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This week many of us have been writing about the questions kids ask. Maybe you are tired of the subject, but frankly, I can’t help myself. To add a little variety, I’ll change up and talk about some of the letters and emails I’ve received from students.

Furthermore I’ll begin by quoting my favorite email from a kid, one which wasn’t even sent to me. I’ve asked Lois Lowry if I could borrow it for this blog entry and she graciously sent me the exact wording. It read:

I am working on a research paper and in my thesis statement I have to identify you. Would you be considered a 19th century author? Please let me know ASAP.

Dear Susan Goodman, I’m one of the many people who were in your second grade group. Here’s one question I wanted to ask you: Is your photographer Michel Dolittle related to Dr. Dolittle?

Dear Susan, Will you please dedicate a story to my bear Oatmeal and me. My name is Mary Jones. I am very happy to meet you. I admiare you a very lot. I have read 4 of your books. I am a big fan on yours. It would be a great honor to have one of your books dedicated to me. Please word it like this. I dedicate this book to Mary Jones and her bear Oatmeal because she admiars me so very much. Sinserly Mary

Thank YOU to all the I.N.K. readers who have submitted questions. They are terrific. Isn’t it interesting to get a better understanding of how we all go about researching and writing?

Here are two answers to a great question from Mark Herr. Thanks, Mark. We hope you find these responses useful.

I know there is no "right answer" to this, but in your opinions, how much research is enough research before you start putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard)?

Here’s how Dorothy Hinshaw Patent answered the question:
That’s a good question, Mark, and the answer depends on a lot of things. How much background information do you have to start with? If the topic is new to you, you’ll need to do lots of groundwork before you even know what questions need to be answered by further research.

I find that after carrying out quite a bit of research, I keep finding facts I already have in hand. Less and less of the information is new. That’s a hint that I’ve mined most of what’s available. For facts and figures, you should have two or three different sources you can trust that agree on the information. Another hint you’re getting there is when you start writing the piece in your head.Once you start writing, you may come up with some new questions that you didn’t think of before, so don’t wait until too close to a deadline to begin to write.

And here’s what Sue Macy had to say:I find that when I work on a book, I do several “waves” of research, each tied to a specific stage of the process. After I have a “lightbulb moment” that suggests a book idea, I do the initial research to make sure the idea is solid and the topic really appeals to me. That usually means reading a few articles and surveying the existing literature to see what’s out there on the subject.

If I want to go ahead with the project, I use this initial research to write a proposal. It might include an introduction to the topic, an outline of the proposed book (this will likely be tweaked over time), and a page or two about the marketability of the book, including a survey of any similar volumes in print and notes on who might buy it and where (or if) it might be used in the school curriculum. Some people also write a sample chapter, which requires a whole lot more research at this early stage. So far, I’ve been lucky enough to avoid doing that.

After the proposal has been sold, I’ll start my in-depth research. That might include visits to places of significance to the topic, interviews with appropriate people, and lots of archival research at libraries and on the Internet.

I do a lot of photocopying and print out lots of scholarly papers and newspaper articles, which I place in folders labeled for each chapter of the book. If an item has material relevant to more than one chapter, I use Post-Its to remind myself to move it to the next folder when the earlier chapter is done.

Once I have organized all of the collected material, I read through what I have filed in the folder for the first chapter. Hopefully, by now I have enough material to enable me to visualize the shape that the chapter will take. I jot down the most important points I want to make in the chapter and use that as a working outline.

With this solid foundation, I begin to write. Of course, I continue to do research as I write. Often I’ll find that I still need to fill in more details or check additional facts. And even after all the chapters are finished, I continue to do bits of research because many of my captions contain material not in the text.

Here are two answers to a great question from Linda Zajac. Thanks, Linda. I hope you find these responses useful.

How do you folks orchestrate working on multiple books for multiple publishers and meeting deadlines? Is there some kind of courtesy given by one editor to another if you're currently working on a project or are the deadlines roomier than they are for magazine articles or do you set your own deadlines?

Loreen Leedy says:
I always have multiple books in progress but at different stages and try to keep the ball rolling on each one. In my experience, trade book editors propose the upcoming deadlines within their production cycle then I gauge which one is realistic given my outstanding commitments.

The agreed-upon deadline might be a year or more in the future. Some publishers put a clause into the contract that requires working on that particular book "next" as opposed to signing a contract for Book A then signing another for Book B (with a different publisher) and working on Book B.If necessary, my editors are generally willing to push deadlines to the next cycle (making it a Spring instead of a Fall book, or vice versa), That may be in part because I'm both the author and the illustrator so there's no contractual issue where an author contract spells out that the book must be published within X number of months.

In my case, any delay is usually due to the uncertainties of design and illustration, which often seem to take much longer than one optimistically estimates. A missed deadline may also happen if the editor is unsatisfied with a manuscript, dummy, or artwork, which means the work has to be redone. Changing deadlines depends on the priorities of the publisher; some may not be willing or able to be so flexible.There are many factors... it takes time to do a quality job and trying to force someone to rush may be counterproductive... the advance money in many cases does not compensate the author and/or illustrator for the time spent working on the book, so they may take a paying job to stay afloat... publishers naturally don't want tons of cash tied up in advances... publishers need to have a book in hand to sell it... et cetera!


Karen Romano Young says:
It seems to me that there are really two questions here: how do you manage multiple editors, and how do you manage multiple books?

I'll take the multiple editors question first. I think of it as any supplier with a customer: Make the one you're working with feel that he or she is the most important. Meet your deadlines and your quality goals, do your work well, and don't mention or comment on the demands other customers place on you. But these are editors, so there are a couple of other issues here. Built into these issues is how to get into this multiple editor fix to begin with!

One, be careful to reserve your genre for one editor. For instance, if you have two novels available, selling them to different editors isn't such a hot idea. You also have a choice to make if your editor turns down one of your novels. Will you submit it elsewhere?

If you work in two genres, you may wind up having one editor for everything, or a different editor for each. Different age groups, too.

Even within one genre or age group you might work with two houses. You might succeed in selling, say, your ocean book to one editor, and your insect book to another, as happened in my case. The key is to figure out what that first editor who took your work wants in the future: does she want to see EVERYTHING? Then make sure she does—and that she knows that if she turns something down, you'll be taking it elsewhere.

Second, be open with your editors about your multiple books. While I don't think you should talk about every book you're working on while you're doing it, I believe it's important to be up front about publishing schedules.

There are lots of issues around publishing different books with different houses in the same season—just as there are issues with publishing two books at once anytime, even if they're for the same house. Some people think that reviewers and buyers will sometimes choose between one book and another in terms of space in their journals or stores. There's some controversy around this, so it's best to keep your various editors informed of the dates, genres, age levels, topics, etc., of your books. The fact is that the market may respond to one of your books more than another, and that this can affect each different title.

Now to the multiple books question. How to juggle multiple books is really up to the individual's multitasking capabilities—just as you decide for yourself how you're going to get dinner, walk the dog, go to graduate school, and write the next Newbery-winning novel.

Some people really don't seem to be able to go back and forth between two books, but I do. I need to. I rarely work on one book at a time. I like best to be working on something fictional or very creative at the same time as working on nonfiction, whether I'm researching or writing. Now that I've added illustration to my resume it's interesting to figure out the mindset I need to be in to work on that as well. And I'm not even getting into freelance writing projects, mentor teaching, and keeping up with Facebook. Here are the highpoints, for me:

1. I make my own deadlines. Right now I'm struggling to finish the revision of a proposal for a new nonfiction book, a painting, and a dummy for an illustrated book. None of this has to be done. Nobody is waiting for any of it. And if I miss the deadline (most likely the painting will take too long) nothing will happen. I don't know why I can do this. And I have just as much trouble finishing things as anyone.

2. I use my energy. I have a lot of energy, but not a long attention span. I want to work all day, but can't focus long enough on one thing. So I'll pick two or three things to work on during the course of the day, break it up additionally by walking dogs and doing the laundry, and more gets done than if I try to park my rear for hours and hours to do only one thing. Fatigue hits, and I can't do anything, and that gets stressful. That said, I can get obsessive about things and just stay with them at the expense of all else; but I never start out by assuming I'll be able to do that.

3. I do the thing that's calling to me. Is it the laundry? Is it the novel? Is it the internet research? It's not that I don't require heavy disciplining; I do. But over time, for the most part, I find that I get to everything.

This is THE KEY to my ability to work on multiple novels: when you work on two, then each of them becomes a vacation from the other. When I'm tired of writing fiction, research seems simple and black-and-white; when organizing information is tying me up in knots (I'm not a linear thinker) then working on a story of my own imagining feels like such a pleasure. And, although the freelance work can seem like a drag, I've learned that I like working with other people occasionally; at least it forces me to get dressed.

I have to admit that there are days when the yardwork or housework or dogs or kids get me carried away and the work goes along the wayside. I tell myself that I need time to process the work; sometimes I can even focus on doing so while up to my elbows in something physical. And I know that the next day, when I sit down to write again that the place will be organized and that writing will feel like a rest.

You have questions. We have answers. Here’s what Sue Macy and Cheryl Harness had to say about this question from fellow blogger Loreen Leedy:

What are your main reasons for choosing a topic to write about?

Sue Macy said:
My first criterion for choosing a topic is my own curiosity. I have to want to explore the topic myself. Writing a nonfiction book requires months, sometimes years, of research, and without a personal interest in the content, I probably wouldn’t be motivated to continue.

My first book, A Whole New Ball Game, about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), was fueled by my love of baseball and my experience of studying women’s history in college. When I first found out about the league (it was mentioned in a book about “firsts” in women’s history), I was astonished that I’d never known about it.

I started doing research to satisfy my own curiosity, and I continued because the stories I was learning about the league and the women who played in it ignited my memories of growing up wanting to play baseball at a time when girls were not allowed in Little League or, like today, in the major leagues.

No matter how enticing a subject is, however, there’s another criterion that must be applied: marketability. If a book won’t sell, publishers (usually) won’t publish it, so I need to prove its marketability to them and to myself.

A Whole New Ball Game had the advantage of being the true story of the league portrayed in the movie A League of Their Own, so the publisher knew their would be popular recognition of the topic. (My book came out the year after the movie, but the publisher bought it knowing that the movie was in the works)

Also, since the league started during World War II, it related somewhat to the U.S. history curriculum, so a book about it was likely to appeal to the school library market. Indeed, the book is still in print some 16 years after its initial publication, at least in part because students every year do History Day projects about the AAGPBL.

When I do a book proposal, the inclusion of a page on the marketability of the book is crucial. Highlighting any upcoming events, anniversaries, and curriculum or media tie-ins helps a publisher see the book’s sales potential.

When I’m in the process of researching and writing a book, I am consumed by my interest in the subject, but I’ve found that the best way to sell a publisher on the concept is to communicate both my passion about the topic and the reasons why publishing it is a good business decision.

Cheryl Harness said:
1. Is there an expressed need for a book about a certain subject? Ask a knowledgeable bookseller. Ask librarians, students, teachers, and parents. In her column, Needed Subjects, in the most recent Bulletin of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, www.scbwi.org, Libby Nelson reports a desire for, among other things, books about feathers, time-telling, and Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first woman elected governor in the U.S.

2. When I look at what's occupying the shelves at my nearest library and book store, do I see a need for a book that's not there, but ought to be and would be if I ruled the world? Regularly studying what's out there is a sensible habit to form and you know what Frances E. Willard, long-gone-dead head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, www.wctu.org, said about habits? "Sow an act & you reap a habit; sow a habit & you reap a character; sow a character & you reap a destiny." Which brings me to the business of a. dead people and b. falling in love with them.

3. Deborah Heiligman wrote about this in her July 21 posting and wonderfully, too. I could fall in love with old Frances E. Willard, even though she'd be turning 170 this coming Sept. 28. I mean, just read her telling about how she learned to ride a bicycle http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5038/ when she was 53, five years before her untimely death in 1898. (Yikes: 58!) I could at least develop a cerebral sort of crush on her. That's what I've done with all of my subjects over the years - of course, I'm pretty impressionable.

Your passionate fascination for your subject will fuel your initial studies. You'll need that fizzy enthusiasm/info combo if you're ever going to seduce some editor into doing what’s necessary to get her or his colleagues to sign off on a contract. If your book is ever to see the light of day, you must talk a publisher into gambling their money.
4. Will some editor who's managed to remain employed actually BUY my take on this or any subject? Will people--make that lots of people--out there exchange some of their discretionary income for a book about the subject I've chosen? Somewhere, someone will ask me about my subject's selling points. It'd be good to have an answer. I ought to know about comparable books, how they've done in the marketplace, and the subject's real-world relevance. I wish I'd had all this at my fingertips 20 years ago when I was telling a guy on the phone why a biography on Andrew Jackson would be a far out proposition. Impossible, he told me, bookbiz-wise.

Why?

Too obscure.

Well, there's a perverse pleasure in rolling one's eyes heavenward behind the back of a callow editor, knowing for sure that the world's going to hell in a hand basket, but having a knowledgeable pitch is more useful.

5. Can you link the subject to an approaching anniversary, the bigger the better? We're coming up on a century since the Titanic went down. Two centuries since the War of 1812 in which Andy Jackson got famous at the Battle of New Orleans - ha!

And 2012 will mark 600 years since Joan of Arc was born. (Oh baby!) The best book for finding such nuggets is Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events. (4th revised ed. Touchstone).

6. Do you have insider, up-close information on or experience with the subject? Pictures? Interview opportunity?

7. Have you been struck by a deep curiosity to learn all you can about pigs or the world's rivers or Stephen Foster, American composer?

8. For an excellent repository of nifty things to write about, let me recommend this book put out by the Core Knowledge Foundation, www.coreknowledge.org. The Core Knowledge Sequence: Content Guidelines for Grades K-8. (ISBN 1-890517-12-7). It's loaded with lists of concepts, events, creatures, eras, and individuals, all so vivid & interesting & genuine that you gotta wonder how these subjects are routinely lumped under the label nonfiction, indicating what they're not. Ah well. Another subject for another day.

In the end, I'm thinking that settling on what to learn about and write about is a proposition of heart and mind. Be led by the one; dig in deep with the other. Or, I should say, choose your path, follow where it leads & keep your balance--like riding a bike.

Thanks to YOU, our loyal I.N.K. readers, we have lots to talk about today and tomorrow. For the rest of the summer, we will be setting aside the last couple of days of each month to answer questions you have left us in the comments.

Today, we’ll start off with a question from Melody: How closely do you need to connect with your subject matter to write about it? Do you need to be female to write about amazing women? An environmentalist to write about Rachel Carson? Do you lose all your credibility if you're writing about African-Americans and you're not African-American?

Three I.N.K. bloggers were excited to answer this interesting question:

Susan Goodman responds:
Melody, thanks for the question. It’s especially interesting to me because I just finished a manuscript about a young African-American girl from the 1840s. I do think that nonfiction writers have an easier time with this issue than fiction writers since we don’t have to have to inhabit our characters or imagine them in quite the same way. Nevertheless we have to inhabit their worlds and understand what their frame of mind was during a different time in history. The answer in part--research, research, research.

In my case, I had to learn about the specific African-American people in my story--who they are, what they looked like, what they did and, hopefully, what they felt and said about those feelings. But I also needed to know what their world was like and how their attitudes, assumptions, and expectations were different than ours today. That said, I also had to learn the same about the white people in my story. Can white people of today write about white people in times so different than our own? In a lot of ways, it is the same question.

But this hasn’t really addressed your question directly. It’s hard because it’s so complicated. I guess I’d say that anyone who writes and is interested in not only including facts, but also truth, in a project probably has something to add. But we writers have to be sensitive and careful. And we have to be just as willing to research and fact-check our own attitudes and predilections as our information.

Let me give you an example. My story takes place from 1847-1850 and there were obviously times I had to mention that someone was African American. But I hesitated to use the term “African American” because it wasn’t in use back then and I was trying to create and be true to a sense of place and time. It felt jarring and anachronistic to me. But, what to do? In my draft, I tried using the word, “black.” It was in usage back then and, since it was the preferred term a few decades ago and acceptable today, it felt like my best bet.

I had enough doubts, however, that I decided to consult with a prominent African-American historian and the director of the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American Culture and History. They both answered my email with long considered responses within hours. They both were clear—use “African American.” Basically they said that by using African American I was making a direct link between some of my contemporary readers and their ancestors. They could see themselves in the people of the 1840s. I also wasn’t accepting the designations imposed on people of African descent by the dominant group.

Needless to say, I changed the word throughout and felt good about it. But I don’t know what I would have ultimately decided on my own.

Gretchen Wolfe responds:
History books are soooo much more interesting these days, thanks to outsider historians and subjects. I'm finding African American history is full of great topics and subjects--way beyond the usual suspects of the civil rights movement. Keep at it, Sue!

Ten years ago the issue of who can tell whose story was extremely controversial. The controversy seems to have died down a bit, but important points were made. Get it right! I believe that anyone can write about anything if s/he gets it right. What does right mean? Obviously factually accurate. And skillfully written. But also with sensitivity to the subtleties of the subject matter and the readers.

I give my manuscripts to experts to judge if the facts and the tone are right. In writing about another culture, I would ask several members of that group to critique my work. I, a white woman, am working on African American history now, following such white authors as Doreen Rappaport, Larry Dane Brimner, and Ellen Levine. Of course we all owe much to Virginia Hamilton, Julius Lester, Andrea Davis Pinkney, and many other African American authors who led the way.

Why would I choose to write about African American history, rather than examine my own German and English heritage? Passion. I’ve found a particular topic that I’m intellectually and emotionally passionate about, and I think that I can tell the story in a compelling way. I’m determined to get it right.

I’ve got more to say about this, including my experience several years ago, of a wonderful workshop led by Ellen Levine. To be continued in my INK blog message of July 22.

Rosalyn Schanzer responds:
Most of my books focus on famous people from history, and I feel very strongly that it doesn't matter one whit about the authors' sex or race when they pick a person to introduce to their readers. As long as a biographer is a terrific writer who's willing to do thorough, unbiased, and accurate research, all is well. After all, it's not a bit unusual that I'm a female who doesn't need to be a guy in order to write about men, so why should a woman be portrayed only by another woman?

Consider this: There's no such thing as a modern historian who was alive 200 or 300 or 400 years ago, yet without ever having lived in, say, Colonial Jamestown or Victorian England, our best writers are somehow able to make the people who lived in those days spring credibly to life. If we can jump that hurdle, then why can't we write just as well about people who are different from ourselves in other ways too?

Thoughtful outsiders put fresh and worthwhile new spins on stories all the time. And even though there are editors and readers who heartily disagree with this philosophy, there are plenty of examples of award winning books that prove my point. Here's a very short list of just a few of them:

Russell Freedman, a white male, won the 2005 Newbery Honor Medal and the Sibert Award for The Voice that Challenged a Nation, which tells the story of Marian Anderson, a black female. He also wrote many notable books about American Indians. This brings to mind Paul Goble, a white Englishman who won the 1979 Caldecott Medal for The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, a book about an Indian girl. In fact he wrote about Indians all the time too.

Another white American male, James Rumford, won a 2005 Sibert Honor award for Sequoyah (the famous Cherokee Indian), and he wrote books about Polynesian and Iraqi people as well. And a white female, Ann Bausum, wrote the Sibert Honor book Freedom Riders, which tells about black and white male and female activists during the historic Civil Rights Movement, thereby covering every base we've just discussed above.

Look for answers to another question tomorrow. And by all means, keep those questions coming. We want to discuss the topics that interest you most!