Embracing Failure

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by Ginger Johnson in The Writing Life, VCFA

Tags

Beth Slazak, creativity, Failure, Jack V. Matson, Julie Berry, Laura Pappano, NESCBWI, VCFA

My sister recently posted a link to an article in the New York Times by Laura Pappano about creativity as an academic discipline.

My sister has a master’s degree in Creativity, a teaching certificate, and training in improv comedy with both ComedySportz and Second City. She is a creative and comedic genius, and has predictably provided the laugh line running through my life.

When my sister posts links, I read them.

The article quotes Jack V. Matson who teaches a course at Penn State called “Failure 101.” His favorite course assignment is to have students make a resume of failures to see how those failures have shaped choices — and, I might add, how those failures have led to good things.

Failure is something writers deal with often, sometimes on a daily basis. We cut our teeth on rejection. The blinking cursor on the blank screen beats out a rhythm saying, “You can’t. You can’t. You can’t.” Rejection can be a slippery slope into a deep chasm of self-doubt and fear. As a matter of self-preservation, we’re advised not to dwell on our failures, our rejections, our bad reviews.

That’s good advice.

However, if you’re feeling up to pulling out your sword to battle your demons, I suggest engaging in a bit of introspection Matson-style to embrace your failures and see what good has come from them.

If I were to write a resume of failures, the top billing would be given to a failed application to a Ph.d program. I looked good on paper: I had good experience, my GRE scores were in the high 700′s, I had received one of two all-university fellowships in graduate school, and I had been accepted into a different Ph.d program years before, which, because of life circumstances, I couldn’t pursue then. My application sparkled.

The program I applied for only admitted one student that year.

And it wasn’t me.

The day I found out, I had plans to meet my dear friend Julie Berry. When I told her of my rejection, she suggested I apply to this program at Vermont College.

No, I said, I’m on the rebound. I need to wallow in my suffering.

So she told me to come to this conference (the New England SCBWI spring conference). “You can submit ten pages to an editor. Then if you like it, you can apply.”

Fine, I said.

Julie can be very persuasive.

I submitted ten pages, went to the conference, and met with an editor whose name is branded on my memory forever. During the critique, she gave me her email address and asked for the rest of the manuscript.

There was no rest of the manuscript. I had ten pages. That was all.

If I ever find an occasion when our paths cross again, if I ever find an occasion when giving this editor a huge hug wouldn’t seem like a stalker thing to do, I’m there. For her small kindness, I’ll be forever grateful.

I decided to apply to VCFA.

Doing so brought me home. No quantity of personality testing or career counseling could have directed me in so succinct a manner as that one failed Ph.d application.

I am now doing what makes me happy. I wear my life — my career — like a second skin. I’ll be the first to admit that it is not an easy skin to wear; I often wish I could shed it, sliding out of it snake-like, when it gets too uncomfortable. However, discomfort brings new failures — failures which lead me onward to new successes.

Polar Vortex Shmortex

24 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by Danielle Pignataro in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I spent this past week at a house on Sea Island, GA. The seventy degree weather and sunshine and sand were a much-needed break from the never-ending Northeast Winter of Doom. I had started to have an overall feeling of malaise caused, I’m sure, by a deficiency in Vitamin D and a lack of physical activity, and a I had a cough I couldn’t kick. In super-southern coastal Georgia, there were no polar vortexes, no mounds of filthy snow, and no coats or boots; there weren’t even any socks.

I’m not trying to rub this lack of arctic chill in anyone’s face. I have never gone away in February before; I’ve seen friends go to warmers places over the years, but I’ve never myself escaped. For one whole week, I did not do any work — actually, I did spend a few hours working on curriculum one day, but I’m not counting that. The papers I brought to grade came back home with me untouched. Instead, there were lazy breakfasts, multiple walks on the beach, bike rides, and Dairy Queen. I collected shells, shot a gun for the first time (at clay targets), and read.

I felt renewed upon my return. Sure, my cough is still lingering, but it doesn’t seem so bad. Can I tackle the next five weeks of test prep with my students? I think I can. Will those papers ever get graded? Sure. Will I take another February vacation in the future? Definitely.

Author vs. Writer Smackdown

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by Rachel M. Wilson in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

author problems, authordom, marketing, time management

194 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes, 30 seconds.

As I type this, that’s how much time I have until Don’t Touch comes out. That’s a little more than six months, but it feels like September 2, 2014, is looming over me like one of those precarious Midwestern ice caves they keep showing on the news.

In the past few weeks, I’ve asked for blurbs, sent in my first pass pages changes, built a website, organized a cover reveal, and held a giveaway. I also received a big ol’ box of ARCs that I’m not sure what to do with . . .

I think mailing’s involved.

Over the next months, I need to figure that out, order SWAG, submit to festivals, plan launch parties in two states, plan a blog tour, schedule signings, make a trailer? I need to decide how much I can afford to travel and where and in what order makes the most sense.

These are author problems–i.e. not bad problems to have. I’m not complaining. And there’s a little-expressed business side of me–let’s call her my inner author–who enjoys all this stuff.

But the writer in me is getting grouchy. The writer in me wants to tackle the author and shut her in a dark room free of distractions till she passes out from lack of Twitter.

This morning, I spent about two hours reading over my notes for my many-times-abandoned novel-in-waiting. It’s languished for months at a time while I’ve revised Don’t Touch, and more recently, while I’ve worked on completely non-writing-related tasks of authordom. I want to work on it, but I want to do it my way. I want to do it first thing in the morning, when I don’t have the weight of a zillion other responsibilities hanging over me. And I’m not going to get that luxury.

So I’d better just write. And remind the author in me that without the writer, she’s just building a gorgeous ice cave in the hot, hot sun.

Who Loves a Garden Loves a Greenhouse Too: Quote from William Cowper

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by Annemarie O'Brien in In Real Life, The Writing Biz, The Writing Life, Uncategorized, VCFA, We're Inspired

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Allison Kellegers, Annemarie O'Brien, Catherine Linka, Erin Clarke, Erin Sommerill, greenhouse literary agency, John Cusick, Julie Berry, Page Cathren, Polly Nolan, Sarah Aronson, Sarah Davies, Shawn Stout, Sue Cowing, Tami Lewis Brown, VCFA, Winifred Conkling

What’s next is a question I’ve been asking myself since Greenhouse Literary Agency sold my first book, Lara’s Gift to Erin Clarke of Knopf in 2011. It’s also a question I thought I would have answered and moved forward on upon the release of Lara’s Gift in 2013.

So what’s the problem?

While I’ve got plenty of story ideas churning around in my head, I’ve actually enjoyed launching my first baby into the world and have allowed my schedule of school visits, book club events, fairs, and readings to balloon out of proportion at a cost to my writing time. In a market where publishers want writers to actively promote their books how do we writers—especially those of us with families and day jobs—balance book promotion and our writing time?

For sure, I don’t have all the answers. I might even be the worst person to talk to about balance as my plate only seems to grow larger by the day, not smaller.

What I can encourage is this: give yourself permission to take time away from the routine demands of your life. Go on a retreat, alone or among other writers. There’s nothing better than a retreat to jumpstart the writing juices, nurture craft, and realign priorities. Make time for your writing because nobody else will. And that’s exactly what I did this past weekend in Orlando, Florida among fellow Greenhouse authors and the Greenhouse team: Sarah Davies, John Cusick, Polly Nolan, and Allison Hellegers.

One of the perks of being a Greenhouse author is the vision Sarah Davies had early on for the kind of literary agency she wanted to build. For starters she chose the name Greenhouse because it evokes a place of warmth and growth. And Greenhouse is indeed a place where each author is treated like a vital part of the garden and nurtured to bear the kind of fruit that could only come from each of our own unique voices and limbs. Hats off to Sarah for the vision and for picking a top notch team to help her execute that vision!

Sarah kicked off the retreat with a motivating talk to inspire us in 2014. There were a number of great takeaways. One of my favorites: go to the compost of your imagination, let it decompose, and then recompose it into new stories with a fresh slant. Sarah encouraged all of us to tap into the emotions of our childhood, to mine the memories, and pull out the most emotionally charged ones. More importantly, she reminded us to be brave in tackling the truth behind these emotions.

Another takeaway I took from Sarah’s talk came from her reading of All the Truth That’s in Me, written by fellow VCFA alum and friend, Julie Berry. She turned the theme of Julie’s book around and asked each of us: “What’s the truth in you? Find it and write it.”

With truth and finding it the core message of her talk, Sarah left us with a quote from Picasso: “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”

Polly Nolan (UK Rights) and Allison Kellegers (International Rights) shared their thoughts about their respective markets. The big takeaways: gone are the days of big advances and quick sales. It can take years before a deal is made so rather than foster frustration at what might not be happening; celebrate the success of the moment like getting published in the first place. Focus on the positives, remind yourself of how hard it is to get published, and live in the moment of these successes. Don’t worry about what’s coming or not coming. You’ll be pleasantly surprised when a deal does close.

The biggest overseas markets are Germany, followed by Brazil, and then France.

John Cusick talked about the power of personal recommendation and word-of-mouth, the secret grease of publishing. He shared his thoughts on networking and made us believe—in the style of Disney—that it isn’t a bad word. He urged us to find the community within our stories to connect with potential readers. He shared another seed of wisdom, in today’s world when our attention is a commodity, know what to ignore, know what needs to get done. Sign up for Freedom to block social media. Give yourself small goals each day. They’ll add up to something fruitful.

We had a lovely dinner hosted by Greenhouse on Saturday evening Cuban style followed by a Talent “Situation” where John Cusick sang and played the piano to everyone’s delight; stylish songwriter and author, Tommy Wallach shared one of the songs he wrote that inspired/was inspired by his story [be on the lookout for the album that will come out with his debut book]; Sue Cowing read one of her poems, “Teacher’s Pet,” from My Dog Has Flies; Dawn Metcalf showed us why nobody would want to mess with her after a few black belt moves; Tami Lewis Brown, Catherine Linka, and Sarah Aronson hosted a trivia contest around children’s literature; and the highlight of the evening was Sarah Davies’ performance singing a rewrite of “These are a Few of My Favorite Things” and playing a very small guitar-like instrument. What a voice!

The weekend was well represented by Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA alums: Sarah Aronson, Tami Lewis Brown, Caroline Carlson, Winifred Conkling, Sue Cowing, Catherine Linka, Annemarie O’Brien, and Shawn Stout. Page Cathren joined us for some lively discussion before the retreat started and hosted me with Miss Lee the night prior.

A warm hug to Erin Sommerill for offering her charm, talents, and keen photographic eye in capturing candid shots, as well as author photos.

A BIG shout out to Jan Gangsei, fellow author and event planner, for managing all of the details of the retreat weekend to lovely perfection.

A huge thanks to Hillcrest Elementary School, Sherri Spicer, librarian extraordinaire; Natalie Storch, one of the most welcoming parent chauffeurs I’ve ever met; and the children in second, third, fourth, and fifth grades for letting me come to their school prior to the retreat to share Lara’s Gift. They were an enthusiastic group of kids with lots of good questions and a passion for reading.

And a very special thanks to the little Hillcrest girl who said she was “vibrating with happiness all morning to meet the author.” Comments like this make my time away from writing well worth it.

And sometimes it’s just healthy to get away for the warm welcome home!

The Landscape of Your Story: Lesson From the Masters

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by lindenmcneilly in The Writing Life, Uncategorized, Writing Craft

≈ 5 Comments

My work in progress takes place in an agrarian village hidden beyond some strange mountains. The villagers are odd, with long-lived superstitions and the wrong idea about many things. There’s a village circle, and some farms, and the family cottage of my main character, Finnegan.

I have done a lot of thinking and drawing to get the setting right, making maps of the direction Finn would go to school, and the position of the barn and where the stream comes down to his pa’s field. I’ve listed the various small shops he’d see if he walked down the village road. I know the names and faces of some of the villagers that most impact his life.

I thought I had a good take on the setting for this novel. Then I went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon with the jaw dropping, enormous oil landscapes from the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Think light, infinite sky, and hilly land so vast you could walk for a month and not reach the castle that rises out of the blue mist on the horizon.

Think mountains so big they seem to hold up another level of sky, one filled with potent, boiling clouds spilling over endless rivers, dotted with boats and winding through city after city.

One enormous painting, The Campo di SS, Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, by Bernardo Bellotto (1743/47), featured an urban landscape so captivating I couldn’t walk away. I stared. I took photos. I stared some more. The museum docent started eyeing me. I walked away, but returned when he ambled to another room. I stared again.

The painting features a real Venetian square and basilica, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, bordered by the waterway Fondamenta Mendicanti. One of the geniuses of this painting is the extent to which the canal pulls your eye back toward the horizon, taking in the boats, apartments, bridges and the promenade. The other genius, and what compelled me even more than the structure of the canal and the finely wrought architecture, was the people.

This landscape was not just populated, it was activated by the people. They were boating,

watching the boats, looking out over the canal, hanging up a canvas, arguing, pointing. This was a real place, with living people in it. The more I looked, the more living I noticed in this snapshot of a world.

Elizabeth George talks about the idea of landscape in her book on writing, Write Away:

“On the surface, it would appear that landscape and setting are the same creatures, identical twins given different names just to confuse the beginning writer. This, however, would not be the truth since setting is where a story takes place–including where each scene takes place–while landscape is much broader than that…Landscape in writing implies much the same as that which is implied by the word when it’s used to refer to a location in a country: It is the broad vista into which the writer actually places the individual settings of the novel, sort of like the canvas or other medium onto which a painter has decided to daub color.

“You need to think about the landscape of your book because if you’re able to make the landscape of place real, you can make the land itself real, which gives you a leg up on making the entire novel real for the reader.” http://www.elizabethgeorgeonline.com/books.htm

When I work on my novel, I want to think this way about my landscape, not only what it looks like, but what’s happening in it. Who’s there? Who are they talking to? What sounds are rising up in the background? What smells? What’s in the distance?

Thinking like a painter of a huge canvas will make my story come alive, just as this painting did for me.

Deep Freeze

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Rachel M. Wilson in In Real Life, The Writing Life

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

deep freeze, Don't Touch, Doris Lessing, obstacles, polar vortex

I’ve been working on a novel that begins with a deep freeze.

(This pic happens to be from Chicago’s awful storm of 2011 and not from the Polar Vortex, but you get the idea. Burial in ice and snow.)

I write outlines, synopses, pages of notes; I write drafts full of characters that have since been discarded. My latest Scrivener file contains 13,000 words. An earlier one: 271,000. Still another: 233,000. Much of that is repeated. Some of it isn’t. Sometimes, I think it’s YA. Other times, it feels more middle grade. Sometimes I think it’s a series, and then my brain starts to shiver.

As I wander through this story, I feel lost as my girl in the snow, fighting her way through wind tunnels of ice chips that bite at her cheeks. And the weather outside matches my fictional wasteland.

Chicago’s experiencing record lows–for the second time this year, a polar vortex is giving me a Monday off with wind chills of 40 below.

My ceiling is gone because my neighbor’s pipes burst during the last low. I’m going to have to move out while cute Russian men replace my floor.

I was making so much progress over the holidays. I felt so close to having a synopsis to share before sickness made my brain fuzz, before the polar vortex squeezed its fist, before my ceiling sogged. The past few weeks have felt like a gauntlet of challenges. I haven’t written much or often, and that’s okay. None of this is normal.

Though it does remind me of Doris Lessing’s wisdom:

If there’s something you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

And here’s the thing … When I do write, I thaw. I feel limber and agile and sharp. I have hope for my story, that I and it will find our way out of this mess that we’re in.

And in Saturday’s mail I received a package with my first designed pages for Don’t Touch, and that felt like a blast of summer.

Writing: Whose Process?

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by nolacarol in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Since today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day, I decided to base this post on one of his famous quotes:

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

To me, this describes the writing process. Years ago in a writing workshop, I listened in awe as a wildly successful novelist and essayist described her writing process. Let’s call this award-winning writer “Star.”

Star taped a long sheet of white paper to the wall, pulled out several different colored felt-tip pens, and proceeded to illustrate how she outlined plot, character, emotion, and other components of her “novel-in-progress.” In fact, by the time she finished, it didn’t seem in progress to me; it seemed done—just written in shorthand rather than prose.

She began with a straight line across the paper. That represented nothing, she explained, except the point of departure. Life is not a straight line; neither is fiction.

One hour later, the piece of white paper was criss-crossed with multicolored lines representing each major character in the book. The basic plot line of the story dipped and rose over the original straight line. (It was red.) Brief notes were scribbled in various spots of the lines: Character meets conflict; character resolves conflict. Other notations were scattered over the page, like, character impacted by other character; foreshadow; what if? The paper looked like something some bored child had done with an Etch-a-Sketch.

The room was silent. Finally, one person asked, “You mean, when you start a novel you know exactly all of those details, you know exactly how it’s going to end?” The rest of us in the room waited.

“Of course not!” laughed Star. “As I engage in the writing itself, things change! I don’t know,” she rather tossed off. “Perhaps my muse takes over. Perhaps I see that something I thought would work actually won’t work. You have to shift when need be; change direction.”

And then she said something that resonated with me. “As time passes, things change. They change in important ways. That character you knew in October won’t be the same character in July. Of course, she’s basically the same person, but she has grown, had experiences, developed. You, the writer, have to follow her development. You can’t leave her where you found her.”

Now the people in the room were puzzled. “Then,” asked one person, pointing to the paper, “why do all that?”

Star seemed genuinely stunned. “You have to have an idea of where you’re going! Of course, you make changes as you go along the way, but if you don’t know where you intend to go, how will you ever get there?”

At that moment, I knew I would never be a writer. Having to do all that work before I wrote the first word was as alien to me as laying out all my ingredients and utensils in advance of preparing a meal. For me, the creative process was, go. Get it down. How could I possibly know everything I would need in advance?

A few months later I attended a lecture by E. L. Doctorow. He said, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Now that’s my kind of writing!

But we are all different. Whether one plans meticulously, designing ones story before writing a single word, or simply writes the first sentence and continuing sentence by sentence, scene by scene, with the evolving development of our characters, writing any story is a leap of faith. It’s believing we have something to say, something someone else will want to read. And it’s remembering – things change.

Speaking for myself, I never see the whole staircase. I have a pretty good idea of what is at the top of the stairs, but I’m going to depend on my headlights to get me there.

Looking for a Good Book?

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Sue LaNeve in Fiction, In Real Life, The Writing Life, Uncategorized, VCFA, We're Inspired, We're Reading

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

A.S. King, ALL THE TRUTH THAT'S IN ME, Amy Rose Capetta, Annemarie O'Brien, Best Teen Books, Carol Allen, Caroline Carlson, Children's Books, E. Lockhart, Elizabeth Wein, Entangled, Inside Out and Back Again, Jennifer, Julie Berry, Lara's Gift, Maggie Stiefvater, Magic Marks the Spot, Marlin Bree, Mitch Albom, Rachel Wilson, Reality Boy, Rose Under Fire, Sara Gruen, Schmidt, Sue LaNeve, Thanhha Lai, The First Phone Call From Heaven, The Headmaster's Wife, The Scorpio Races, The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates, Thomas Christopher Greene, Varian Johnson, Wake of the Green Storm: A Survivor's Guide, Water for Elephants, We Were Liars

So many books, so little time. How does one choose? My fellow VCFA S3Q2 (The Super Secret Society of Quirk and Quill) classmates offer up a few of the books we chose to read this week–and they are gems:

Linden McNeilly:
ENTANGLED
by Amy Rose Capetta and

THE VERY NEARLY HONORABLE LEAGUE
OF PIRATES,
Book 1
Magic Marks the Spot
by Caroline Carlson

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
by Sara Gruen

Jennifer Schmidt:
THE HEADMASTER’S WIFE
by Thomas Christopher Greene

Annemarie O’Brien
and Sue LaNeve are both reading:
ALL THE TRUTH THAT’S IN ME
by Julie Berry

Sue LaNeve:
WAKE OF THE GREEN STORM: A SURVIVOR’S GUIDE
by Marlin Bree

Carol Allen:
THE FIRST PHONE CALL FROM HEAVEN
by Mitch Albom

Varian Johnson:
WE WERE LIARS
by E. Lockhart

Rachel Wilson:
THE SCORPIO RACES
by Maggie Stiefvater

and

REALITY BOY
by A.S. King

Ginger Johnson:
INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN
Thanhha Lai

and

LARA’S GIFT
by Annemarie O’Brien

and

ROSE UNDER FIRE by Elizabeth Wein

Preparing for an Author School Visit

13 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Annemarie O'Brien in In Real Life, The Writing Biz, The Writing Life, Uncategorized, We're Inspired

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alexis o'neill, Annemarie O'Brien, author school visit, camille powell, catherine link, dan gutman, flintridge bookstore, greenhouse literary agency, Lara's Gift, laura purdie salas, miss book moot, Random House, Rick Riordan, school visit experts, tony buezzeo

For checklists and the mechanics on conducting a successful author school visit go to your publisher’s web site and search ‘school visits’. Random House, for example, features a site called Set up a Visit that outlines basic information you and the host school should follow.

Because even the best planned events might experience some sort of hiccup I also read numerous posts on the subject from authors who shared their experiences in the trenches of elementary schools. Here are my top ten tips to minimize some of those hiccups:

Tip # 1

Alexis O’Neill

Before you do anything, sign up for blog posts from School Visit Experts. Alexis O’Neill offers a place for published authors to find and share advice on how to create and deliver quality programs for kids, teachers, and librarians. It’s an awesome blog about author school visits. Even if you’re not yet published, sign up and start learning now!

Tip # 2

In 9 Ways to Get Teachers to Love Your Author Visit O’Neill brings up a valid point about the Q&A session of an author talk. Sometimes it’s hard for the author to hear the kids’ questions, and their questions are often repetitive or off-track. To best prepare, ask teachers for questions ahead of time, and then choose which to answer. Another option is to develop your own questions and build them into your presentation.

Waimea Canyon Middle School – 6th grade

The number one question I always get is: “How did you come up with the story idea for Lara’s Gift?” Instead of waiting for someone to ask this question, I ask the audience: “What do you think is the number one question kids ask me?” The kids become engaged and multiple hands shoot up.

Kapaa Elementary School – 5th grade

Here I am in Kauai on a school visit where the hugs were boundless and the leis welcoming. One school even invited the only pair of borzoi living on the island into the classroom to give the kids a chance to meet a real borzoi!

Tip # 3

In 4 Ways to Make Librarians Love Your School Visit, Toni Buezzeo gives great advice: Understand and design presentations to respond to local curriculum. When you are in a school, you are temporarily in the position of an educator. Because every school hour is precious in this age of standards-driven education, and because in all but five states (see map), those standards (entitled the Common Core State Standards) are national, it is easier now, than ever before, to incorporate them into your presentations. Start here and then solicit help from teachers you know to refine your presentations.

Tip # 4

If you are working with a bookseller to set up a school visit, Catherine Linka, author of 7 Ways to Make Indie Booksellers Love You recommends that you be absolutely clear from the first conversation with a bookseller if you need to charge for a school visit. “It is fine with us [Flintridge Bookstore] if this is how you make your living, but do not expect us to get the business for you. We will, however, be happy to supply books after you have made the deal. If you can afford to do free school visits, it will be a treat for us to call our customers and set those up.”

Tip # 5

Laura Purdie Salas gives great advice in From 5 Things I’ve Learned about School Visits: send posters and free books once the author school visit contract is signed. She had some mini-posters printed with a bunch of her book covers and an announcement that “Laura Purdie Salas is coming to school on ________!” On the back of the posters she printed tips to help the adults prepare for her visit. She sends 3-4 posters plus 2-3 of her trade hardcover books in advance. She says, “The cost is well worth the extra excitement the materials generate.” I took her advice and created my own poster.

Tip # 6

O’Neill stresses the importance of connecting with your audience by Telling Stories about Yourself. Whether you are speaking to an adult audience or to kids, remember to weave in a story or two about yourself – ones that listeners can connect with. Dig for funny or poignant nuggets from your growing up years, disappointments/heartbreaks, celebrations (disastrous or otherwise), unexpected kindnesses from others, family vacations (or lack thereof), school (conflicts or triumphs).

Tip # 7

What do you do if the bookseller at your school event doesn’t bring enough books? O’Neill offers a great solution in From Economical Bookplate Solutions: send them a signed bookplate for every book sold that goes unsigned. It’s disappointing – to you and to readers — when schools or bookstores run out of your books during your appearance. Being able to autograph and personalize a book can mean the difference between a sale and no sale.

Tip # 8

It is worth repeating what Dan Gutman says in The Perfect Author Visit in that a successful school visit usually comes down to how much preparation the librarian, teachers, PTA, and principal put into it. Here are some suggestions from Gutman that you can share with your host school:

 Tell students the author is coming starting at least a month in advance. Put the author’s books on display in the school library. Put a display of book covers up in the hallway.

 Have classes read the books and write book reports or think up questions to ask the author.

 Throw a contest and have the winners receive autographed books.

 Have an art class make posters, banners, and bookmarks welcoming the author.

 Have a writing class write reviews of the author’s books.

 Arrange for the students on the school paper to interview the author.

 Call the local newspapers. Maybe they’ll send a photographer to cover the event. If they don’t, take pictures yourself and submit them.

 If the author writes about a specific subject, create a theme day around it at school.

 Talk it up. The more excited you are, the more excited the kids will be. And when the kids are excited, any message the author gives them will really hit home.

Tip # 9

Camille Powell

Camille Powell, a.k.a. Miss BookMoot gives lovely insight on author visits from a librarian’s perspective in Advice for Authors on School Visits. The section that hit home most with me was “what to talk about”:

 Often, kids know how a manuscript becomes a book. It is interesting and even MORE fascinating if you tell the story of something exciting, horrible, difficult that happened during the process.

 Students have been taught how to use a library or how to do research . Share something interesting that happened or that surprised you while you did your research. Where did you go to do your research? Got pictures?

 Talking about revision is interesting IF you can relate your challenges in the writing process. If you are sharing a manuscript page bleeding with corrections and suggestions, make sure they can see the details on the page with a visual (a slide or overhead.)

 Illustrate and explain a specific editing change. If you are lucky you will be presenting in the school library but be prepared for a gymnasium or lunch room-sized venue. Think of those kids at the very back. Can they see and appreciate what you are sharing?

 Writers of historical fiction sometimes share artifacts or facts from the time period they write about. Share some true stories from that time too. Something drew you to writing about that event or time period, what was it?

Tip # 10

Authors know how important an opening is to hook readers. The same goes for school presentations. Be sure to read O’Neill’s article on Great Beginnings which features examples of how authors like you have started their talks.

Author Rick Riordan

And finally, if you ever feel like you’re “trying to fill a reservoir with an eye-dropper” as you plan one school visit after another wondering if your hard work will ever pay off, read My Overnight Success by Rick Riordan for inspiration. You will carry a deeper appreciation of what it took Riordan to get where he is today, as well as be humbled by the doubt he felt along the way.

A BIG thanks to the generous authors and writers that make up the children’s book writing community. To those authors cited in this blog post, hugs all around for taking the time to share your experience.

Out of the Dark

06 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Ginger Johnson in In Real Life, The Writing Life

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

antidepressants, Depression

When I was fifteen, I lay in the bathtub, wishing more than anything that I had the courage to sink beneath the water and fade away into oblivion.

When I was seventeen, I contemplated a bottle of Tylenol, wondering if the entire bottle of chalky white pills would erase me.

When I was twenty-four, I sat in my car, prepared to stuff rags into the tailpipe, hoping to slip into the eternities.

When I was thirty-two, post-partum depression overwhelmed me.

The continuation of my story is rather cliche. Suicide was never really an option, so I learned how to manage. I got out of bed each day. I exercised, and that helped. I ate well. I took vitamins. I took 5-HTP, an amino acid that assists in the production of serotonin. I prayed. A lot. I was gentle with myself. I gave myself a manageable list of things to do each day. I became very good at slapping a smile on my face, and when people asked how I was, I always answered, “Fine, thanks,” though my smile was cracked, and I couldn’t meet their eyes.

There were good days, and there were bad days. Just as the bad days were really, really bad, the good days were really, really good. There was just enough sunshine and butterflies to balance the dark clouds and doom.

Even so, a day would inevitably come when I was overwhelmed by an existential despair, and life was simply too much for me. I was ashamed because of it. Though I knew better, I thought that if I just did X differently, I would be fine. I should be fine.

Sometimes I was fine.

More often, I wasn’t.

So I tried harder. I researched depression. I wrote about both depression and the search for happiness here, here, here, and here. I talked about it with friends. They urged me to take medication, but I was scared of drugs that messed with my brain, no matter how much my mind was messing with my brain.

In October, I watched this at a church conference:

When I hit a low point — again — a week later, I knew something had to be done. I could have been a poster child for clinical depression, and everything and everyone around me was suffering because of it.

What followed then could be taken verbatim from an ad for Prozac or Zoloft: “I saw my doctor, and he prescribed some medication.”

My doctor reiterated to me in a very kind way what I already knew: depression is a physical thing, a chemical imbalance. It wasn’t my fault, nor was it something I could change by will or wish, by eating more carrots or doing more cardio. It wasn’t as simple as choosing to be happy and putting a smile on my face. There was something within me that wasn’t working the way it should.

So I filled a prescription and contemplated those pills for a full 24 hours. The emotional storm was over by that time, and I wondered if I really needed them. I decided I did.

The first month, I felt euphoric. The second month I simply felt healthy—physically and mentally. I tallied up the many unexpected ways the medicine had helped me. The most surprising was that my body temperature normalized. I used to be cold all the time, as if I had ice water running in my veins. No longer. My metabolism sped up. I had more energy. I could focus on my work. I was calmer with my children. I wasn’t stressed or anxious about anything. I had confidence in myself for the first time, ever. Oh, and I was happy, too.

Clearly, this was not just about mood. This was not about choice. This was physical as much as it was mental.

This felt miraculous.

I recognize that antidepressants don’t work for everyone. In fact, they have not been a perfect solution even for me; I have experienced just about every side effect there is, but my body seems to be metabolizing the medicine tolerably well now, and I am a changed person.

I have hesitated in writing about depression yet AGAIN, but I feel compelled to speak since so many writers struggle with it. So I add my voice to the hundreds in the ether, advocating for courage and for treatment, and for an end to the stigma attached to depression. Depression is not a character flaw, or a personality weakness; it is a physical affliction, just like myopia or diabetes.

Let us erase the stigma of depression before depression erases us. Let us support each other with courage and kindness, and without judgment. Too many voices have been stilled by their silent struggle; too many stories have been left untold.