Explorations

Advertising on book covers and inside books

2012-05-11T21:27:00.002+02:00

Ads on book covers?
Last week a book was published in China with an advertisement on the back cover. It isn't intrusive--the ad is a small logo of a textile firm. The deputy director of the Publishers' Association of China announced his association's deal with an advertising agency in March. He talks about it in this article in People Daily. (Well worth reading.)
Though ads on covers may be new, ads inside books are not new.

I remember reading books with ads in them. The ads weren't for products, they were for other books by the publisher. But they are ads! I went to my bookshelves to see if I could find these ads in some of my older books.

First, I found a picture book I bought when I lived in China. The back cover shows photos of other picture books: advertising. (As I thumb through this book, I now wish I had bought more copies of this book and bought some of the other books shown.)

Some books advertise other books published by the author--these advertisements use several pages at the back of the book and show book covers and include pitches or blurbs. (Some books published today still mention other books by the author, but they don't have the tone or look or feel of an advertisement.)

I own some recent children's books that include the first chapter of another book by the same author. This is a type of advertisement, one that can hook the reader. (It can also frustrate the reader if the book isn't yet published!)

Historically, some publishing houses included mail order forms on the back pages of their books.
Here are some of the publishing houses (who used these types of ads) that I found while browsing my shelves.

-Vintage Random House (1984): the back four pages lists "Vintage" classics: "Available at your bookstore or call toll-free to order." Plus, there is another page (and order form) to order the book on audio-cassette.

-Avon/Harper Collins (1990) published a Newbery Honor book. The back page has lists of books and prices, plus a coupon for ordering books.

-Apple Scholastic (no date) has the same type of form in the back of their Apple Classic Black Beauty. The books available are classics and are offered for around $3, with $2 for shipping.

-Ballentine (1976) Tolkien Books have information about ordering other Tolkien books. Plus, one book has ads for both Lord of the Ring Maps and posters on one back page and an ad for the MS Read-a-thon on another page.


Tolkien: Smith of Wooten Major and Farmer Giles of Ham; The Tolkien Reader.

-Other publishers on my shelves that have order forms are Dell (1973, 1990); Bantam (1974); Penguin (1986; 7 pages with 4 order forms! But no prices, yet it says, "please include sales tax); and Signet (1965 and 1984).

A more recent Scholastic Book (2002) has three (!) pages in the back with illustrated advertisements with mail order blanks to fill in.

What about picture books?
Golden Books and some Scholastic books and others show either book covers or a list of books--and I've bought books because of this--but these books give no way to order directly.

Next, I wondered if there were any books from a long time ago that included advertising. I found an example online from 1776: about 3/4 the way down the page shows an ad on an endpage of Aristotle’s Masterpiece.

At some point, most US publishers went away from selling directly to the public. I wonder why that decision was made; I think a few publishers are now again selling e-books directly to customers.

Advertisements could be intrusive and take away from the reading experience. (I can imagine a poorly done ad being placed right at a cliffhanger.) But perhaps the right type of ads placed in the right place would be acceptable to readers.

Here are a few questions that I'm now asking myself:

Would advertisements in the back pages of a book irritate me as a reader? (I remember when I was a child, I would always read these ads and wish I could get some of the books mentioned.)
What about ads on book covers? What if it was only a small logo?
What about a book where the author was paid to insert and highlight a product? (This has happened, by the way.)
What if advertising meant that high quality books (edited and published by reputable firms) were available inexpensively?
Or should books, as one of the last few places we go for entertainment without marketing and advertising, remain ad-free?

Revision: links to authors who share early drafts

2012-04-27T12:23:00.000+02:00

I'm always fascinated at how different writers revise their manuscripts.

I gave examples in a past post about Lewis Carroll and also shared my rainbow manuscript revision technique.

I recently found out that CBCC of University of Wisconsin placed Ellen Raskin's drafts of The Westing Game online. (The Westing Game won the Newbery award in 1979.)

Here's a link to the drafts and to the audio of Raskin talking about her manuscripts!
The information and background about the book design (Raskin was very involved) is fascinating. (The first printing was shredded.)
The working notes and intro to the project are also excellent.

Deep revision for me often means cutting characters, adding characters, changing plot points, strengthening desire lines, and once *gasp* changing the premise, which meant rewriting that entire novel. Deep revision also includes cutting chapters and writing new chapters and scenes.

Below are links to other authors who share their revision process. All their examples are excellent.

Janni Simner posted various versions and an excellent analysis of the opening paragraphs of her short story, "Song for Two Voices" in 2005. In this post she also talks about finding the right voice for this story. She often shares thoughts about revision on her blog.

Melissa Marr shared early drafts from pages in her notebooks in 2009. See here and here.

More recently, earlier this year, Maggie Stiefvater shared her some of her revisions on her blog.
She also asked other authors to share their revision thoughts and process: Stiefvater gives links on her blog to ten authors who share their drafts.

Cheryl Klein talks about the Process of Publishing Second Sight

2012-04-27T09:41:00.001+02:00

Photo by Cal Werry

It’s a treat to visit with Cheryl Klein today in my third of three interviews with authors and publishing professionals about indie-publishing. She joins me to discuss what was involved in publishing her book, Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults.

Cheryl Klein is an Executive Editor at Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, and is the author of Second Sight. Her website is filled with information and resources for writers.

[This interview is also simultaneously posted on Through the Tollbooth, a group blog by VCFA alumni.]

[Sarah] How did you prepare your book, Second Sight, for publication? What extra steps did you need to take because you published it yourself?

[Cheryl] I write my talks in outline form to keep them and me loose as I speak, so first I had to revise them for print — which involved a lot of revising altogether; I think I more or less rewrote my speech on voice completely. After that, I sent it to a freelance book designer I’d hired, and she came up with a sample interior design, which I approved. She and I then went through two rounds of proofs (which sometimes involved me rewriting more than I should) before finalizing the interiors. It was all very much like the standard editorial process we use at Scholastic.

The designer and I also collaborated on the cover, with both of us generating ideas, settling on a concept, and then tweaking the details until we had something I liked — something I love, actually. My personal style — in everything from the clothes I wear to the art I love to how I edit my books — emphasizes very classical, clean structures and lines combined with bright colors and textures and patterns, and this book cover is a wonderful example of that.

Finally, I registered for an ISBN so the book could be included in various online systems, and a bar code so it could be scanned and sold in stores. And I researched book printers and distributors online, and reached out to a number of services for quotes.

[Sarah] Who else was involved in the publication process?

[Cheryl] My designer was named Whitney Lyle — she’s now a full-time book designer for Scholastic. The books themselves were printed by McNaughton & Gunn in Michigan. Several of my editorial friends consulted on the copyediting and flap copy.

[Sarah] What are the advantages of publishing your book in print form? What were the biggest challenges you faced?

[Cheryl] I never considered publishing it solely in e-form — in part because I grew up on real, physical books, and I love them madly, and I wanted to have one of my very own. So one great advantage was just to be able to hold a book I’d written in my hands. . . . It was really satisfying, if that doesn’t sound too egotistical. On a practical level, the biggest advantages are probably having something physical to sell at my speaking appearances, as I do a fair number of those, and that the book can reach an audience beyond people who own e-readers (as that’s still just a limited subset of readers, and will probably remain so for quite some time to come).

The biggest challenge was trying to figure out the proper distribution for the books — how many books should go where, and which were the right services to use that would answer the particular needs I had.

[Sarah] You used Kickstarter as a way to raise money to print your book. Why did you choose Kickstarter?

[Cheryl] At the time I did it (July of 2009), Kickstarter had just opened for business earlier that year, and it was the only crowdsourced-fundraising website for artistic activities that I knew of.

[Sarah] You started your own small press: Asterisk Books. Could you talk about how this was helpful in publishing Second Sight? Also, how have you distributed your book?

[Cheryl] Well, I have to confess that Asterisk came into existence basically because of Second Sight — I wanted to have a proper imprint name to put on the spine and title page! I chose “Asterisk” because I love stars and punctuation, and because I love the additions and amendments and digressions the mark represents.

Second Sight is available online through Amazon.com’s Advantage consignment program and through Mybookorders.com, an independent distributor out of Minneapolis. Working with Mybookorders was really important and useful to me early on because (a) I wanted a non-Amazon option for people who are concerned about the company and (b) I needed a distributor that could handle discounts at various levels, so the people who sponsored me on Kickstarter could receive the proper credit for their sponsorship (for instance, a $10 sponsorship = $10 off the book), and Amazon doesn’t offer such an option. The book has also been for sale at my local independent bookstore near work, the wonderful McNally Jackson Booksellers, and I’ve been selling it at my various appearances since it’s come out.

I owe my mother a HUGE thanks here, as she and my dad are not only storing over a thousand books (at present) in their garage, she’s also been shipping books to Amazon and to my appearances as necessary. (They know her really well at the local FedEx.) Thanks, Mom!

[Sarah] The Asterisk graphic and name “Asterisk Books” do add a nice touch to the spine and title page! One last question: Second Sight is a popular book and is now in it’s second printing. Do you plan to release it as an e-book?

[Cheryl] At present, I do not have plans to release it as an e-book.

[Sarah] Thank you, Cheryl, for a great interview!

Be sure to visit Cheryl at her useful website (that includes many of her craft talks) and her wonderful blog. Cheryl is also on twitter. (There is important info on her website about the various option of placing orders for her book, Second Sight. Her book is an excellent resource for writers, one I highly recommend.)

Debi Faulkner on the Teamwork of Indie-Publishing

2012-04-25T12:00:00.001+02:00

It’s a pleasure to visit with Debi Faulkner today as I continue my series of interviews about e-books and indie-publishing. Originally from Detroit, Debi has lived in Europe for over ten years.

Debi is a poet and the author of four novels, including the chapter book, Lilypad Princess, and the young adult novel, Summoning. Her middle grade novel, Year of the WereCurse: WereWhat?, was recently released in its print version.

[This interview is also simultaneously posted on Through the Tollbooth, a group blog by VCFA alumni.]

[Sarah] Publishing a book is always a team effort. Who did you choose to help prepare your books and what did they do?

[Debi] While I’ve always relied on my wonderful and talented critique partners and writing buddies to help me prepare my manuscripts in the initial stages, going past that into the indie-publishing field has been a real learning experience.

My first novel, Summoning, went through several rounds of revisions with my own writing circle, then several more based on advice from agents who’d suggested changes. Though none of those agents ultimately took on the book, I believed that it was a story that deserved a chance.

My husband was the one who convinced me to publish the book myself, and when I discovered that it was possible to publish electronically, I tried to learn everything I could about the process. Having a small (extremely small) bit of experience with digital photography and art, I made the original cover myself. Formatting was a bit trickier, because each of the venues available to create and sell an ebook has its own methods and its own formatting rules. For this book, I took on the (sometimes very frustrating) task myself.

I pushed the “publish” buttons on the various sites, and viola! a book was born!

It didn’t take long for me to learn that my cover was amateurish and that some of the paragraphs on the Kindle edition did not format correctly.

It was time for help.

A fellow indie author on the Kindle Board’s Writer’s Cafe, Thea Atkinson, created the current cover and various other members helped me correct the formatting errors.

But I’d learned my lesson, and I’d found a wealth of resources including Editor Extraordinaire, Lynn O’Dell, and Cover Artist to the Stars, Glendon Haddix.

[Sarah] You chose an experienced and well-known editor to edit your books. What was it like working with her?

[Debi] One of the main criticisms of indie-books is that they are poorly edited. Unfortunately, that statement can be all too true. It’s possible to write a horrible first draft, decide it’s pure gold and hit that publish button before a book is ready.

But writing is my career. My reputation is on the line every time someone samples or downloads my books. I wanted them to be the very best. I wanted them to be professional. As every serious writer knows, professional editing is a must in producing a professional book. And getting the right editor is important.

That’s where Lynn O’Dell of Red Adept Publishing Services came in. This woman is amazing. Not only does she have a copyeditor’s eye for all things grammatical, but her ability to analyze story arc, characterization, pacing, plot holes – everything a good editor needs to help an author fine-tune a manuscript – is spot on.

I hired her to work with me on Year of the WereCurse: WereWhat?, and it was definitely my best decision in this entire journey so far. She is tough, and she knows how to motivate a writer to work harder, dig deeper and find a story’s underlying “truth.”

Because she is so good, and because she is extremely popular with indie-authors, I booked a place on her schedule for my next book before I’d even started writing it!

[Sarah] How involved were you in choosing the covers for your books?

[Debi] As I described above, Summoning‘s original cover was my own. While it no longer has my cover, I did learn quite a bit creating it and through the criticism of it. On my second book, LilyPad Princess, I took the lessons I’d learned and designed the cover myself.

One of the biggest issues with ebooks is making the cover completely legible in a thumbnail format – that’s the size prospective buyers see, so making any part of the title or author name too small, or adding too much clutter that is not easily distinguishable at a small size, is counter productive. What works well for a print cover doesn’t necessarily work for an ebook.

For WereWhat?, I chose to hire a professional cover designer for two reasons: the story did not really lend itself to a photo-centric cover, and the genre/age-range (mid-grade paranormal aimed at boys) seemed to scream for something hand drawn. That’s when I found Glendon Haddix with Streetlight Graphicswww.streetlightgraphics.com. Glendon and his wife, Tabitha, were extremely accommodating, but it’s Glendon’s vision of Jack Henry’s world that is on the cover of the book. He took my suggestions, my concerns and the main themes of the story and worked them into a fun, attractive cover. When something didn’t quite match my vision, he revised it. For me, it was an amazing process to watch – and have input on – my characters coming to life visually.

When I chose to add a print version of WereWhat?, Glendon expanded the cover to include the spine and back, too.

Streetlight Graphics also did all of the formatting for WereWhat?, both in all ebook and print versions. Glendon also included the lobsterclaw from the cover at the beginning of each chapter, which I absolutely love.

[Sarah] Which e-books formats did you choose? Why? [Did you need a company to help with publication and distribution?]

[Debi] This is another one of the ever-changing aspects of indie-publishing. When I began with Summoning, in October of 2010, there were three main venues: Smashwords (which distributes to various outlets such as Apple, Sony and Kobo, among others), Amazon for the Kindle and Barnes and Noble for Nook users. There seem to be more options now, though to be honest, I’m not as versed in them as I should be.

One of the areas of flux for this particular issue has been the addition of Kindle Select through Amazon. An indie-author can achieve higher rankings and visibility by choosing to include a book in the Select program, which is a plus, but in order to participate, the book cannot be offered in ebook format on any other site for the duration of the commitment (which is 90-days at a time).
The arguments both for and against this practice are lengthy, and I won’t go into them. I will say, though, that I am currently experimenting with Select, and both Summoning and WereWhat? are signed up in the project. For the time being.

[Sarah] What advantages do you see with e-books?

[Debi] For me, there are two major advantages and one really nice “perk” ebooks have over a printed book. First is the ease of reading and storing entire novels. My Kindle is much easier to hold than a 500-page hard cover, and it fits easily into my purse, so I almost always have it with me. Of course, I no longer have to beg to buy more book shelves, either. I have to admit to loving the feel of a new, hard-bound book in my hands and smelling that new-paper smell, but when it comes to really diving into and living in an imaginary world with well-written characters, I can do that just fine electronically!

The second major advantage for me is the ease of purchasing books. Believe me, that’s a big one, too. I live in a non-English speaking country, and while I can find English books in the local store, they’re not usually the ones I’d like to read and the variety is very small. Ordering books and paying for the overseas delivery is also very cost prohibitive. Even ordering books through the local bookstore has proven out of my price range, because the stores must charge me all the additional costs they incur in getting the book. With my Kindle, I can go online, choose a book and start reading it within seconds.
That same ease of purchasing is one that I hope translates to buyers of my own books. Anyone can go online, find one of my books and be reading it without ever leaving the couch. Of course, getting the visibility for my books has proven to be the challenge.

The “perk” is that the cost of most ebooks is less than the print versions. It means I can buy more books!

[Sarah] Your book, Year of the WereCurse: WereWhat? was first released as an e-book. Recently it became available in a print version. What did you need to do to prepare it for print publication? Why did you choose to take time and effort so it would also be available as a paper book?

[Debi] You’ve hit on one of the pitfalls of ereaders for me – not many kids have them yet. Sure, as parents upgrade to the newer versions, kids will get the hand-me-downs, but right now there are just too few kids, 9-12 years old, who have their own Kindles. Or their own Kindle accounts.
I decided to add the print option to WereWhat? mostly due to the age range. I want to make it more available to my target audience. This is a new venture for me, but the print books are available on Amazon and can be ordered through bookstores, which should make it more available to the kids who may want to read it.

As of this moment, I have not begun the process for my other books, but if WereWhat? does well, I would definitely consider adding print versions of them all.

[Sarah] What are your plans for future books?

[Debi] In the long run, I would like to pursue both indie and traditional publishing. They each have their strengths, and I believe pursuing both is the best strategy for authors at this point.

Of course, one of the biggest things about traditional publishing that holds appeal for me may be an emotional one: validation. Having someone read your work and believe in it enough to want to invest time and money into putting it out there into the big, wide world…well, I’m sure there’s no feeling like it.

But I also know that I have other options. I don’t have to place all of my worth as an author on what a particular imprint is looking for at any particular moment or whether or not my manuscript is commercial enough or too commercial or if it can be easily categorized. If I truly believe in a story, and if I can work with a team of professionals to put out a professional product, then I have that choice and the freedom, knowledge and resources to do it.

Whether a book is indie or traditionally published, it still comes down to story – whether the book will attract and engage readers. If it’s a good story well told, I believe people will want to read it.

[Sarah] Thank you, Debi! It's been so fun to learn about your publishing journey.
You can find out more about Debi and her books by visiting her website.

Margaret J. Anderson on publishing out of print books as e-books

2012-04-23T16:13:00.003+02:00

It’s a delight to visit with Margaret J Anderson today! It is really cool to talk with one of my favorite childhood authors! I discovered her books when I was in middle school, and I loved reading them over and over again. Her historical fiction books swept me away on adventures to foreign lands and earlier times. (Searching for Shona is a book I still vividly remember today.) I particularly loved her fantasy time travel books.

[This interview is also simultaneously posted on Through the Tollbooth, a group blog by VCFA alumni.]

Margaret J Anderson has been writing for publication for over thirty-five years and has published 12 novels. Her nonfiction books include biographies and science books. Her most recent books are Carl Linnaeus: Father of Classification and Bugged-Out Insects (2011).

Her out-of-print novel, In the Keep of Time, was recently released as an e-book.

[Sarah] Did your rights revert back to you or did you work with your publisher to regain your rights to your books?

[Margaret] Years ago, after my early fiction books had been out of print for a while, I asked my publisher (Knopf) for the rights back. I had the idea of getting a regional press interested in publishing some of them as paperbacks that I could sell when I was giving school presentations, but I was too involved with new projects to follow through. This was before the era of Nooks and Kindles, so I had no thought of issuing electronic versions of the books – and neither did Knopf. I’ve heard that publishers aren’t so quick to relinquish rights these days.

[Sarah] Could you explain the process you went through as you prepared In the Keep of Time to be published as an e-book?

[Margaret] Six years ago, I wrote a historical novel called Olla Piska about the botanist David Douglas (of the Douglas fir). A couple of months after it was published by the Oregon Historical Society, they went out of the publishing business, leaving Olla-Piska as an orphan child. They returned all the rights, so with the help of Ellen Beier, who had done the cover, I began to look into publishing it as an e-book. We learned the names of companies like Smashwords and BookBaby, but the big question of how you let people know the book is out there hung over us. In the end, I decided to get my feet wet by publishing a book that already had potential readers. I get quite a number of e-mails from people who read In the Keep of Time and my other early books as children and are sad that they can’t find copies to read to their children.

When I decided to start with In the Keep of Time, I was faced with a problem. The book was published in 1977 before I owned a computer, so I had no digital version. I would have to retype the entire book into Microsoft Word. Somewhere I’d read that scanning the pages could introduce mistakes that are hard to fix. Besides, I’d have to tear one of my few copies apart to scan it and I wasn’t sure my scanner was up to the task. On the upside, retyping meant I could avoid the five most common formatting mistakes cited in the Smashwords style guide. (Don’t use the tab key to indent a new paragraph, etc.) By the time I was finished, I had a new admiration for my younger self – hammering out all those long-ago books on a typewriter and correcting mistakes with whiteout!

[Sarah] Which e-books formats did you choose? Why?

[Margaret] I chose to go with BookBaby, though I can’t claim this was the result of extensive research. It was mostly based on their response to an email I sent them asking (among other things) what was the advantage of using BookBaby rather than one of the other companies out there. Someone named Meghan wrote back saying, “I believe that the best part about using BookBaby is that if you need help, you can pick up the phone and dial us and a real live human being will answer you!” That’s very reassuring when you’re dealing with all this uncanny stuff like an entire book arriving on your Kindle with the click of a mouse! I’ve already talked to Meghan a couple of times. Also, BookBaby is located in Portland, so it feels local. As well as formatting the manuscript for all the popular reading devices: Kindle, i-Pad, Nook, Kobo, etc., they handle the financial dealings, collecting royalties and sending them on to the author.

[Sarah] Why did you choose to release In the Keep of Time first?

[Margaret] As I mentioned earlier, In the Keep of Time has loyal followers—if I can find a way to reach them. Although the book was written years ago I think it will connect with today’s children. It is a time-slip adventure in which the key to Smailholm Tower unlocks the past, taking four children back to 15th century Scotland, where border raiding was a common practice. The next time they use the key, the children find themselves in the 22nd century in a post climate-change world—a world without technology. Today’s kids are aware of climate change, but it wasn’t on many people’s radar back when the book was published 35 years ago.

[Sarah] You chose a photograph you took of the tower for your new cover. Where did you take the photo? Did the photo require any editing or photoshopping?

[Margaret] The photograph on the cover is of Smailholm Tower, a Scottish border keep near Kelso where my parents lived after I’d emigrated to Oregon. It’s the setting that inspired my story, and I worked in some legends associated with the tower. We always visited the tower when we went back to see my parents, and I’ve taken dozens of pictures over the years. Laszlo Kubinyi, who did the original cover, based his artwork on a photo I sent him. I couldn’t use his cover for the e-book edition because of copyright restrictions, but I did choose a similar view of the tower.

Ellen Beier helped me design the cover. Yes, we did do some photoshopping. The first step was to straighten the tower. Ellen pointed out that my photo had a slight leaning-tower-of-Pisa slant to it that I hadn’t noticed! Then we changed the background colors to give the picture a more interesting science-fiction look. Finally we picked the font for the title, which was hard because there are so many choices. I’m excited about what finally emerged.

[Sarah] What other books do you plan to release as e-books? When?

[Margaret] That depends on how long my enthusiasm for typing lasts! And also how the current project fares. I feel as if I’m climbing a fairly steep learning curve! But I’m already more than halfway through typing In the Circle of Time, a sequel to In the Keep of Time, which focuses on the future people. There’s a third book, The Mists of Time, but before I do that one I want to do my earliest novel, To Nowhere and Back. It has also generated a lot of letters and was a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year in 1975. After that, I may do Journey of the Shadow Bairns, which is based on my husband’s family history in northern Saskatchewan. Next in line is Searching for Shona, a World War II story that draws heavily on my own background. And somewhere in between I’ll do Olla-Piska.

[Sarah] What advantages do you see with using e-books?

[Margaret] It will be interesting to see how this technology evolves, but I do think it’s a great way to make books that might have a limited audience available to readers. It’s hard for publishers to justify the production and storage costs for a physical book that isn’t going to jump off the shelves. E-books don’t take up space in warehouses or on bookshelves. They can also be sold at a much lower price. I’ll receive a 70% royalty for In the Keep of Time from most reading devices, so I can price it as low as $2.99, which will give me $2.00 per book, the equivalent of a 10% royalty on a $20 book. The buyer benefits from the cheaper price as well.

Like most authors, I’ve always been in love with books and have a whole wall of them behind me as I write. But when I look at my grandchildren I see the writing on that wall! They like their electronic devices! It used to be that the paperback edition was the poor relative of the hardbound book. Then readers wanted the lighter, cheaper paperbacks. Pretty soon they’ll all be turning pages on their Nooks and Kindles with their busy thumbs. Personally, I still love the look and feel of a book, but I do like being able to adjust the font size on my Kindle!

[Sarah] Do any of the e-book formats allow a reader to order a print copy of the book? In other words, is there a way for a reader to buy a paper copy of the book?

[Margaret] There are ways to publish your book in a format that allows the reader to buy a print copy, but I didn’t go that route, partly because there still are a few physical copies of my early books out there through Amazon etc. Though the prices can be crazy! I just checked Amazon and a used hardback edition of To Nowhere and Back sells for anywhere from $39-$319! In 1975 it sold for $5.50.

[Sarah] When you were retyping the story, did you ever have the urge to change anything?

[Margaret] I have found myself doing some tweaking and editing! I’ve had 35 years of writing experience since I wrote In the Keep of Time. I was a bit too fond of run-on sentences in those days, so I have eliminated some “ands.” I’m making a few bigger changes while re-typing In the Circle of Time, where Robert and Jennifer find themselves two hundred years in the future. The present time in the book is around 1979, the year I wrote the book, and I haven’t changed that. There is, however, mention of something that happened in 2010, which must have seemed quite far into the future back then. Seeing it didn’t happen in 2010, I’m jumping the event forward to 2050!

[Sarah] How does it feel to work with this book again?

[Margaret] Re-reading a book I wrote all those years ago is a bit like a time-slip adventure! It takes me back! Some of the incidents in the story were triggered by real events. One evening, when we went into the tower with our four young children, a black bird fluttered down from somewhere up near the roof and fell dead at our feet. I used this incident in the opening chapter of In the Keep of Time. The characters in the book weren’t based on my own children, but they do bring back happy memories of those visits to Scotland. And the book also brings back memories of children’s eager questions in response to the many slideshow presentations I’ve given over the years.

I really am enjoying re-visiting these old books. It’s a dark day when you get word from your publisher that your precious book is going out of print. I started this project thinking that turning my books into e-books would confer some sort of immortality on them! It turns out that isn’t the case. I have to pay BookBaby $20 per year to keep a book alive! And the real truth is that a book is only alive when someone reads it. So I hope my old titles will spring to life again when today’s kids reach for their Sony or iPad, their Copia, Kobo, Nook or Kindle. I love those names!

[Sarah] Thank you, Margaret, for visiting with me today. Now I have a great reason to buy an e-reader.

You can find out more about Margaret and her book on her website.
In the Keep of Time is available on Kobo, Kindle, Nook and other ebook formats.

Doors--like the cover of a novel--are an invitation to look inside

2012-04-17T21:11:00.000+02:00

I always wonder what is behind closed doors—especially fascinating and unique doors.

Door in Bruges, Belgium

Art Nouveau entrance in Brussels, Belgium

This long cord makes me want to pull on it and hear what the doorbell sounds like.


Long cord, to left of door, is what one pulls to ring the bell.

Some places don't have doors, but only openings, such as this stick house in Keukenhof Gardens in Holland. It reminds me of the story of the Three Little Pigs.

Stick House--I'm in the photo so you can see the scale

This door leads directly to a canal.

Photo taken in Bruges, Belgium.

Just like a great cover or opening page of the novel, a door is an invitation to peek inside.

Front of Art Nouveau house in Brussels, Belgium

Detail of door. I'm standing in front.

Occasionally, we are invited inside when we don't expect the opportunity. The inside can be even more amazing than we could have imagined.

Stained glass windows from inside of house.

The owner of the Art Nouveau house (pictured in the 3 photos above) saw us and invited us into his home! The windows are so clear and almost glow when seen from inside! They are gorgeous!

I took these photos on a recent trip we took to the Netherlands and Belgium. (Neither country is that far of a drive from Frankfurt.)

Bologna Book Fair 2012- Awards and Interviews

2012-03-22T09:29:00.000+01:00

I enjoy following the Bologna Book Fair each year. Two years ago I attended the fair. It's a great way to get a pulse of what is going on in children's publishing. Plus, it's fun see all the international publisher's booths and displays.

The BolognaRagazzi Awards are given each year in several categories. New this year is the BolognaRagazzi digital award, which is given to apps. Seeing the covers (and reading the descriptions) of the award and honor books give me a good glimpse into the most stunning books of the previous year.

Also new this year is the Children's Museum Award. It was announced by HRH Princess Sibille of Luxembourg. How cool is that? The short list of museums looks intriguing. I hope next year a museum from the U.S. is on the list.

SCBWI is also involved in the book fair and has a booth. Interviews with authors and illustrators and others involved in children's publishing can be found at the 2012 SCBWI Bologna series on Cynsations.

I interviewed Paul O. Zelinsky, Caldecott Medal winner, for this series. If you want to learn more about Zelinsky and his amazing work, you can read my interview at this link.

Greg Leitich Smith: Dinosaurs, Writing, and Research

2012-03-16T09:38:00.000+01:00

Greg Leitich Smith's newest book, Chronal Engine, is an exciting time travel adventure back to the time of dinosaurs.

Greg Leitich Smith in the Houston Museum of Natural Science

Greg is also the author of the middle grade novels, Tofu and T Rex and Ninjas, Pirahnas and Galileo. Plus, he co-authored the picture book, Santa Knows, with his wife, Cynthia Leitich Smith.

I'm excited to talk with Greg today about his writing process, research, and of course, dinosaurs.

[Sarah] Could you share your journey to becoming a writer?

[Greg] I think everyone who is a writer starts out as a reader. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t enjoy reading, and pretty much read everything I could get my hands on (and still do). In general, I tend to read a lot of nonfiction and enjoy mysteries, humor, and science fiction and fantasy.

In high school, I thought it might be fun to write for a living, but recognized that planning on something like that without having a day job or trust fund was not the wisest career plan. I eventually put the idea aside and pursued my interests in engineering and, later, law.

When Cynthia started writing, she learned the business and brought home tons of books, the new generation of children’s and YA books, and I started reading them. And that’s when I decided to try my hand at writing again. I went to a couple workshops, submitted the manuscript for NINJAS, PIRANHAS, AND GALILEO around, and got some nice personal rejections. Eventually I revised and submitted to Cynthia’s agent, Ginger Knowlton, who was probably not overjoyed to receive the manuscript of a client’s spouse. :). She did, however, agree to represent me. I think she sold the manuscript on the first submission after that.

[Greg] How has your writing process changed with each of your novels?

Each novel has tended to be completely different. My first, NINJAS, PIRANHAS, AND GALILEO, was written essentially straight through without any kind of outlining whatsoever. I had an idea that I wanted to do the Galileo story as a comedy in junior high, so I had sort of the broad contours of the plot, but nothing beyond that. There was a significant amount of backtracking, though, and trying to keep things organized when you couldn’t “see” everything was difficult.

With CHRONAL ENGINE and my more recent projects, I now generally try to come up with an interesting character and a plot beginning, middle, and end, and then will attempt a preliminary draft. This usually is only about fifty to seventy five pages long, but it’s enough to give me a sense of what’s going on. I’ll then do a next draft, which will still be on the short side. At this point, I’ll put together a table outline. Basically, it’s a word processing document with a five column table. Each cell in the table is either a scene or a chapter and I’ll write a brief description. I’ll also put the whole thing in 8 point type so I fit the whole outline on a single page. That way, it’s easy to see the entire story and figure out what’s wrong with the flow and whether any scenes need to be inserted or moved.

After that, I’ll try to come up with what I call my first draft – a novel length manuscript with a compelling protagonist and internal and external arc. Once I have that, I’ll revise. Of course, it’s entirely possible that that first draft and all its story arcs will be thrown out. With CHRONAL ENGINE, the only things that really remain from the first draft are the title, one of the early scenes when they get to the Cretaceous, and the name of the protagonist.

When I do a revision, I like to print out the manuscript as two pages per sheet – it makes it seem like a book, cuts down on the sheets of paper, and seems more manageable somehow. If I need to insert scenes, I’ll either write on the back of the printed out manuscript or use a legal pad. I think one draft of CHRONAL ENGINE I did completely by hand on about five legal pads.

[Sarah] In an article you wrote for the Association for Library Service you discussed how you used children’s and adult books when you did research about dinosaurs for Chronal Engine. What other types of research did you do?

[Greg] The research really ran the whole gamut of books from picture books to professional texts and papers. My wife and I also watched a lot of dinosaur documentaries and pseudo-documentaries (of varying quality) on Discovery Channel and the like. The BBC series "Walking with Dinosaurs" was enormously helpful in getting a visual on the ecosystem, although they did take some liberties with the dinosaurs.

Most fun, of course, was that it gave us an excuse to go to every natural history museum in every city we happened to visit. Some of the museums we've visited include the Texas Memorial Museum here in Austin; the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman;the University of Michigan Natural History Museum; the Field Museum of Natural History; and the National Museum of Natural History. Here in Austin, we also have the Hartmann Prehistoric Garden, which features plants that are of types that were around in the Mesozoic. And, we also went to the JURASSIC PARK area of Universal Studios Florida and DINOLAND USA at Disney World. For research purposes only :-).

Of course, it wasn’t just the dinosaurs that needed to be researched. I also had to figure out the whole wilderness survival business and time travel.   For the survival stuff, I read books like the US Army Survival Manual and the SAS Survival Guide, as well as the Boy Scout’s Handbook (I’ve never actually been a camper…). In addition, I made Cynthia watch far too many episodes of Survivorman and Man vs. Wild – at least, the episodes that were set in tropical locales.

[Sarah] Do you do most of the research before you begin writing or do you research while writing your books?

[Greg] Research was pretty much an ongoing thing. I did a bunch of preliminary research to get an overview of the environment that I wanted to use: generally based on the Late Cretaceous Aguja and Javelina Formations of the Big Bend area in southwest Texas.

Once I go that, I sort of had a handle on the basics (and having been to the museums, etc., gave me an idea for the size of creatures and sense of scale, etc.), but there was a lot along the way that I had to look up and had to make sure of. Essentially, every time I wanted to reference a new plant or animal, I got compulsive to make sure there was evidence of it in the fossil record (as of the Late Cretaceous).

For example, when I first decided to put in, say, crayfish and earthworms, I had to find out if there had been crayfish and earthworms in the Late Cretaceous of Texas (I figured there were, but wanted to make sure there was something in the fossil record). My first go-to was the dinosaur references that I had accumulated, but in many cases they weren’t quite as comprehensive or time and region specific as I was looking for, so I often went to original scientific papers, many of which are available online.

I also perused books like the US Army Survival Manual to get ideas on what Max and the gang would’ve needed to do to obtain food, shelter, water, etc., and not get themselves trampled or eaten. In early drafts, too, there were a lot of Swiss Family Robinson type scenes, where I went on in detail about how they built shelter, fish traps, snares, etc. Fortunately, for the flow of the story, most of that got edited out…

I did do the time travel research from the beginning, because I wanted to have an actual time machine and have that machine be an integral part of the story. Also, I wanted to make sure everything I did was consistent with the “mode” I picked, but also leave it a bit ambiguous (which it would be for the characters, anyway).

[Sarah] Could you tell us more about your fascination with dinosaurs?

[Greg] Dinosaurs are intrinsically, of course, totally cool. :). When I was a kid, I had the advantage of parents who bought me books and took me to the library, and also to the Field Museum of Natural History, one of the world’s great natural history museums. There was just something completely amazing about these giant, awesome creatures, and the fact that they’re no longer around.

And I think that’s basically the thing that draws people to dinosaurs: they were real. Not monsters, not dragons, but real flesh-and-blood animals that walked the earth. Even better, they’re a kind of science that’s easy for laypeople to participate in, at museums or even hunting for fossils on their own (There are some amazing specimens that were discovered by children and teens).

And today, I think we’re in kind of a golden age of dinosaur science – new areas of the globe are open for exploration and new techniques are being used to examine specimens. New discoveries are being made every day, and many of them are reported (with varying degrees of accuracy) in the popular media. There’s also a very accessible blogosphere of paleontologists and paleo-enthusiasts and paleo-artists who make for some interesting conversation.

[Sarah] Austin has a strong writing community. What types of involvement have you had and how has this helped you grow as a writer?

[Greg] As a community, Austin got its start in the mid-nineties when Meredith Davis founded the Austin SCBWI chapter. Kathi Appelt, who was at the time the Regional Advisor for the Brazos Valley chapter, also was an early supporter of the Austin community. In fact, early on, the chapters did joint events together, one of which was a workshop where an early draft of my first novel got a gratifyingly good reception from an editor at Harcourt.

Since that time, Cynthia and I have been happy to be a part of a group that has seen many members make their first sales and, importantly, stay in the community afterwards. There’s a sensibility that we’re all in it together and that, as we were mentored, so we should mentor others.

Thank you, Greg, for joining me today!

You can learn more about Greg at his website. Also, be sure to visit his blog.

View From My Desk: Wrecking Ball (movie)

2012-03-09T13:06:00.002+01:00

Here is what I see when I look out my window:

Yes, the view from my desk can be distracting at time.

They've been tearing down this building for over 6 months. Some days the BOOMS and BEEPS are so loud that I hear all the noise even when the window is shut. I've been amazed how hard it is to rip apart a building.

Link Medley: Subverting Expectations, Marketing, Dinosaurs, and more

2012-02-17T11:47:00.000+01:00

This is a wonderful and insightful essay: Subverting expectations by Uma Krishnaswami.

Check out a series of great posts by Janet Fox about marketing and publicity.

Sucker Literary Magazine is a new literary magazine for young adults. To find out more, read Mima Tipper's interview with the editor, Hannah Goodman. Also--this online magazine is a great place to submit young adult short stories.

One of my favorite books from my childhood was a time travel story into the time of dinosaurs. So of course I'm excited for Greg Leitich Smith's soon-to-be-released novel, Chronal Engine. He is celebrating it with photos of writers with dinosaurs. Check out my photo with the Frankfurt dinosaur over on his blog.

Kill Your Darlings, but Keep Their Ghosts and Shadows

2012-02-10T13:30:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I feel like I’m wielding a machete or a flamethrower when I’m revising a book. Pages burn into ashes. Sentences blow away like the seeds of a dandelion clock.

There are times we must remove our Darlings.
(“Remove”: a sterile word for “cut” and “kill,” which implies blood is involved.)

We may remove
a word.
A sentence.
A scene.
A desire.
A motive.
A character.

Or another element of the story.

The revision may be substantial, and it is like we are pulling the warp threads out of a plot or sending the keystone from a character arc tumbling to the ground.

The art of writing involves knowing what needs to stay and what needs to be removed.

A positive spin: We are deleting cutting rescuing our Darlings from a place they don’t belong as we find the best way to tell our story.

What happens to the words we delete?
Scenes we eliminate?
Characters we yank from the pages?

Our Darlings may go on to another life as we tuck them away in our mental “use later” file or into a “cut from book” file in the computer. We can save an awesome turn of phrase to use at another time later. We can borrow and steal elements from a deleted scene for another story. Not a word we write is wasted.

When I remove words/ sentences/scenes/characters from a story, what else happens?

Example One: In my novel, River, I cut a significant secondary character. She wasn’t pulling her weight. (Truth be told, she didn’t want to be in the book.)

When I revised, elements of her character that were critical to moving the plot forward shifted to two other secondary characters.

Example Two: [These opening sentences are taken from one of my picture books that I wrote while at VCFA while in the picture book semester. This book was a finalist in the 2010 SCBWI Barbara Karlin Grant competition.]

1. “We climb our mountains from the inside, up and up we climb.” (First draft—when I was desperately trying to get words on the page so I could make my VCFA packet deadline.)
2. “Today we will conquer a new peak, the highest peak in the mountain range.” (2^nd draft.)
3. “Today we are explorers. We cross the bridge toward the mountains wild . . .” (Final draft, after numerous revisions.)

Only two significant words remain in the final draft: “we” and “mountains.” The concept of going “inside” shifts to a spread later in the manuscript. The word “explorers” in the final version captures the idea I wanted to express in the earlier versions.

Ghosts and Shadows
The essence of what is cut removed often floats around and squeezes into other sentences or parts of the book. At times, deleting and writing more words acts as a palimpsest: not all that was removed is fully erased. Vestiges remain.

Even when we kill our Darlings, they live on as ghosts and shadows. Aspects of what we removed remain in the pages. In essence, although what we cut is no longer there, ghosts of those words will haunt our pages and flit between sentences.

What is your experience with the traces and shadows, the ghosts of your Darlings?

Laura Watkinson, Translator, Winner of the 2012 Batchelder Award

2012-01-24T06:44:00.000+01:00

Laura Watkinson won the ALA 2012 Batchelder Award for her translation of Soldier Bear (“Soldaat Wojtek”). The Mildred L. Batchelder Award is for an "outstanding children's book translated from a foreign language and subsequently published in the United States."

Last year I interviewed Laura Watkinson for the Through the Tollbooth blog, and I'm reposting that interview here today.

I’m excited about today’s interview! Laura Watkinson joins me to answer my questions about translators and translating books.

Laura translates a wide range of books (picture books, graphic novels, young adult and adult novels) into English from Dutch, Italian, and German. She studied languages, literature, linguistics and literary translation at Oxford, Cambridge and University College London.

She has translated for many publishers including Scholastic Books (Arthur Levine imprint), Golden Books, Eerdmans, and Peirene Press (London). She participated on the panel, Mixing it Up: The Process of Bringing International Books to the US, with publisher Arthur Levine and editor Cheryl Klein, at the 2009 ALA conference in Chicago (for USBBY and the Young Adult Library Services Association, YALSA).

She translated Heartsinger by Karlijn Stoffels and recently completed a translation of Tomorrow Pamplona, an adult novel by Jan van Mersbergen, for Peirene Press and is currently working on a translation of Berlin by Cees Nooteboom for Maclehose Press.

After living in many European countries and teaching at universities in Italy and Germany, Laura moved to the Netherlands in 2003. She recently moved to a very tall, thin house on a canal in Amsterdam.

[Sarah] What was your path to translating children’s books?

[Laura] It’s been a long and meandering path, which probably started when I was very small and read a book about a grandma, but no one in the book called her Grandma. They all called her Oma instead. And I slowly realised that this book came from Somewhere Else.

As a child, I was always surrounded by books and I became more and more interested in languages as I went through school and had the chance to learn French and German.

I grew up and headed off to study languages and literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford University, and later spent time teaching English at the University of Erlangen in Germany and at the University of Milan in Italy, before returning to the UK to do a Master’s in English and Applied Linguistics at Cambridge, which included an element in translation.

I’d been doing small pieces of translation work on the side all the way through university and later while I was teaching English as a foreign language, but I really decided to concentrate on translation when I took the postgraduate certificate course in literary translation from Dutch into English at University College London in 2001. It was a fabulous introduction to the world of literary translation with a variety of guest speakers, including professional translators of literature, drama and poetry, and a Dutch writer in residence. It also was an important first step in building up a network of fellow translators, as it’s good to know other people in the same profession, particularly as a freelancer.

When I started out as a translator, I sent my CV to a few publishing houses and gradually built up a number of regular clients, primarily in the world of contemporary art. I knew that I wanted to work in children’s books, so I studied that market and kept an eye open for houses that published children’s books in translation and started to make contacts at Dutch and Flemish publishing houses.

I also submitted a sample translation of an excerpt from a book by Karlijn Stoffels to the NLPVF, now the Dutch Foundation for Literature. They assessed the translation and placed me on their list of approved translators of children’s books, which means that my translations qualify for subsidy. The Dutch Foundation for Literature is a great support for literary translators, providing training and networking opportunities for translators, along with the Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen in Utrecht. They co-ordinate summer courses in translation and the annual Vertaaldagen (Translation Days) for literary translators from and into Dutch: two days of lectures and workshops in Utrecht, just before Christmas.
I translated a lot of excerpts and picture books and was delighted when Arthur A. Levine decided to publish my first major translation of a children’s book, which was in fact another book written by Karlijn Stoffels: Heartsinger (2009).

It was great to have Cheryl Klein, who edited the Harry Potter books, as the editor for the project.

Looking back at that description of my career path, it all seems rather carefully planned, but that’s not really how it’s felt. I’ve just always been interested in languages and books and studying, which has influenced my decisions and has led me into a career that I love. I now translate primarily from Dutch, often from Italian and only occasionally from German, which was in fact the main focus of my first university degree.

I should probably point out that there’s no typical career path for literary translators. Of course, I’m sure all literary translators share that love of language learning and stories, but I know translators from a very wide range of educational and professional backgrounds, with and without relevant qualifications.

[Sarah] In addition to the translator, who is involved with the translation process?

[Laura] Typically, a book will go through a fairly lengthy process before it’s selected for translation. Let’s say a children’s publisher from New York travels to the book fair in Bologna, looking to acquire the rights for some books from Europe that he or she feels have something to offer to young readers in the US. The first problem is that old language barrier. It’s one thing having a publisher from a Dutch house telling you how fantastic a particular book is, but another thing entirely being able to read it for yourself. So what often happens is that the Dutch publisher or the Dutch Foundation for Literature will commission a translation to take along to the book fair.

In this case of a picture book, that’s nice and easy – the translator produces a translation of the whole text and the American publisher has access to both the pictures and story and can assess the book there and then. The final version of the English text may well be very different from the translation available at the book fair though, once it’s gone back to the translator and through the editing process. For various reasons, it may even be translated all over again by a different translator.

However, if a foreign-language publisher is trying to sell something like a YA novel, it makes little financial sense for them to have the whole book translated and time is also an issue, so they’ll usually have just an excerpt translated to take along to the book fair. An excerpt is typically around twenty pages, generally from the beginning of the book, although I’ve noticed they seem to be getting shorter lately. The excerpt may be packaged with extra information about the author, such as a bibliography and perhaps an interview. These info packs go out to publishers all over the world, so a publisher in, say, Mexico may read an excerpt translated from Dutch into English before deciding to commission a translation of the text into Spanish.

At the book fair, the US publisher will talk to the Dutch publisher and perhaps to the representatives of the Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund, who promote books written in the Dutch language and also subsidise translation and in some cases production costs. Everyone hopes that the publisher will return home with a number of possible projects.

If it’s a YA book and the publisher has only seen an excerpt, the next step might be for the publisher to commission a reader’s report from someone who knows the foreign language and who has some understanding of the market. A reader’s report is usually a maximum of three A4 pages and will include a brief summary of the plot, together with extra information about the book and the author (awards, reviews, reception in the home country) and the reader’s opinion about how well the book might work in translation and where it might fit into the market and the publisher’s list. Are there any other books out there like it? How might readers feel when they finish the book?

If the publisher still likes the sound of the book, he or she may ask a translator to work on a longer excerpt. This may be the same translator who worked on the initial excerpt, but not necessarily.

All of this material then disappears into the usual internal publishing process and sometimes, a few weeks or months later, the publisher comes back to the translator with a yes and the next stage of the process begins: translation.

For those months of translation, the translator will usually work alone, sending occasional queries to fellow translators (we have quite a good network) and maybe to the editor and sometimes to the author. When the draft is finished, it goes to the editor and you spend a few weeks working through the normal editing and proofing process. I imagine this is probably more straightforward than typical editing, as the book has already been edited and published in a different language.

You shouldn’t think though that the text is writ in stone just because it’s already been published in the original language. Sometimes, at this stage, an editor will make changes to the structure of a book, perhaps breaking the story up into new chapters and reordering events, maybe making an ending more upbeat or less ambiguous. It depends a lot on the editor’s knowledge of their market and the publisher’s catalogue and, of course, on discussion with the author.

Sometimes the process is a lot simpler. I recently translated Vincent and Camille, a Golden Book that was commissioned directly by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, for example, and then I went on to translate a graphic novel and accompanying teaching material for the museum: Vincent Van Gogh: An Artist’s Struggle, which was a collaboration between the museum and EurEducation. Here's the book trailer:
In these two cases, the museum got in touch with me directly and there was essentially one point of contact all the way through the process.

I mentioned before that translators usually work on their own, but I recently had the opportunity to collaborate on a fantastic project with two other translators, Rhian Heppleston and Michele Hutchison: The Wrong Place, a Belgian graphic novel by Brecht Evens. We were lucky that the publisher, Drawn and Quarterly, agreed to let the three of us work on it together. It was an interesting process, as the text was, of course, dialogue, so having three of us chipping in really helped to establish different voices. For once, the translation process was more about talking than writing. We sat there together, the three of us, and worked away to get the same emotion, colloquial swing and occasional cringe-worthy awkwardness into the dialogue of the characters. We polished and honed the text and read it out loud. It was a very rewarding experience and I hope that the dialogue rings true. When we reached the editing phase, we also did a little work with Tom Devlin of Drawn and Quarterly to tweak the dialogue by ironing out a few phrases that worked better in the UK than elsewhere in the English-speaking world. The author, Brecht Evens, read the translation too and came up with some suggestions, so the editing process was a real team effort.

[Sarah] Who usually selects the translator?

[Laura] It ultimately comes down to the publisher and they’ll usually go for someone they’ve worked with before or, if they like the translated excerpt, they may stick with the same translator. I know that some translators fall in love with a book and decide to translate an excerpt and send it off to publishers. Sometimes the author will even commission an excerpt directly from a translator so that they can contact foreign publishers themselves, effectively bypassing their publisher at home.

[Sarah] Do you ever talk directly with the author? What types of conversations do you have?

[Laura] Hmmm, an interesting question. I know a number of translators who prefer to translate classic books by dead authors, as they’re easier to negotiate with! There are tales about nightmare authors, most of which are probably exaggerated or apocryphal, such as the author who complained about the words in the translation being in a different order than in the original…

There’s also the very occasional author who doesn’t quite trust the translator’s native-speaker credentials. “Are you sure that young people call it a ‘bike’? I thought the English word for fiets was ‘bicycle’ – that’s what I learned at school and that’s what it says in my dictionary.” “Why have you used the present continuous here? Surely it must be the present simple.” Or perhaps you send a translated excerpt to an author for a quick last-minute check, because nobody knows the text like the author and it’s great to have the expert read through and pick up on any problems. However, the author somehow misunderstands his or her role in the process and, rather than sending a few comments and queries, mails a “corrected” version of the translation – all the examples of “because” have mysteriously become “for” and your carefully crafted dialogue is now full of inappropriate, archaic phrases. Um, there’s not much you can say in those cases. You just have to grin and say firmly that it’s native-speaker intuition and that you’ve been working on your English for a very long time.

Such cases are, thankfully, pretty rare. Many authors never become involved in the translation process, particularly if it’s just an excerpt. In my experience, the ones who do read the translation and come back with queries are, 99% of the time, a pleasure to work with and I often end up shaping the final version based on their feedback. You discuss the points, reach a conclusion and polish off the final version of the text together.

When I start on a new book translation project, there’s a lot of emailing back and forth and I make it clear to the publisher that if the author would like to go through the translation and come back with any questions and comments, that’d be great. I don’t approach the author directly though unless I have any niggling queries that I haven’t been able to solve throughout the translation process. That might happen if I’m not quite sure what the author meant or if I’m about to take liberties with the author’s words and want to check that it’s all right or perhaps if there are two options for handling something and I’d like another opinion from someone else who really cares about the book. Then we might meet up or email each other to sort out those last few bits and pieces.

There are also a couple of authors with whom I’ve had a closer working relationship. One year, before the book fair, I worked on a translation of a rhyming picture book by writer Edward van de Vendel, just for fun. The two of us played around with the text for a few days, bouncing suggestions about, and I think the end result was a true collaboration and was better than either of us could have come up with on our own. Edward’s a fine writer and rhymer, with a great sense of humour and top-notch English and he’s very into translation too, so it was a good experience.

[Sarah] Voice is unique to each author. How do you approach voice?

[Laura] I don’t really think too much about how to approach voice. If the book’s well written, the voice is strong enough to flow through into the translation naturally. Sometimes it’s tricky to work out how to reflect a particular dialect or what sort of words and phrasing might get an individual character’s voice just right, particularly if that voice is very distinctive, but it’s generally a very organic process.

[Sarah] Languages take different amounts of space which can affect length and page count. (The reason for this question is I noticed deletion of what I felt were important sentences in a German translation of one of my favorite children’s novels.) Do you ever need to cut words? If so, how do you decide what to leave out?

[Laura] The number of words doesn’t really matter in a typical book for middle grade or YA. The translation may come out shorter or longer than the original text, but it is what it is and the number of pages/words in the original won’t have any impact on the length of the translation. It just gets published as a normal book with no restrictions on the translator.

Those cuts you saw in the novel will probably have been down to an editorial decision. That could happen at any point in the process for a number of reasons: perhaps the translator spots an inconsistency and tidies it up or maybe the editor thinks the wording is too flowery or bloated for an English-speaking readership. It could even be that the author has had second thoughts and has trimmed down the text for the translated version or a reader has spotted an error and written in to let the publisher know.

As a translator, I generally translate pretty much what’s on the page, unless I spot a continuity error (someone’s still drinking from the glass of lemonade that they finished two pages ago) or something that really won’t work in English, such as a play on words that only works in the original language (then I have to get creative…) or a concept that doesn’t exist in the target market (a Dutch stroopwafel might just become a simple waffle – it satisfies the same need for sugar and is known in both markets). Dramatic cuts to the text are more likely to involve an intervention by the editor.

Two cases where space is an issue are picture books and comics, where the words have to fit into a text box or a speech bubble or a particular space on the page. You have to bear that in mind as a translator and try to keep the text at around the same length as the original, which isn’t too difficult, but you can’t tell for sure whether it’s going to fit until the words are actually on the page. Usually the designer can do a few tricks, but you need to pay close attention to the line breaks at the proofing stage, as sometimes the words are split strangely to make them fit. I recently came across a “fair/y tale” in a text, for example, so the “y” had to be moved up and squeezed in to make the poor “fairy” whole again!

[Sarah] Do you also change the names of characters for some books? How do you choose the right names for the characters?

[Laura] I haven’t yet changed the name of any characters in books or pieces that I’ve translated for adults. I think that adult readers don’t mind the occasional unpronounceable name in a book. In fact, it sometimes adds to the appeal, as it’s a reminder that the book is foreign and a little bit different, even though the emotions and story should be universal. The exception to this would be if a character has a nickname that means something. In that case, I’d have to make a choice between translating the name and using that name all the way through the text, which is generally the smoothest, least intrusive method, or explaining the nickname when it appears the first time and then using the original name throughout, which may be a little irritating for the reader. You have to decide on a case-by-case basis.

As you can imagine, the situation’s different for children’s books. Just this week I’ve been translating an excerpt of a book that has a girl called Geesje in it. Most younger English speakers who have no experience of Dutch would be pretty stumped by that name. Is it a girl or a boy? How on earth do you say it? So, in the English version she’s become Gina. I generally go for a name that has a similar feel to it as the original in terms of length and initial letter and I think it’s important to choose a name that could still work in the context of the original book. You could find a Gina in a school class in the Netherlands, in America, in Australia… The name Gina doesn’t make the character of Geesje any less Dutch – it just makes her a little more pronounceable! Hmmm, but maybe Gina’s not the best option. I wonder if there might be a more suitable name for her. Geesje, Gina, Geesje… Hmm… I think that little puzzle’s a good illustration of what a children’s translator gets up to all day at work.

Thank you, Laura, for a great interview!

Smallest Library I've Seen -- Frankfurt, Germany

2011-12-29T10:23:00.002+01:00

This has to be one of the world's smallest libraries.
It is definitely smaller than the phone booth library in England.

This tiny library is the close to where I live.

This bookshelf library can be accessed from either side by opening the glass doors. There are ten shelves, five on each side. The sign in German, when translated says, "open book closet." It is an official Frankfurt am Main City Public Library and is always open.

Of course, since this is Germany, books are borrowed on the honor system. Take a book and bring it back when you've finished reading.
I looked inside and scanned the titles. They are all in German and some of the books looked very old! I pulled one out to look at it's printing date: 1926!

Another angle of this library.

Libraries, whether large or small, whether the books are in English or another language, are one of my favorite places in the world.

Fairy Tale House in Michelstadt

2011-12-19T13:37:00.001+01:00

I rounded the corner in Michelstadt when visiting their Christmas Market and saw this amazing building.

Characters from various Grimms' tales are painted on the outer walls of this traditional fachwerk house.

Characters on this side of the house include Hansel and Gretel (top), Bremen Town Musicians (center), Little Red Riding Hood (right), and Cinderella with the prince (left)-the 2nd panel of the story.

Detail of Bremen Town Musicians and Little Red Riding Hood. (Her hood has faded from a brighter red, but see the wine and bread in her basket?)

Here I'm standing in front of another side of the building.

Bottom right is the first panel of Cinderella with birds. Above is the Frog Prince, and to the left is a dwarf, carrying a lantern. I'm not certain which tale he is from, as there are a couple possibilities.

Three panels that tell the story of Puss in Boots. Left, the cat is with a man with a horn; center, a girl and boy pass by; right is Puss in his boots.

Details of Puss in Boots

Details of The Frog Prince

And last--here is a view of the house, with part of the Christmas Market in the foreground.

May your holidays be filled stories.

Happy Holidays.

Art of Revision—The Rainbow Manuscript technique

2011-12-12T16:49:00.003+01:00

Art of Revision—The Rainbow Manuscript technique

I started using colorful fonts when revising after Martine Leavitt, my advisor at Vermont College of Fine Arts asked me to make all my changes in red.

Red!

My manuscript was bleeding after I was done:

Screenshots of my novel, River at 10% zoom. Shown
are the beginning (top), middle, and end (bottom.)

Yes, I made that many changes; the changes represent a deep revision.

As I worked I grew to love red font!

Because all red words are better words, better sentences, and even new scenes at times, I have grown to think of red as a positive writing color, instead of the color that marks all my mistakes.

Later revision of River

Using another font color lets me see what I’m doing, or what I recently changed. In some cases it is helpful when I read through my novel the next time, as I can see what I changed. Other times, the red font was just for the process, and I switch the font all back to black before I work on it again..

Also, if I work for several hours or a couple days and feel I didn’t make much headway, I can look at the colorful font, and realize, yes, I did make good progress.

I don’t use colored font with every draft. It’s not useful to me in early drafts.

Occasionally, if I need to both be aware of the last changes I made and need to track my current changes as I take an additional revision pass, I’ll add another color, like blue. If I move a substantial passage, I may mark those sentences with another font color for those passages.

By the end of the revision pass, at least temporarily, I have a rainbow manuscript.

Screenshot of my novel, Crossings-a late revision at 10% zoom

Choosing Books for Gifts

2011-12-06T10:01:00.001+01:00

I recently received an email from a relative asking for book suggestions for her teens and college age sons.

At first I had two thoughts:

What books do I think each would enjoy?

Word of mouth is powerful.

In this case, her daughter stayed with us this past summer—so I know what types of books she likes. For the others, it is harder to come up with titles. Different books speak to different readers, and it can be tricky when giving suggestions and buying books for others.

So how does one find the “right” book? (Or books, because one book is never enough.)

1. One of my favorite approaches is to peruse the shelves of a bookstore or library. (Of course, here in Germany, where typically only bestsellers are imported, a bookstore isn’t the same experience. But every time I go back to the states, I visit at least one bookstore and feast.)

2. Lists of books. Many organizations publish year-end lists online, such as the New York Times, Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly. But often we want to find a book that is more specific, a great book that isn’t a bestseller. One can search online and find all sorts of lists, for example, the recent lists about dog books posted by Leda Schubert and cat books posted by Kathi Appelt). For children’s books an extensive list of lists can be found at Chicken Spaghetti.

3. Bloggers' book reviews. There are many wonderful blogs. Kidlitosphere Central has a great listing for those who want to discover and explore blogs that review and talk about books.

4. And of course, word of mouth. If someone gives me a book recommendation, the chances that I’ll buy that book are quite high.

I’ve always given books as gifts. (Which is one reason for our overflowing shelves and our substantial library of children’s literature—a home library that has more English books than either the international school or national library in one country where we lived.)

Beloved books will be read over and over again and they will be treasured for years. Uma Krishnaswami wrote a blog post this week about her first book. I also still have my first ragtag books from childhood —Snow Treasure, an Enid Blyton, and Island of the Blue Dolphins.

It's delightful to choose the “right” book for a gift, especially when the child immediately falls into the pages, losing herself in another great story.

Kimberley Griffiths Little: setting, characters and book trailers

2011-11-23T10:27:00.001+01:00

Kimberley Griffiths Little is the author of five middle-grade novels. The Healing Spell was a Bank Street College Best Books (2011) and won the 2010 Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel. Her most recent book is Circle of Secrets. Kimberley once had 6 weeks to write and revise and submit a novel to her editor.

[Sarah] How do you approach writing when you first get an idea for a story?

[Kimberley] When I first get the initial inklings of an “Idea”, it just attacks me. For instance I’m sitting at my desk travelling the many wonders of the inter-webs when *SMACK*! An “Idea” for a new project hits me right in the face and plum near knocks me off my chair. After I recover (and get an ice pack for my resulting black eye), I find my “Notebook” or a piece of paper and start writing down my Idea. Now because I have a life, (and kids and a husband and a house to clean and cats… :/ ) I usually just write down the Idea and then let it simmer on the back burner of my brain stove while I go about my daily activities. When I get my next “Idea” (I managed to dodge this idea from hitting me in the face but it did clip my shoulder), I go and I write it in that same notebook and let it simmer for a while. My next idea (which gut punched me) I write it down and I just continue to do this until I think I have it all down (which usually results in me needing to get a massage to work out all the inevitable kinks).

Note: these head-smacking Ideas are all for the same Big New Fancy-Schmancy Novel, but I will get hit with little pieces of the characters, the twists and turns of the plot as well as the climax or the emotional core of the story over a period of many weeks or months.

Once I have a Notebook – or my head – filled up with Ideas, I transfer all these notes onto 3x5 cards which I then lay out on a table of the floor and rearrange in various orders. Once I’m ready to write, I dive in and start fattening the Ideas with words to make them all nice and fluffy (like sheep) and I put it all in a Word document called a Manuscript.

[Sarah] How do you find your characters? As you revise, what do you do to deepen your characters?

[Kimberley] Well, my characters often find me. They just walk up to me when I’m doing any of my daily activities and introduce themselves. They give me a big ole hug and greet me like I am an old friend who has just been gone for a little while. Then they move in. They come in with all their stuff and a couple of suitcases and they make themselves at home. They eat my food in the middle of the night, they watch my TV during all hours of the day, and they take my cars and go travelling all over my neighborhood and they even sleep in my Bed! My Bed!!!

Then when they realize that I’m going insane watching them wreck my house and life, they come over to me and pour out their hearts and souls and tell me all their darkest desires and secrets and deepest dreams—all while sitting at the table drinking a nice cup of cocoa and me writing furiously in my notebook. Then they thank me for the “Wonderful Visit” and they go back to their own little world where they live their lives through my writings.

[Sarah] The setting permeates through your writing. You recently discussed “deepening character with setting” on Cynsations. What craft techniques, besides description, do you use when writing and revising to make the setting a character?

[Kimberley] Me and my setting have a “date” so it can try to woo me. I get dressed up nice and fancy and go to pick up my setting in my car and we go out to dinner. Then the whole evening is filled with my Setting talking to me about its great characteristics and then it butters me up with telling me just how I could write about it and make us both shine in the spotlight. Then it whisks me away to show me all of its wonderful sights and history and hidden nooks and crannies, and it makes me fall for it over and over again. When I get home, I’m still hungry for more so I spend weeks and months reading everything I can get my hands on about my setting, jotting down all of its lovely secrets and small and wonderful aspects in my Notebook. Or you might say that I do a big research trip, fall madly in love with the setting and just write passionately about it. Either way it works ;-)

[Sarah] You have some great book trailers. What steps did you take to make your last book trailer?

[Kimberley] First I write a Script. Once the book is written, I write the script—or try to—about a year in advance of publication. It gets rewritten a bunch and I say it out loud to get the words and phrasing and timing right. Then I let it sit in my computer file because I got distracted by this chocolate covered Peep that just kept calling my name and teasing me all over the house.

About nine months pass and I remember that I have a book that is about to be published and I need to make a book trailer for it—because I ADORE book trailers, I really do. SO I rush to my computer and find my file that I emailed to my fantastically talented friends who makes Book Trailers for a living (Nua Music, although they mostly write music and do amazing Sound Design). Then I start screaming and hollering and otherwise just freaking my head off because I need a book trailer done soon and all I have is a script and some pictures or video that I managed to take during past research trips to the area—and how am I going to make The Best Book Trailer of the Year out of just that??!!
*commence hysterical crying*

Finally, I pick myself up off the bed (where I had dramatically thrown myself to cry), call my friend and tell her what’s up. And she takes over! Cindy-Rae gets all the items I’ve collected for the trailer and she and her son start working, writing music, taking more pictures and finding a wonderful family from the bayou to do all the voice-over’s and pose for more pictures and they manage to make all of the Trailer an Over-all Delicious Delight. I’m asked for my opinions quite often and we are up to the middle of many late nights but after many questions and debates we finally arrive at something Marvelous! And Tah Dah!

Circle of Secrets book trailer

[Sarah] Which authors have inspired you?

[Kimberley] This is such a brain-freeze question! I love so many authors and many new authors and debut authors inspire me to work harder. The very first writer’s conference I ever went to was a small affair in Santa Fe, New Mexico eons and eons ago and at that point I had never met another writer before in my life, let alone a published author, let alone some of my favorite authors. I was so overwhelmed after the two-day conference was over that I went home and cried for a week. It was such an emotional time and confirmed to me that this was what I wanted to do with my life (I’d been writing since I was a kid) and I felt like I had found my *tribe*. The authors who spoke that weekend were Richard Peck, Lois Duncan, Steven Kellog, and Rosemary Wells. And they didn’t’ just *speak* from afar. Since the group was less than one hundred people there was a lot of one-on-one time with them. We had meals with them and Rosemary Wells was critiquing everyone’s stuff for free and letting us sit in the “living room” and ask questions and she talked and talked and talked. It was simply marvelous.

[Sarah] What are your writing snacks?

[Kimberley] A local delicacy known to heighten the senses and Stimulate the Writing Capabilities of any who will answer its Siren Call: Chocolate. Or some homemade chocolate chip cookies. Lots of Homemade cookies.

Thanks, Kimberley, for a great interview! Be sure to check out her blog. You may also want to read her process and be inspired by her 3x5-card-plotting-method.

Celebrating Picture Book Month

2011-11-23T07:48:00.001+01:00

I wanted to join in the fun and also celebrate picture books this month.
November is picture book month, and readers, librarians, and writers are celebrating all over the internet. Check out the great picture book month website and read the daily blogs posts written by "picture book champions."

One of the things I love about picture books is they are such a delight to share and read aloud. Picture books are for all ages, infants to adults. My parents read books to me when I was young, and I read to my kids. I even occasionally read picture books to my teenagers; some books beg to be shared. (We couldn't stop laughing when I read Ned Mouse Breaks Away, by Tim Wynne-Jones, to them.)

I've even read picture books a few times to my kids in college, over Skype--this was when I discovered a few incredible picture books during my MFA program that I wished we had read when they were young. (Bark, George! by Jules Feiffer and May I Bring a Friend? by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers.)

We wore out favorite picture books with our frequent readings. I taped pages back into (and sometimes bought a second copy) of many books, including Jamberry, by Bruce Degen; Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson; and Freight Train, by Donald Crews. I taped covers back on. I accidentally taped the cover back onto the spine of The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear, by Audrey and Don Wood, so the cover was upside down and at the back. It didn't matter--we read it again and again, until pages fell out second and third times.

Some picture books can be read in a few minutes, while story picture books, such as Big Bad Bruce, by Bill Peet (which I've read at least 50 times out loud, as it was one son's favorite for a year) take almost thirty minutes. Yes, I had to tape this book back together too.

Some of my most vivid, emotional reading experiences came while reading picture books. The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, perfectly captured my experience (bewilderment, fear, amazement, adjustment) of moving to a foreign land where I couldn't understand anything or read a word.

I found spending a semester studying picture books at Vermont College of Fine Arts helped me with my novel writing. I discovered new favorites as I read hundreds of picture books--books ranging from The Tragical Death of an Apple Pie--an ABC book from 1840 and Struwwelpeter--a groundbreaking Germany picture book (1845), to the classics, metafiction, and as many Caldecott Award and honor books that I could find.

Each year, I buy picture books for myself, my family, and friends. I love discovering newly written picture books. Recent ones I read and love include Big Bouffant, by Kate Hosford; Big Red Lollipop, By Rukhsana Khan; Out of the Way! Out of the Way! by Uma Krishnaswami; and Do! by Gita Wolf.
I'm looking forward to reading If All the Animals Came Inside, by Eric Pinder as soon as it is published next spring.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means it's time to pull out my favorite seasonal picture book, Thanksgiving at the Tappletons', by Eileen Spinelli and illustrations by Maryann Cocca-Leffler, and read it again.

Here's a wonderful video from picturebookmonth.com with great quotes about the importance of having picture books in our lives:

Amsterdam -- Photo Tour, plus SCBWI Netherlands Conference

2011-11-09T16:19:00.001+01:00

Last Friday, I took the high speed train from Frankfurt to Amsterdam to attend an SCBWI conference where I taught a writing masterclass on Saturday morning. Mina Witteman, the regional advisor, organized a stellar conference. Check out the post conference write-up at the SCBWI Netherlands website.
I dashed out during a break and bought several packages of delicious stroopwafels from a grocery store to bring home. (They are what my kids wanted me to buy for them.)

It was my first time to visit Amstersdam and I took a ton of pictures. Here is a brief photo tour.

A canal, with a view of boats, bikes, and townhouses.

This photo is taken from a bridge.

Construction project on a canal.

A bike and a door.

This type of bike, with a carrier in front, is common.

Wall mural--mosaic tile combined with bas-relief painted figures.

Modern wall mural

Entrance to a mall.

Note the old archway entrance with statues on top.

Dam Square and a mime.

About six mimes were performing the day I walked through this square.

Lamp post--detail of metalwork.

The city lamps use gas to make the light, so they give a cool glow.

(The actual light bulb isn't in this photo, but I am most fascinated by the details here.)

A canal at night. I like this photo, because it shows the intersection of one canal into the canal that runs to the left and right of this photo.

All photos copyrighted by Sarah Blake Johnson

Link Medley: Hunger Mountain, Write at Your Own Risk, and Sita's Ramayana

2011-10-25T15:48:00.000+02:00

Hunger Mountain Literary Magazine released their latest issue, and it's available online. Be sure to read "A Cut-Out Face," a great short story by Mima Tipper. Also check out "Idiosyncratic Tone in the Novel" by Wendy Voorsanger, a superb writing craft piece that discusses tone and shaping language.

Recent insightful posts in the blog, Write at Your Own Risk, include "Touching Silence" by Uma Krishnaswami, "Finding Stuff Out" by Leda Schubert, and "Writing Roots" by Laura Kvasnosky. Also don't miss, "Making a List" by Kathi Appelt where she talks about making her list of 100 stories that "not only influenced my writing, but that live within the heart of every tale I've every told."

I'm still mulling over these posts, thinking about my writing roots, how I do research, where I "touch" silence in my creative process, and which 100 books should go on my own list.

Also, Sita's Ramayana, by Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar, appears on the New York Times best sellers list for graphic books. In this version, the story is told from the viewpoint of Sita, the queen. It is brilliant. (A review can be found in the New York Journal of Books. ) Sita's Ramayana is published in North America by Groundwood Books.

I looked through this wonderful book at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the Tara Books booth--it's a another example of the high quality books that Tara Books always publishes. They also recently published another great graphic novel, I See the Promised Land, about Martin Luther King--which received Special Mention in this year's White Ravens Catalogue at the Bologna Book Fair.

Frankfurt Book Fair 2011

2011-10-15T10:08:00.001+02:00

I visited the Frankfurt Book Fair again this year. (I live in Frankfurt close to the fairgrounds.) It is a huge rights fair with over 7000 exhibitors from more than 100 countries. It is a business fair, a working fair, and is only open to the public on Saturday and Sunday.

The fair is a great way to easily see a publisher's list by looking at their booth. The fair always reminds me how critical a cover is--I can tell from the covers about the type of books a publisher publishes, especially when I see 50 to 200 book covers next to each other. Also this year there were more movie size posters of book covers on booth walls, as well as more booths with interactive screens and other electronic items.
I love seeing all the children's books from Latin America, Asia, Middle East, Africa, and from every country in Europe. By viewing these, I get the pulse of worldwide children's publishing and a feel for the trends in different parts of the world.

One of my favorite parts about the fair is seeing some of my friends' books displayed.

A few highlights from my fair visit:

Finding a friend's recently released book, My Name Is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson. Her book was announced this week as a finalist for the National Book Award!
(A great interview with Debby was just posted on Uma Krishnaswami's blog, Writing with a Broken Tusk.)

Tara Books booth. This is one of my very favorite booths to visit each year. They have published some of my favorite picture books.

Running into the President of Iceland at the Iceland's special country booth--Iceland is the country guest of honor this year. I was reminiscing about my years in Iceland, and I recognized him when he brushed past me. (We'd met at an event at his house when I lived in Iceland.)

Meeting someone from Bhutan! A publisher, Kuensel, from Bhutan, had a booth at the fair. It was Bhutan's first time to the Frankfurt fair. It was interesting to talk with this man about publishing in Bhutan and about his country. Many of the books were dual language English-Dzongkha. It's a beautiful script. (He didn't have any children's books with him, but they publish them.)

I took the time to attend one of the fair's numerous events: a discussion and reading about translating poetry for children. It was a delight to hear poems in the different languages as well as the lively discussion about the opportunities and challenges of translating.

At the end of the day I went to the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award announcement of their 2012 nominated candidates. It's the largest literature prize for children's literature. They discussed Shaun Tan's work--he won the prize this year--and showed a great powerpoint presentation that showed his work, including a drawing from his childhood. Next they talked about the prize (and how the person or institution is chosen) and handed out the announcement. There are 184 candidates from 66 countries this year.

Teaching Masterclass in Amsterdam

2011-09-23T10:53:00.004+02:00

I'm teaching a writing masterclass at the Netherlands SCBWI conference in Amsterdam on November 5th.

The conference will be held at ABC Treehouse, and the theme is Publishing in the Global Market. Other presenters include Doug Cushman (illustrator and writer), Ben Norland (art director at Walker Books), Martine Schaap (publisher), Omar Curiëre (app designer ), Erzsi Deàk (literary agent) and Siobhan Wall (artist and writer).
This is a very nice conference, and writers and illustrators from many countries in Europe are attending.

(The registration deadline is October 1st.)
If you live in Europe, consider attending this regional conference.

Also coming up, in October, is the Frankfurt Book Fair. Iceland is the guest of honor, and since I lived in Reykjavik for a couple years, I'm looking forward to their special exhibits and program. If anyone wants me to look for a specific book or take a photo of your book at its booth, comment here and I will see if I can find it.

Tami Lewis Brown and The Map of Me

2011-09-21T11:49:00.000+02:00

Who gives a twelve year old girl the keys to her dad's "Faithful Ford" and sends the girl and her little sister on a road trip?

Tami Lewis Brown does in her latest book, The Map of Me, a delightful and realistic middle grade novel.

When reading, I really believed that Margie took the Faithful Ford (and her sister) and drove through the rainy night in search of her Momma.

This story takes Margie, her sister Peep, and readers on a marvelous journey. More than a road trip, this book is also about maps, following one's heart, family, sibling rivalry, courage, and chickens.

Tami joins me today to answer a few questions about writing The Map of Me.

Sarah: One of my favorite lines in the book comes while Margie is figuring out how to use the gas and brake pedals: “that almost near mistake proved something. I knew how to react in an emergency.” Many obstacles arise during her road trip, and Margie attempts to solve all the problems so they can make it to her destination. What solution did Margie came up with that was the most fun to write?

Tami: The starting to drive bits were really HARD to write but I always knew Margie would “put on a good face” and act like her failures were intentional. At the beginning of the book she lies to herself as well as to others and I enjoyed capturing that.

I liked writing the gas station scene a lot, especially when Margie pays for the gas. She picks the cheapest gas then worries whether the car will like it, almost as if the car is a cat and she’s picking the cat food flavor. I wanted Daddy’s Faithful Ford to be almost a living creature to Margie and that scene gave me a good opportunity to explore that. Plus choosing gas, paying for it, and pumping it seems obvious to an adult but it’s is a mystery to kids.

Sarah: In a flashback scene late in the book, Margie lies in the grass next to her Momma in the middle of the night, and they watch the stars. Often, when two characters interact, writers rely on dialogue to move the story forward, but this is a scene that is filled with very little dialogue and a type of silence. What writing craft techniques did you choose to use when you wrote this emotional scene? Why?

Tami: That’s my favorite scene in the book. In some ways it drove the entire story. The central question was what could make a mother leave her children behind. Writing this scene I realized that Helen Tempest is having a nervous breakdown. She’s not acting rationally and she’s cut herself off from her family. She doesn’t respond to Margie so there’s no opportunity for true dialog. Margie has to make the journey on the road to absorb what was really happening in the backyard. That’s why this flashback appears so late in the book. Margie remembers it when she’s ready to understand it.

This scene is all about things that are unsaid or cannot be said in the Tempest household. It felt natural to bring the night noises forward in the absence of the sound of dialog and I was inspired by Vermont College advisor Richard Jackson’s article “The Word Overflown by Stars: Saying the Unsayable.” It’s a poetry essay but much of what Jackson says can be applied to prose.

The scene was motivated by two sensory images- the velvety sky and the whispery night sounds. When I was a child I often thought about people I loved being somewhere else but under the same stars. I knew Margie would think about that once her momma was gone. That led me to a series of star and constellation images which become most visible in this scene. I suppose these stars are an objective correlative, the map of the stars embodying Margie’s quest and inner yearning.

Sarah: The craft book that you mention is one of my favorites, one that I suggest to other writers all the time. The secondary characters in your book such as her little sister, her father, and Jimmy, are as real as Margie. What did you do while writing and revising to bring these characters to life?

Tami: Mostly I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, then I wrote some more. For this book I didn’t look for pictures to “represent” these characters and they’re definitely not based on real people. It was hard to get a firm grip on Daddy. He kept sounding mean—very mean in some drafts. My editor reminded me that in the end I couldn’t send Peep and Margie home alone with a cruel man. I didn’t have to write a “happy ending” but I needed to let my middle grade reader understand that Margie would prevail in the end. She’d be safe. So I had to tone Daddy’s personality down a lot. The last scene, where he arrives at the International Poultry Hall of Fame, was hard to get my head around. But again I just wrote and wrote until it felt right.

Sarah: Equations and the symbols < and = show up as an important element in the story, even though Margie believes she is not good at math. Could you talk about how this reflects her view of herself compared to other members of her family and also how it correlates to her emotional arc?

Tami: Margie feels less than Peep and in sixth grade they’d be studying some algebra basics with simple less than and greater than equations so I thought that symbol might be on Margie’s mind. It also looks like a closed chicken beak. There used to be a long sequence of made up equations and imaginary chickens clucking but it was a bit too surreal, maybe, so it got cut. I have always been horrible at math and the less than and greater than signs seemed so weird to me in elementary school. I guess I carried that into Margie’s perspective.

I admire so many middle grade authors and Sara Pennypacker, the author of the Clementine books, is one of my favorites. I especially like how Pennypacker describes ordinary things in a completely fresh but childlike way. I think in one book she describes an angry person’s lips as a ruler line. It’s a complex description but it springs from an authentic child perspective.

That description was in the back of my mind when I thought about Margie looking at Daddy’s face when he arrives at the Hall Of Fame. What would she see? Lips that formed two straight lines? What does that look like? An equal sign. This is the precise moment when Margie comes into her own, recognizing that everyone, including her blustery daddy, is vulnerable, and in this way they are equal. That image, both child-like and emotionally loaded, embodies what I was trying to say in the novel. We’re all in this together. Even if a young reader doesn’t get all the layers they know what an equals sign means and they understand Margie’s journey from less than to equal to.

Thanks so much, Tami, for joining me today.

To read another interview with Tami head on over to Writing With a Broken Tusk where Uma Krishnaswami talks with Tami about the process of writing.

Also, check out Kathi Appelt's video blog where she reads a snippet from the book.

Images and the Illusion of Reality in Fiction

2011-09-10T22:11:00.000+02:00

I posted in Through the Tollbooth blog this week.

I wrote about a topic I've been considering recently: how does fiction becomes real while we are writing or reading.
One important element of this is producing images in the readers' minds.

Crafting fictional worlds and the illusion of of reality is part of the art of writing.

On Monday (Virtual Reality or how Words Can Create images) I looked at how descriptive details, active verbs, and setting allow the image to be formed. When crafting the sentence (and the associated image) every word counts.

Images and emotion was Wednesday's topic. Here's a quote: "Emotional images are the wings of a virtual world." I consider how senses, dialogue, and the unseen can help produce powerful images.

Friday's post (Images at the Story Level) is where I look at the bigger picture. I discuss two major elements of creating images and the illusion: repetition or accumulation of images and continuous, consecutive images.

If you want to read the complete posts and see the examples I share click on the links above.

Plotting resources

2011-08-31T15:14:00.000+02:00

Janet Fox talks about plotting on her blog this week.

As I read her post (where she talks about using a plot chart, the 3 act structure, and turning points--which are placed in specific points in her books), I glanced at my bookshelf. Although I have a few books which discuss plot, I don't own many books that focus on plot. I have three: Story, a screenwriting book by Robert McKee, Aristotle's Poetics (of course), and The Hero with A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. In addition I have notes from some great lectures given by M. T. Anderson on structure (and plot) while I was attending Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Janet includes an excerpt from an article she wrote in her blog post, and it's worth heading over to her blog to read that.
The complete article is included in a book titled Advanced Plotting. Several authors contributed to this book, so I assume a wide range of approaches to plot are discussed in the book.
Until September 3rd this book is free!! (After the promo it is 99 cents.)

So if you want to read several writers' thoughts on plot head over to Janet's blog where there are links and the code you can enter for the free e-book.

Do you have any favorite writing craft books that focus on plot?