A Guilty Confession and a PSA for INK

Sex and the City: Carrie and her friends are having their usual breakfast gathering, going over the issues of the day when Carrie makes a reference to something she wrote in one of her columns. This is followed by a lengthy awkward silence. One by one, she points her raised eyebrow at Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte for an explanation, as each confesses her own guilty reason why she has not, in actual fact, been reading her best friend’s column.

Present Day. Present Company: Hello, my name is Tanya, INK fellow and regular contributor, and I don’t always read our column.

Now that that guilty confession is out of the way, let me just say, that changes today.

There is a lot of content out there, friends—and content is a word we nonfiction writers are learning to loathe, what with the current trend to label most of what we do “content” or “informational.” A lot of content + too much to do + not enough time to do it = (hangs head) INK not always making my reading list.

What a mistake. Here’s the PSA part.

Bottom line: If you are a person who loves reading, writing, teaching, and/or helping readers find interesting nonfiction for kids (a.k.a. INK), make INK a frequent place to come calling.

Why? There are a ton of incredible, fascinating blog posts here! I am in awe of what I have learned just in the past hour by scrolling through the posts of my esteemed colleagues. And funny! Insightful, witty, interesting, and off-the-beaten-path. Check it out.

Highlights from this past month: ways to think about alternatives to e-books, what “writing like a boy” might mean, intelligent design in science classrooms, and more!

From this past year: meaningful uses of backmatter, how an illustrator tackles creating a pb about an artist, why books pub on Tuesdays, nostalgic childhood stories directly relevant to an author’s current process, and more!

From years past: photo research, ethics, responsibility to our readers, visual storytelling, movies made from books, and more!

Wow. I have always known that this was the place to be. It’s why I’ve been here all these years. But seeing it in black and white brings it into clear focus. Thank you, all you INK writers, for contributing to this wealth of fascination. I’m yours, now and forever. Carrie Bradshaw won’t need to raise her eyebrow in my direction ever again.

A Painless Way to Accomplish Common Core State Standards: Using Nonfiction Books and the Library of Congress

One of my favorite parts of being an author of nonfiction books is using primary sources.  There is something wonderful about seeing actual documents or images related to what I’m writing about.  It makes the events deeper, richer and more meaningful.  I use primary source documents to learn more about the topic I’m researching and I look for ways to use them in my books.    

Recently I took a class through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program.  Since I often write about historical topics, I wanted to learn more about the collections at the Library of Congress (LOC).  I was amazed at their massive online collections which contain documents, maps, newspapers, images, sound recordings, sheet music and much, much more.  While searching the LOC website I found myself getting lost in a fascinating world of primary sources—a real treat for a nonfiction author.    

Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program

Since the LOC places incredible primary sources at our fingertips, I’ve thought a lot about how to use them in conjunction with my books in order to accomplish the goals of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  These standards require using nonfiction books not only in English class but in history, science and math class too.  This is good news to me because as I write, I’m thinking of possible ways great teachers could use my books in various content areas.  In each subject area, I want readers to take in what I’ve written about the topic, but I also want them to use my books as a jumping off place to learn more about related topics. 

A teacher could use one short scene in my book The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon to read and discuss in class-then go to the LOC website to search for related primary source documents (suggestions below excerpt). 

For example: 
Excerpt from pages 98-99, The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon (Carolrhoda, 2011).   

At noon, the hooves of six white horses clattered on the cobblestones of Wall Street as they pulled a white coach carrying one man. Fifty-seven-year-old George Washington climbed out. Out of respect, the silent crowd removed their hats. Washington removed his hat and bowed to the right and left as he moved through the crowd. Nearing the building, he walked through a line of soldiers and was escorted inside and took a seat in a mahogany armchair. Vice President John Adams told Washington that members of Congress would accompany him as he took the oath of office.

So more people could witness the ceremony, the swearing in would take place on the second floor balcony, which had been decorated with red and white stripped curtains. Federal Hall had recently been remodeled using patriotic symbols. On the balcony, the middle wrought-iron railing featured a design of thirteen arrows, representing the thirteen states. The pediment above featured the image of an eagle. 

Washington stepped onto the balcony wearing a ceremonial sword and dressed in the height of fashion. He wore a linen shirt with pleated ruffles underneath his suit. His waistcoat and jacket were made of the same brown fabric as his knee breeches. For this formal occasion, his hair was pulled back in a braid, covered in white powder then tucked into a black bag.

Robert Livingston, the Chancellor of the State of New York, administered the oath of office. Secretary of the Senate, Samuel Otis, held a huge Bible.

Washington placed his hand on the Bible and said: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Livingston raised the Bible slightly, and Washington bent over and kissed it.

“Long live George Washington, the President of the United States!” exclaimed Livingstone when he turned to the crowd.

“Huzza! Huzza! Huzza!” roared the masses. 

President George Washington bowed.

“Huzza! Huzza! Huzza!” they cheered.

Some were so overcome with emotion that they could not speak. Tears of joy rolled down the cheeks of many members of Congress and people in the crowd.  

 

 

Library of Congress website

Go to the Library of Congress and search for:

1.  Original U.S. Constitution, which created the office of the President.  Find the oath of office in Article II, section 1.  Note that George Washington was given the honor to be the first person to sign the Constitution and his name appears at the top.  (You could also take a look at the Articles of Confederation and the Bill of Rights.) 

 

2.  Federal Hall, location of inauguration.  See a 1790 hand colored image of the building.

 

3.  George Washington’s inaugural address, April 30, 1789.  See and read Washington’s handwritten notes-the actual pages he held in his hands as he addressed Congress that day.   

 

 

By using and discussing the primary source documents from the LOC, and my book (or another nonfiction book that deals with this topic) as a secondary source document, a teacher accomplishes many of the CCSS Anchor Standards.  With these few selections, a teacher can teach reading, writing, research, speaking and listening skills, and language-and it happens naturally and all at the same time.   

Painless . . . really. 

www.carlamcclafferty.com

 



 

 

 

Writing and Teaching Outside our Comfort Zones

I joke at school visits that my speciality is writing about things I know nothing about. There are no jokes, a boss of mine used to say. She said it with a large measure of meanness, usually when someone had just made a joke. In fact, she was the boss who made me decide to become a freelance writer. Anyway...  


I do, often, write about things I know nothing about. Presumably by the time I'm done writing them, I do know some things. And yet....  A few weeks ago in the New York Times puzzle blog, Gary Antonick wrote about Paul Erdos on the occasion of his 100th birthday.  He included some excerpts from The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos.  

THAT was WAY COOL. I was dancing. But.... I couldn't understand a bit of the math in Gary Antonick's puzzle. Or in the comments afterward.  I didn't try that hard, really. Mostly because I went into a white hot panic. I was so far out of my comfort zone. I passed calculus in high school only because Mr. Hunsberger was a supremely nice human being. No math courses since. And yet I wrote a book about a mathematician. 

And I, the author of many science books, took one science course in college--biology for poets. Pass/fail. I passed, thank you very much.

Over the years I have written so many books outside of my comfort zone that I guess those zones have become more comfortable. But that took a long time. Teachers, especially elementary school teachers, tell me they often teach subjects they are not that comfortable with--usually science or math. And yet they find ways to teach outside their own comfort zones all the time. 

Recently on Twitter a professor at Fresno State got in touch with me. She was teaching Charles and Emma to her college class of students who want to be English teachers. She wrote: 
Kathee Godfrey ‏@cakeypal

11 Apr

@DHeiligman We're going to play with the idea of the writer as scientist, figuring out what your hypothesis was and what you observed

I told her I loved that idea! What a great way to teach that book! And then she wrote back: 

Kathee Godfrey ‏@cakeypal11 Apr

@DHeiligman It also might be a how-the-English-teacher-can-infuriate-her-science-colleagues lesson. ;)

I told her I doubted it. Because the trick for her and her students, just as it is for me, is to find the way in. I asked her to tell me how it went. While I waited to hear the results of her experiment I thought more about writing outside my comfort zone--how I do it and why. It's first and foremost about finding a way in. 

For me the way in is almost always with the person and the personal story. I am, above all else, a people person.  How did Paul Erdos manage to live in this world being very much not of this world? Why was he the way he was? Was he happy? How did other people view him? What excited him about math? How did math change his world and how did he change the world with this math? In answering the questions about him and how he lived his life, I learned why mathematicians all over the world loved him, and still do. I understand the spirit of his math, if not the actual numbers. (Though I admit, I do understand more than Mr. Hunsberger would ever believe!) 

Kathee Godfrey reported back that her class was a success. Here's what she wrote:

Here is the photo of several of my wonderful students: Dana Resendez, Amelia Sarkisian, Marcella Camino, and Melinda LaRochelle. We're studying your book in a senior seminar on young adult literature and all these students plan to be English teachers. In class Thursday, they came up with hypotheses about what you wanted to illustrate in your book and then identified the evidence or methods to support their hypotheses. It worked surprisingly well!


Brilliant, right? She and her students found the way in, and you can see by their smiles they were happy and proud with the results because they connected. That's all that it takes, right? As E.M. Forster said: "Only Connect." 

To read more about the class, go to Kathee's own blog about it, which she calls it, by the way, The Writer As Scientist. 

So how do teachers connect when they are out of their comfort zones? Sometimes they bring in experts to help. Or ask friends behind the scenes. But mostly they rely on books--good, well-researched, entertaining, original nonfiction books for kids--to help them teach the subject. This weekend I'll be at IRA, talking with reading teachers and other authors about nonfiction and how to use nonfiction books in their classrooms. (Come say hello--here's my schedule.)  I know I will hear more ideas from teachers about how they teach out of their comfort zones. And I know they will tell me books are key. 

As to why I write, so often, outside my comfort zone... I think it's because I never want to be bored. I hate being bored. And I love to be challenged. I'm sure there's some other darker reasons, but why go there?

In college I took one art history class, also pass/fail. It was early in the morning, in a large auditorium. There were lots of slides, so the room was darkened. You know what I remember? It's where I learned the word UNDULATING. That is all I remember. I did, however, pass that one, too. With a certain amount of relief.  

And now back I go, into the dark, outside of my comfort zone, to my book about--an artist! 

I'm starting to think, folks, that my I.N.K. columns are in place of therapy. Thanks for listening. 

Confessions of a Sissypants

"Adventure is just bad planning." Roald Amundsen

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself."  Amelia Earhart

So, okay, I've written about many an adventurer. 

Seafaring pioneers, living in close, seriously smelly damp quarters, offering up prayers and rationing their limited quantities of foul food and beverage down below the decks of the pitching, tossing Mayflower.  

John Adams setting off on horseback [me, I sat astride a horse exactly once, when I was about 9 years old, feeling as if I'd been plunked atop a the broad, warm ridgepole of a living house] to Philadelphia, not quite 400 miles from his Braintree, Massachusetts farm. Picture this earnest, talkative lawyer and his 11-year-old son daring their voyage to France in the winter of 1778. Crossing the Atlantic, whose waves were thick with the ships of His Britannic Majesty, who had less than little use for John Adams or any of the rest of his treasonous buddies at their upstart Congress. 

Teenaged Ben Franklin on his own, a runaway apprentice, hiking across NJ to PA.  Or stranded in London.

Sister Sojourner, long in years (47 or so), poor in pocket, rich in conviction, setting out on foot to speak the Truth.

Teenaged express riders, each alone but for his pony and mochila full of mail, pounding away through the wilderness. 

Dan'l Boone, Adventurer

Daniel Boone. Need I say more? No, I think not. 
Teddy Roosevelt.  Ditto.

True, setting out to write about someone, some long-gone event is a voyage of discovery. There are suppositions to be challenged. Facts to be discovered and verified.  True, one must travel to walk about where others have walked before. Photographing. Sketching. Envisioning the vanished past. Thanks be to all that is holy for historic sites and practitioners of living history at such places as Plimoth Plantation and Williamsburg. 

 Grateful as all get out am I that I got to do it but it occurs to me that I've not been entirely worthy of writing and illustrating stories about these valiant souls.   I'm afraid that my feelings regarding adventures are more aligned with those of Bilbo Baggins:  "We don't want any adventures here, thank you!..."nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!"   That being said, I'm awash with pre-travel oogly-booglies because way too early tomorrow morning I'm off on one those beastly things. By the time any of you read this post, what I hope won't be part of any posthumous noting of my final efforts, I will have well and truly had an adventure to the Brent International School in Manila.  About which I'll write and have pictures for next month's post, God willing. 

I'll have had moral support from fellow INK-sters Deborah Heiligman and Susan Kuklin, bless 'em, regarding changing planes in Tokyo.  They could have advised me to put on my big girl panties and deal with it, for crying out loud, but they knew to be kind to a rattled soul standing, bags packed, upon a ledge and/or brink.  More to the point of this blog, for these 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders on the far side of the world, I shall be conducting writing workshops. Certainly I have done these before and have been charmed, sometimes chagrined, and knocked out more than once by the work of young writers. But because my presentations have generally consisted of 1. my being entertaining and instructive – about history, about writing about history, about finding the facts because making the past come alive but not in some horrid zombie way– before the convened, silent but for their laughter. And 2. a boatload of jolly Q & A.  Working with young writers is a comparatively foreign country. An adventure.

 In preparation, I'm finding a wealth of information gathered by those who manage classrooms every single day – wait. I must go put on a hat so I may take it off to those who daily convey the nuts and bolts of commas, indenting one's paragraphs, and constructing clear narrative to newbies in acceptable forms of written communication. It occurs to me once more that writing is one skill set, acquired by years of writing and reading; teaching writing, quantifying traits, all six, is entirely another.  And nothing is more instructive than preparing to instruct. I'm so eager to meet these young writers, who've been reading my take on the Pilgrims, the Pony Express, Daniel Boone, etc.  Oh to BE there, listening, sharing, guiding, and applauding their efforts. If only I didn't need to GO there.

to be continued.... 

Guest Blogger, Darcy Pattison, Everyone Knows! False Assumptions

I’d like to introduce today’s guest blogger, Darcy Pattison, an author, blogger, and writing teacher.  Darcy has been published in eight languages. Recent nature books for children include: WISDOM, THE MIDWAY ALBATROSS, first place winner in the Children’s Picture Book category of the 2013 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, and a Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly; DESERT BATHS, an NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book 2013, and PRAIRIE STORMS. Darcy Pattison is the 2007 recipient of Arkansas Governor’s Arts Awards for her work in Children’s Literature.

As a speaker, Darcy presents programming on her books, and is well known across the country for her Novel Revision Retreat.  Because of her reputation as an excellent writing teacher, Darcy’s blog, Fiction Notes, which offers practical advice on the craft of writing, has many followers.  Her blog can be found at  www.darcypattison.com/

 

 

 

 

Have you heard the old folk song, “Sweet Violets”? It’s a practical demonstration of setting up an expectation and thwarting it:

 

There once was a farmer

Who took a young miss

In back of the barn

Where he gave her a. . . lecture

 

On horse and chickens and eggs

And told her that she had such beautiful. . . manners

 

That suited a girl of her charms,

A girl that he wanted to take in his. . . washing and ironing

 

And then if she did,

They could get married

And have lots of . . . sweet violets.

 

Kids and science are like this. They make assumptions about a topic and it is sometimes difficult to move them past those assumptions. Take the subject of baths.

Everyone knows that a bath means lots of soap and water, right?

 Not necessarily.

 I heard a story about birds who take baths with ants. Anting is a well-documented behavior among certain species of birds, and happens one of two ways. The birds may simply go and stand on an ant nest and allow the ants to crawl through their wings. Or a bird may crush an ant in its beak, then use the crushed ant like a washcloth to stroke its feathers. Scientists suspect that the ants are helping the bird get rid of parasites, such as tiny mites. Or the crushed ant releases formic acid, which may act as a disinfectant.

 When I heard about anting, I wondered how else animals might take a bath. First, I had to define for myself what a bath meant. Bathing is a method of hygiene that helps remove dirt, parasites, dead skin/feather cells, etc. When you remove the assumption that a bath means water, many types of animal behaviors can be defined as a bath.

It was time to research. To stretch the idea to the max, I decided to use only desert animals—just to emphasize that a bath doesn’t have to be water.  This did mean some limitations. I couldn’t include fish. In fact, it was hard to document any cleansing behaviors from amphibians or arachnids. I stretched the definition to the max by including a snake (reptile), who sheds his skin as a bath.

 

The result if my picture book, DESERT BATHS, which was named a 2013 Outstanding Science Trade Book. For me, the most interesting thing is how kids stretch their definition of a bath and challenge their initial assumptions. That’s good science.

 

 

 

 

Video on You Tube: How Do Desert Animals Take a Bath?  Arkansas Audubon Summer Camp

 

 

I Can Just Ask!

Today’s post will be short and sweet, partly because I’m juggling a handful of projects (a process that deserves a whole post in its own right) and partly because I’m a little hyped:

For the first time in my nearly 20 years of working on biographies, I am working on a project about a live person.

Waterhouse Hawkins, Walt Whitman, Alice Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Susy Clemens, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were all lively, and I tried to bring them to life on the page, but technically, they are no longer with us.

For the first time, I am working on a book about someone, happily, who is—who very much is.

Writing about someone long gone has its advantages. You can utilize the scholarship of others to help inform your understanding of primary sources. And it’s way easier to determine the lasting significance of someone’s accomplishments when you can see if it actually lasted.

But there is something amazing about thinking, “I wonder how she felt about x?” and then realizing, “Oh! I can just ask!”

I’m feeling a little giddy, like a kid in a pastry shop filling the box with more and more treats. Every day I seem to be emailing a dozen or so questions (though I was kind enough to give her the whole weekend off—both days) and then, in a little bit, getting answers.

Will everything make it into the book? Probably not. But the box is brimming over with treats, and I get to choose the ones I like best.

And then, even better, to ask for more. 

Nonfiction in Non-Book Form

Let's begin by agreeing that everyone reading or writing for I.N.K. loves books, obviously(!) During my career, many changes have taken place in the publishing industry, from big box bookstores to word processors to personal computers to digital layout and illustration. Recently all this ebook stuff started up...reflowable ebooks, book apps, subscription services, and other innovative ways to deliver "content." (Don't you just love being a content creator and/or a content consumer? Whatever!)

Anyway, I looked into a variety of options, put an o.p. title on iBooks, helped start a group blog about digital books, and spent many hours absorbing blogs/forums/webinars. One criterion is that I must have big, colorful visuals as part of my digital creations. It's fairly easy to have a text-based ebook up on Amazon et al without too much difficulty, but it's not relevant for my purposes.

If a publisher wants to do something ebookish with one of my published books, there's no additional effort on my part, probably. But if not enough is happening along that line, many authors have been seeking other options.

After looking into various alternatives and pursuing some, I've come up with these general guidelines for evaluating potential indie projects:

How long does it take to create it?

How "gettable" is it for buyers?

How robust is the marketplace?

And does it have to be a "book?"

In all the excited chatter about this or that innovation, rarely is the cost-benefit ratio mentioned. Sure you can do X, but if it takes months and/or thousands of dollars to do X, how realistic is it for a product that needs to earn its keep via actual sales? I can tell you from personal experience that merely planning an interactive book app (for example) takes eons, much less actually making it. Many of us don't have a lot of spare money or months to gamble away on this or that project that may or may not sell. Trying to learn some new miraculous tech-of-the-moment before it withers away may not be the best use of one's time. Perhaps some "old" technology may be perfectly fine and offers orders of magnitude less hassle. Not to mention that many more potential customers already have the reader or other software installed and they don't have to buy a new device, download an app, or learn a new program.

I'm not sure when the idea of getting out of the book "box" dawned on me. The question became: what am I trying to deliver...is it a book, or is it information + fun? So let's say it doesn't have to be a book or a digital book-facsimile. Then what are the possibilities: a game, a play, a song, a video, a hands-on project? Without further ado, here's one nonfiction resource that I've made:

Shown is one part of a PDF that has printable posters, an informational text selection, charts, diagrams, student response pages, plus the butterfly craft where students showcase what they've learned about Monarchs. More info is in this blog post. I have no idea how commonly available this type of hands-on educational activity may be, but based on the feedback so far, teachers and students are enjoying it. And just about anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can download a PDF and already has a printer.

Other non-book nonfiction examples
• Crazy for Similes is a book extention activity in PowerPoint format, another very common program that zillions of people have. This one is a freebie, and has been downloaded over 500 times in less than a month.

• A PDF related to my book Seeing Symmetry has a scavenger hunt, an illustration matching activity, various drawing, cutting, and folding pages, posters, and a real-world symmetry recording sheet.

• On my drawing board is a printable nutrition game related to an upcoming fall book, and nearby are piles and piles of scribbles about ideas from A to Z that I'm dying to work on, just as soon as I finish this book dummy for a publisher.

And what about that marketplace guideline? As far as I know, you can't sell PDFs on Amazon, or if you can, nobody knows about it. My stuff is too big to fit in a dinky little tablet screen (you know I love you, my iPad) and besides, have you ever tried to search for anything in the so-called iBookstore? Apple wants to sell hardware and software, but books, not so much. If they did you could search on "sea turtles" and have my sea turtle book come up, and a bunch of other relevant iBooks that don't necessarily have "sea turtles" in the title or subtitle. And, you could read an iBook on a non-Apple device/computer the way you can read a Kindle book on just about any device. Not to go on a rant, but seriously!

The marketplace that I stumbled over last year is TeachersPayTeachers. With over a million registered users, it's going great guns with just under $7 million in earnings for its sellers in the 1st quarter. The sellers are primarily teachers, who are self-publishing resources that they use in their own classrooms. It's intriguing and just plain fun to cut out all the intermediaries, sell for a lower price, and hear directly from people who are using your creations and who often make suggestions for things they need. There are other options out there for selling digital and hard goods such as Etsy, and other teacher-oriented selling sites.

The best technology in the world is useless if it's too hard for people to utilize, and without a good marketplace for people to buy and sell, nothing much happens. Who knows what the nonfiction ecosystem will look like in 5 years? I'm looking forward to watching it evolve and taking part. Oh, you're probably wondering about my sales, aren't you? It's definitely a learning curve to figure out what people will pay for. Let's put it this way...if all my items sold as well as my top sellers, I'd be a very happy author-illustrator. Just like regular ol' traditional publishing, you make what inspires you, put it out there, and hope somebody will want it!

It's Spring and Revisions Are in the Air

   The weather is warming up, the sun is shining, and we all want to be outside cleaning up our gardens and getting ready for the summer.  Only a lot of us can't!  I know at least four people who are feverishly working on revisions right now; mine arrived two weeks ago (along with a gentle hint that if I got it done in a timely fashion the book could be published a season sooner than previously thought).
   As it happened, the package arrived when a non-publishing friend was visiting.  He'd never seen an edited manuscript, so I showed him a few pages.  His eyes went wide, then he blinked a lot and said something like, "Wow, that's a lot of green ink.  I'd be really pissed off."
   I'm sure that the process I go through with a revision is similar to a lot of other writers.  I'm thinking it's a bit like grieving for a dead pet.  Various painful stages have to be weathered in order to come out on the other side.  So I explained it to him.
   First, I glance through the manuscript carefully to get a sense of what needs to be done.  I stop from time to time to read a comment in the margin.  And sometimes I do become angry.  But never at my editor.  My editors (I have three) are all very smart and knowledgeable.  I get angy at myself for not producing a perfect manuscript, one they would read and say there's nothing more to do.  Ah, wouldn't that be nice?  To write a perfect manuscript.  But that's impossible, so I get angry at myself in order to motivate myself to dig into the text and make it as good as possible.  There's a bit of the high school cheerleading emotion here, but it seems to work.  For me anyway.
   Second, I start at P. 1 and begin addressing the problems my editor has highlighted.  I was once an editor, so I always do my own editorial suggestions well before I get those from my editor (and I can be really nasty about my writing); so I add my comments/suggestions to the list.  Also, my lovely wife Alison and my agent will sometimes offrer suuggestions.
   Initially, I attack the easy stuff.  Mispellings (I am not very good at spelling) and grammar (I happen to be very creative when it comes to punctuation).  My aim here is to correct the obvious mistakes, but even more important to become comfortable again with the text (after all, it can be weeks, sometimes months since I last reread the text).  Then I go back over the manuscript to answer some of the harder questions and suggestions.  This phase often requires additional research of one sort or another.
   It's hard to say how many times I have to go over the text before I've answered all of the questions.  I can only say it is not just once or twice; maybe closer to a dozen or so times.  Eventually, I can sit back and say that I've satisfied my editor, myself, my wife and agent --  that the text is a lot better than it was when I sent in the original draft.  Am I done?  Not by a long shot.
   Here's where I enter phase Three.  I put the manuscipt aside for several days and try to forget about it.  Not an easy thing to do.  After a while, I will open the manuscript and make believe I am reading it for the very first time, with an eye to catching any repetition, any line that seems fuzzy, any idea that needs to be fleshed out a little more, any sentence that feels as if I had worked on it, etc., etc.  I want the information and the themes to be accurate and clear, but I also want the text to have a smooth, graceful flow. 
   After I finished explaining this to my friend, he said (and I think he meant this as a compliment), "And here I thought you spend most of your day reading or taking naps."  I do, of course, read a lot and I also think napping is a much underappreciated art form.  But right now I have to get back to this revision, where I'm still working through the Second phase.  With every page revised, I'm a step closer to getting out into the sunshine.                    

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and More

           of our writing lives...

 

Example #1  

The Good:  A friend/colleague of mine travels all around Massachusetts doing book talks for teachers and librarians.  She recently told me that for the past year or more, most of her favorite picture books have been nonfiction. Hands down. The quality and turn of ideas, language and illustrations have been getting better and better.

The Bad: She also said that she and her compatriots have also noticed and discussed that fiction picture books seem to be going through a dry spell. There are peaks and troughs in every genre and, for some reason, there hasn't been a lot of excitement or innovation in that category.

The Ugly:  So my friend often urges educators in her audience to use nonfiction books as read-alouds in the classroom to encourage more boys reading, and more nonfiction reading in generally, especially due to Common Core.  Yet teachers admit that when they are going to read to the class they still primarily use fiction.


Example #2

The Ugly:  Royalty checks often straggle in after March 31st.  After opening an envelope, one friend jokingly(?) wondered if he should spend his royalty to pay that month's utility bills or buy a couple tanks of gas.

The Bad:  This friend's check reflected the sales of a very well-reviewed and award-winning book.

The Good:  My friend got to write the book he wanted to write, on a subject he wanted others to read about.  His book was well reviewed.  It did win awards.  Furthermore, it clearly paid out its advance and got to the royalty stage in this time of school and library cutbacks.


Example #3

The Good:  A book I loved writing about the first desegregation case has been acquired by Bloomsbury/Walker, a house I love working for.

The Bad:  Although this is my umpteenth book and I should be used to it, the time between acceptance and publication, especially when illustration is involved, is always too long.

The Certain:  After Deborah Heligman's delightful and surprising post, I know this book will be published on a Tuesday.  And due to its subject matter, whatever year it is published, my bet is it will come out in February.  

You Write Like a Boy

I recently had occasion to look through my ninth-grade diary, where I came upon this curious notation: “English—Miss K. said I write like a boy! Thanks!” Needless to say, this entry brings up some questions:

• Why, exactly, did Miss K. think I wrote like a boy?
• Was her comment meant as a compliment or a criticism?
• When I wrote, "Thanks!" was I expressing sarcasm or pride?

I’ve thought long and hard about my English teacher’s comment. From my current perch as a journalistic, nonfiction author, I wonder if she had picked up on the fact that my writing tended to be more reportorial than emotional. Was there a dispassion in my ninth-grade writing that she pegged as “masculine”? Did I rely more heavily on verbs than adjectives and thus not write flowery prose? Or was it the content that made her draw that conclusion? I don’t know which piece of writing prompted her comment, but in those days, I know I wasn’t writing about sports. Still, perhaps the protagonist in a story I wrote was more self-confident than those of the other girls in my class. I guess it will remain a mystery.

As for the second question, I’m hoping it was more of an observation than either a compliment or criticism. To put the comment in historical context, it was written in 1969, when the second wave of feminism was in full swing. I don’t recall Miss K. being a feminist. (She was known as “Miss” K., but that was before “Ms.” became a popular option.) I asked my brother, who had her as a teacher a few years after me, but all he remembered was that she was “cute.” I remember her being relatively new to the profession, and perhaps not as nurturing or supportive as some of my more memorable instructors. Still, I’d like to give her credit for being evolved enough not to criticize me for my writing voice. So I’ll take her words as either a compliment or an observation.

Alas, to the third point, I think I really did feel proud of her assessment. In the late 1960s, men got the great jobs and had the adventures that girls like me secretly wished we could have. I never wanted to be a boy, but I did read Boy’s Life and fervently wished I could go on the escapades chronicled in that magazine. In my mind, by saying that I wrote like a boy, Miss K. was telling me she thought I was tough and adventurous. That meant I might have the stuff to pursue a worldly career beyond marriage and childrearing. So I am 99 percent sure that I was expressing pride, rather than sarcasm, when I wrote, "Thanks!"

In my quest for enlightenment about my diary entry, I pulled out my ninth-grade yearbook and looked up Miss K. Yep, now I remember her. She even signed my yearbook. Here’s what she wrote: “You certainly have the ambition and ability to go very far in life. Best of luck and success to a very intelligent girl.” Now I wonder if it was my ambition and drive that she thought were masculine. I was always pretty competitive, whether in gym or in English class. And since this was three years before Title IX started to level the playing field for women and men, ambition wasn’t exactly an accepted part of a high school girl’s DNA. 

Of course, one conclusion I could draw is that Miss K.’s comment said more about her than it did about me. Today, when gender roles are somewhat fluid and political correctness is paramount, I can’t imagine any teacher thinking, let alone telling a girl she writes like a boy, or visa versa. Though I suspect most teachers wouldn’t have voiced those thoughts in 1969, either, maybe it was an acceptable faux pas for a young woman just out of teachers’ college.

At any rate, I suspect I've spent a lot more time thinking about Miss K.'s comment now than I did when she originally made it.