Some Thoughts On Writing That I Can't Keep To Myself

I was just reading the most recent post at Storyglossia and Steven, who I think I will start referring to as The Storyglossia Guy because I don't actually know him, said something so interesting. Perhaps, like myself, you've always heard that writers should show and not tell? Well, The Storyglossia Guy explains why. It robs readers of the opportunity to interpret the story themselves. You're robbed of your Aha! Moment.

Perhaps, like myself, you have also always heard that stories have great significance for mankind. We're into stories. Well, Storyglossia Guy explains that, too. "In life we tell stories to make sense of and to cope with our experiences."

I suspect that this is one of those really obvious things I should have interpreted for myself but, instead, had to be told. I tend to be that way.

This totally explains some stuff Philip Pullman said in last year's New Yorker article about what can be learned from reading fiction. If fiction writers tell stories to make sense of and cope with experience, then, yes, we ought to be able to learn something from what they have to say. In theory, anyway.

Poetry Friday

Some of the other kidlit blogs are doing poetry Fridays. Though I have made some feeble attempts to read poetry and even to write it, my knowledge of it remains very limited. So today I will tell a poetry story instead of publishing a poem.

When I was in college, I worked three summers in the kitchen at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. (Forgive me if I've told this story before, by the way.) The kitchen staff could attend all the public events at the conference because once we were out of our uniforms and in our cutoffs and tee-shirts, it was hard to tell us from the younger writers. One night while dinner was being served, the waiters (who were writers on work/study, so to speak) came through the kitchen all excited. "Anne Sexton is here! Anne Sexton is here!" they kept saying. She had come to visit her friend, Maxine Kumin.

I would have been really excited about this, too, if I had a clue who either of these people were.

So, that evening, instead of going to hear Anne Sexton give a reading or a lecture or something in the lovely little theater on that mountain campus, I went to the pond to go skinnying with my girlfriends from the kitchen. Keep in mind, folks, at that point in my life, I didn't know how to swim. I was sort of skinnywading.

This was probably in the summer of '73. A little more than a year later, Anne Sexton would give her last reading.

This story must have some meaning, though I'm not sure what it is. Perhaps something about me never being quite in step with the rest of the literary world.

(Thanks to Blog of a Bookslut for the link.)

One last poetry note: Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy posted two poems today that I absolutely loved when I was a teenager. I think I copied them over once. I don't know what the heck I thought I was going to do with them.

What's Happening in the New Horn Book

The March/April The Horn Book carries a couple of articles on graphic novels. I particularly liked Graphic Novels 101 by Robin Brenner, who edits three websites that review graphic novels.

Judith Ridge from The Misrule Blog also has an article in this issue.

Here's something I found particularly interesting: The last issue carried an...unflattering...review of Louis Sachar's Small Steps. This issue carries a full-page ad for the book!

Let's look at reviews:

Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof) has a new book, The Queen of Cool.

Someone from Readerville told me about Catherine Fisher, so I noticed the review of her fantasy Darkhenge.

I'd never heard of Simon Mason or The Quigleys but the review of his new book The Quigleys in a Spin sounds very good.

Megan Whalen Turner's The King of Attoila received a starred review. I loved the first book in this series and am looking forward to this one, the third.

Happy Birthday, Bev

Newsweek has a nice article this week on Beverly Cleary who will be turning 90 this month. I didn't discover Cleary's work until I was an adult, and I can't say it particularly grabbed me. I do have to hand it to her, though--I had young relatives who loved her Ramona books. And they were young male relatives. Conventional wisdom claims that boys won't read books about girls. Not so when Cleary wrote them.

I also respect that Cleary has no plans to do any more writing. She says it's important to know when to stop. I plan to write so long as I can sit up in front of a word processor. But I worry that she may very well be correct. I'd hate to be writing past the point where I have anything of value to say. Or anything entertaining to say. Or anything coherent to say.

Oh, what am I thinking? With the genes I've inherited, I'll be dead long before that happens.

Thanks to About Children's Books for the link.

This Doesn't Sound All That Bad To Me

I have a family member who reads U.S. News & World Report. He passed on to me the March 13 issue with a cover story called Books Gone Wild!!! Some points I found particularly interesting:

Remember the 2004 NEA report Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America? The report said that fewer than half of American adults read "literature," meaning fiction or poetry? People 18 to 24 are down almost 30 percent in their literary reading over a twenty-year period? Is it coming back to you? Well, in the U.S. News article the president of the Association of American Publishers suggests that some of those readers have just shifted from literature to nonfiction. The NEA report is called "A Survey of Literary Reading in America" remember. Did it do any surveying of nonfiction reading?

And the vice president for new media at Random House says, "People are reading more than ever--screen-based reading, on mobile phone, BlackBerrys, computer screens, reading blogs, and gathering information on the Web. As a publishing industry we need to provide products that meet the needs of this digital, Internet-savvy generation."

Meaning that when it becomes easy read fiction in a screen-based manner, people may start reading it again.

The business about people not reading fiction is certainly bad news for people like myself who write it. But it clearly doesn't mean that people aren't reading at all. We're not talking about the fall of western civ. here.

Another interesting point:

That NEA report came out in 2004. Book sales actually went up in 2005. Okay, the top 200 bestsellers accounted for about ten percent of sales. And many of the other sales may have been due to nonfiction purchases. But even taking all that into consideration, I think it shows we're still a nation of readers.

I Thought So, Too

Yesterday Camille at Book Moot began a "gotta have" list for what she calls her "virtual" school library. The list included The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, which I just happened to have read a week or so ago. As I was reading it, I kept thinking it belonged in classroom and school libraries, too.


The book might be considered a kid version of Neil Gaiman's American Gods in that it sets up a world in which the gods of the past are real and have a very definite presence here in the good old U.S. of A. It's also a buddy/journey story since our hero, a twelve-year-old boy of mysterious birth who learns he's the son of a god, has to make his way across the country on a quest. And then I'm sure there are those who are going to compare it to Harry Potter because of the summer camp for demi-gods that no one knows about and the two buddies, one of whom is a girl much feistier than poor Hermione ever dreamed of being.

I have a vague recollection of enjoying Greek mythology back when I was in junior high school, though I can't say it's a big interest now. I think this book would be a great supplement to an English curriculum that included mythology. It would be a treat for the kids who like the subject (as I used to) and would enjoy this fantasy about gods in their own time. It might also make mythology more palatable for kids who don't like the subject (closer to my feelings now).

I recognized a couple of the kids' stops on their cross-country trip as being updated scenes from The Odyssey. I suspect (though I may be wrong) that if I remembered more about that book, I would have recognized more.

I've noticed that a number of the adventure stories I've read these last few months involve kids right around twelve-years-old. I often have trouble believing twelve-year-olds can pull off the stunts these kids are asked to pull off in these books. Oddly enough, I didn't have any trouble believing Percy could fight gods and furies. He was the son of a god, after all. What I found difficult to buy was that these poor kids could manage traveling across country with so little money.

Rick Riordan taught middle school for fifteen years. A quick look at his blog Myth & Mystery suggests he's still interested in education.

More About Me, Me, Me

I received a very nice rejection e-mail today. I had sent an essay to a magazine directed toward writers. The essay was about my experiences with self-promotion and my gut feeling that I never know whether spending time on marketing does any good, that perhaps I'd be better off just doing more writing. (You guys have heard all this from me before.)

Well, the essay was turned down. But the editor said that given my background in children’s writing, he'd be willing to look at queries related to that area, especially on topics that could be discussed in a how-to format. And he also attached some guidelines.

Now, he's assuming I know "how-to" something, which is probably not the case. Nonetheless, I thought it was a painless rejection.

Did I Have A Good Day? I Can't Tell

Today was a mixed bag. I finished revising the talk I'm going to give this Saturday at an American Association of University Women luncheon. I worked on it at least a couple of days last week (not all day, of course, because there's absolutely nothing that I do for an entire day, and I like it much better than the script I used last year. Now I just have to practice reading it for the rest of the week. I read a short story that Stephen J. McDermott blogged about at Storyglossia. That blog is turning out to be fantastic. I also reread A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor because we're doing this impromptu short story discussion at Readerville. And I caught up with A Novel in a Year and got a great idea for the setting of that book.

So that seems as if I had a good day. Even if I didn't accomplish a lot of writing, the reading ought to be improving in some way, right? It's important to study, isn't it?

Then I made two phone calls to bookstores I had already contacted to see if I could arrange author appearances to support Happy Kid! when it comes out in May. I hate doing store appearances, and I don't believe they do a whole lot of good. I just want to have a couple because I think an author has a better chance of getting newspaper coverage if she's making an appearance in the area. That sort of makes it news whereas evidently newspapers think the mere fact that you're having a book published is something else.

Well, neither store is ready to make a commitment. I think one of them isn't going to, and if the other store comes across I'll never contact the first one again. But in the meantime, I am not enjoying this.

But then my editor sent me a copy of the cover for Happy Kid!, so that was nice.

Fay Who?

I've been all excited for a week or two because Fay Weldon is supposed to be coming to UConn. I contacted my nephew about this because he attends the school and works in the Coop. Surely, I thought, I would need a ticket to get into a Fay Weldon event. My young relative said he'd heard nothing about Fay Weldon coming to campus and didn't think anyone knew who she was.

Because I'm a witch (or something that sounds like one), I feel a little better about my bookstore problems because of that story. And it suggests I shouldn't have any trouble getting in to see her.

Fay Weldon has written children's books, though I have yet to read any of them.

Reading Lists

In It's a Tale of Two Approaches, high school reading lists are hit by some for not being demanding enough. I assume by high school reading lists, they mean the pool of books that teachers choose from when planning what they'll cover for the year and not summer reading lists.

Man do I hate summer reading lists.

But, back to the article in question: Some of the people quoted felt a diet of demanding classics is necessary in order to teach students how to think and prepare them for college. Learning how to think is good, of course. And a knowledge of our our culture's literature enriches life. But beyond that I begin to feel a lot of ambiguity. Who decides what is a classic? Yesterday I called The Count of Monte Cristo a classic, but I've got a feeling it's just escapist fluff to some of the people who want kids to be reading Camus. While I'm a big fan of Jane Eyre and think it's worthy of study at some point in life because it was a model for so many books that followed it, it really is basically a romance. Is that a classic that kids absolutely need to be exposed to in order to move on in life?

It's also hard for me to get behind a steady diet of the classics because that means abandoning YA, and I think young people need YA. A steady diet of classics will pretty much mean reading about people who are not at all like the high school students doing the reading. I know I sure didn't feel a whole lot of connection with ol' Huck Finn when I read him in high school, even though he was my age or younger. And I got far, far more out of Romeo and Juliet when I reread it a few years ago than I ever did when I was a teenager.

What does being told year after year that great literature is literature that has nothing to do with you have to say about the status of the young?

Well, it probably says boat loads, actually.

Thanks to Blog of a Bookslut for that link.

And Another Reason For The Young To Read Classics

I went to see V for Vendetta last night. Thank goodness I had the foresight to read The Count of Monte Cristo when I was a teenager, because there were many, many references to it in the movie. In fact, I think an argument could be made that V for Vendetta is a very violent, bloody updating of the story.

So young'uns, when you find yourselves with a lot of time on your hands because you can't get into R-rated movies, use some of it to educate yourself on the classics. Once you reach the age of seventeen, you'll enjoy sexy and/or violent movies so very much more because you'll understand all the literary references.

School Library Journal, by the way, described the original V for Vendetta graphic novel as being appropriate for grades 9 and up.


Oddly enough, I haven't seen any reviews that mention Monte Cristo. Does that mean absolutely no one else has read the book or noticed that aspect of the movie?

It's That Time Again

Yes, boys and girls, the first week of April is coming up soon, and that means Buy A Friend A Book Week is almost here.

I know I'm supposed to buy a friend a book for no good reason, but I'm using the next Buy a Friend a Book Week as an excuse to contact a friend I haven't seen much of lately. That's cheating, I suppose, but I'll still be buying a book.

I'm not sure, but it looks to me as if the Buy a Friend a Book site has yet to recommend a children's or YA book for purchase during BYAB. So I will recommend the books I've purchased for BYAB over the past half year: Whales on Stilts by M. T. Anderson and Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins.

This time around I think I might buy A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb.

Yes, I Did It

This morning I did three repetitions of circuit training while listening to The Guardian's conversation with Kazuro Ishiguro, author of the Alex Award winning Never Let Me Go.

For those of you who aren't up to lifting weights for thirty-nine minutes while listening to this interview, here are a few interesting points:

1. Ishiguro made three attempts to write the book over a period of nine years. That was music to this writer's ears.

2. Many readers feel the book has a mystery element. The author finds this surprising.

3. Many readers wonder why the characters in the book didn't make an effort to avoid their fate. I wondered about that, too. Especially since we see the characters grow through adolescence, a period when people reject a whole lot less benign things. Ishiguro said he didn't want to write a book that was a metaphor for slavery, which he was afraid would be the result of a revolt on the part of his characters. In addition, the characters' fate is a fate that comes to everyone at some point. Everyone else accepts it. (More or less, actually.) And, finally, Ishiguro said he doesn't think an author needs to explain why to everything. Some situations can just be presented as accepted by the characters in the world the author has created.

Myself, I'm a big why person. I have to address why in any book I write. However, Never Let Me Go is so good, I was able to accept the situation as the author presented it.

A Bog is Not a Web Site

The most recent SCBWI Bulletin includes an article called Blogging: What, Why & How For Writers by Michele Regenold. While Ms. Regenold is right that blogs are great places for unpublished writers to actually do some writing, she also suggests that published writers can use them to tell visitors about "a writer's work, upcoming events, a writer's thoughts on his or her own work, etc."

I've noticed some writers using blogs or livejournals instead of web sites recently, so Regenold is reporting on something that is actually happening. I think using a blog in that way, though, is a major mistake. A traditional web site communicates that kind of information much, much better and faster than a blog.

The reason an author wants a presence on the web is to do just what Regenold talks about in her article. Visitors to author web sites are looking for information. Is this the Gail Gauthier who wrote Saving the Planet & Stuff or some other Gail Gauthier? What's the book about? Has she written anything else I'd be interested in? Has she written anything that's available on the Internet, and are there links to it here?

Assuming any of that information were available in my blog, a reader would have to hunt through hundreds of posts looking for it. And no reader would do that. If the visitor leaves without getting the information she was looking for, I may have very well lost a reader for my book(s).

At a web site, however, (at least at a good one) that information should be laid out in an orderly way so that readers can find what they're looking for quickly. There are masses of things competing for their attention. If they can't find what they need right away, they are completely justified in giving up and doing something else.

It's all about communication. If you have information you really need to get out to people, you want to present the information in such a way that they actually can get it. If I tell you guys about something here in my blog that I really need people to hear about, I repeat it on the homepage to my web site where they can find it immediately.

One way to keep clear the difference between and functions of web sites and blogs: A web site is about fact. A web log is about opinion.

I Wish I Could Find Time For This

You can listen to a live discussion with Kazuo Ishiguro thanks to the English publication The Guardian. Ishiguro's marvelous book Never Let Me Go was one of this year's Alex Award winners. The Alex Awards are given each year to ten adult books that appeal to teen readers.

Unfortunately, the conversation is thirty-nine minutes long, and that's a long time to sit next to my computer staring into space. Unless, of course, I were to take up knitting or rocking small children while sitting here in the office. No! Wait! I just had a brilliant idea! I'll listen to it tomorrow morning while I'm doing weight work!

Ha! Now you know what I'll be writing about tomorrow.

Thanks to Blog of a Bookslut for that link.

I Missed This The First Time Around

Tiff at BSC Headquarters is rereading The Baby-sitters Club series, which she says she loved growing up. No info on how old she is now.

I'm wondering if, after I read The Gossip Clique or The Gossip List or The A-Clique or whatever those books are I have waiting for me upstairs, I should read a volume from Baby-sitters Club? Maybe one series led to another? Maybe there's some connection beyond the fact that they are girl-oriented books that Gail has never read?

Thanks to Blog of a Bookslut for that link, too.

Now I Wish I Knew More About Fantasy

While I was traveling last week, I listened to the audio version of Septimus Heap: Magyk by Angie Sage. I enjoyed the experience a great deal, even though the book had a number of similiarities to that other book series about a boy wizard.

This wizard child, too, has been separated from his family. His family is a lot like the Weasleys, large with nice parents who aren't terribly successful. There's also an older uber-wizard like whatzzisname in Potter.

However, he's a ghost in Magyk. That really limits his ability to save the day. In fact, at an important point the main characters ignore his instructions (for a logical reason) and a climactic scene takes place without his influence.

This wizard world is also complete all by itself. There's no contemporary human world in this book, the way there is in Harry Potter. It's all wizard, all the time. The adult characters are much more sophisticated here, too. Septimus' family is not at all dysfunctional, either, even though they did lose him for a while. Ten years, in fact. And the characters don't lie in order to move the plot along.

Though I don't read a lot of fantasy, I've always felt the Potter books weren't particularly unique. The wizard school thing seemed familiar, and certainly the three friends on an adventure wasn't anything new. I don't know whether Magyk has been created in Harry's image or if both books are part of some fantasy genre I'm not familiar with.

Magyk, like Golden & Grey, which I talked about yesterday, is also filled with the marvelous detail we see in J. K. Rowling. I thought innovative detail was something unique to Rowling, but now that I've read Angie Sage, Louise Arnold, and, a few months back, Terry Pratchett, I see that a lot of writers are able to do this complete fantasy world thing and do it very well.

Which just leaves me wondering how Harry Potter fits into the fantasy world.

Look What I Found

This has absolutely nothing to do with children's literature, but today while I was wandering around on-line, instead of working, I found the Storyglossia weblog, which is connected to the Storyglossia Literary Journal. What's interesting about this weblog is that the blogger, Steven J. McDermott, does "book and short story reviews with a particular emphasis on the craft of short story writing." He links to stories published on-line and then discusses them.

Now, I don't know how good his commentary is, having just found the blog a few hours ago, but I'll be checking him out for a while. It seems like a good opportunity for someone interested in reading short stories and/or writing them.

The Edge of the Forest

The new issue of The Edge of the Forest is up and features an interview with yours truly.

The Edge of the Forest is going to include a feature called Kid Picks, which I appreciate. I'm always droning on about how kids don't often get an opportunity to have any say in kid literature--they don't write it, edit it, or review it, and have no part in making library and classroom selections. It looks as if once a month a group of kids will get a chance to be heard at The Edge of the Forest, at least.

Readerville Authors

I've got a little news about two authors from the Readerville community. I just learned that YA author Rosemary Graham has started a blog. And Anne Ursu received a very good review for The Shadow Thieves in the new Horn Book.

Has Gail Been Reading Anything Lately?

Yes, she has. Not too long ago I read
Golden & Grey by Louise Arnold.

I number of years back I read a ghost story to some young relatives. I swear, I thought it was going to be a neat, fun experience. However, the child ghost involved had died some kind of horrible death, and there was lots of talk about decomposition.

One of the kids I was reading to has never recovered.

If only Golden & Grey had been around back then. This ghost story brings fun back to the idea of ghosts, in large part because ghosts aren't spirits of the dead. They are just...ghosts. So there's absolutely no boo-hoo factor at all. At least as part as the dead are concerned.

Tom Golden is a very unhappy child who seemed to have had a good life going for him until his family moved, and he started being tormented at his new school. Grey Arthur is a ghost with no job description. All the other ghosts have specific jobs, like poltergeist, for instance. Grey Arthur doesn't have much in the way of skills. He's kind of depressed and directionless.

Unhappy child. Unhappy ghost. They were made for each other. Grey Arthur creates a job for himself--invisible friend to Tom Golden. When Tom is the victim of an accident that leaves him able to see Arthur, things get even better. Or worse, depending on how you look at it.

This book has the wonderful detail that I've always thought is J. K. Rowling's greatest strength. And lo and behold, Arnold was discovered in a BBC contest looking for the next J. K. Rowling. (Though Arnold says she's never read any of the Potter books--she's seen the movies.)

Instead of murky plots involving good and evil, though, Golden & Grey focuses very intently on a child-centered situation. Tom is miserable at school. Hey, lots of kids are miserable at school. Lots of kids would love an invisible friend to help them get through their days.

I thought the book slowed down when an adult bad-guy entered the picture, though I don't know if child readers would be bothered. Otherwise, this was a very enjoyable read. And I'm not even bothered much by school these days.

If you go to Amazon.com and check out the reviews for Golden & Grey, you'll see that School Library Journal really did not care for it at all. At last! A book I liked that other reviewers didn't!