Stuffed Into a Teapot

Well, I'm taking slow-blogging to new heights. :) 

Ropes course with the fam on vacation in NH

One thing that gets on my nerves is when people throw around the idea that because of TV (or the internet) kids have shorter attention spans than they ever had before. You know, when people say it authoritatively in a how-to-write-for-children book, without citing any evidence. 

Alice: From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I've been told what I must do and who I must be. I've been shrunk, stretched, scratched, and stuffed into a teapot. I've been accused of being Alice and of not being Alice but this is my dream. I'll decide where it goes from here.

Bayard: If you diverge from the path...

Alice: I make the path!

(From the 2010 movie, Alice In Wonderland)

By making that sort of assumption, that children are being damaged by the progress of media, you might as well stuff 'em into a teapot.

It may be true that attention-deficit issues with children are on the rise, but let's face it, that's a chemical process in the brain. I don't think people have found a causal effect between that and TV or computers. And, it has been shown that kids with ADHD can actually "hyper focus" when they find something compelling to focus on. 

That's the point, right?  Give kids something compelling to focus on.

I do think that it is true that there are different sources of entertainment that can lure our kids away from books, but the takeaway for us writers is that in order to compete with these games, shows and interactive experiences, we need to grab the reader on the first sentence, and hold their interest through the whole book. Which is why writing for young readers is so darn intriguing in the first place. Want a challenge? Try to write a novel for today's youth. They expect the best. It's our job to give it to them.

My kids don't zone out after 12 minutes because they have been trained by the TV and commercials (in fact, the commercials are more compelling to my kids than the show, most times). They don't stop focusing on interesting things after a few moments and drift away. They aren't less inclined to focus. They just have more to chose from.

We need to learn from the experts in the gaming field, like Jane McGonigal, and write in a way that gives kids positive feedback and a real interaction with our books, either figuratively, if we are writing traditional stories, or literally, like Patrick Carman. (The video clips of Skeleton Creek scared the bejeesus out of my eldest. Because he didn't listen to his mother. I'm just saying.)

But let's not assume that our kids are becoming less because they have more to interest them. Let's give them the more (which I believe today's authors, in general, are accomplishing).

Take my nine-year-old son, for instance. 

Give me s'more!

Some might say that he doesn't have the attention span for reading, because he tends not to choose books at his reading level. He sees a full page of text and turns away. But it's not attention span that is his problem--(I don't happen to think he has a problem, thank you very much, teapot stuffers)--but that he is an auditory/sensory learner, and not a visual learner. So most age-appropriate books are, by definition, not his cup of tea. But give him an Alvin Ho book, and he won't put it down. For him, humor is the carrot that will pull him through an entire book.

As a writer, you don't necessarily have to hook my son. (Although the fist fight that ensued in the back seat of my car when I tossed Anna's ARC of My Sort-of Fairy Tale Ending to my kids shows that she has. I'm talking FIST FIGHT where I had to pull the car over and physically separate the kids. Thanks, Anna. #MyBoysReadGirlBooks #TheyArePassionateAboutBooks #MyDaughterWonTheFight)

But you do have to know what type of kid you are hooking, and then hook them the whole way through. Don't let 'em off the line.

And, as if I haven't mixed enough metaphors in this post, I'm encouraging you to make your own path, when it comes to writing books, and not write under the fear that children don't have the attention span to pick up a book and read anymore.  You make the path!

And, now for our regularly scheduled commercial: If anyone wants help with the path, we have an All Things Picture Book group meeting at the Writers' Loft in Sherborn on Thursday night this week, and a Craft Chat on Character on July 23rd, also in the evening. Here's the link. Join us!

Take the Suck out of Success

The road to success can really suck. Especially as a writer. It is fraught with critiques, revision, and rejection. 

Lofter Kyla (far left), me (2nd from the right) with our triathlon training posse, on the day of our tri, last September.
For some reason, I thought this sign was funny. :) This race was so much better because we trained together. It made the TRAINING fun. And that says a lot!

I still see success for my books as having them find a place with a traditional publisher. That definition of success for my writing hasn't changed. But for my own professional life, I've found other successes--and they all have to do with creating community and connecting people with what they need for their own success.

I enjoy building the Writers' Loft, a non-profit writing community. I enjoy helping to organize the NE-SCBWI conference. I find success when I connect with and am helpful to others. I might sound like a broken record at times--community...community...community.

But I think that some things bear repeating. Like this one--The Kindness Project. Because we are human. Because some things are universal. Because we need witnesses to our road of suck. Because we want to celebrate the successes--and the kindnesses. Because, ultimately, things are better when we aren't alone.

What is your perspective on community? What type of writerly community do you see as the most beneficial to your success? I am putting together a workshop about building community, and would love to know what has been important to you, or what you want to know about in order to build your own support system. 

Unapologetically Human

I spent the first day home from the NE-SCBWI conference thinking about what had gone wrong, and what I had done or said that wasn’t “right.”

Sometimes I make the mistake of talking to strangers as if they already know who I am, are privy to the inside joke, or have heard the beginning of a conversation I had weeks ago. I worry, later (always later), that the joke or point I was making didn’t come across at all, because, well, you’d have to know me to understand where I was coming from.

Dude. At NE-SCBWI, I said some weird things to agents. And made a comment about drinking in front of someone I had just met, a comment which totally could have been misconstrued.

Evidently I like to torture myself (afterwards, always afterwards). But this same skill and attention to detail might just make the difference between a good manuscript and a great one, as I turn in to do another revision.

The second day after the conference, I remembered my favorite moments. Sure, Grace Lin dissecting the Chinese characters for the word "love" to mean "swallowing your heart" was amazing. 

But my favorite moments were the human ones. People reacting to me in the same ways for which I was berating myself. Those funny things that make us connect, through our mistakes or quirks. Through our need for chocolate (I’m looking at you, Stephen Fraser!) and those silly times we put our foot in our mouths, or miss the mark on a joke.

I love those human moments.

I think of how refreshing it is to land at a blog like Matt’s, that talks about how he stumbled around while querying. Made all the mistakes. Because, boy, I have too! (On a side note, who wants Matt to come to NE-SCBWI next year??!!)

How that means so much more to me than someone spouting out the correct way to do things. How trying to be perfect (and the flip side of this—judging others) just turns everyone off.

How the best parts of life are the messy ones.

So, have you had similar experiences? What is the most embarrassing thing you’ve said or done? How often do you worry about your human moments? 

And, the following has NOTHING to do with mistakes, but cuteness and utter kindness:

Cowgirl (in first grade now) did a report on Anna for school. And she became Anna for a day, and parents had to guess who her Mystery History person was. 

My favorite part? "It was done in the style known as writing which involves a computer." PRECIOUS. 

My other favorite part? That Anna CAME. I am still marveling that Anna has that amount of grace and kindness to make my daughter's day. (Heck, YEAR!)

Just THIS. Too cute for words!

THANKS ANNA!!! 

And thanks to everyone who made the NE-SCBWI conference such a roaring success!

Spring in New England

Spring in New England means the kids dust off the bikes and use them to go EVERYWHERE.

It means optimistic planting. (That last frost is over, RIGHT?!)

And, most of all, it means the NESCBWI conference. :)

I'm heading out today for friends, workshops, hilarity, learning, a little bit of stress (you know, pre-manuscript critique), and lots of hobnobbing.

I'm always so excited to meet up with those friends who I don't get to see often enough. Although, being so engrossed with catching up with those friends makes me worry that we look like a closed-off group. If you are new to the conference or just want to say "hi," please BUTT IN. :)

I can't wait to see EVERYONE.

Springfield, here I come!

NO-JUDGMENT ZONES

Blog, what blog?

I stop blogging at times, not because I'm so busy (is anyone's BS detector going off? I guess I'm just saying that being busy isn't an excuse--I know some of you Do It All), but because I'm Feeling Something. And I don't like to explore Feelings in a public place. I need to be calm when I put it out there. :)

Even so, I still get pretty worked up when I think about Marathon Monday. The Boston Marathon is a hallowed race course for me--we walk from our house to the halfway mark to hand out oranges most years, and before I had kids, I cheered at Heartbreak Hill when I wasn't jumping in to run the last two miles alongside my brother. (You know, who Qualified--see all my sisterly pride?)

I don't run those kinds of distances--ever--but when I watched the events unfolding, I said to my sister-in-law, "next year, maybe I'll run it." Ignore that the qualifying time is pretty quick. Ignore that the farthest I've ever run at one time was 17 miles.

My sister-in-law laughed and told me that the one thing she could count on New Englanders for was a fine-tuned Eff-You attitude. :)

Which, in the moment, made me happy. I'd run the marathon to show my solidarity with the people who had their amazing celebration of the day, and SO MUCH MORE, stolen from them. But now, I'm wondering if decisions I make in a knee-jerk, you-can't-stop-me fashion ever make sense.

So I think of writing and querying and book reviews. When we as writers start to get bitter, when we start making decisions based on the things that make us mad--whether it's a rejection, or a bad review, or an uncomfortable crit, then we start to wander into the Land of Eff-Yous.

I'm not preaching here--we've all done this, and you know this blog is a NO-JUDGMENT Zone. My hope is that we go off the rails privately, that we deal with our visit to the land to get us through and then come out the other side, but I've seen that bad tweet, that unfortunate blog post, that manuscript which is suddenly an e-book, because the author has landed in the land of Eff-Yous.

And can't find their way out.

I'd rather live in the NO-JUDGMENT Zone. Where people not only forgive our transgressions, BUT HELP US OUT WHEN WE ARE ABOUT TO MAKE ONE.

And, I know we are all busy, and I know we don't even have time for the important things in our own lives, but if we really took a moment to see what someone else needed, or to see that someone was hanging by a thread, just surviving, wouldn't there be less feelings of rejection and hurt and EFF-Yous in this world?

Okay, now I'm totally preaching. I should get off my soap box and lace up the running shoes if I'm going to be ready to run 26.2 miles come next April. :)  

I hope you are all not living in the Land of Eff-Yous, but in that NO-JUDGMENT Zone. I hope you are whole and well and that I will see you next week in the Land of SCBWI.

And if you do find yourself stuck in the EFF-You Land, please let me know, I might be able to help. :)