-curious adults wonder the same thing. So, I am going to tackle this as a teacher and as an author.
As a teacher, the most important thing I teach about writing is that it is a process, not a product. That it is a joyful habit filled with delight.
We recently had a professional development in which writing was looked at by many of my colleagues as an unpleasant necessity of life, a task to teach unwilling children, steps to impart in a lesson. When writing is taught as a task, it lacks the element of time. Why would you want to engage in an unpleasant activity over a sustained period of time? Better to suck it up, push through to the end, and complete the obligation. It makes my heart hurt. Probably the biggest disservice is to the revision process. In school, we destroy future writers by demanding that writing should be revised almost immediately after the first draft is written. It wasn’t until I became an author that I understood the magic of the revision process and how time away from the words helps the writer see the repetitions, poor use of words, leaps in logic, and holes in the story. I had been trained from a very young age to leap into revising as a tedious process that one had to complete to get to the end. Let’s stop doing this to new writers. Let’s give them the gift of time and pleasure.
As an author, this question is a bit more nuanced and complicated. All authors have their own process. I usually begin with a theme that I want to explore (same as my process as a visual artist). Then I develop a “what if” these characters were faced with “that”. From the “what if” emerges a story. I often sit on this developing story while it simmers, stews, and swirls around my brain sometimes for days, months, or possibly years. Sometimes I write it down and try to find the story although it often evades me when I do this. When I use this method, I usually run it past at least a couple of critique groups a few times and then past a couple of critique partners before sending it to my agent for her notes. This can take weeks or months. More recently, I think on it, dream on it, and let it marinate until it’s ready to burst out onto the paper/screen. Sometimes if I’m lucky, the story that jumps out is intact. If this is the case, I usually show it to one or two critique partners then send it off to my agent for notes. This process can take as little as a few days to a week, before the manuscript is ready to go on submission. Recently I had a conversation with a writer at a retreat who adamantly stated that they hated writers who brought their untouched first draft to critique sessions without having reworked it several times first. Clearly, they have a different process and didn’t take into account the time the story spent in my head before it poured out in one attempt. Time is irrelevant during the creative process. There is no right or wrong. There is only what is right for the writer/artist in their authentic process.
Time plays a part in the querying process. This can be excruciatingly long and is often not fruitful. I have manuscripts that have been on submission to various editors for a few years. Sometimes we get feedback/rejections within the first couple of weeks and sometimes the submission process drags on. For an author there seems to be no rhyme nor reason. I am often amazed at the randomness of it all and rejection is an agreed upon part of this lifestyle.
The question of time also comes into play in the actual production of the book after the manuscript is sold. I believe the norm is 2 years for a picture book. The manuscript for Hello, Little One was sold in 2018 and the publishing date was in 2020. The manuscript for Egyptian Lullaby was sold in 2018 but the publishing date was not until 2023. Sometimes the length of time changes according to the availability of the illustrator. Generally speaking, the production time of the books is more predictable than the creative time of the author before the sale.
Process over product cannot be measured by time.
By Zeena M. Pliska
author of
Hello, Little One: A Monarch Butterfly Story
Egyptian Lullaby
Chicken Soup For the Soul For Babies - Say Thank You? (But Why?)
Chicken Soup For the Soul For Babies - A Gift For Me? (I Want It!)
