Sendak Exhibit Comes To Connecticut

A touring Maurice Sendak Memorial Exhibition hits Connecticut this weekend. This is the fourth children's literature event planned for the weekend of November 9th, which is either brilliant planning or a really impressive lack of communication.

"Maurice Sendak" opens on Saturday at my favorite Connecticut museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art. It continues through February 9th.

Related events:

• Mon., Nov. 11, A Family Day developed around the exhibit will be held from 11 AM to 3 PM
• Wed., Nov. 2o, "Dr. Seuss and Mr. Sendak," a talk geared toward adults, will take place at 1 PM

An exciting event for Picture Book Month, though I'll probably have to wait until after Christmas to get there.

Science Fiction For The Picture Book Set

What Do We All Do All Day carried a neat post on science fiction picture books back in August. My favorite, and not just because it's the only book on the list that I've read, is Company's Coming by Arthur Yorinks with illustrations by David Small.

I read Company's Coming to my sons the day before I got the idea for my first book, My Life Among the Aliens. It was the jumping off point for that book.

Writing Students And Nonacademic Jobs

Several years ago I read an article on the two writing worlds, one that is focused around traditional publishing and one that is focused around academic publishing. (This was before the self-published entrepreneurial e-writer appeared on the scene. That seems to me to be a third writing world.) According to this article, traditional publishing involved publishing in order to support a writing career, and academic publishing involved publishing to support a teaching career.

Erika Dreifus has a piece today on the chances of a writer with a graduate education finding a tenure-track university position. (Imagine an expression of shock here.)

In addition to the information she covers from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, Dreifus adds this "...unlike other disciplines, creative writing essentially mandates that a new assistant professor bring a published book to the table as a job applicant; moreover, it can take a very long time to see one’s first book published." (Imagine another expression of shock.)

On a more positive note, she suggests taking "a broad view of “nonacademic jobs” and search more diligently for writing-intensive jobs in universities, publishing houses, cultural organizations, and so forth (not to mention non-writing jobs, such as accountancy positions, within writing organizations and centers)..."

An Illustrator Talks About Voice

Facebook Friend Hazel Mitchell recently did an interesting guest post at Cynsations. She wrote about illustrators finding their style and at one point used the word "voice," something writers look for.

Hazel also mentioned having been in the Royal Navy. There's something I don't see every day.

Time Management Tuesday: What Can You Do With A Month?

This is National Novel Writing Month, which I'm not taking part in this year, though I did back in 2004 when I said...wait for it...wait for it..." I see this as an opportunity to force me to structure my time better." (I'm telling you, the time thing has always hung over my head.) However, I did just finish a month-long writing unit with the May Day folks. I didn't finish a novel during that time, though we don't try to in that group. We try to use these month long "set asides," as I sometimes call them, to generate some work or do something specific.

The Original Plan

As I'm sure you all recall, I planned to do four things:

1. Sprint at least five days a week
2. Generate two pages of material as many days of the week as possible
3. Allow the two pages of new material to include new scene planning, if need be
4. Learn to do what I'm going to call skim writing, meaning I'm going to try not to stop to get obsessive about perfecting factual bits, names, etc. I want to leave ______ or bold placeholders, which I hope will help me move ahead generating material that will provide the solutions for those blank spaces and placeholders that I can then go back and correct. I get bogged down much, much too often with those types of things for my taste.

That may have been too many objectives for a one-month writing goal, but I did pretty well with the first two, and made an effort, at least, with the third and fourth ones.

The Best Results

1. Sprinting, or doing a quick, intense writing session, has been great, and I'm hoping it is becoming part of my writing process. I've been doing a twenty minute sprint in the midst of my workout period because I've been walking outside for a half an hour after whatever else I do in the morning. The sprint comes before the walk, and walking after the sprint can often lead to breakout experiences related to the work done during the sprint. Just this morning, for example, I realized while out in the street that I needed to change the house one of my main characters lives in in order to make it do more to define him.
2. I started a new book, which I haven't done in a year or so. I'm three and a half chapters in as a result of the October set aside, and didn't get further, even though I'd started before October, because a lot of my new work involved rewriting chapters one and two.

What Next?

 I can't continue working on this project several hours a day because I'm preparing to attend a master class retreat in less than two weeks, and that involves another, completed novel that I need to bring myself back up to speed on. But part of what you gain from working intently on a writing project, as we did last month, is the involvement with the world of the book. That's particularly important for organic writers like myself who don't have a plot outline to anchor us and bring us back to that world, if we've been away. Even with an overall, big picture idea of what's going to happen, a lot of our plot evolves as we're working, as we're deeply into the project. Walk away and when you come back you'll find yourself having to make a big effort to figure out where you were going with this thing.

What I'm trying to do to prevent that is continue with those sprints. I'm doing what I call "mummy sprints" (the book was originally about a mummy; not so much now) as many days of the week as I can. No, I'm not suggesting I'm going to write a book in twenty minutes a day, though I imagine a person far more patient than I am could. What I'm hoping to do is to stay in this project mentally so that when I can get back to it, maybe at the end of this month, I can simply continue working.

And, yes, I should have finished chapter four by then.

Regarding NaNoWriMo

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, as I was in my first sentence, oddly enough, I got some ideas just this past Saturday for my 2004 NaNoWriMo project, which I've barely touched since then. I'm trying to get some notes down on that.

And Facebook Friend Kimberly Sabatini is doing NaNoWriMo this year and has shared a little news of how she's doing. I'm hoping to hear more about how she's using this time.

 

But Where Was Bess?

When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I was a big fan of The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. No idea how I stumbled upon that in one of my one-room schools. I was on Team Bess. I remember next to nothing about the highwayman, except, of course, that he came "riding--riding...up to the old inn door." "Bess, the landlord’s daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair" was so clearly the hero of this thing.

Many years later, I would read a critique that suggested that The Highwayman wasn't high art. I was stunned, stunned I tell you.

You can understand, therefore, what drew me to The Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson with illustrations by Axel Scheffler. Get it? Highwayman? Highway Rat? The book is about a...well, highway rat...who rides a horse and steals food. The story is told in verse with some of the same style as The Highwayman. "I am the Rat of the Highway, The Highway--the Highway..."

There's no Bess, though. There's no romance for junior high readers to get excited about. Yes, that's probably because this is a picture book for much younger children.

If you want to overthink this, and I do, The Highway Rat is quite a deep book. Highwaymen were thieves and murderers, not romantic heroes. The rodent highway rat is probably more true to life in that sense than the human highwayman of the poem.

November Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar Update: Not Your Mother's Road to Publication

I missed this event while pulling together this month's Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar. This post should turn up when accessed through the Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar link to your left.

Nov. 16, 1:30 to 3:30, Not Your Mother's Road to Publication: Hear a panel of authors discuss the traditional and non-traditional routes they took to get published. Moderator Laura Toffler-Corrie, author of The Life and Opinions of Amy Finawitz and the newly released, My Totally Awkward Supernatural Crush, will discuss traditional publishing and obtaining an agent. Sari Bodi, author of The Ghost in Allie’s Pool, will talk about working with a small press. Mary Beth Bass, author of Everything You Know, will discuss publishing an e-book. Elizabeth Yu-Gesualdi, author of Broken Road, will talk about the self-publication process. For teens and adults.

Event will take place at the Harry Bennett Library in Stamford

As it turns out, I met Sari Bodi years ago at the Rabbit Hill Festival. That was back when there still was a Rabbit Hill Festival. Sari is part of the ever increasing pool of people with whom I've had lunch.

Some Changes In The World Of Picture Books

A slide show from Penguin Random House.

Thanks to Cynsations.

The Weekend Writer: Picture Book Edition

I have made two attempts at writing a picture book. The first time, the editor I submitted it to said the humor was more appropriate for middle grade students, suggested I rewrite and resubmit it. That became my first book, My Life Among the Aliens. When I tried again, a writing group partner suggested that effort would work better as a chapter book. My editor agreed with her. That evolved into A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat.

My take away from these two experiences is that not every idea is appropriate for a picture book. Unfortunately, I've got nothing on what exactly is a workable picture book idea.

I have another take away on picture books from a teacher's conference I attended in 1999. Cecilia Yung explained that the pictures in picture books don't just illustrate text. They actually carry part of the story themselves. Things like setting, characters' emotions, some action don't appear in the text. They appear in the illustration. A reader takes in the whole story at once through text and image. The illustrations in a picture book can even have their own storyline.

This was kind of mind boggling to me. It's one thing for author/illustrators to create a picture because they can work both aspects of the story at the same time. But how do writers working on their own create a story that doesn't include large amounts of the information that goes into the illustrations but isn't so bare bones that agents and editors don't find it uninteresting?

Clearly, I've never been able to work that out.

November Is Picture Book Month

Okay, people, Octoberfest is over and Picture Book Month begins today. No, I'm not a picture book writer, but I enjoy a picture book as much as the next person. Plus we have family members who are into them. So Original Content is supporting Picture Book Month with links to articles, blog posts, and the like on the subject, as well as my own reader responses to picture books.

Today I'm directing to you to the article Persons of Interest: The Untold Rewards of Picture Book Biographies by Barbara Bader, which was published in the September/October issue of The Horn Book. I tend to obsess about definitions and to me a "biography" has always been the story of a whole life. So what's with calling these nonfiction picture books that can't possibly cover decades "biographies?"After reading Bader's article, I'd have to say that these bits and pieces or flash overviews of lives are biographies because all lives are made up of a whole array of stories, not just one lengthy one. As Bader says, "Why one picture book biography after another about the same person?...Because, especially in picture-book form, it's always possible to tell a different story, to express different feelings."

A story is the point here. We're not looking for the story.