By: Laurel Snyder,
on 9/2/2008
I’m honored to be up today at Beatrice.com, with a little essay about sexism in “traditional” children’s books. Beatrice was one of the first lit-blogs I ever read regularly, and Ron Hogan is one of those people who make the world run. Illuminati kinda guy. No joke.
Stop by?
By: Kelly Herold,
on 9/1/2008
When Laurel Snyder told me she'd be on tour, I just had to jump on board. She's a wonderful blogger, a fantastic writer, and she has a new Middle Grade novel that sounds just up my alley. So in honor of Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains and of Laurel Snyder, please welcome her here at Big A little a.
Kelly: Laurel--You've written many books--nearly all for different age groups. For which age group do you like to write most and why?
Laurel: Hmmm. For me, writing begins with language-- with a line or a bit of dialogue or even a single word. Figuring out what form the project wants to take can be a matter of trial and error. I made several false starts, for instance, at poems (for grownups) before turning the phrase "greasy spoon of stuck" into a picture book called Inside The Slidy Diner. So the age I want to write for, on a given day, is a matter of what's working that day.
Kelly: Beer, wine, or a soft drink?
Laurel: Oh, all three please! And a whiskey back if you'll join me. Most often, weather dictates. Red wine on a cold night. Wheat beer on a hot summer day, or limeade!
Kelly: If you had the chance, would you travel to space?
Laurel: As long as you come too. I'm not good with isolation. I'm an ENFP.
Kelly: Oh, man, I'm an INTJ/INTF. And, I'm scared of space. Terrified, to be honest. Will you be okay if I sit in my living room and cheer you on?
Here's another question: Beach, city, or forest?
Laurel: Oh, the beach. I love most kinds of places, the way I like most adult beverages. NYC in a snowstorm. The Tennessee Mountains on a fall day. But I grew up in MD, near the Atlantic. Nothing else will ever feel quite right to me. I miss seagulls.
Kelly: Why do you think you're now focusing on writing for children?
Laurel:Well, I'm sure that part of it is that I have my own kids. But really, I've always read children's books, and re-read them. I just love them, and think that most of the books that touch people deeply are books they find when they're young. I feel insanely lucky to get to be a part of that. I'm still writing poetry, but adult prose feels a lot less important now that I'm writing for kids.
Kelly: Coffee, tea, or a triple skinny latte?
Laurel: Coffee! Good dark roast brewed thick and chewy, but just plain old regular drip. It feels like there's something broken in the world when my coffee costs more than my lunch. Tea is for winter afternoons.
Kelly: You're a popular blog reader and writer—one who participates in the kidlitosphere actively. How did you get started blogging and why?
Laurel: Hmmm. I actually started blogging back in 1999, using Dreamweaver, so that the posts accumulated backwards. As a result, my original site, lonelysongs.com was a MESS. But the worst part of it is that my original blog was a chronicle of one very depressed year when I moved to New York City, not to mention a diary of the men I had loved and/or dated in my life. People ate it up, but I'm very very very glad it disappeared into the aether. I didn't really understand what the web was, how public it was. Lesson learned (for the most part) the hard way.
Kelly: I have to say that your first blog sounds fabulous, Laurel. I'm sorry I missed it! Okay, on to another question: Movie, Theater, or a Concert?
Laurel: Concert, of the acoustic variety. Something alt-country or folky. I love twang. Ideally, outdoors on a sunny day. With a fiddle or banjo. I really learned to love music in Iowa, where the music feels very American.
Kelly: Ooh, Iowa. Over the years, I've become a fan. Better to love where you live, no? Okay, here's another question: If you had an entire week and unlimited resources to do whatever you'd like, what would you do and why?
Laurel: Hmm. That's a tricky one. For myself, all alone, I'd take a week in Jerusalem. Stay at a nice hotel, but putter in dark corners. With the whole family, I'd rent a cottage in Ireland, near Doolin, with a private chef and a nanny. Just let the kids roam and run while I sat and listened to music. I'm not ready to take the kids to the Middle East just yet.
Kelly: I hear you, Laurel. I have that struggle too--only with Russia. Okay, here's another question: Halloween, New Year's, or Valentine's Day?
Laurel: Halloween! I love dressing up! Though I love it a lot less now that they move it to a weekend night and make everyone trick or treat at the mall at, like, 4 pm. What's that all about? Halloween is for letting kids do insane things in the dark on a school night, obviously.
By: Alice Pope,
on 8/29/2008
Debut Author of the Month: Laurel Snyder...
This month's debut author Laurel Snyder's first two books have release dates just a few months apart. Her picture book Inside the Slidy Diner is an October release from Tricycle, and her mid-grade Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains is coming in October from Random House. Both books were slush piles submissions. Here she explains her almost simulteanous first books; talks about finding her agent, waiting tables, and writing poetry; and offers advice to those seeking publication.
How did you end up with your first books being published so close together?
Oh, it's a funny situation, but for a good reason! Basically, both books were pulled from slush, about a year apart. Tricycle accepted Slidy a year ahead of Random House contacting me about Scratchy. So then Slidy was due to come out last fall, in time for Halloween (it's a spooky kind of book) and Scratchy was supposed to follow about a year later. But the artist working on Slidy threw herself into it like you wouldn't believe. The pages are very involved, hand painted with with collage elements, and some crazy details. There are recurring images like a mouse you have to hunt for on each page, and all sorts of little jokes... it's wonderful, a work of art (that I really can't take credit for at all). So it took a long time, and at first I think the press wanted to speed her up. But when they saw what she was doing, they decided to let her take her time so she could maintain that level of complexity, and they gave her another year!
Please tell me and my readers a little about both of your first books.
Inside the Slidy Diner is a picture book about a little girl named Edie who lives in a macabre sort of diner where the lady fingers really are! Watch out for the Wigglepedes!
Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains is a lower middle grade novel, an old-fashioned fairy tale set in a place called "The Bewilderness"�about a milkmaid named Lucy and a prince named Wynston. When Wynston has to pick a queen, and Lucy is deemed too common for the job, Lucy runs away in search of her mother. So of course Wynston chases after her, and they have all sorts of silly adventures. It has wonderful pictures by Greg Call, and a lot of silly songs. There's a sniffly prairie dog named Cat, a sweet but ornery cow, and some cautionary tales about living life too rigidly.
You started out submitting on your own, but you have an agent now. How did you find her?
When you get pulled from the slush at Random House, it suddenly becomes easier to find an agent! I queried about 30 of them in one whirlwind weekend, got offers from several great folks, and was lucky enough to be able to choose. I'm very very very happy with my amazing agent, Tina Wexler. I picked Tina because she didn't scare me. She talked to me like a person, laughed a lot, and felt immediately like a friend. One of the best decisions I ever made. But I was rejected by a lot of people before that all happened (some of whom sleazily offered to rep me after the book was in committee, but I'll never say who!).
Tell me about getting your first BFYR contract.
They never tell you how long it'll take to get the actual contract, do they? The formal offer came one day while I was teaching comp at a community college in Atlanta, and I actually got the message as I was dashing from school to pick up my son at his babysitter. I must have looked like a crazy lady, screaming my face off in the gridlock traffic all the way home. But the contract came about four decades later, in the heaviest envelope ever, and I just signed where I was supposed to, and sent it back. Maybe that's dumb but I figure that's why I have an agent.
How must inspiration did Slidy Diner draw from your experience waiting tables in several greasy spoons?
It really is a kind of encoded memoir of those years. I guess its a lesson in how anything can be interesting, and how we need to collect details wherever we go. Show Don't Tell, and all that. Rotten grill grease, tattooed waitresses, and sad patrons who sleep in their oatmeal don't sound like things you'd put in a children's book, but somehow it worked. I should say, for the record, that I love waiting tables, and plan to do it again when my kids are a little older. The Hamburg Inn, where I worked in Iowa City, was a second home to me. For me, living in a world of non-writers is important, so I have something to write about.
How have SCBWI, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Class of 2k8 each helped to shape your writing career?
I could write a whole book about the Workshop. I really have a love/hate relationship with that world. I love poetry, and I love Iowa City, and I cannot imagine my life without some of the friends I made in those years. But the climate of that MFA program made me a little nutso. Not the program itself, but the weird competitive stuff that happens among the students. It made me so crazy I stopped trying to keep up and dove into children's books, my touchstones, and that's really how I began writing for kids. So I have to thank them for that! Also, although I didn't share with anyone else, my teacher Marvin Bell was very supportive of Scratchy Mountains. I'll never forget that!
Once I found myself writing for kids, I didn't feel like I could show anyone at the Workshop the things I was working on. And that's where the SCBWI came in. It provided, along with the Verla Kay Blueboards and the CWIM, a community and a set of instructions for how to think about publishing. I don't know how I would have ever found a home for my work without SCBWI. I don't actively participate in the physical world, but as a virtual community it was critical for me.
2k8 is awesome, but that happened very late in the game. I was already into several other books by the time I joined 2k8, and it's a nice way to meet people and get the word out, but I don't feel it had any effect on my publishing career, per se. Though another class member from Iowa, Sarah Prineas, was an early reader for my second novel (Any Which Wall, 2009) and she's become a good friend, so that's wonderful!
You have a lot of experience writing material for adult readers, having published in Salon, Utne Reader, The Iowa Review and others. What led you to write for children?
Children's books are some of the best, most innovative books in the world. I read them myself, and I find that there's a spark of magic in them. I just love them. I'd say that 80 percent of the most important books in my life are things I read before I was 12. I hate the division between children's books and the literary institutions. I just don't think the divide makes sense. Also, writing for kids feels almost political to me. Helping to shape the future--not writing political books and offering "messages," but providing the right stimulus for kids. Giving them something to chew on.
You've said that writing children's books is not as lucrative as you thought it would be when you were in fourth grade. Since (so far) writing for young readers has not helped you buy a mansion or become a gajillionaire, what keeps you interested?
Well, it's a lot more lucrative than poetry!
No, seriously, one benefit to beginning as a poet is that poets don't write to earn. They write to write. I don't think about money or the market when I write. As a result, I have written some books you will never see, like a morbid picture book called, The Boy Who Caught His Death. I always assumed I'd write, and make my money some other way--whether teaching, waitressing, or writing schlock for hire.
You have a book release party coming up and have a string of promotional events on the horizon. What's your plan for engaging your audience?
Oh, I don't know that I have a plan. I just think meeting kids and seeing them excited about books is the most exiting thing in the world. I want to believe that if I work hard, I'll write good books, and that if I write good books, they will find their way into people's hands. It has been explained to me, in so many words, that I'm not a "bestseller" kind of author. I can live with that. It's a great gift to me that I can write the books I most want to write, and I have an editor and an agent who will help them reach people. Especially since more copies have already been pre-ordered than were even printed when I published my book of poems. Poetry really does make you appreciate having a wider readership of any kind. Based on anything I've ever experienced, both of my books have already been successful.
What's your advice for those working toward publication?
I think the trick is a very careful balance--between writing hard without thinking about selling, and then selling hard (by which I mean hunting for a book deal) without thinking about the possibility of failure. I do believe that a good writer who plugs away will someday publish. You can only fail if you set quantitative expectations like, "I'll publish before I'm 30" or "I'll send this to 51 agents and then quit." I do think you have to listen to your most honest readers and friends, and if one books isn't working, try another. But you can't quit. I have about 30 "dead" picture book manuscripts in a drawer and Scratchy Mountains went through draft after draft before it was accepted. In fact, you can go to my blog and see a rejection letter from the very editor who acquired it! I figure if I can have two books pulled from slush by two different editors, it still happens a good bit.
By: Laurel Snyder,
on 8/23/2008
So, on Tuesday (which is the BIG DAY) I’ll be online all day at Book Roast, chatting with folks and making a general fool of myself (no surprise there I guess). And I would beg you stop by for a number of reasons.
1. I’m scared nobody will come, and I’ll look silly.
2. I’m nervous about the book and could use your love, generally.
3. Book Roast is awesome fun and you should check it out.
4. You could win a free book.
5. It benefits Reach Out and Read!!!
Pretty please, won’t you stop by, and maybe even help me spread the word?
By: Laurel Snyder,
on 8/13/2008
So I’m sitting her in a big pile of books, and I’m thinking I should give a few away.
Hmmmm….
How’s about this?
You’ll post a little story to your blog, about a task/ job/situation/role for which you are thoroughly unsuitable (the FULL title of my book is “Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR the Search for a Suitable Princess”).
For instance, if I were entering the contest I might say, “I would make a thoroughly unsuitable vow-of-silence-nun, because I never shut up. Also I am Jewish.”
In addition to this little post, you’ll also ou’ also add a link to this post (by way of explanation) and the cover of the book (see above).
Then you will scramble back here and post a comment, to let me know you’ve entered the contest!
In a week’s time I’ll select the most entertaining story entered, and the winner will get a FREE signed copy of my book (in which I promise to write something REALLY unsuitable).
How’s that?
Let the games begin!
By: Laurel Snyder,
on 8/12/2008
They’re HERE!!!!
The books are here! The glorious, beautiful, amazing, shiny books full of pages and words and pictures. And it only took 8 years for them to get here!!!!
A lot of “important” moments along the way. The initial chat with Lisa, the letters of on-spec revisions, the day it went to committee, the agent-getting, the acceptance, the first round of official edits, the second round, copyediting, last-minute fact checking, blurb hunting, contracts arriving in the mail, checks arriving in the mail, arcs arriving in the mail, the first review, etc. etc. All of them HUGE moments. And with the arrival of each, this feeling of “I’m about to be an author”.
But checks and agents and deals and reviews do NOT make you an author, whatever some people may think.
A BOOK makes you an author!!!
There is something in the actual concreteness of the thing. The THING! It is a thing, not an idea. I had an idea, and I worked at it, and now, 8 years later, the idea has become a thing. An object. It’s an incarnation. It’s CRAZY!
I can wrap it up and give it as a gift. I can burn it for firewood. I can barter it for goods and services. It is a thing. I can touch it.
MY BOOK!!!!!!
(which the boys–THING 1 and THING 2– helped me, joyfully, to unpack. I’m a lucky lady, to have such helpers)
By: Laurel Snyder,
on 8/3/2008
My little book trailer got a mention today on Fuse #8’s Video Sunday!
I feel so fancy!
Oh Laurel I SO remember trying to write with a house full of preschoolers and no child care. It gets easier, I swear! Eventually they even learn how to cook.
Can't wait to read your book! Thanks for the interview, Kelly.
Great interview! I just ordered this book!
Thanks so much for having me!
I have to say that the lonelysongs linked here is not (obviously) my messy, oversharing blog... funny to see that someone else has the URL now.
The ex-bf section of my old site was called "Autobiography of lost loves OR Some Particular Boots I've knocked."
Really, it's good it has gone the way of the dodo.
:)
You're welcome, Rosanne. And you're right: It does get easier.
Yay, Tricia!
Laurel: It was so much fun. (I'll take down that link.) Thanks for stopping by.
That was fun to read. Can't wait to see her book.