I spent Thursday at the NYS English Council Conference in Albany and had a great time talking with colleagues in both of my worlds – the English teachers and authors alike.
Nancy Krulik, author of the Katie Kazoo series, was at the table next to me. She’s written FORTY BOOKS in that series. 40!! I find that amazing and love that she still gets excited talking about new ideas for Katie.
From left to right, Tim Tocher, Joseph Bruchac, & Ann Burg
I met Tim Tocher, whose historical baseball novels look like just perfect for some of my boys at school. It was also great to see Joe Bruchac, whose work I always love, and Ann Burg, whose YA novel in verse ALL THE BROKEN PIECES is one of my favorite new books of 2009.
And here’s Michael Buckley, of SISTERS GRIMM fame, with his new NERDS book. Michael captured all of our end-of-the-day silliness with his spirited hat. I’m not positive, but I think it’s actually a hot dog in a bun. With mustard on top, too.
Many thanks to Scott and Alison of Merritt Books for hosting us at NYSEC!
1, I’m plugging away at my revision for SUGAR ON SNOW, stealing bits of time wherever I can. I used to feel like I needed big chunks of time to get anything done, but that idea has sort of faded away for me, and I’m thankful for that. It makes it so much easier to find writing time when I’m not holding out for the two-hour block.
2, My brother Tom just finished his last training run for this year’s Marine Corps Marathon to raise money for autism research. I don’t get to see him much because he lives out in Colorado, and traveling with a teenager who has autism is a challenge, to say the least. But I’m so, so proud of his dedication to his family and his work with autism research, and I’m thankful I could help out with his efforts this year. Here’s a link to his fund raising page in case you’d like to pitch in, too – I know he’d appreciate it.
3. Tomorrow, I’ll be spending the day at the NYS English Conference in Albany, signing books and generally making merry with the folks at the wonderful Merritt Books, the official conference bookstore. I’m looking forward to chatting with teachers and touching base with some writer friends, too!
4. On Saturday, I’ll be at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, which makes me happy because it’s a fantastic indie bookstore with a great kids’ section. The event is at 2pm if you’re in the area and would like to come by . I’m making Nonna’s funeral cookies. Come on…you know you want to taste them…
5. Ever notice how little things can make a big difference in your day? It was almost four this afternoon and I was wrapping up work in my classroom when one of my students came running into the room. "My friend made cookies for the swim party today. They’re chocolate chip and we thought you’d like one!" She put it on my desk on a napkin with a huge smile that brightened my day even more than the cookie.
What about you? Who made one of your days brighter this week?
A few quick updates tonight…before I get back to SUGAR ON SNOW revisions.
1. Thanks to all those who entered THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. book club giveaway. The winner, drawn at random from those who entered, is Jeni from the Glenwood Schools for Boys and Girls in Glenwood, Illinois. Congratulations, Jeni! And for everyone else… please let me know if your book club chooses GIANNA Z. as a selection. I’d be happy to send along some signed bookmarks and find a time to have a Skype chat with your group after you read.
2. Speaking of Skype, I had a great visit with 6th graders in Mequon, Wisconsin this afternoon. We talked all about the research and writing process, and they had some fantastic questions. The author-tech-geek in me was pleased to discover that I can actually Skype and scroll through PowerPoint slides on my laptop at the same time. That allowed me to page through the slides and talk about them on one computer in my office while the teacher in Wisconsin projected the PowerPoint onto a screen in her classroom next to the Skype screen. Cool stuff, I tell you…and I was able to make it to my son’s cross country meet afterwards, too. That would have been tricky with an in-person visit.
3. I read in Publishers Marketplace recently that Neil Gaiman’s poem "Instructions" is going to be a picture book. This makes me happy – I love that poem, particularly when he reads it here (
A couple weeks ago, a school principal & teacher in California asked me where she could find pictures of real manuscripts from real authors going through the revision process to share with her students so they’d be more excited about revising. I didn’t know of such a resource, but as a teacher, I absolutely loved the idea. As an author, I knew I probably had some writer friends who would be more than willing to help teachers by sharing a photo or two.
The result is here… a Revision Gallery with a collection of authors’ notes and photos of their marked-up manuscripts. I thought today, NCTE’s National Day on Writing would be the perfect day to share our stories.
The PowerPoint slides are below (as jpegs) for teachers who would like to save them & use them in the classroom, and the full presentation is also on SlideShare (though the conversion process distorted a couple of the images).
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…Megan Crewe, author of GIVE UP THE GHOST! I had the good fortune to read an early copy of Megan’s book, and I loved the mix of modern high school kids with that paranormal twist. A girl who sees ghosts is compelling enough, but the fact that she can talk to them AND that they feed her gossip? It adds up to a fantastic read (and just in time for Halloween, too!)
Welcome, Megan! Tell us about the first thing you ever wrote that made you think maybe you were a writer.
When I was in fifth grade, we had an assignment around Halloween to write a suspenseful story. I loved making up stories, so I put a lot of effort into mine, which I believe was about a werewolf. My teacher picked it as an example to read to the class. I remember looking around and seeing all the other kids totally wrapped up in the story, and realizing that maybe writing wasn’t just something I loved, maybe I was good at it, too. Maybe I could be a "real" writer.
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? Part of my bedroom is my sort-of office space: my desk, my special writing chair, bookshelves with my YA and reference books. When I have a project I’m working on, I write for a few hours every morning, on my laptop. And I’m not allowed to turn on the desktop computer with the internet connection until I’m done my goal for that day. During the rest of the day, I’m often jotting down ideas or outlining scenes in my notebook, wherever I happen to be. Do you have a favorite strategy for revision?
I read over the previous draft and make notes on things that I want to change. If I’ve gotten critiques I consult them and add any ideas from those comments to my list. Then I either make an organized list of things to change/work on in each chapter, or, if I’m making larger changes, re-outline the book scene-by-scene to work in the changes. Finally, I open a new document and start writing the new draft from scratch–though I have the previous draft open beside it so any parts I’m keeping I’m really just re-typing.
What’s your best advice for young writers?
The most important part of becoming a good writer is just to keep trying. Write whenever you can. Read widely so you know what’s out there and how other writers have handled different types of plots and characters. Study your stories and look for ways to make them better. Realize that it’s okay that a story’s not going to be perfect the first time you write it. Writing can be a lot of hard work, but if you love doing it, it’s totally worth it.
What’s special about your debut novel?
Unlike most stories where the main character can see ghosts, Cass embraces her ability and actually feels more comfortable with the dead than the living. Exploring how she got to that point, and how she can move on from it, is something I feel makes the book special. 🙂
What were the best and worst parts of writing it?
The best part was getting to know Cass and the other characters better and better as I revised, and being about to show their stories more fully. The worst was struggling with feedback that Cass wasn’t sympathetic enough, even though she was to me and some of my readers–finding a way to soften her up without losing the edge that was so important to her personality. But I think I’ve managed to do that! How did you find your agent and/or editor?
I found my agent the usual way–no connections, just queried, sent the manuscript when requested, and got an offer of representation. And I found my editor through my agent, of course. 🙂
And here’s the pitch from Megan’s successful query letter:
Sixteen-year-old Cass McKenna would take the company of the dead over the living any day. Unlike her high school classmates, the dead don’t lie or judge, and they’re way less scary than Danielle, the best-bud-turned-backstabber who kicked Cass to the bottom of the social ladder in seventh grade. Since then, Cass has styled herself as an avenger. Using the secrets her ghostly friends stumble across, she exposes her fellow students’ deceits and knocks the poseurs down a peg.
When Tim Reed, the student council V.P., asks Cass to chat with his recently-deceased mom, her instinct is to laugh in his face. But Tim’s part of Danielle’s crowd. He can give Cass dirt the dead don’t know. Intent on revenge, Cass offers to trade her spirit-detecting skills for his information. She isn’t counting on chasing a ghost who would rather hide than speak to her, facing the explosive intervention of an angry student, or discovering that Tim’s actually an okay guy. Then Tim sinks into a suicidal depression, and Cass has to choose: run back to the safety of the dead, or risk everything to stop Tim from becoming a ghost himself. Thanks for joining us, Megan!
One last thing…and then I’m back to my mug of tea and my revision…
Tomorrow is the last day to enter THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. book club contest, where you can win a whole set of books for your reading group or classroom literature circles group. Click here for the easy details on how to enter!
I’d love to see more entries from mother-daughter book clubs, so if you know someone who runs one, please let them know about the contest! And if you have blog readers or Twitter pals who might be interested, please feel free to share the news – just one day left to enter. Thanks!
I’ll tell you right up front…this is going to be one of those long rambling posts about the writing process, photos included. If you don’t want to be mired in a tour of my messy revision-mind, you should probably just move on now. Nothing to see here…
Still hanging around? Okay… here’s the revision story. Last Friday, the UPS guy came with one of those big, thick, daunting envelopes. My editor at Walker had already emailed to let me know the second round of revisions for my December 2010 middle grade novel SUGAR ON SNOW were on the way. I love revision, but opening that envelope this time threw me for a bit of a loop at first. This revision feels bigger than the first one, and I have less than a month to turn it around if we’re to make copy edits on time. But the more I read over the letter and thought about it, the more excited I got. What editor MK is suggesting is exactly what this book needs to get to the next level…to get ME to where I want to be as a writer.
The revisions fall into two main categories — making relationships between characters deeper and stronger (and there are a lot of characters in this book!) and establishing a better balance between the main character’s home/school life and her ice skating world. Here’s what my revision process has been looking like so far.
There’s the usual green tea, notebook, laptop, manuscript, & revision letter. That paper up on the envelope is actual a plot diagram that editor MK created showing the book’s main plot points leading up to the climax. I’m not showing a closeup because it’s kind of spoilery, but I’ll tell you what it looks like. So I could better understand the balance issue, MK put the plot points that relate to ice skating under the timeline and the home/school stuff over the line. It’s about an 80/20 division right now, heavy on the skating, and I agree with her that it would be stronger if it were more like 60/40.
This second editorial letter is four pages long, almost all focusing on individual character development and relationships. Good stuff.
I’m doing most of that work off the computer…right here.
This is one of those pricey notebooks with a thick cover that I bought for 80% off at a little paper goods store in SoHo on one of my authory trips to NY. I saved it for a time when I needed a special notebook that made me extra excited to write, and when I first felt overwhelmed reading that editorial letter, I knew that it was time to pull it out. I’ve been doing everything I can to develop the main character, Claire, more as a student and friend. I just finished character sketches of every one of her 7th and 8th grade teachers. I’m not sure yet which of those will make it into the new draft, but I know them now.
When I went back to the actual novel to start working on the computer again, the first thing I did was bring it scene by scene into Scrivener, the new writing software I started using after I finished this book.
See the colored index cards on my virtual bulletin board? The green ones represent scenes that focus on Claire’s family & home life. The orange ones represent skating scenes in Lake Placid and the lavender ones are competition scenes. (The red ones are important but are sort of a secret – sorry.) And the turquoise ones are school scenes. But here’s the thing… When I first set this up, there were only two turquoise cards. The others are blank scenes that I’ve added over the past few days – placeholders for the new school scenes that I’m going to write to help with the balance issue. I love that Scrivener lets you "see" the whole manuscript in such a conceptual way – it really helps me at times like this.
Interestingly enough, it was in thinking through one of those new school scenes that I came up with a way to build on one aspect of my main character that I’d sort of alluded to but didn’t really develop fully in the earlier drafts. It’s going to be really, really fun, so I’m saving the work on that thread for after I’ve tackled some of the new scenes that are going to be a little tougher to muddle through. I’ll do that sometimes – use the fun stuff as a reward for sticking it out through the hard stuff.
I don’t save the easy stuff, though, interestingly enough. The little line edits and quick fixes? I do those first for a couple reasons. If I wait too long and have made major changes, it’s harder to find those line edits to make the changes. And also, accomplishing some small jobs helps me to ease back into a manuscript and feel competent in that world again, so that when I tackle the bigger issues, I’m able to do so with more confidence.
You may not hear a whole lot from me, blog-wise, until this revision is done, so I’ll leave you to continue the conversation. What works for you when you’re tackling a big revision? How do you break up the job so it doesn’t feel overwhelming? Any unusual strategies that have led to breakthroughs? Go ahead….talk amongst yourselves… I’ll try to stop by with some tea later on.
My blog posts have been few and far between lately, mostly because I had two editorial letters for two different projects land on my desk last week, so I’ve been keeping my head down to revise. One of those books — the picture book — is just about ready to go back to my editor and off to its illustrator. My critique partners say it’s pretty much set, so I’m just giving it a couple more days to brew, to make sure I don’t have "senders’ remorse" when I fire off that email.
The other revision, for my Dec. 2010 MG novel SUGAR ON SNOW, is….bigger. But I think I’ve figured out a good way to tackle it, and I promise a nice juicy process post about that soon, for those of you who are like me and can’t get enough of the processy details.
Today, though, a breath of fall — courtesy of my kids, who pulled me away from my laptop for a couple hours, and some other critters we hiked with at Point au Roche State Park.
Wooly bear caterpillars were everywhere, getting ready to hibernate in the next couple weeks.
I apparently got too close because this guy actually coiled up and struck at my camera. I think he fancies himself a rattlesnake.
It’s funny… sometimes when I’m revising, I just need to be locked in a room with my laptop. But sometimes, getting out of that room is even more important to the process for me. Looking up through the trees, getting close to a caterpillar, close enough to see the green flecks on a snake, gives me new eyes for my story, too.
This is a special request for my published author friends to help teachers of writing…
I got an email today from a school principal who works with a large number of economically disadvantaged kids and English language learners, and she’s determined to help them become better writers through the revision process. She wondered if there was a place online where she could take them to see what published authors’ marked up manuscripts look like when they come back from a critique group or an editor or just when the author is revising on paper. I don’t know of such a resource, but I told her I’d see if I could pull something together. I’m hoping to create sort of a revision gallery or series of blog posts with this information:
Author’s Name
Website
JPG of a marked up manuscript page
Title of published book (or soon-to-be-published book) from which the page is taken
And (optional) paragraph from the author about the revision process
If you’d like to be included, please take a photo of your marked up page and attach it to an email (kmessner at katemessner dot com) with your name, title of the book, website, and if you’d like, a paragraph about your revision process. If you’d prefer to post something like this on your own blog, that’s great, too. Just send me a link & I’ll do a round-up post with all of those. The kids using this will be all ages, so if you write for older readers, please make sure the page you share is one that’s a good choice for teachers to share in the classroom.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help out with this. I think it could be a great resource and help to introduce kids to new authors, too!
Editing to add: I’m hoping to share a blog post and PowerPoint via Slideshare on Tuesday, October 20th to celebrate the National Day on Writing – so I’ll need all photos by this weekend if you’d like to help. Thanks!
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…Lauren Bjorkman, author of MY INVENTED LIFE! With Roz and Eva everything becomes a contest—who can snag the best role in the school play, have the cutest boyfriend, pull off the craziest prank. Still, they’re as close as sisters can be. Until Eva deletes Roz from her life like so much junk e-mail for no reason that Roz understands. Now Eva hangs out with the annoyingly petite cheerleaders, and Roz fantasizes about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade.
Roz has a suspicion about Eva. In turn, Eva taunts Roz with a dare, which leads to an act of total insanity. Drama geeks clamor for attention, Shakespearean insults fly, and Roz steals the show in Lauren Bjorkman’s hilarious debut novel for teens. (Publishers’ copy)
Welcome, Lauren! Tell us about the first thing you ever wrote that made you think maybe you were a writer.
In third grade, I wrote and illustrated a book called The Lava Monster. My dad laughed his head off when he read it, and that tipped me off. What books did you love when you were a kid?
I lived on a sailboat with limited shelf space, so I read my favorites over and over–Harriet the Spy, James and the Giant Peach, and The Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Is there a particular teacher or librarian who was a mentor for you in your reading and writing life?
My 10th grade English teacher, Miss Vickers, was somewhat strange and not always popular because of her harsh grading. Yet her passion for stories and how they are told stays with me to this day. 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? After I drop off my kids in the morning, I make a large cappuccino, prop myself up in bed with a bowl of something snackish next to me–chocolate chips, almonds, and sometimes dry cereal, goof off on the internet for half an hour until the caffeine kicks in, and then write. Yes, I really live it up. Do you have a favorite strategy for revision?
I’ve tried everything. Over and over seems to be the best strategy 😀 It also helps to pick one aspect (a single character, dialog, a plot element, sentence structure) to revise at a time. What’s your best advice for young writers?
Know the rules. And break them when it suits your purpose. What’s special about your debut novel?
My wacky, exuberant, and sometimes (often) clueless main character. What were the best and worst parts of writing it?
For me, critique is an essential ingredient to writing well. But the first few post-feedback hours are often painful. Oh no, my baby has a goomba hanging from her nose! Sometimes, though, the critique sparks an idea that will change my novel into something closer to flawless (ha!). That makes me happy. How did you find your agent and/or editor?
At the end of a five day novel-writing workshop, my instructor offered to refer me to his agent based on the piece I shared with the class. It was a total and wonderful surprise.
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Today…Megan Crewe, author of GIVE UP THE GHOST!
Today…Lauren Bjorkman, author of MY INVENTED LIFE!