I teach middle school, first and foremost, because I love kids that age and love sharing books and writing with them. Reason #2? Probably the field trips. I have never quite gotten over that feeling I used to get in second grade when I’d arrive at school, see the yellow buses waiting outside, and know that we were leaving. Walking right out of the building to go to an official interesting place.
My seventh graders and I went to one of those places on the Burlington, VT waterfront today. We took a trip on the University of Vermont’s research vessel, the Melosira. If you teach and live within striking distance, I highly recommend this trip. My group started the day with some activities in the lab, then ate lunch and climbed on board for a variety of lake-science activities.
Our guides used this special net to collect plankton samples for examination under the boat’s two dissecting microscopes.
This post is part of a year-long series of blog interviews I’ll be hosting with my fellow 2009 Debut Authors, called "How They Got Here."
It should be an especially helpful series for teens who write, teachers, and anyone who wants to write for kids. 2009 debut authors will be dropping by to talk about how their writing in school shaped the authors they are today, what teachers can do to make a difference, how they revise, and how they found their agents and editors. (You’ll even be able to read some successful query letters!) If you know a teacher or two who might be interested, please share the link!
Today…Leigh Brescia, author of ONE WISH! If Wrenn Scott had only ONE WISH she’d wish to be thin. She desperately wants to be popular and snag a hot boyfriend. Her amazing voice (for once) overshadows her weight when she lands a lead role in the high school musical. Pushing to get thinner by opening night, Wrenn’s waistline shrinks as she learns all the wrong ways to lose weight from a new "it-girl" friend in the show. By opening night, the old Wrenn has almost disappeared. After a crisis reveals her weight-loss tricks, Wrenn realizes there are much more important things than being thin, popular, or even dating a hunk.
Welcome, Leigh! Tell us about the first thing you ever wrote that made you think maybe you were a writer.
My mom signed me up for a poetry class at the local library when I was in the sixth grade. I wrote a poem about my cats Tiny and Tiffy, and my teacher loved it. I thought: “All right! I can do this.” I can still quote the poem. 🙂
What books did you love when you were a kid?
My mom read to me a lot when I was younger, and I participated in the summer library reading program (you know: read 100 books and get a medal/trophy/certificate), but I remember devouring Sweet Valley Twins and Babysitters Club books. I couldn’t get enough of them.
Is there a particular teacher or librarian who was a mentor for you in your reading and writing life?
Not particularly. All of my English teachers/professors impacted me in some way. I thank a number of them in the acknowledgements section of One Wish. I figured I should thank them all at once, in case I never publish another book. 🙂
Moving on to the here and now, most writers admit that making time to write can sometimes be a challenge. When and where do you write? Do you have any special rituals? Music? Food & beverages?
Because I teach online English courses, I usually write at night. My mid-morning to dinner hours I devote to grading papers and answering student emails. I do my serious writing when my little girl is in bed. And yes, there are rituals: I must have a glass of milk (and some kind of snack: chocolate, ice cream, cookies, etc.). I listen to music depending on my mood. Do you have a favorite strategy for revision?
I try to edit as I go. Before I begin writing I’ll re-read the chapter/content I wrote the night before. After I finish the ms, I usually go back and re-read it twice on the computer. Then I print it and break out the red pen. I usually print and edit the ms 3-5 times before I think my agent is ready to see it.
What’s your best advice for young writers?
Read a lot of good books, and keep practicing. Don’t give up! Not everyone will understand why you want to be a writer, but if it’s meant to be you’ll make it happen.
What’s special about your debut novel?
I think a lot of teen girls will relate to Wrenn. I wasn’t overweight in high school, but I had many of the same thoughts and fears. Everyone wants to be accepted.
What were the best and worst parts of writing it?
This was the second book I officially wrote, and I think the best part, as I was writing, was knowing that I had the strength to finish it. When I was writing my first ms, I was so concerned about word count that I couldn’t focus on the story. Since I’d already proven that I could finish a book-length ms, I was able to focus more on plot and character development. How did you find your agent and/or editor?
After I finished the ms, I bought a copy of Writer’s Market 2004 and started querying the agents who represented YA writers.
I spent my Children’s Book Week Wednesday at an extra-special school visit. All this month, the kids at Peru Intermediate School are reading my Lake Champlain historical novels, Spitfire and Champlain and the Silent One with their teachers, while they read other books at home to work toward meeting personal reading goals for the month. Today, I gave presentations to the third, fourth, and fifth grade classes.
Here are some very enthusiastic third graders.
The kids all had terrific questions, and when I left the presentation area, I found a surprise…
Hallways with beautiful student artwork, inspired by Spitfire and Champlain and the Silent One! This is one of the things they don’t tell you about when you are about to have a book published…how some day, you’ll be walking down a school hallway and see the scenes you wrote brought to life in color by amazing young artists. This has happened to me a few times now, and every time, I fight back tears. (Good ones… so thanks, Peru kids!)
This illustration shows a scene where some of the members of Silent One’s tribe are sick from eating flesh from an old pig carcass they found at the French settlement. My favorite part? Silent One’s speech bubble… "I told you not to eat the meat."
After my two morning presentations, it was time for a luncheon in the library, where I ate cookies, talked with kids about their favorite books, and signed lunch napkins and books (most that I had written and one that I didn’t, but its owner insisted that I sign anyway). Really, lunch time doesn’t get much better than that.
I’m looking forward to one more visit to Peru Intermediate at the end of this month, when we’ll be celebrating meeting our reading goals and giving away books. For now…it’s time for me curl up with tonight’s reading. I still have three more books in my pile to reach my goal!
Shelly Burns, over at Write for a Reader, asked me to answer a few interview questions to help her celebrate Children’s Book Week on her blog, and she’s giving away an advance reader copy of THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z.
To enter her drawing, just read her blog post and leave a comment. She’s offering extra entries to folks who post or tweet about the contest, too.
This post is part of a year-long series of blog interviews I’ll be hosting with my fellow 2009 Debut Authors, called "How They Got Here."
It should be an especially helpful series for teens who write, teachers, and anyone who wants to write for kids. 2009 debut authors will be dropping by to talk about how their writing in school shaped the authors they are today, what teachers can do to make a difference, how they revise, and how they found their agents and editors. (You’ll even be able to read some successful query letters!) If you know a teacher or two who might be interested, please share the link!
Today…Deva Fagan, author of FORTUNE’S FOLLY! I had the good fortune (no pun intended) to read an early copy of Deva’s book, and I SO wish this book had been around when I was ten years old. FORTUNE’S FOLLY is the kind of book that made me a reader — the kind of book I would have disappeared with into my room for hours on end, until I knew everything would be okay, because these characters from another time and place feel so very, very real.
Thankfully, I haven’t grown up all that much. I still love stories like this, and most of all, reading this ARC, I was excited for my students and my daughter because they’re just going to love Fortunata, a heroine who doesn’t wait around waiting to get saved. This book has an enchanting romance, to be sure, but in no way does Fortunata compromise her sense of self or forget where she came from. In fact, she’s the one who does the rescuing, with bravery, cleverness, humor, and pure will that will leave kids cheering.
Welcome, Deva! Tell us about the first thing you ever wrote that made you think maybe you were a writer.
When I was in the fourth grade we did a unit on mythology, and had to come up with our own myths. I wrote a story about a bard who gives his lyre to a toothless whale so it can strain the krill from the ocean and get enough food to eat (thus bringing baleen into the world). What was even better, though, was that our teacher printed up a collection of stories, poems, essays and book reviews from everyone in the class (including my whale myth) and then we bound them into little books. I was so excited to have a story in a "real book"!
What books did you love when you were a kid?
I particularly loved (and still love!) L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House books, the Mrs Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald, the All-of-a-Kind Family books by Sidney Taylor, the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffery, The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, C.S.Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Dogsbody and Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones, So You Want to be a Wizard? and Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane, and The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce.
Is there a particular teacher or librarian who was a mentor for you in your reading and writing life?
When I was in High School, we had this excellent program in which some of us got matched up with students from nearby Princeton University, who served as mentors for whatever field we were interested. I worked with a young woman named Cara Garofalo, who was studying creative writing and English. She (very very kindly, I recognize in retrospect) encouraged me on my first novel (which is horrible, full of purple prose and a girl with silver eyes and an anti-hero who looked like my favorite pop star at the time). She also introduced me to the wonderful musical Into The Woods, which was really inspiring. And just going to visit her in the old gray stone towers of the wisteria-covered dorms was a really positive experience, seeing how much people valued education and literature and talking about ideas and books. I wish I knew how to find her now, so I could thank her for everything!
Moving on to the here and now, most writers admit that making time to write can sometimes be a challenge. When and where do you write? Do you have any special rituals? Music? Food & beverages? I write in the early morning, usually. Since my day job involves sitting at a computer too, I like to do my creative work before I get burned out. I usually turn on the computer, make a cup of hot black tea with milk (the first of many!), and sit down. If I am in the groove, I sometimes just start writing. Other times I re-read what I wrote the day before, or turn on inspirational music, or spend some time playing out a little mental movie of the current scene.
Do you have a favorite strategy for revision?
If I am working on my own first revision of the rough draft and there is substantial work to do, I usually create a brand new document and cut and paste everything I want to keep into it, with big "TO DO: " notes in bold red sprinkled throughout. I also like to redo my outlines when I am doing a major revision, to get a mental framework in place. If I am working from an editorial letter or feedback from critique partners, I generally do the smaller things first, then tackle the bigger issues.
What’s your best advice for young writers?
To read broadly, and think about WHY you love the books you love.
What’s special about your debut novel?
It’s the kind of book I particularly enjoyed when I was about 10 or 12: mixing adventure, romance, humor and fantastical settings. Also, it has some really horribly ugly shoes in it.
What were the best and worst parts of writing it?
The worst part was struggling to fix the ending. I knew something was wrong, and for a long time I was trying to just tweak it and coax it into something I liked. Finally I had an epiphany and realized I needed to rework it more substantially, by adding a new chapter and making the main character more proactive. But once I made those changes I knew it was better. Hopefully readers will agree!
The best part was writing it all in a madcap dash for NaNoWriMo. I started the first draft November 1 and finished it about 5 weeks later. I’ve never written so fast, and it was very thrilling! I would love to try writing like that again but I am not sure my schedule nowdays will allow for it. How did you find your agent and/or editor?
I found my agent first, by researching (mostly online) to find agents who represented books like mine and mailing out lots and lots of queries. Eventually, I started getting positive responses, and ultimately an offer of representation. I had no connections or anything like that! There were definitely points where I thought about giving up and struggled with the hundreds of rejections, but I knew I had to stay determined and keep trying.
And here’s the pitch from Deva’s successful query letter:
All Prince Leonato needs to do to find a bride is to ride off on a snow-white steed, secure a magic sword, vanquish the wicked witch, recover the enchanted slipper, and rescue the princess who fits it. That is the prophecy Fortunata makes for the queen. The problem is: it’s not true!
Ever since her mother died and her father lost his shoemaking skills, Fortunata has survived by telling sham fortunes. Now, if her prophecy for the queen does not come true, her father’s life will be forfeit. To make matters worse, Prince Leonato is handsome, brave and kind, and Fortunata is falling in love with him.
(Deva had more great query letter material here, but it was spoilery…so that’s all you get for today!)
So I was finishing up Elise Broach’s book MASTERPIECE last night, and the author’s note at the end talked about the spark of idea that led to this brilliant book – a contact lens lost in the sink. That led Elise to wish for some tiny creature who could crawl down and get it for her, and that led her to imagine Marvin, a friendly, talented beetle who absolutely shines as a main character.
I love hearing about the whispers that start a story churning, so I thought I’d share the stories behind my two latest works in progress, both of which started with setting.
Right now I’m working on a middle grade mystery that grew out of my editor’s travel troubles. (She has no idea about any of this, so if you are reading this, Mary Kate, thanks for the inspiration! *waves to Mary Kate* ) When bad weather stranded her in Atlanta this spring, I got thinking about airports and how much I like them and how I’d love to set a book in one. And then I got thinking about being stuck in airports and how I often end up meeting the most interesting people, just because we can’t get to Tulsa or wherever for three more hours, and that’s where my middle grade mystery begins…with three kids, snowed in at a Washington D.C. airport, and a stolen treasure. I’m in the early stages of this book, just a few chapters in and stalled until I get to D.C. for a research trip later this month, so it’s too early for me to share more. But it’s interesting to me that the story started with setting.
That was the also case with SUGAR ON SNOW, the middle grade novel I worked on much of last year. The whispers started here…
…at a sugar house on pancake weekend, where I crunched through the spring snow with my daughter, watched the sugar steam puff into the sky, inhaled the sweet smell of sap being boiled down to syrup, and watched the hustle and bustle of the family that owns this farm. For the next few weeks, I toyed with the idea of a character who lives on a maple farm near the Canadian border, and that’s when Claire showed up and started whispering in my ear.
I’d talk back to her on my morning run. "Well, sure…you’re a great kid and you have a fascinating life up there, skating on the frozen cow pond in the winter and everything. And sure, it would be fun to write the sugaring scenes, but what are you going to do? You have to do something. You can’t really have your own book until something happens, you know?"
Claire would sigh and go away for a few days, but she kept coming back. I liked her, but I didn’t start to write about her until summer, when I spent a weekend with my daughter at a basic skills figure skating camp in Lake Placid. She was excited to take different kinds of skating classes at the camp, and I was excited to sit in the coffee shop across the street and work on revisions for the first book in my MARTY MCGUIRE chapter book series with Scholastic.
But it turns out I hadn’t read the fine print on the skating camp brochure. When I signed my daughter up for camp, I had also signed myself up for a weekend of "parent education" workshops. So instead of drinking mocha lattes with my laptop, I found myself in the Olympic Center Hall of Fame Room with a bunch of other skating parents, learning about figure skate blades that cost more than my car is worth. Although they weren’t what I had planned, the workshops were fascinating, particularly the one that featured a sports psychologist who works with figure skaters and talked about the stress, the pressure to commit more time and money, the competitive nature of the sport. What if my sweet Claire from the maple farm somehow ended up training here? I pulled out my notebook and started scribbling ideas.
After that, there was a whole lot of research and writing and revising, brilliant critiques from writing friends, more revising, an editorial letter from my agent, and more revising. And here’s what grew out of that pancake breakfast in the March sunshine and not reading the fine print about skating camp. From yesterday’s Publishers Marketplace…
BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z author Kate Messner’s SUGAR ON SNOW, in which a farm girl is discovered by a charismatic Russian skating coach and thrown into the uber-competitive world of elite figure skating, where she must stand up to the mean girls on ice and find the courage to follow her dreams, again to Mary Kate Castellani at Walker Children’s, for publication in Winter 2011, by Jennifer Laughran at Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
This post is part of a year-long series of blog interviews I’ll be hosting with my fellow 2009 Debut Authors, called "How They Got Here."
It should be an especially helpful series for teens who write, teachers, and anyone who wants to write for kids. 2009 debut authors will be dropping by to talk about how their writing in school shaped the authors they are today, what teachers can do to make a difference, how they revise, and how they found their agents and editors. (You’ll even be able to read some successful query letters!) If you know a teacher or two who might be interested, please share the link!
Today…C. Lee McKenzie, author of SLIDING ON THE EDGE! Shawna Stone is a heartbeat away from making the worst mistake anyone can. She’s close to taking her own life. Kay Stone is a grandmother Shawna has never known, and at sixty-four Kay feels there is little left in her life to look forward to. When they are thrown together they circle each other in a crucible of secrets and distrust until saving a doomed horse unites them and gives each a reason to live. Welcome! Tell us about the first thing you ever wrote that made you think maybe you were a writer.
The first piece of fiction I ever wrote was a short story for an East Indian magazine. Now that I think of it, that was pretty audacious. I have no first-hand experience about India, but I won the $100 first prize! Naively, I patted myself on the back and decided I could publish just about anything. Not true!
Most writers admit that making time to write can sometimes be a challenge. When and where do you write? Do you have any special rituals? Music? Food & beverages? I’m an early morning writer. I mean like sometimes 4 am if I wake up with a good idea. I write at my desk on my computer, sip a cappuccino, and work until sunup. Then I take a break, do chores, make my list and get dressed before going back to read what I’ve written and start the re-write or whatever.
Do you have a favorite strategy for revision?
I don’t have a specific strategy for revision. If I’m stuck I often do a printout and take a hard copy someplace away from my desk. Sometimes that gives me a new perspective on the critter that’s giving me problems.
What’s your best advice for young writers?
I guess I’d say, "Keep writing. You’ll only get better."
What’s special about your debut novel?
Well, obviously, the best part is I wrote it. Next, I don’t have to write it again. But if I were to be serious I’d have to say the best part is I think my book has appeal for younger and older readers. That’s what I’m hearing anyway, so I hope it’s true.
What were the best and worst parts of writing it?
The best part was when I wrote the chapters from two different points of view (pov). That is, I wrote what happened from my young main character’s pov; then I wrote the same set of events from her grandmother’s pov. That was interesting and fun to do.
The worst part was getting the opening paragraph. That took forever. How did you find your agent and/or editor?
I always read the SCBWI Bulletin and WestSide was open to young adult submissions with edginess. "I’ve got one of those!" I said and sent off my query.
Thanks, Kate. Your questions were a challenge, but I enjoyed thinking about them.
The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum is an amazing resource for lake history, so when their educators asked if I’d be part of a book club for families, I jumped at the chance. I love the way they’ve scheduled the book club event to coincide with the museum’s Native American Encampment so kids will get to see and touch so many of the things they read about in Champlain in the Silent One — right down to a replica of a birch bark canoe. Here’s the flyer… Feel free to share the link if you know families that might be interested!
Linda Urban’s fantastic picture book MOUSE WAS MAD is officially out this week, and she’s hosting a contest on her blog. If you visit , you can win a signed copy, along with some Lake Champlain Chocolate Truffles. As someone who has enjoyed both Linda’s book and Lake Champlain Truffles, I can tell you that both are darn close to perfect.
To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on Linda’s blog, saying what makes you mad and how you feel better. For example, yesterday, I had one of those terrible, horrible, no-good, etc. etc. days…ala Judith Viorst. Eating chocolate often makes me feel better, but since I’m trying to be healthy at the moment, I went outside and shot baskets. I discovered that I am a remarkably good shot when I’m miffed, and I was wishing my husband had been there to play HORSE because we are competitive with things like that, and I am certain I would have beaten him without even racking up an H.
In my upcoming middle grade novel The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z, the main character has a monster leaf collection due. It’s a project she’s put off to the last minute, and now everything that can possibly go wrong…does. If only she’d had access to this iPhone application, I might have written a whole different story. The scientists developing this particular app say if all goes well, you’ll be able to identify a plant from a photo of its leaves that’s then uploaded to a database. Ultimately, they say it could help researchers learn more about climate change and changes in biodiversity. And of course…it would make those school leaf collection projects a walk in the park. Thanks to for the link!
Today…Leigh Brescia, author of ONE WISH!
Today…Deva Fagan, author of FORTUNE’S FOLLY!
Today…C. Lee McKenzie, author of SLIDING ON THE EDGE!
Linda Urban’s
This is just too cool.