My failures help me bloom. No, really, they do!

My former colleague Carol Hinz, editorial director of Millbrook Press, has something powerful and succinct to say about failure in the creative process. The idea that failure is a necessity strikes me as a radical and welcome challenge to our self-imposed standards as creative types. Let’s face it: Who among us doesn’t fantasize that whatever we’re working on will succeed, ideally in the most hyperbolic terms imaginable? If we feel an urge to create, after all, it stands to reason that we also long for our creations to be received with appreciation.

As human and natural as that longing is, it has a nasty flip side: Because we yearn for success, we often despise our failures, viewing them as a source of shame–something to be swept under the carpet, thought of as little as possible (and with mandatory cringing), and spoken of rarely if ever. Trouble is, shame about failure is destructive to our development as creators. We can become so afraid of having to feel that shame again that we hold off from creating anything at all. Or maybe we do create, but in doing so we play it safe, hoping to dodge our critics.

The idea that failure is a necessity can help to free us from shame and our fear of its return, though. Our failures become part of the artists we are; they shape our emotions, our aesthetics, our judgment. Those experiences empower us to move on to the next story or poem or painting–the one that may very well be successful. I’ve had some remarkable successes in my career, but I’ve had extraordinary failures as well, as a writer, as an editor, certainly (hee!) as a blogger. Today I try to look at those past mistakes (and my current failures-in-progress) with a gentleness I once lacked. All those flops were necessary; all of them made me the person I am now. Without them, my work–this blog entry, the poem I’m trying to write, the editing I did yesterday–would not be possible.

One of the hardest things I do as an editor is to tell a writer that a book is flawed in many significant, fundamental ways, so many that maybe it’s time to set it aside for a while and think about a new project. I’m grateful that I haven’t had to do that for a while, but it’s happened before and it will happen again. That kind of feedback, even when phrased with the respect and kindness all writers deserve, can be devastating. I’m so acutely aware of this possibility that I’m tempted to gloss over my true opinion in such instances, to offer encouragement to go forward when what’s truly needed is a step in some entirely different direction. But that would be a grave disservice to my clients, who aren’t paying me to be lied to or coddled. And so I tell the truth.

What I hope we can all remember at such times is that, yes, failure is not only inevitable, it’s necessary. It has things to teach us that we can learn in no other way. Some of those things may be concrete lessons in our craft, but many of them are lessons in being human, lessons in deep emotion and deep thinking, lessons in becoming ourselves as artists. Without them, our successes wouldn’t just be meaningless; they would never happen at all. So today I want to join Carol in wishing us all the best possible failures.

The post Grateful for failure? appeared first on KidLitopia.

“All who wander are not lost.”  –J.R.R. Tolkien

“Breaking up is hard to do.”  –Neil Sedaka

It’s been a grim few weeks, creatively speaking, since I wrote about letting go of Greenthorn. Mourning the book-that-wasn’t has left me feeling sad and riddled with self-doubt. There has been silence on the blog; there has been more than a little moping; there has been a bleak prognostication or three or seventeen. There have been attempts to fill the Greenthorn-shaped space with new ideas or, barring that, nachos. And there has been, finally—finally!—a moment of revelation.

I want my messy, problematic, eternally unfinished book back.

I want it with its twelve years of bumpy history, its snarled plotting, its overabundance of characters of the wrong ages according to market forces. I want its five versions and counting; I want its impossibly ambitious dramatic arc. I want it the way a mother wants an ugly child with behavioral issues and uncertain academic potential.

I want it because when I am working on it—not thinking of the publishing scene or the glutted fantasy market or the impossibility of finishing the damn thing, just working, just writing—I feel creative and happy. I feel as if I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, what I’m meant to do. And that is no small thing.

My new promise to myself for 2013 is to take delight in my beautiful, misshapen problem child. I do not promise to submit its pieces for critique, to outline it, or to finish it. (Especially not that.)  I promise simply to be with it and to love it. I promise to write it.

Happy New Year, my friends.

The post Reclamation appeared first on KidLitopia.

In the wake of my failed (for now, anyway) novel, I’ve been preparing to start a new piece of fiction in January. I began coping with my grief over Greenthorn by making an active, and now rather entertaining, decision to Just Do Everything Right This Time. What a concept! I would simply repair my creative process, correct my neuroses—if those are even separate undertakings—and set myself up to write and finish a wonderful book in 2013.

I am as pantsy as pantsers get. Pant, pant, pant. Pant.

I am a fairly poor planner where writing is concerned, so it seemed to me that the key to success would be to plan. I determined that the main reason I never finished Greenthorn, or at least the main craft-related reason, was my difficulty with plotting. (Put in terms of the “plotter vs. pantser” dichotomy, I am as pantsy as pantsers get.) With Greenthorn, I had all these subplots that refused to be woven together into an even vaguely coherent story, thanks to my tendency to write whatever I felt inspired to write at a given time, with relatively little concern about how (or if)  it would fit into the whole. Not surprisingly, I ended up with more hole than whole, and eventually with a morass far beyond my ability to navigate.

In keeping with my brilliant idea to Just Do Everything Right This Time, I determined that I would need to become a plotter, working out what would happen in my story before I created a new morass—before, in fact, I created anything. And so I charged forward. I developed a conflict, a setting, the foundations of the microcosm in which my story would unfold. I imagined a protagonist with an appealing name.

And then, a week or so ago, I stopped. I just couldn’t be bothered.

In fact, I realized, I didn’t even care.

Oh no.

Some head-scratching ensued. Soon enough, I came to understand what was missing: my scintillating plan had no heart, no soul, and most importantly, no character.

Oh. Right. That.

I’m pretty certain that effective plotters are engaged by their characters. Effective pantsers (if memory serves) certainly are. But in Just Doing Everything Right This Time, I tried to force a process onto myself that was neither plotter nor pantser but machine-tooled, assembly-line, punch-it-out storytelling. No wonder I didn’t care.

I’ve never written a scrap of fiction that didn’t start with a character, a voice, a relationship, something inarguably emotional. Sure, there might be a wisp of an idea mixed in somewhere—at the best of writing times, a character and her wisp arrive together, alchemy already in progress. But idea-driven I am not. The ideas come from the people for me, not the other way around.

Where does this leave me? With a perfectly likable plot that I shall, in all likelihood, never expand into an actual story. But it also leaves me something far more valuable, a flicker of insight into process. I have to respect my need to start with character. I may find a way to start with character and then outline a plot, I may remain a pantser for good, or I may find a happy middle ground. But at least, no matter what, I know I’ll care the next time I sit down to write, even if I ultimately Just Keep Doing Things Wrong.

The post By the seat of my… appeared first on KidLitopia.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.     –Carl Sandburg

 I’ve clearly struggled with blogging lately. Time is part of the problem; the rest is, as usual, more complex. Truth be told, I seem to have a certain (rather limited) amount of physical and creative energy these days, and when I’m tapped out, I’m done. Now that I’m editing a bunch of hours per week (yay!), I’m feeling the impact in all kinds of ways. I owe e-mail to friends, I’m behind on blogging, and I’m a leetle beet tired now and then. Oh, and I never did post the second half of the poor Character Illuminator. Argh.

All this constitutes a great deal of material for the Inner Nasty to work with. Remembering my practice of befriending the Nasty, I’m able to see that the internal messages telling me I’m failing, I’m screwing up, I’m not going to be able to keep all these plates spinning are all about trying to protect me from those very stresses. The Nasty, in its confused and unconstructive way, just wants me to be safe. That’s the part of its message I want to listen to.

Then there’s the question of my own writing. I’d be a lousy host-of-a-haven-for-writers indeed if I didn’t protect my writing time, yes? I’m happy to report that I’m working on a pair of intriguing ideas for 2013, one fiction and one nonfiction. I feel as if they’re fragile little things, these ideas, much in need of nurture and safety. Right now, they aren’t getting enough.

Hence I’m seeking opportunities to restore balance to my writing life. My commitment to KidLitopia remains ironclad, but I’d much rather post a single decent entry per week than two (or one, or zero) halfhearted ones. Going forward, I’ll blog on Mondays with regularity. As news pops up and time permits, I’ll add an extra post here and there. Meanwhile, I’ll be hard at work trying to re-establish that most necessary and, for some of us, elusive of creatures: the writing habit.  Happy writing, my friends.

Image courtesy of Library of Congress/Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph Collecton/photographer unknown/digital ID fsa.8b00867

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 “Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.”    –Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata”

With the possible exception of New York City, the Internet is the noisiest place I’ve ever been. I find this the case even with my speakers off, as they generally are unless I’m listening to music. The noise is visual and mental as well as auditory: Colors blare, popups pop, links demand to be clicked. And that’s before we even get started on social media.

Recently I wrote about the role of the Internet as a generator of self-doubt for the insecure, i.e., me. I find I also need to strike a balance in terms of this problem of noise. Noise disrupts my connection with myself even more than envy does: At least when I’m feeling envious, I’m experiencing something that I can name and grapple with. When too much noise seeps into my mind, I can hardly feel at all, much less think. My brain on the Internet too often morphs into a barren landscape, devoid of creative impulse.

As much as I want and need to keep up with industry goings-on, for example, the sheer amount of material out there–newsletters, blogs, tweets, websites of periodicals, and on and on and on–overwhelms and dismays me. This is the main reason I haven’t set up a blog roll or resources page here at KidLitopia: The last thing I want to do is to give readers still more chatter to follow. And the first thing I want to do is to provide a respite from the noise, just as Max Ehrmann described in 1927. I want you to be able to come here for a moment’s peace, unrushed, not feeling compelled to click on another dozen links the moment you arrive.

I recognize the irony in my complaint, though: Without this noisy Internet, there’d be no KidLitopia at all, no musings shared, no online respite for visitors. So it’s really once again a matter of finding the middle path; making nice with this medium because, its drawbacks notwithstanding, it’s given and continues to give me so much that I value; and remembering that I choose how and where I spend my online time. The online world can hurt my writing or help it. It’s up to me.  Placidly I go.

Image credit: © Martin Zahnd/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-3.0

The post Turning it down appeared first on KidLitopia.

“I wasn’t sure how to start this, so I did anyway.” –Joss Whedon, on writer’s block (in Rookie, a website for teen girls)

Is it tantamount to professional self-destruction, in our media-saturated world, to admit now and then to having nothing much to say?

I promised I’d blog on Mondays and Thursdays, and it’s (barely still) Thursday, so here I am. But I’m just…here.

C’mon, friends, can I at least get a few points for honesty?

Truth be told, I have six or so topics in mind for blog posts, but somehow they all seem terribly difficult to tackle today. A funny thing has happened on the way to my revitalized freelance career: I’ve become busy. Busy is good. We like busy. Nor is my version of busy remotely impressive relative to that of many others. But for me, after a year and a half on disability, working even a few hours a day amounts to a sea change.

And so I find myself a wee bit tired, tapped out, perhaps charred along the edges (but not, you see, burned out). It must be time to revitalize by spending time with my dogs, my life partner, and possibly a stuffed animal or three. Goodnight.

The post If it’s Thursday, this must be KidLitopia appeared first on KidLitopia.

Rise and shine, authorial friends! It’s a new week and a new chance to play with words. Here’s a quick writing prompt to help you connect with your inner creative-kid-genius.

1. Pick a few demographic details about a kid. Don’t think about it for long; just choose an age, a gender, nationality, whatever else comes to mind in an instant. Write ‘em down.

2. Write down two adjectives that describe your kid’s appearance. Again, don’t ponder. Just go with what comes to mind.

3. Write down three adjectives that describe your kid’s personality.

4. Imagine your kid exploring a strange new place. The kid comes upon this sight:

5. Using any (but probably not all) of the information you wrote down in #1-3, write a paragraph telling us what happens next.

If I feel bold, I’ll post my paragraph in the comments later today. Emphasis on the if. Happy writing!

Image credit: © Pritt Kallas/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-3.0

The post Monday morning writing prompt appeared first on KidLitopia.

I’m grateful today for stories, for my people, and for my animals, though not necessarily in that order.

I’m grateful for renewal of body, mind, and creative spirit.

I’m grateful for shelter and safety.

I’m grateful for the strange, winding road that has brought me to this moment, in this house, at this desk, because this moment, house, and desk are excellent places to occupy.

Oh, and I’m grateful for tea. Very grateful for tea indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Image credit: © David Wilmot/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-2.0

The post KidLitopian gratitude appeared first on KidLitopia.

I’ve been reading with much interest Mary Kole’s new book, Writing Irresistible Kidlit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers, just published by Writer’s Digest Books. Kole, an agent who blogs at http://kidlit.com, has shared a wealth of wisdom about the children’s and YA marketplace as well as the practice of writing. I’ll be pondering what I’ve read for quite a while.

One topic that has lodged itself in my noggin and refuses to budge is that of “commercial” as opposed to “literary” fiction. Kole describes how the mindset of publishers includes a “perceived split” between these entities, with commercial books offering page-turning plotting and high sales potential, while more literary titles feature quieter themes and outstanding writing but less in the way of bestseller potential. I should emphasize that Kole doesn’t endorse this type of black-and-white thinking on the part of publishers, but she knows it well, and she wants writers to understand the realities of the marketplace.

I know it well too. During the years I directed Carolrhoda Books, I developed and acquired books of both types; doing so made good sense from a business standpoint, and my reader’s heart is certainly big enough to accommodate many types of literature. The rare book that managed to inhabit both of these (arbitrary, artificial, yet all too real) categories tended to perform the best in terms of sales. Commercial books without particular literary distinction might go either way. And many extremely worthwhile literary books did not break through, even though they received good reviews. There were wonderful exceptions, literary books that garnered enough attention thanks to subject matter or awards or a random twist of fate to sell well, but they were exceptions indeed.

We could dissect why this tends to be the case, faulting various aspects of publishing, popular culture, and society at large. We can complain about it—believe me, I have—and we can wish it weren’t so. At the end of the day, though, we still face the same challenge as writers: How much attention should we pay to marketplace realities as we decide what stories to tell?

Market, shmarket

Ah, but we need to back up already. Some of us don’t feel we decide as such. Stories and characters and inspiration come and go, not always under the writer’s immediate control. For these authors, it’s not about making an active, market-driven decision regarding audience and subject and plot; it’s about telling the stories that want to be told.

I’ve often thought of myself as a writer of this ilk. From a creative perspective, my involuntary gut reaction to terms like “market-driven” is to cringe. I write stories about the characters who come calling in my head, not a “fantasy for YAs” or a “mystery for MGs,” thank you very much. So there.

(It may be worth reiterating at this point that I have never finished, much less published, a novel. I’ve wondered of late whether I’ve overromanticized the creative process to my own detriment—but that is a topic for another post.)

My well-developed respect for the muse notwithstanding, how do I reconcile my creative process, my desire to write stories that matter, stories that may indeed earn the dreaded stamp of “literary,” with the undeniable fact that I also want to write stories that will reach, be read by, and perhaps even be loved by actual children in the real world?

This question brings me back to Mary Kole. After describing how publishers often slot books into “commercial” and “literary” categories, she proceeds to poke holes in that very dichotomy. “It’s not that commercial books are ‘not literary,’” she explains in the third chapter, “it’s that they’re also bringing something else to the table: a sales hook.”

Sales hook? My idealistic writer’s heart likes that term about as much as “market-driven.” Still, it sounds as if she’s moving toward some sort of middle ground. Let’s stay with her a while longer and see where we end up.

An unexpected twist

Kole goes into great depth about sales hooks, their nature, and how to find yours if your story lacks one. All this material is well worth reading. Ultimately, though, it comes down to this: a sales hook is the reason kids will want to read your story, articulated in a few succinct phrases.

Oh.

Hmm.

Try as I might, I can’t come up with a single thing to dislike about being able to express how my stories will appeal to their intended audience. It’s not the easiest thing to do at times, but it sounds like the kind of thinking I already attempt when I wrestle with my words and plots and characterization.

Kole goes on to encourage us to think deeply and truly about our ideas, to write about life-changing moments and events, and to write the stories we wanted to read when we were kids ourselves.

Well, heck. All that sounds pretty darn literary to me.

At the end of the day, Kole simply asks us to be mindful of our readers, of why we’re asking them to spend time with us when they could be skateboarding or playing with the dog or any of a thousand other things. That’s a practice my writer’s heart already embraces. If it happens to increase the likelihood that someday my story will reach and be embraced by kids, so much the better.

And so I reach this unlikely conclusion: The marketplace is not a thorn in my creative side. In fact, it’s critically important to me—not because I hope to hit the bestseller lists, get a movie deal, or spawn a series with (shudder) ancillary tie-ins, but because the marketplace is made up of folks who love stories and deserve the best that I can offer. The marketplace is kids and the grown-ups who buy books for them. They aren’t profit margins or sales figures; they’re my people.  Thinking about them with care and love as I do my work isn’t just savvy. It’s the right thing to do, especially here in KidLitopia.

The post Making peace with Mary Kole and market forces appeared first on KidLitopia.

“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it.”  –Anne Lamott

These words capture what I hope to accomplish in both fiction writing and blogging. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how we do our best work by connecting with our own authenticity and then finding ways to share it successfully with the world.

Easier said than done, of course.

The real world can be a problem in this endeavor—particularly, in my case, the digital world. One of my challenges in navigating the myriad websites, blogs, and publications dedicated to kidlit is that I tend to measure myself and my accomplishments against those of everyone (really: everyone) I read about. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a writer alive who doesn’t do the same thing at least some of the time. It’s human nature, after all, to compare ourselves to others; doing so is part of how we figure out who we want to be and what we hope to do with our lives.

The trouble is that when I focus on what others are writing, publishing, selling, and winning, I quickly lose my connection with my inner truth. In its place arises an envy-green blob of longing, often accompanied by the Inner Nasty. Goodbye, authenticity. When I focus primarily on how others will react to what I have to say, I produce writing that feels shallow at best, compromised at worst. That’s if I produce anything at all.

Much as I’ve come to accept that the Inner Nasty will be with me always—and even has something valid to tell me—I believe that the tendency toward envy will never truly abate for very long. I’ve yet to succeed at moralizing myself beyond the human condition. Instead, I’m working on befriending the green blob, icky as that feels, and treating it with compassion.

How to reconnect with one’s inner truth at such times, though?

For me, the answer isn’t to ignore the world at large (by staying offline, for example) or to pretend that I write in a vacuum of audience-free purity. It’s more a matter of balance and perspective. I need the connections the Internet provides with book people of all stripes. And what’s a writer without an audience, anyway? What I need to do is to bring my thoughts about how others perceive my work into alignment with my emotional core.

Part of that core in my case is a longing to reach, help, move, and entertain people with my words. That authentic human desire empowers me to think in a new way about what my audience—be it kids, teens, kidlit writers, or publishing folks—most needs and wants from me. It isn’t the latest cool thing; that’s someone else’s gift to offer. It isn’t award winners, either; none of us can serve up a prize-winning book to order. And no one out there in the world needs me to be famous or even slightly famous.

So what do people need?

Well, kids need good stories, the ones that only I can tell (because none of us could ever tell the same story in the same way, thank goodness). Writers need constructive feedback and support. Colleagues in the industry need information and camaraderie.

Hey, I can offer those things, with honesty and love, and in doing so I can feel like I’m being myself.

Framed this way, my mission becomes something new. I’m not focused on how to make myself stand out from the crowd, how to write something worthy of acclaim, or how to impress whoever happens to wander into KidLitopia that day. Would I love for those things to happen? Sure. But my real goal is to serve others through writing. My quiet inner voice likes that goal quite a lot. It feels right, for me. And while it does feel vulnerable to say as much in a public forum, doing so feels right too. It is, just as Lamott says, writing toward the emotional center of things, KidLitopian style.

The post On authenticity, competition, and the green blob appeared first on KidLitopia.

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I’ve been trying to write the same novel, off and on but mostly off, for more than twelve years.

There. I said it.

Greenthorn is a plant with magical properties, you see, and there are these kids and there’s a massive war and–oh, never mind.

The book is a YA fantasy called GREENTHORN. I could say many more things about the story, its unwrittenness, and especially its unwriter. I could say that I lack diligence, that I lack commitment, that I lack fervor. I could say that I’m a poseur, not the real deal. I could say that I’m a damn good editor but a bit of a mess as writers go. Even the messy ones.

For a long while, I’ve believed all those things to be true. And maybe they are.

Today, though, it strikes me that there must be few behaviors more tenacious than returning time and time again to a piece of writing that simply will not respond to the author’s ministrations.

Today, in fact, I feel altogether stubborn, like a (smallish, curly-haired) bulldog worrying at a bone despite the indigestion that results.

I love this book. I love its inventiveness and its characters, its darkness and its light. I love that when I enter its world, I forget everything else for a little while.

I also hate it.

I hate that I can’t fathom the plot’s structural problems no matter how many different ways I look at them. I hate that I seek and receive wonderful feedback and mentorship yet fail to finish the story. I hate that I set the thing aside for months or years at a time because of all the ways it makes me feel, only to return to it with unfulfilled longing.

Most of all, I hate the way the unfinishedness of this book keeps me (as I imagine it) on the outside of the community of writers, looking in on the warm camaraderie of people who have stuck it out for one manuscript after another, writing and writing and writing through critiques, rejections, and maybe even publication now and then.

Now, when I’m at my best—especially after a good nap—I can feel in my bones that what makes us writers is writing, not completing a certain form (the novel in this case), amassing regrets from agents and publishers, or even attaining the nirvana of a book in print or pixels. And despite the fact that for long stretches of time I have not written even five minutes a day, I do write. I am a writer. The warm and happy circle is open to me anytime I care to wander over to the campfire and grill some marshmallows.

One of the challenges of my writing life, though, is that like most of us, I’m not usually at my best. Another is that it’s difficult even for a freelancer to take more than two naps per day. Hence I spend an unconstructive amount of time feeling inauthentic. That’s bad for my health as well as my work.

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”   —Herman Hesse

Over the years, I’ve tried now and then to work on new stories. I’ve written nonfiction, too. Greenthorn keeps calling me back. It’s a struggle to know whether to double down, to go all in—pick your favorite gambling metaphor—or to put it aside. One thing that’s become clear is that the struggle itself is part of the answer. I used to believe that a book that won’t let me go is a book that’s determined to be written, period. But it occurs to me now that a book that I can’t let go may simply be a book I’m not ready to write.

I credit KidLitopia with prompting me to confront these questions. It’s impossible to make a comfy home for writers without peeking under the bed to sweep out the dust bunnies now and then. I’ve never been the greatest housekeeper, either, so it’s good to have a reason to haul out the broom.

There are other books, right? Other stories, other characters. There must be.

I could never just abandon Greenthorn for good. My decision is this: I’ll spend the next few weeks letting go, for now, of the struggle. And I’ll spend 2013 writing something new, something I haven’t even begun to dream up. Maybe Greenthorn’s day will come eventually; maybe not.

One thing I do know is that I like the thought of not having to acknowledge, a year from now, that I’ve been trying to write the same novel for thirteen years.

Image credit: © Alan Silvester/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-2.0

The post Letting go of Greenthorn: A meditation on getting unstuck appeared first on KidLitopia.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are.  –Marcus Aurelius

Life can be a serendipitous little animal sometimes. Here I am, on the verge of launching KidLitopia at last, when along comes a happy opportunity that shakes up everything I’d just published on this site about my editorial services and rates.

The change afoot in my corner of the universe is this: The KidLitopian’s editorial services are now available through The Editorial Department (TED), an author-services firm that provides support in the areas of editing, submissions, marketing, and design. TED’s freelance editors offer clients a wide array of services, from a $35 introductory 10-page critique to manuscript annotations to even more detailed guidance and feedback.

After weeks of planning to relaunch my editorial career as a solo freelancer, I chanced across TED’s website and discovered the firm was seeking a kidlit editor. The more I read, the more I realized I had to inquire: Not only does the company share my editorial philosophy, it’s based right here in Tucson. Over the past few weeks, TED’s friendly and well-informed staff have gotten to know me a bit, and I them. My sense that the fit might be good proved correct. After a look at my background, references, and editorial acumen, TED agreed. So here we are.

I’m thrilled, to put it mildly, to find myself in a situation that empowers me to better serve authors. I’m probably not unique among editors in that I happen to be more skilled at editing than running a business. Because TED’s wonderful staff handles the administrative and other business-oriented parts of the process, editors are free to focus on what they do best.

TED’s fees are also significantly lower than those I would have charged working solo. That’s because I had to pay myself, so to speak, for that administrative work—and I had to plan for lean times as well. TED will help me build a base of satisfied clients, meaning steady work and less stress for me. Those happy circumstances will enable me to provide better service to my authors at a lower cost.

Finally, authors are empowered by this change, too. TED’s been in business for more than thirty years; their lifeblood is serving authors well and helping them to publish their best books in the best possible way. What does this mean for you, the author? It means you have access to expert help–and to protection along the way. For example, if an author finds herself matched with an editor who isn’t a good fit, TED will step in to resolve the situation. That’s a much safer scenario than one in which an author hires a solo freelancer and has little recourse in the event of a poor fit or the editor’s failure to follow through.

As for the rest of KidLitopia, this site will continue to grow and thrive in the company of kidlit folks. I’ll continue to offer free gifts and to share my thoughts on writing and children’s books via the blog. The Five Percent Promise remains in effect and now applies to my income from TED.

Change is good! If you’d like to learn more about my relationship with TED, check out the Editorial Services FAQ or post your questions below.

The post Meet TED! appeared first on KidLitopia.

KidLitopia is honored to be participating in KidLit Cares, a Hurricane Sandy relief program organized by authors Kate Messner and  Joanne Levy. Kate’s inspiration to auction off donated kidlit books and services to raise funds for Sandy survivors is an example of how tragedy can give birth to compassion and generosity. The auction features everything from school visits to critiques to virtual writing workshops. I’m donating a  manuscript critique, including an editorial letter and textual comments. It will be featured in round 2 of the auction, which starts Monday, November 12. If you have a kidlit manuscript ready for a new pair of eyes, please consider placing a bid here. Winning bidders will send their funds directly to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and provide a receipt to the auction organizers, who will coordinate contact with the donors. Brilliant.

In other news, parts 1-4 of the Character Illuminator are now available! This free download is an experimental module comprised of a workbook and a series of visualizations, guided by your very own KidLitopian. You’ll meet, learn about, and write about a new character in a relaxing, creativity-nurturing environment. Parts 5-8 will be available on November 15 and will be announced in the blog. Given the experimental nature of the Character Illuminator, I’m hoping to hear feedback from folks as to whether it was useful, fun, not so great, or what have you. Download away, writer friends!

Last, but definitely not least, stay tuned for a major announcement about my editorial services. It’s a fantastic development that will make those services more accessible to more writers. Huzzah!

The post KidLitopian News Roundup appeared first on KidLitopia.

You may have noticed that my signature on KidLitopia’s home page includes the designation “Former Child.” I chose that moniker in homage to one of the greatest children’s book editors ever to grace the profession, Ursula Nordstrom.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Ursula’s delightful voice, bold vision, and winning ways with authors, hie thee to your library and check out Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom (HarperCollins, 1998), edited with skill and loving care by Leonard S. Marcus. Known for being an unapologetic renegade—she edited and published Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, among many other innovative and challenging books—Nordstrom found herself questioned on numerous occasions by librarians whose tastes ran toward the more traditional. Asked what qualified her to publish children’s books, given that she was not herself a librarian or teacher, Nordstrom replied, “I am a former child, and I haven’t forgotten a thing” (p. xxii).

Those eleven simple words reflect the connection between past and present that informs my sense of mission in both editing and writing. Everyone is a former child, of course, but few people can fully remember the essentials of childhood—the emotional aspects, the lived experience of being a kid—much less embody them in work and art the way Nordstrom and the brilliant authors she edited could.

When I’m doing my best work, which (alas) is not one hundred percent of my waking hours, I feel myself tapping into a connection with Shannon-Who-Was. I don’t mean this in a literal way—I do not cuddle Manther the Panther at my desk, for example, though I do still own and cherish Manther the Panther—but rather in a felt sense. There’s a rightness to good work that resonates with the kid I used to be. She can recognize authenticity, I think.

Playing astronaut with my big brother under the dining room table

I believe—brace yourself; this may get a bit zany—that it never hurts to give Shannon-Who-Was a chance to come out and play now and then. This pertains not so much to work as to overall well-being. During a period of illness, for example, I rediscovered the joy of coloring. (I say this as a person without the slightest gift for the visual arts.) There is something quite soothing and freeing about the act of changing white paper into colored paper: Regardless of the quality of the end product, something exists in the world that didn’t before. Shannon-Who-Was likes this a lot. She also likes silly songs, rhymes, and pretending to be a Muppet. It’s therefore a happy coincidence that my husband is one of the silliest people I’ve ever known; our home, though lacking in actual kids, is rife with play.

I’ve meandered far from Ursula, but I think she might understand. Kids are wanderers, too. They may not know where they’re going, but that’s okay: The adventure lies in the journey. Just like good work does.

Image credits: (top) HarperCollins Children’s Books; (bottom) © T.W. Barefield

The post On being a former child appeared first on KidLitopia.

Coming soon to KidLitopia: a free, eight-part visualization module designed to help you connect with and get to know the star of your next story.

The Character Illuminator is comprised of a downloadable workbook PDF and eight mp3 audio files, each 3 to 4 minutes long. I’ll be your guide through a series of inspiring visualizations, accompanied by soothing background music by Chris Zorn. After each visualization, the workbook will give you an opportunity to record and reflect on what you’ve learned about your character. By the end of the module, you’ll have an understanding of what makes your character tick, what’s going right and wrong in the character’s life, and what qualities make this kid unlike any other. You may even find the seed of your story itself—after all, character is what creates drama.

Parts one through four will be available in Free Downloads by November 8, with the second half of the module coming the following week. This format is, frankly, experimental; I have high hopes that it will help you know your characters more deeply, but I look forward to your feedback either way. If the format does prove useful, I’ll expand it into other aspects of writing kidlit. If not, I’ve had a blast writing the script and learning to do some (very basic) recording and sound editing!

In support of your work,

Shannon

Image credit: Lienhard Schulz, German language Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons/CCA-SA 3.0

The post Announcing the Character Illuminator! appeared first on KidLitopia.

What’s the biggest block to your writing success? One of mine is the Inner Nasty.

We all know the Nasty by one name or another. To some, it’s a gremlin or a troll; others call it the Inner Critic. (If you’d like, leave your label for the Nasty in the comments—I’ll compile a list in a follow-up post.) Whatever the moniker, the Nasty is that mean voice in our mind that tells us we’ve got nothin’. We lack talent, skill, perseverance, brainpower, creativity. Our writing is banal and trite, and whoever says otherwise is either lying or a fool. We’ll never amount to much; if by some happy accident we accomplish something meaningful, it’s a fluke.

Left unattended, the Nasty destroys writing sessions, characters, whole books–even human beings.

Given the formidable power of my Inner Nasty, I’ve done plenty of research over the years on how to contend with it. The ideas in this post didn’t originate with me; they’re distilled from numerous writings on, and conversations about, psychology and creativity. In particular, I thank author Ann Weiser Cornell and the amazing Andrea Schroeder of Creative Magic Academy, as well as Camille Derricotte, psychotherapist and wise woman extraordinaire.

The Inner Champion

One approach to contending with the Nasty is to stifle it with positive self-talk. This strategy focuses on the creation of an Inner Champion, a cheerleader and defender who has the strength to stand up to the Nasty and send it packing. The internal dialogue looks something like this:

Inner Nasty: You are never going to finish that book. How many years have you been working on it now? That critique you got was right on the money. The book is not original and it’s never going to see print.

Inner Champion: Hey! Quit being mean to Shannon! She’s got tremendous talent and a lot to offer the world. Her writing may not be perfect, and she may be slow, but she’s doing it.

IN: Whatever…

IC: And remember the encouragement she got from A and B and C?

IN: Who, them? They’re not exactly world-famous literary critics. Besides, they probably said those things because they’re her friends, so they had to be nice.

IC: That’s enough out of you. You’re just an internalization of some Mean Person from Shannon’s Childhood. I’m not going to let you sabotage her.

IN: Whatever…

IC: Shush. Just shush.

IN: [rolls eyes, slinks away]

For me, this approach rarely works longer than, well, a few seconds. While it feels good to practice my Champion voice, the Nasty seems to be the smarter of the two by far. It slithers right back into my interior dialogue without warning, equipped with fiercer criticism than ever. The Champion can yell all she wants, persuade with all her verbal acumen, and even beg, but the Nasty will never be more than briefly subdued. And that’s not a good environment for creative work.

Listening with Compassion

I’m finding better results with a very different practice, one that’s more complex; it asks us to take a seemingly paradoxical stance toward the Nasty. We begin with the premise that every part of our personality has an important function, something useful to tell us that merits an attempt to understand it. In this approach, we listen to the Nasty—not accepting its words at face value, but simply listening. Instead of reacting with shame or anger, we tell the Nasty that we’re willing to give it space to say what it needs to say.

We also give the Nasty the benefit of the doubt. That sounds like a curious thing to do with a voice that seems so intent on tearing us down. Again, we’re not buying into the Nasty’s message. We’re looking deeper, working from faith that the Nasty has some unmet needs that are prompting its attacks. Finally, we do what we can to reassure the Nasty that as we proceed with our creative work, we will ensure that its needs are seen and taken care of.

The idea, put briefly, is to meet bile with compassion and disgust with acceptance (but not, to reiterate one more time, with belief):

Inner Nasty: You are never going to finish that book. How many years have you been working on it now? That critique you got was right on the money. The book is not original and it’s never going to see print.

Shannon: It sounds like you want something.

IN: Huh? Yeah, I want you to face the truth. If you could really write, you’d have published a novel by now. Probably more than one. Hello, haven’t you noticed that you’re forty? Tick, tick, tick…

S: You’re afraid I’ve missed my chance.

IN: Well, you have, haven’t you?

S: What else?

IN: …

S: Go ahead. I’m listening.

IN: Like I already said, this thing you’re writing, it isn’t much good.

S: And what worries you about that, if it’s true?

IN: Well, duh. You’re embarrassing yourself. You’re going to put that work out into the world and everyone will see that you’re a fraud, a hack, a talentless wannabe. Even if you somehow get it published, you’ll be humiliated in the end.

S: You’re afraid I’ll be embarrassed and humiliated.

IN: I’m sure of it.

S: Well, that is a scary prospect.

IN: Uh-huh…

S: Here’s the thing, though: I’ll be okay. Even if I put work out there and get a negative response, I’ll get over it. I’ll be fine, and you will, too.

IN: …

S: Really. We’ll be okay. So I’m going to do my work, and you can rest. And when you need to talk again, go ahead, and I’ll listen. How does that sound?

IN: [wanders away in search of tasty lunch of bat wings and lizard tails]

It turned out in this case—and it pretty much always does, for me—that the Inner Nasty just wanted to protect me from something quite painful. Being heard helped it stop spewing and start listening. And being reassured with the honest truth that I’ll survive no matter what freed it to relax. This isn’t to suggest that the Nasty is gone for good. Far from it! It will get scared again, and when it does, it will probably get mean again. The difference is that now I have a strategy for making peace with it. Most of the time, I can proceed with writing despite the occasional eruption. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

What approaches have you tried in dealing with your Inner Nasty? What works for you, and what doesn’t?

This post is available as a downloadable PDF  here.

Image: From Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, written by Lewis Carroll, 1871, John Tenniel/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

The post The Inner Nasty appeared first on KidLitopia.

“Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.” —Alan Cohen

Thanks for joining me in this new adventure, a site that celebrates and supports kidlit and the extraordinary people who create it. My dream for KidLitopia is to make a place that serves writers in ways that aren’t easy to come by elsewhere. It isn’t hard to find book reviews and trailers, advice on getting published, and oodles of material about the craft of writing for kids and teens. You’ll probably see such posts here now and then, too. I’m especially interested in doing close readings of first chapters of acclaimed books, for example, to delve into what we might learn from them and how we could apply those lessons to our own work.

Mainly, though, I want this site to speak to our writing hearts—the source and focal point of our creativity, our dreams, our anxieties and struggles. To this end, the perspective of many posts will be reflective, gentle, and encouraging. You won’t find the nuts and bolts of getting published here, but you will find plenty of thoughts about why we try and how to sustain when the going gets rough.

If you’ve surveyed the site a bit, you’ve learned by now that KidLitopia is also the home of my freelance business. I’ve spent a good piece of time pondering whether it’s inherently contradictory to house a money-making venture within a site that aims to reflect a noble, even loving, mission. Ultimately, if it emerges that the inclusion of the business undermines that mission, I will divide the two. But to me, the various elements of KidLitopia comprise a seamless venture, particularly within the context of the Five Percent Promise. Editorial services and classes are the very best things I have to offer to kidlit authors. To segregate them would ring false, I think, and would do a disservice to the people I most want to help. That said, I very much want to hear from you if you find the combination distasteful or insincere.

Because KidLitopia is in its infancy, you can expect to see myriad changes and perhaps a false start here and there as I stumble along. In fact, I’ll take a risk and put myself out there: a small, no-longer-secret part of me is afraid I may fall on my (cyber)face. Fortunately, I’ve experienced enough of both failure and success in my professional life to know that if I do, I’ll learn a great deal about myself—enough to dust myself off and move along to the next exciting thing.

Meanwhile, please watch for new posts every Monday and Thursday, with the occasional extra woven in along the way. Your feedback is always welcome, via either comments or email. Happy writing, my friends!

(Photo © Joe Ravi/Wikimedia Commons/CCA-SA 3.0)

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