It’s a whole lot of pages – but is it a book?

There was standing room only this week at Interabang Books in Dallas, as writers and would be writers packed into hear a panel sponsored by the Writers League of Texas. Four North Texas authors, moderated by the League’s executive director, Becka Oliver, shared their methods for turning the mass of pages they sometimes end up into actual publishable – and published books.

“When you talk to four writers with four different kinds of backgrounds, you know we’re really going to dig in,” Oliver said, as she introduced writers Jeramey Kraatz, author of the Cloak Society and Space Runners novel series; Sanderia Faye (Mourner’s Bench); Mike Merschel (Revenge of the Star Survivors); and memoirist Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget).

Kraatz & fans

In case you don’t already know from reading these posts, where there are four writers in a room, there are will be four different methods of writing and revising that writing. I, and probably the rest of the audience, listened, hoping to find a little of this and a little of that we could put together to find our own recipe for success.

“I want you to talk about your pre-writing process,” Oliver said, turning to Kraatz. “Do you make an outline? What if you get stuck? How do you go about the plan?”

“I don’t believe in astrology,” Kraatz said, putting on his deadpan face, “but I’m a total Virgo, in that I plan everything.”

When he first started writing novels, he “wrote a huge outline, went off track and couldn’t get back to the plan,” he said. Lucky for him, he already had experience with comic book writing that came to his rescue. 

Since then, he’s had four books published, three in his Cloak Society series of middle grade novels and the first book in his new Space Runners series. That schedule, “where I’m turning out a new book every nine months,” doesn’t permit extensive outlining.

“Now,” he said, “I do very short, conflict-driven outlines,” without trying initially to figure out his books chapter by chapter. 

“I’m an accountant,” Faye said, mentioning her work before she became an award-winning author. “I’m not going on a trip unless I know where I’m going. I outlined on Excel spread sheets. And I didn’t do it just one time, but over and over. . . I need to know the beginning and the end."

Despite that, she knows her method isn’t going to work for all writers. “Get to know yourself, because all your process is going to be based on your personality.”

Hepola (front), Merschel & Faye

“One of the biggest things for me, was giving myself permission to write – and to write poorly,” was Merkel’s take. As a longtime editor at The Dallas Morning News, “I had a lot of experience with editing, a lot of experience in turning bad writing into something not so bad,” which he found he could make use of in editing his own writing – after the words were on the page.

“Now, Sarah,” Oliver said, “no pressure, but you’re speaking as a spokesperson for all nonfiction writers.”

“I’m such a perfectionist,” Hepola said, who believed her once-heavy drinking had been a crutch that helped smooth her frustration with an imperfect world. “As a sober person, I’ve had to develop a tolerance for imperfection.” 

Despite her extensive experience in writing and editing nonfiction, “It took me three years to write Blackout, and two years of that were spent trying to figure out how to do it.”

“So you didn’t outline?” Oliver asked.

“No,” Hepola said. Well, not exactly, that is. “I keep a notebook and write lists of things, (but) I never look at them. I’m trying to capture some ongoing thing in my brain.” 

Once those, ahem, highly imperfect drafts are on paper, how, Oliver asked, do the panelists go about shaping them into publishable books?

“I write a lot of series books,” Kraatz said, “so I avoid a lot of revision in the first book. (Later) I start the writing day by revising what I wrote the day before,” avoid the horror of facing a blank page the first thing in the morning.

“People have an idea that when they’ve got a draft, (the book) is done,” Hepola said. "The revision process is what really makes art.”

Despite – or maybe because of – her own professional experience as an editor, “I actually love being edited when I can get myself out of it. It’s important to realize that everybody’s trying to get you to the best version of yourself. You want the caring feedback of caring readers.”

Merkel agreed. “The most valuable thing I get from newspaper (work) is that writing is a collaborative effort.”

Want more about the writing process? Check out the Writers League of Texas site for more, including online classes and podcasts. “Turning a Mess of Pages into a Book” makes its final appearance next Thursday (October 19) at Book People in Austin, after appearances in Houston and San Antonio as well as this week’s in Dallas. 

Barnstorming small libraries with Texas Writes, part 2

Nobody ever says writing in the shortest of art forms is simple. But when the readers of those short literary forms are children, barely able to read, sometimes barely able to talk, how hard can writing them be? Much harder than it may appear, poet/journalist/picture book writer Liz Garton Scanlon told her audience at the Lillie Russell Memorial Library in Lindale, Texas, to the “deceptively simple” art of writing for picture books.

Liz Garton Scanlon

Scanlon was in Lindale, along with middle grade novelist/creative writing instructor Jeramey Kraatz, on behalf of Texas Writes, a program of The Writers’ League of Texas  that brings accomplished authors to rural Texas libraries for a series of free presentations and discussions.

Originally a poet with training in journalism, Scanlon began reading picture books after her first child was born, “re-exploring a lot of books I had loved as a kid.” And she had an epiphany: “The thing about picture books that isn’t true of almost any other form – they get read over and over!” What author wouldn’t be thrilled to know her words have such long legs?

Better still, that author doesn’t face the vocabulary limitations of first reader books or chapter books because, “ideally, you’re reading out loud. . . There’s a mistaken belief that the language of picture books has to be simple. But picture books have an adult present. There’s a huge exposure to the world that doesn’t have to be dumbed down.”

And it’s this shared reading that is one of the most satisfying aspects of picture books. Reading them “is one of the few times in children’s lives when you can’t multitask. It’s profound and intimate.”

Still, in entering the world of picture book authorship, Scanlon learned the hard way that picture books now aren’t the same literary form as those she loved in her own childhood.

Once, picture books were in some ways adult-centered, intended to teach children what adults wanted them to know. Now, they’re about “giving kids a way to have the power that in the real world they rarely do, to see the world through their eyes. These books need to be child-centered, what they see and need and dream about.”

As with any literary genre, picture book authors need to know what’s going on in their field. “I say, read 100 before you start to write. Make 50 or even 70 of those 100 books contemporary. It makes sense to know what’s going on in the picture book world (and to) think of picture books as a child’s first walk into the world of literacy.”

So, what exactly are the basics of what Scanlon termed, perhaps not completely jokingly, “the hidden underbelly of the picture book world”?

Ideas, for one. “I used to think I had to have some really grand ideas (but) so many books are about the world inside us. And those can be miraculous enough,” she said, referencing her A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes, a book of metaphors. “Kids don’t know word (metaphor) but they understand the concept.”

“Idea” books, sometimes called concept books, rely less on the narrative arc essential for most fiction. Picture books with a traditional (although short) narrative arc still thrive, but within the few pages available for the books, the narrative needs to be as brief as flash fiction.

Picture books generally have 32 pages, the first few of which are dedicated to issues of copyright and title. And as modern parents find themselves with less time to devote to reading picture books, the words on those 30-odd pages have decreased from the 1000 of a few years ago to often fewer than 500 now.

The emphasis on brevity makes the book illustrator the author’s savior. “Write the 1000-word version, and pare it down. What’s all the stuff the illustrator can do? Take that out!”

(Need more help? A lot more? Check out Scanlon’s site for ideas, and for in-depth aid, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and its many local chapters.)

***

I first heard about Texas Writes in 2016, when The Writers’ League visited Dallas to discuss, among other issues, the program. I was excited enough to put Texas Writes on my list of events, and pick one of the closest, in Lindale, for a visit. The program, supported by a grant from the Tocker Foundation, began in 2013 with visits to five small libraries in Central Texas. It’s expanded this year to 15 libraries across the state.

Check the current list (additions are made as needed) at the site. Librarians interested in participating may email wit@writersleague.org or call the Writers League at (512) 499-8914. The next Texas Writes visit will be this Saturday, February 25, to the Hood County Library, 222 N. Travis St., Granbury, from 1-4 p.m. It’s free, but to be sure there are enough tables, chairs (and refreshments), please pre-register with the library at (817) 573-3569.

Barnstorming small libraries with Texas Writes

There were maybe a dozen of us along the sides of the long tables at Lindale’s Lillie Russell Memorial Library, with eager pens and notebooks at the ready. There were two of them on the other side of the tables – Jeramey Kraatz  (author of The Cloaked Society trilogy and the upcoming Space Runners series) and Liz Garton Scanlon (author of Caldecott Honor book All the World, as well as Bob, not Bob!, A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes, and more). Make that three, counting Jo Virgil, in Lindale to represent Texas Writes, a program of The Writers’ League of Texas that brings accomplished authors to rural Texas libraries for a series of free presentations and discussions.

Scanlon (l) & Kraatz

Kraatz writes middle grade fiction (see him also at the North Texas Teen Book Festival March 4), and Scanlon writes picture books, but in many ways their discussions have broader implications for all genres. Starting with that impetus for all stories, conflict. Or as Kraatz terms it, “Trouble Talk.”

No matter how much we try to avoid it in our lives, “trouble is interesting in story,” Kraatz told our audience. Conflict is a way to guide readers through a story. And for writers, it provides a means for working through a project when we’re stuck, and as a key to self-assessing our writing.

“How do you look at your writing objectively? How do you tell if it’s working?” One way to answer both questions is to ask: “how is the overall conflict of the story being addressed in this particular section.”

“We want our characters to have something to overcome, the more (conflict they face) the more satisfaction we feel (as readers).” And although each story has an overarching conflict, some form of conflict – sometimes described as tension – should be evident on every page.

It’s not all fists and guns. For starters, Kraatz named four broad categories of conflict. Three are external: (man vs. nature), man vs. man, man vs. society. But the fourth type of conflict – and most important in his view – is internal, the struggles all human beings have within their own nature.

In children’s literature, there’s no such thing as one size fits all readers. It’s vital for writers to understand who their readers are and where the story is going in order to determine an age-appropriate level and kind of conflict.

Middle grade (MG) books are aimed at readers approximately 8-12 years of age, with subdivisions of lower middle grade (8-9 years) and upper middle grade (10-13 years). Young adult (YA) books are written for ages 13-17. Although because kids prefer to read up, younger children are more likely to pick up books for the next older group, while older readers seldom (if ever) look at books aimed at younger readers. The age group aimed at is also a guide to a book’s length – typically 65,000 words for upper middle grade; 85,000 for young adult.

“Don’t worry about dumbing down writing,” he said. “The key is the core conflict – how much of their world do the characters understand? It’s the conflict that decides the appropriate age group. What is your audience familiar with? What is the world they know?”

For 12-year-olds, the world is most typically limited to home, school and sports. For 17-year-olds, it’s much broader. After all, they have Internet access. Middle grade books tend to emphasize internal conflict as the characters try to determine their place in their world of school and family. For teen readers with a broader idea of who they are, story conflict ends to become external.

Each adult fiction genre also has its own conflict. Whichever genre – or age group – a writer aims for, “conflict allows us to reveal a broader depth of character.”

***

I first heard about Texas Writes in 2016, when The Writers’ League visited Dallas to discuss, among other issues, the program. I was excited enough to put Texas Writes on my list of events, and pick one of the closest, in Lindale, for a visit. The program, supported by a grant from the Tocker Foundation, began in 2013 with visits to five small libraries in Central Texas. It’s expanded this year to 15 libraries across the state.

Check the current list (additions are made as needed) at the site . Librarians interested in participating may email wit@writersleague.org or call the Writers League at (512) 499-8914. The next Texas Writes visit will be this Saturday, February 25, to the Hood County Library, 222 N. Travis St., Granbury, from 1-4 p.m. It’s free, but to be sure there are enough tables, chairs (and refreshments), please pre-register with the library at (817) 573-3569.

And stay tuned for the next installment of Texas Writes from Lindale, as Liz Garton Scanlon discusses the curious, deceptively simple secrets of writing picture books.

Wordcraft – What it means to be a literary good citizen

It was a first – the first visit to Dallas of the Writers' League of Texas, with a public panel discussion similar to those held monthly in its home base of Austin. The topic in this election year, when civic issues are on everyone’s mind: defining what it means to be a good citizen in the literary sense.

Judging from the enthusiasm of the crowd that filled the community room of Dallas’ Half Price Books main store on Northwest Highway, it should be the forerunner of many more such panels to come. WLT Executive Director Becka Oliver moderated an eclectic panel of four Dallas-area literary figures: Karen Blumenthal  (author, Tommy: The Gun That Changed America); Will Evans (publisher, Deep Vellum); Sanderia Faye (author, The Mourner’s Bench); and Jeramey Kraatz (author, The Cloak Society).

So what did they think being a literary citizen really means? What are the pathways to becoming a literary citizen? What are the ways of claiming and acting on that citizenship?

For a lot of writers who create alone, “being a literary citizen is like engaging with a community,” Evans said.

His literary journey began with the intention of becoming a writer. But it was discovering Russian literature in the original language in college – and realizing that he was able to translate books he wanted to read into English – that would move him from translating to engagement with the international literary community through his nonprofit press, Deep Vellum.

Blumenthal also found her definition of literary citizenship evolving. From a career as a journalist and nonfiction writer for adults, she became interested in nonfiction for children when one of her daughters became interested in the Great Depression, a subject with little representation on her school library shelves.

Public and school librarians have been enthusiastic supporters of Blumenthal’s work. Her volume Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition was one of School Library Journals Best Books of 2011. The support of libraries in turn influenced her to help, including organizing support for expanded hours fat Dallas’ public library system and for the upcoming April 30 Dallas Book Fair.

For further delving into that literary community, Blumenthal recommends organizations such as the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators), which has a North Texas chapter, and PEN International. “And PEN Dallas,” Evans said. (He’s vice president of the Dallas chapter.)

Perhaps the most unlikely of journeys to literary citizenship was the one Faye took: as regional manager for Walmart, where she helped direct corporate giving to community organizations such as Dallas’ Tulisoma, the annual South Dallas Book Fair.

“I believe in supporting the artists financially,” she said, noting that as an author, even one with a book acclaimed by the likes of Dennis Lehane, “I work so many hours for zero dollars.”

Support can also be as simple as buying books, at readings as well as bookstores such as Deep Vellum’s, opening next month, as well as supporting the support systems of writers, such as libraries, recommended by both Blumenthal and Kraatz.

Add to that the act of writing reviews. And finally, social media.

“If it weren’t for social media, I don’t think anyone would know about Deep Vellum,” Evans said wryly (a position sure to change following this week’s very favorable review in The Dallas Morning News of his translation of Fardwor, Russia! by Oleg Kashin).