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Mainly because I could, last night I downloaded the Lord of the Rings to my Baby-Touch-Me iPod. Fourteen bucks from Amazon's Kindle store, not bad.

I'm all for ebooks and read them a lot, but I wonder if the format will encourage the kind of devotion to a text that my friends and I had for the Tolkien books in high school and college. I went through three paperback editions: the Baynes covers (I had a poster based on those, see left), the Tolkien watercolors (pale but evocative) and the Brothers Hildebrandt (fanboy embarrassing). The Baynes were for a boxed set ($3.00!) and in every case, having the books meant as much as reading the books. Digital culture will obviously create its own items of nostalgia (like that damned Myst music) but how will plain text fare?

Michael Sedano

Jeff Gomez. Print Is Dead. NY: Macmillian, 2007.
ISBN: 978-0-230-52716-4 ISBN-10: 0-230-52716-7

In Gomez' not distant future, the airport bookstore would sell me access to thousands of titles and, onsite, a machine to make a book while I wait. Browse the card catalog, pay a fee, print and bind.

Alternatively, the bookstore would have an iPod or Kindle connection to that library. Drop a few coins, download a couple of good airplane books for the long journey back.

In any case, I would have crossed the continent with both titles and saved the ten dollar Sunday Times. Or...

The digital age will have an impact on reading, Gomez observes. For one thing, text will be as pervasive as it is portable. Wireless connection to vast libraries means limitless access to text. Reading is in no danger from the digital age. The medium for reading changes from printed page to electronic screen page. People will be reading more, not less. 

Gomez compares the electronic reading transition to that of the automobile and the horse, as captured in The Magnificent Ambersons, where a change-maker admits he has "no idea what changes will come about from the impending take-over by automobiles, but the changes will surely come and they will profoundly influence everything you ever knew about getting from here to there."

A Kindle, for all I know, might just influence profoundly everything about reading, from handling a book to magnifying the type size to be merciful to unsharp eyes. I imagine one feature is timing the screens to forward automatically after a minute passes. 

That pace would be about right for most airplane books. Jonathan Segura's journalist in deep shit story moves so swiftly along that you might set the screen faster. 

Omaha, Nebraska makes an unlikely setting that has little to do with the action. The story could happen wherever, Omaha, Minneapolis. Reporter digs into urban development. Runs across deadly comic militia clowns. Crosses powerful developer that leads to murders. Reporter is tortured and sexually humiliated by bad guys. 

The reporter, a pill-popping booze-swilling asshole, keeps up a conversational patter that carries the story from the mundane to the outrageously unbelievable. Segura doesn't take the intern storyline as far as he signals, but being trussed and bound dressed in a purple nightie soaked in the bad guy's urine. And shot?

In a digital age, a writer's occupational hazards will limit themselves to repetitive motion injury, a bad back, and eye strain. Unless you write for a weekly in Omaha. In which case your occupational hazards will make for a lot more excitement and a lot more fun reading.

One day, who knows, I'll load up my portable reading device and head into the blue yonder with ten books and hope my batteries hold out, que no?

That's the penultimate Tuesday of February. Two thousand nine. Tempus fugit. World enough and time. See you next week.

mvs

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PW has announced its (casually) bookseller-chosen Cuffie Awards, with Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury's Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes as the picture book pick. It is a big favorite here, too, getting a starred review and a spot on our Fanfare 2009 list. Every parent I know loves it, and the text and design beg for story hour sharing.

But I have a nagging problem with it. The whole point of the book is that everyone has ten fingers and ten toes, and that while we celebrate each baby's uniqueness, isn't it great that they (and, by extension, we) have this particular array of anatomy in common? "And both of these babies, / as everyone knows, / had ten little fingers / and ten little toes."

Except, of course, when babies don't. Not everybody does--some are born with fewer (or lose them due to disease or accident), some come with an extra one or two, some people don't even have two hands, for God's sake. I know that these people are relatively rare, but there is something that bothers me when a book so determinedly inclusive manages to be so clueless about what it's actually saying. If this book had a mouth, it would be cramming all ten toes into it right now. You would never (knowingly) read this book to a child who didn't have ten fingers and toes, would you? And shouldn't that give us pause about sharing it with the ones who do?

I don't usually have much patience for debates about "sensitivity" and have no idea why this book bugs me as much as it does.

Elizabeth sent me this link to the end of literature as we know it.

The new issue is wending its way to your mailbox and we've posted selected excerpts online, including a three-way take on e-books and our annual list of the best holiday books. Does this mean I can finally start listening to Christmas carols?

Unless there's an abandoned chicken bone at stake, Buster has never been one for much straining at the leash. But where he used to not mind being thus tethered, I'm finding that he, at sixteen or so (we'll never know for sure), seems to welcome the security. He now blinks and stumbles in the morning sun, for example, and walks with more confidence when he's leashed. He trusts me and he likes being with me.

Why the dog story? Because I'm experimenting with my new Kindle, where Amazon.com is very much at the other end of the leash. The stuff I thought I wouldn't like--the design, the digital ink and lack of a backlight--is in fact fine, although all the plastic-button-pushing is noisy and feels very last century. What's bugging me instead is the feeling of an ever-present tether to Amazon.com, a master I neither like nor completely trust. I don't like browsing the Amazon site, and I don't trust the company's effect on the American character. Amazon is all over the Kindle. The Kindle is designed to get you to visit and spend more money at Amazon, pushing you to the same high-volume bestsellers that the main website does. (Kindle Store selections seem split among popular titles, copyright-free classics and scary e-book originals, the same mix which has long been available from such sites as ereader.com.) And with the Kindle so pricey in the first place ($399), I guess I might resent throwing yet more money at Amazon for the privilege of using it.

But I'll take it with me to Chicago (don't forget, Sutherland Lecture Friday night) and see if it has the potential to become habit-forming. If not--well, I've kept the packaging.

All kinds of ways to avoid work right here, but I suppose you could tell yourself that it's continuing education. I'm really enjoying Charles Cumming's "The 21 Steps." Maps! Thanks to Leila for the link.

Interesting piece from The Guardian about the pending court case involving J. K. Rowling and the would-be publisher of a Harry Potter encyclopedia. What's intriguing to me is that both sides seem to have given statements that support the opposition!

There's a piece on the International Children's Digital Library in today's Boston Globe that inspired me to take another browse over there. The ICDL is currently running a bunch of features on Mongolia, which fits in nicely with my Silk Road kick--I'm reading Colin Thubron's Shadow of the Silk Road and listening to Sainkho Namtchylak, kind of a Mongolian Bjork.

The ICDL reader is still kind of cranky on my computer--much as I love Jeannette Winter's The Christmas Tree Ship I wish it would let me read something else--but browsing through the Mongolian-language books on the site is in itself an education. Nice pictures, too--look especially at the books by Bolormaa Baasanuren.

I spent this weekend as a faculty member at the Eastern PA SCBWI Pocono Mountain Retreat. I loved meeting so many talented writers, illustrators and editors. Thanks to everybody for the kind reception and fantastic event. Special thanks to conference chair Marilyn Hershey and all the SCBWI volunteers who worked so hard to make this weekend incredible. I really learned a lot and even snuck in some writing time and reading time too. As part of the conference, Nancy Mercado and I delivered a talk which, according to the program, would “demystify the author/editor relationship.” I don’t know if we did any demystifying, but we sure had a lot of fun! To prepare, Nancy and I spent the past week emailing questions and answers back and forth. There was some thought that we’d turn this exchange into a handout. By the end of the week, however, our Q&A session stretched to about 8 pages long. Not a good handout. And it’s actually too long for a “normal” blog entry. Still, we promised everybody at the Sterling Inn that we’d make it available on my LiveJournal. So -- as promised -- here’s a conversation with Paul & Nancy: The Novel. Enjoy!

Nancy:  When people ask, do you call yourself a writer? Do you think someone needs to be published to call themselves a writer?

Paul: Sometimes I call myself a writer now. Mostly I do it because that’s what people expect, and I think they feel a little cheated if I dodge the title. But I think “writer” is not the correct job description. I really think of myself as a story teller. That’s what I was before getting published, and that’s what I’ll be if I never write another word or publish another book. All that said, here’s a story: Recently I led a group of about a dozen kids through the process of writing a picture book together. We submitted the finished product to Scholastic’s “Kids Are Authors” project. Scholastic actually publishes the winning submission. When we started, I gave this little speech about how we’re not writing a book to win a contest. We’re writing a book to share our stories and work together and have fun. One little girl (who happens to be my daughter) raised her hand and said, “But Dad, won’t we have even more fun if we get published?!”

Well… actually… yes.

Nancy: Many new writers get great ideas inspired by their own lives and then try and put those ideas into their stories. But this is a very hard thing to do! Do you incorporate true stories into your writing? If so, what's the best way to incorporate real things that have happened into your fiction writing?

Paul: I definitely incorporate true stories into my writing, but I don’t usually start there. I use my notebook as a sort of diary of the past. I’m always writing down lines and scenes that happened days and weeks and even years ago. Sometimes they’re not even my own memories. If somebody tells me a really good story, I’ll write it down. Each of these pieces have a certain feeling to me… not so much mood, but it’s like they have some kind of texture that feels very real. Later, when I’m trying to create a scene that should have a similar tone, I can go and look at the “true stuff” and try to figure out why it feels that way. Once I think I’ve figured it out, I’ll usually try to create a new episode with a similar texture that is more true to my characters, but sometimes I find that the true stories – once I really boil them down and change the names to protect the guilty – are the best fit.

Paul: Why children's books? Why not adult fiction or magazines or nonfiction? What is special about making books for children that makes you want to be a part of it?

Nancy: When I was in college I worked at this mall bookstore called Lauriats and I was one of those nerdy booksellers who gets extreme pleasure out of finding the exact book someone's looking for. In the year or so that I was there, I "adopted" two sections of the store (anally straightening them, seeing that they were well stocked etc) and those two sections were photography and the children's book section. I loved going down the rows of children's book and making sure that we had enough copies of The Great Gilly Hopkins in stock or creating a display about some random topic and then finding books that would fit that bill. I distinctly remember sitting up at the cash register reading Missing May (for the first time!) and wishing that everyone would just leave already so I could get back to my book. It was definitely around that time that I decided I wanted to be a Newbery judge when I grew up.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is when I went into publishing there was no question in my mind that I would go into children's books. I don't think I even entertained the notion of working on adult books. I did go on one interview with FSG Adult (I was working at Barnes and Noble at the time and was desperate for a job that paid my rent!) and when the interviewer asked me what FSG books were some of my favorites I just kept going on about Peter Sis. Oops. Anyway, the interviewer just looked at me like I was an idiot and said that perhaps children's books would be more the place for me.

I like reading adult fiction and non fiction, but they just don't make me giddy in the same way that a YA novel can. There's an emotional pull that draws me towards children's books and I'm not sure why. I just can't imagine getting up in front of a sales force and going on and on about an adult novel. Oh, and don't get me started on magazines. I can't stand 'em and mostly it's because I feel morally compelled to read them cover to cover the way I would a book...and that's not exactly what they are intended for!

Nancy: Same question (sort of) back at you: Do you think you'll always write novels? Would you ever branch out and do picture books? Non-fiction? Magazine writing?

Paul: I still have so much to learn about ways that stories can work when they’re shaped like novels. It makes sense for me to stay and practice in there for a long, long time yet. I would love to write picture books, but I haven’t put in enough time and practice to make one that works yet. I read a lot of non-fiction, and I think I have a good sense of how those tick. I can imagine giving that a try except that I don’t have enough time (or focus) right now to do all the research it would require. I’ve done some magazine and newspaper writing too. Their limits make telling stories in those formats really fun puzzles to solve. The other thing I really want to write is plays.

Nancy: Do you have any simple technical rules that you stick to when writing? For instance, sometimes I tell beginning writers that they should strike all adverbs from their writing (i.e. "I don't want to go to school," she said, sadly. That type of thing.) Is there anything that you won't let yourself get away with? (Such as ending a sentence with a preposition as I just did.)

Paul: I know this may be hard to believe, but in my first drafts, I try very hard to use correct grammar and complete sentences. Following the good old Elements of Style (God bless E.B. White!) forces me to think clearly about what I'm trying to communicate. When I revise, I'll scramble everything up any old way if I think that it makes characters' voices come through more clearly, but breaking those grammar rules has to be an intentional act and not just a loosey-goosey romp through the language. By the way, the Elements of Style has no problem with sentences that end in preposition. Really!

Nancy: When you were revising the book, did I ever say, "Show, don't tell?" (I can't remember.) If so, what did you do? How does an author show, not tell?

Paul: You gave me very few "show, don't tell" notes. I remember this because I was embarrassed the few times that it came up. It's not like show-don't-tell is a secret. I guess I feel like I should know better.

When I catch myself dumping a lot of info on the page, first I try to turn it into dialogue. Of course the first thing I should do is decide whether the info is necessary at all, but I keep everything way past when I should throw it out. Anyway...It was a beautiful night... becomes (depending on the character) "Pretty night, huh?" or "I hope I see a shooting star." Or "Could you get your butt out of my face, I'm trying to look at the moon." Fixing this problem often gives me an opportunity to create stage time for smaller characters or discover why that particular information might be important at all.

But then - and this may surprise you :) - sometimes I overdo the whole dialogue thing. If I happen to notice this, I'll try to turn plain info into a scene with action (lots of action) that includes specific details about smell, sound, taste... I actually take apart other writers' scenes to see how they do this (and lots of other things) effectively. I can picture the opening scene in Because of Winn Dixie and the Christmas pageant scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany or the stealing the chickens scene in Love, Ruby Lavender or dozens of other scenes in other books, and when I go back to see how those authors created that moment, I find very little "telling." It's 90% action/dialogue and 10% aroma.

Nancy: Author's always talk about voice. Editor's always talk about voice. To find voice, people recommend everything from interviewing your character to writing a journal from their perspective. How did you "find" Dulcie's voice? And did you have a firm grasp of her voice through the entire writing of the book?

Paul: I think this answer is going to end up making me sound like a total psycho. But here goes...Dulcie was always clear to me while writing the book, but I spent a lot of time finding her voice before I committed myself to page one. Even with short stories, I don't want to go forward until I know the characters really well. I think writing is a way for me to think about what it means to be human, so creating stories without creating characters that sound and feel as real as possible... that's not what I want to do. I think the way I get there is sort of like this: first I write a lot of dialogue between half-baked characters (their names are like BOY and GIRL1 and TEEN and OLD MAN) until one or two of them start to acquire a particular internal rhythm that is reflected in their manners and way of speaking. From there, their conversations sort of drift toward people and places and things they really care about (movies, places, particular songs, food, whatever) or I move them toward lines and questions that are interesting to me. I try to put them in particular places that I know how to describe, and I start trying different names on them. (All the boys go through a Leonard stage. I don't know why.) Now I have people that I really care about talking about fascinating things in interesting places...so I spend hours and hours trying to write stories in which they don't get hurt and they have everything they need and they enjoy the view and everybody is happy all the time. I have to confess that I find this time very rewarding. I'm writing pretty good sentences, the dialogue isn't bad, I'm enjoying some real quality time with my invisible friends, and everybody loves me because I am a benevolent god in my own little world. And then one day I wonder, WHAT IF... that's when I start inflicting pain and generally acting like a writer.

Paul:  I know that I've told you that I want to believe that I am the only writer that you ever work with and that when I think of you at work I just imagine that you're sitting at your desk tapping your pencil or practicing yoga or re-reading Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack while you eagerly await whatever brilliance (or nonsense) I'm making up. That's not really true (except for very rare occasions). I actually hope you're working on books that take your breath away all the time. So... are you? And how do you balance everything that goes into all that and still make me (and probably every other writer/illustrator you work with) feel like you've been sitting around just waiting for me to call?

Nancy: Ha! The reality is that I sometimes am not very skillful at making every author feel like I've been waiting around for their call. Sometimes, I make people wait a very long time for a response and sometimes I don't call people back right away and sometimes (this is the worst!) I sign up a novel and then can't actually edit it for months! Every editor whines about how there is increasingly no time at the office to actually edit or read manuscripts anymore and that is quite true. At the same time I love what I do and if the ten year old me found out what I do everyday for a living she would be very psyched. As for working on books that take my breath away, I do feel quite lucky that I have had a certain amount of freedom to sign up books that truly make me happy and giddy. So I'm going to disregard the rule of not talking about other books with one of your authors. (Actually I think I've already disregarded this rule as you've probably known about most of these.) Here are some of the books that are out this year that I'm very excited about: The Qwikpick Adventure Society by Sam Riddleberger, Emma Jean Lazarus Fell out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis, I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry, and The Little Red Fish by Taeeun Yoo. And just recently I've signed up a YA graphic novel memoir about a young girl's struggle with bulimia, a middle grade novel about a Southern kid who goes back in time to the Battle of Stonewall, and a early chapter book series about a little girl named Keena Ford who reminds me of Ramona Quimby.

Paul: One of my very favorite parts about working with you is talking about books. Actually, I enjoy talking to you about all kinds of crazy things, but sticking to books… Talking about how they work and why sometimes they don’t, about favorites and disappointments, I feel like you’re as excited and eager to think about these questions and this work as I am. Except for very occasionally (I’m thinking of the damndamndamn moment with Saving Francesa), I don’t usually walk away with a specific lesson learned, but later, I’ll be wondering about something and then I’ll go to the books that we’ve talked about or maybe I’ll just have a very quiet a-ha! Also, I love bringing other people into this conversation… whether it’s my kids and my favorite librarians to see what they’re saying about the books or whether its other book people that we introduce to one another because maybe they’re on a similar wave length.

Paul: I never know how to introduce you anymore... this is my wonderful friend who is also an editor... this is my editor who is also a great friend... and half (or more) of what we talk about has nothing to do with books. For me, this is not a bad thing. In fact, it is a very good thing! But I do try to remember that you have a job that would be served well if I were to write an award-winning novel. I have to confess that I'm not necessarily trying to write an award-winning novel. I just recognize that career-wise, that could be a good thing for you. Of course, there was the Wedgie... but anyway, your job requires that you spend a lot of time with folks like me who are not full-time, book professionals. Do you want to just smack the whole lot of us sometimes? 

Nancy: Umm, is there a question in there? And btw, you can't just drop the word wedgie into a conversation and then not explain. The Wedgie, for those of you who don't know, is a chocolate taste sensation, and having one delivered to my office was quite a memorable day. Paul sent me one when he foolishly felt that he needed to compensate me with something since his book didn't make the BBYA list (the committee was just plain wrong, what can I say?) and he thought I would be disappointed. The way I see it is that almost everyone I work with has a day job (professor, fundraiser, stay at home parent, editor, etc) and so I recognize that people aren't going to be pumping out award-winning books with speed or regularity. I like to just ignore where the next books are going to come from and just assume that they will come in if I keep doing what I'm doing.

Paul: YIKES! Are we going to let people read this exchange?!?!?! In case the answer is yes, here is the official WEDGIES press release:

Press Release

Contact:  Senor Crème Brulee

Email: [email protected]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MERCADO WINS CRÈME BRULEE WHITE CHOCOLATE WEDGES

BEST EDITED BOOK METAL MEDAL

QUAKERTOWN—Nancy Mercado, editor of “Defining Dulcie” is the 2007 winner of the Crème Brulee White Chocolate Wedges Best Edited Book Metal Medal.

Considered the “Academy Award” of children’s book editing, “the Wedgie” honors the editor who takes the longest journey with the messiest stack of unorganized words and pages and then somehow turns the whole thing into a book that readers love. In the process, the editor typically makes a writer look pretty darn good too. The award was announced on January 26 in Quakertown just a few days after some other children’s book awards were announced.

“Those other awards are nice,” said Mr. Brulee, spokesperson for The Wedgie, “but our medal is really metal.”

When asked to summarize “Defining Dulcie,” Brulee said, “Read it yourself. And anyway, this isn’t about the book. This is about the editor. She deserves an award.”

When informed about the award, Paul Acampora, author of “Defining Dulcie,” could barely speak. “I’m so—”

“You shut up,” Brulee said to Acampora. “This isn’t about you.”

Brulee added, “With that guy, Mercado could win the Wedgie again. You should see the mess Acampora’s working on now. But it’s got potential.”

For more information about The Wedgies, you’re out of luck. Members of the 2007 Crème Brulee White Chocolate Wedges Best Edited Book Metal Medal are a secretive bunch. They don’t have phone numbers, websites or, god forbid, blogs. They don’t have time. They’re all at home reading good books and preparing awards for well-deserving editors.

###

Paul:  Whenever I've had to hire somebody, I always used these 3 criteria: 1) Can they do the job? 2) Will they do the job? 3) Do I want to be in the same room with them while they're doing the job? In terms of finding writers and illustrators to work with, I have always assumed that editors and agents use the same basic guidelines. Yes? No? Would you reject awesome work from somebody you really don't want to work with? 

Nancy: The reality is that I don't often get to meet the author or illustrator before I sign up the book and so sometimes it's not until afterwards that I realize that we aren't quite on the same page about things! These days though, I try to make a point to at least have a phone conversation with someone before I sign up a book with them. And I can't say I would reject awesome work from someone that I didn't have a connection with, but I can say that if someone's really fun it definitely makes me hope and pray that I will like their work.

Paul: Here's a questions I'm a little afraid to ask... I'm afraid that you'll consider this and say "WHAT WAS I THINKING?!!! But here goes: When we first met and I showed you the first three pages of what eventually became Defining Dulcie... and then I confessed that there were only 3 pages of the novel that would eventually become Defining Dulcie... and that I had no novels at home in the drawer and had never written anything longer than a couple dozen pages...why did you think I could write a novel?? Were you excited about working with somebody from scratch? Did you really think I could do it? Now that you've been at Dial for a few years and your pile of work is much bigger, would you do that again? Were we just both at the right place at the right time? 

Nancy: For some reason I wasn't worried at all. It could have been because I thought you were exaggerating when you said that was all you had (like you were hiding pages in a drawer somewhere??) but mostly I think it was because I loved the voice of those first few pages so much and I knew it was impossible that they could just be a fluke. I didn't know that I would definitely buy your book when it was finished, but I knew I would want to read it when it was done or even when it was half done! It's true that my time is much more limited now, but I still will throw all of my energy into something that I feel has a true voice. There are times when I pour my heart into an editorial letter on an unpublished manuscript and it never comes back to me. That stinks but ultimately I think it's okay. I truly believe that if an editor has a spirit of abundance (as opposed to a spirit of poverty) about manuscripts, then the good manuscripts (that I'm meant to work on) will continue to come in. Btw, I don't know if I've ever shared this with you but here is the first letter (and I'm not editing out anything here including the "hardly new" comment...sorry about that) that I ever wrote to Lauri my publisher about Defining Dulcie. It's from November 17, 2003! (One thing I love about this letter is how I'm trying to show how I can have a head for marketing-note the Joan Bauer "hook".)

Dear Lauri,

I've been corresponding with Paul Acampora for a year now about his writing. And finally he has sent in a first novel that I think is very worthy of our consideration. Similar to his short story that was accepted into the YA Collection, this novel is full of voice and heart. I think he could be pitched as the male Joan Bauer...and this book could be favorably compared to Rules of the Road. 

To me this is one of those books that deals with serious issues in a way that doesn't make you think you are reading a problem novel. I envision this to be a Winn-Dixie kind of book: hopeful and poignant; or like a Kevin Henkes novel that quietly touches readers and shifts things inside of them. The author is quite adept at creating a world and characters that we are destined to care about.  Dulcie Morrigan Jones is one of those thoughtful (in the true sense of the word) characters that young readers will respond to. True, the subject matter is hardly new, but it's the writing style and hopeful tone that I think will earn the respect of book clubs, reviewers and readers.

What could be improved: I think the definitions would need to be pared down considerably if not completely, the ending would need to be 100% more credible, we'd need to hear more about her trip back across the country and more about the mom's character in general, and there would need to be a more "meat" added to the narrator's inner transformation.

The author enjoys the revision process immensely (and is a voracious reader of YA and middle grade novels) and in spite of the necessary improvements listed above, I think he is a strong writer who we could invest in and reap amazing results.

Do you agree?

Best,

Nancy

Paul: Thank you for sharing your letter to Lauri! I really expected that you would NOT buy the book. Not when I started it and not when I finally sent it in. I don’t mean that in a self-deprecating way. And I don’t mean that I didn’t REALLY hope you would take it. I did! But it seemed impossible that the stars would all line up to make this happen so I didn’t really worry about it that much. I knew that writing a novel would be a huge adventure. That’s why I didn’t try it till I thought I might get something out of it besides frustration. The opportunity to share the fun, the questions, and the work – regardless of whether you published it – remains one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. And in terms of submitting the original manuscript, I have to confess that I actually worried about you because we’d gone back and forth for about a year and become friends and now I’d put you in a position to give the gift of rejection. That’s never fun. I expect you’ll have to give that gift to me one day, and that will be okay (still not fun though!) Here’s another thing you might not know. When you called to tell me that you wanted the book, you also told me that I still had a ton of work ahead. That your boss wanted you to edit the book “the old fashioned way,” which meant I’d probably have to rewrite the whole manuscript several times. You gave me the news in a kind of I’m-warning-you voice, maybe worried that I would say something like every-single-word-I-write-is-a-diamond-that-must-not-be-touched! But what I really felt was such excitement and a little awe that you felt that I was worth the work and that you’d somehow convinced other people too. I still feel more than a little amazed.

Nancy: We've joked that you have broken every publishing etiquette rule in the book. Can you elaborate on what some of those were?

Paul: The first children's book editor I ever heard speak really emphasized proper publishing etiquette. Her talk made me feel like she really didn't have time for the little people that wrote the books. In fact, I sort of wondered if she even liked the people who wrote the books. And something else struck me too... if I practiced and practiced and practiced and finally wrote something worthwhile AND THEN followed all those proper publishing etiquette rules AND THEN got rejected the requisite 10 jillion times just like all the other writers in the world who are a lot better than me... if I did all that stuff and finally had something accepted, I'D END UP WITH THAT EDITOR.

Here are some bits from an old copy of Writers & Illustrators Guide to Children's Book Publishing: Communications with editors should be "...concise, informative and professional." It should "contain all the necessary information - AND NOTHING MORE." Also "... phone calls, emails and faxes might alienate an editor." In my own defense, I don't think that I've ever sent you a fax.

I think the purpose of etiquette is to create a safe place for people to make (or not make) relationships. It's not part of a transaction. I've met writers who are terribly unhappy because they've followed all "the rules" and then met long waits or rejection. It seemed like they felt that their good behavior merited a reward. I guess I just think good behavior (not necessarily proper behavior) is it's own reward, and that the quality of the work should be the determining factor in whether or not it gets accepted. Of course, I also believe that except for rare occasions, most of the good work an editor sees is not a ton better or worse than the other good work that might be acceptable. At that point, I think the editor will choose to work with the person who will offer a more enjoyable and rewarding partner in the adventure of making a book. So it just makes sense to be yourself. (And never say anything bad about anybody because children's publishing is a really small world.)

Nancy:  You've often said that your tactic for gracefully receiving an editorial letter from me was to pretend for a little while that I was right. Where did you come up with this innovative approach? And approximately how long did you have to pretend before you realized that I was right?

Paul: This is an easy one. First, long before you sent me your first "official" editorial letter, we'd already talked about so many different things. Not just my own work, but other people's work and how we experience it in similar and different ways. I really trust that you know what you're talking about.

Also, I figure that really smart people pay you money to know a lot about how stories work, about what makes characters come alive, and about what kinds of books kids want to read. And it's not like there's a shortage of folks who want to be editors. So people that actually get that job...well... I don't think Penguin hires dummies. And even though I've only met Lauri Hornick briefly, I'm sure she doesn't. So that means that you're an expert and a professional and really, really smart. It would be insane for me to ignore your guidance.

Finally, you've let me know that you share questions or concerns with other editors, experts and people you trust. I know that you think long and hard before you write something down inside the editorial letter. I take it seriously. If I didn't, I think I'd be cheating both of us.

In the meantime, I don't want to discount my own choices and opinions so what I do is I simply incorporate every single change you suggest into a new draft. I try to do this in one sitting so if there's any pretending going on, it doesn't last too long. :) Then I let it sit for a day or so in the hopes that I'll forget where I made the revisions. Then I go through it and pretend it was ALL MY IDEA. Sometimes, the revised parts will feel clunky and I just sort of naturally change them back to the way they were. Other times, the revised parts flow a lot better and I discover that you've helped me get a lot closer to what I was trying to do in the first place.

Nancy:  Was there anything in the editing of Defining Dulcie that you just plain didn't want to do? Didn't feel you were able to do? How did you handle that?

Paul: I didn't want to change the beginning section. It's like I had a relationship with those first sentences and paragraphs, and I did not want to let them go. You had been making gentle notes and suggestions that maybe things needed attention there. I ignored you and wrote funny one-liners that I knew you'd make me cut. And then, at your suggestion, I read Saving Francesa by Melina Marchetta. You and I talked on the phone about it, and I remember telling you how much I loved it, but I almost didn't get into it at all because I felt the beginning was sort of boggy and slow. And then you said something like "OH REALLY???????" And then I said (on the inside). "DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN."

Not long after that, I chopped fifteen or so pages off the front end of my manuscript. Luckily, I'd also just read an essay by Richard Peck where he said that beginnings were really just endings in disguise so I didn't have to discard everything. Just move it to a better place.