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My path to becoming an author is . . . unusual. Like most writers, I’ve loved books all my life. Some of my earliest memories are of being bribed by the promise of a Golden Book if I would go to sleep in my own bed rather than my parent’s bed (I took the bribe). However, as I grew up, a wide variety of books were not readily available to me. Our small town didn’t have a library and neither did my elementary school. What passed as our “library” was a small collection of books sitting on the bookshelf below the wide windows that ran the whole length of the classroom.
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Peter Rabbit was my favorite book, and was
also one my Mama bought to bribe me. |
Somewhere around the third grade I got a pink diary. I’d like to say my diary entries were long narratives about my hopes and dreams that show a budding writer’s flair for the dramatic. That is not the case. In reality my diary entries are so sparse that the entire text of my five year diary could fit on a napkin, a cocktail napkin. But when I look at that diary now, I do see the beginnings of an author—a nonfiction author. Each diary entry contains the facts and does not include any extraneous information or fluff. For example on one especially important day in history, July 20, 1969, I simply stated: “Dear Diary, the astronauts landed & are walking on the moon.” It is simple, to the point, and has the sense of immediacy—not a bad start for a future nonfiction author.
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| My childhood diary shows an early glimpse into my future as a nonfiction author. My straightforward recording of the moon landing came just one day after my confession that I dreaded facing my piano teacher (I hadn't been practicing.) |
As an adult, my first career is as a Registered Radiologic Technologist. Next I became a wife and busy mother of three children. I read voraciously, but still had no thoughts of becoming a writer. In fact, I would never have become an author if tragedy had not entered my life. My youngest son, fourteen-month-old Corey, fell off of the backyard swing and died from a head injury. Life as I knew it ceased to exist. I was devastated, to say the least. Ultimately I wrote an inspirational book about the Spiritual battle I faced after Corey’s death and how God brought me through it and back to Him titled
Forgiving God. It was the first book I’d ever written.
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| My first book, an adult inspirational book that deals with the death of my son, Corey. |
After my first book was published, I began writing nonfiction books for young readers. No classes. No journalism degree. No mentor. I just started researching and writing. Along the way I joined SCBWI, went to writer’s conferences, and learned all I could about children’s publishing. I listened to the old writer’s adage that says “write what you know” when I chose X-rays as the topic for my first book in this genre. That book, titled
The Head Bone’s Connected to the Neck Bone: The Weird, Wacky and Wonderful X-ray, was awarded the SCBWI work-in-progress grant and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). When that book was finished, I wondered if I could do it again. I could. The next two books,
Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium and In Defiance of Hitler: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry were also published by FSG. Then came
The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon published by Carolrhoda,
Tech Titans by Scholastic, and my newest book
Fourth Down and Inches: Concussion and Football’s Make-or-Break Moment also with Carolrhoda.
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| My nonfiction books for young readers. |
Since libraries fill me with awe and appreciation, I’m thrilled to know that my books are in library collections all over the world. In some ways I’ve come full circle. I began as a child with no library access and I became a nonfiction author who has done research in some of the finest libraries in America including Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Boston Athenaeum.
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| Doing research at the library at Harvard. |
I didn’t plan to become a writer or a public speaker. But the twists and turns of life have turned me into both, and they are a good fit for me. I love the challenge of researching a topic I know nothing about. I love to write about ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. I love to capture the imagination of a live audience and take them on a journey as I share with them the amazing things I’ve learned about the subjects of my books. And as an added bonus, researching my books has given me incredible life experiences that I will always treasure. I’ve visited Marie Curie’s office at the Radium Institute in Paris and sat in her chair, behind her desk. I’ve stayed on the grounds of George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon and watched the sunrise over the Potomac River while standing on the piazza. I’ve looked into the faces of men and women who were saved from the Nazis by Varian Fry and listened to their personal experiences. I’ve wept with the parents of teens who lost their lives as a result of concussions. I’ve presented programs in a wide variety of venues including C Span 2 Book TV, Colonial Williamsburg, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the U.S. Consulate in Marseilles, France, teacher conferences, workshops, and at many schools.
Now I’m honored to join this amazing group of women known as TeachingAuthors. It will be a whole new adventure and I’m looking forward to it.
Carla Killough McClafferty
www.carlamcclafferty.com
Long, long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, it was the time before computers. Even typewriters were not a common household item. At least, not in my childhood home on the front range of Colorado. Colorado Springs was small then, full of open spaces. The public library was way, way on the other side of town. There were no bookstores. The only library available to me was my school library. I checked out every book I could read. By fourth grade, my favorite authors were already Mark Twain, Jack London, Charles Dickens, James Fennimore Cooper, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and many more. And if I wanted to have my very own copy of a book, so I didn’t have to return it, I copied the book.
By hand.
So is it a wonder that I became a writer when I grew up?
Even now, after all these decades, with the onslaught of computers, iPads and fancy programs that write text for you, I still write everything by hand. Even this article was first written by hand.
It turns out to be a good thing, to write by hand. Scientists now know that cursive writing is an important tool for cognitive development. It teaches the brain to be efficient, helps to develop critical thinking skills and refines motor control. In fact, children who learn cursive tend to learn how to read faster, generate more ideas and retain more information.
When I was copying my books in the fourth grade, I paid more attention to the details of the story. I experienced the characters on a deeper level because the very act of writing them out engaged all my senses. I had to pay attention to the words, how they were ordered, and how they were used. And, of course, I experienced the linear logic of the plot.
When I grew up, I began writing stories that featured the landscape and characters that were larger than life. A student of American history and folklore, my first books were picturebooks. If you want to know more about my picturebooks, check out JoAnn’s interview with me here!
I continued exploring the American landscape, blending folklore and history in my first middle grade novel,
Big River’s Daughter (Holiday House, 2013). The book comes recommended by the International Reading Association, and was nominated for the Amelia Bloomer Project (American Library Association, 2013). The book is listed on A Mighty Girl’s Top 2013 Mighty Girl Books for Tweens and Teens. My second middle grade historical fiction is
Girls of Gettysburg (Holiday House 2014) and takes on the daunting challenge of researching the Battle of Gettysburg. For this story, I walked the battlefields four times, experiencing the very landscape where my characters lived and breathed, and died. If you are interesting in my research process for this book, you might enjoy this interview by Laurie J. Edwards,
here. The book comes recommended by Booklist as “a unique, exciting work.” School Library Journal calls the book a “riveting historical fiction.” The book is listed as a Hot Pick on Children’s Book Council for September 2014.
Of course, writers have to pay the bills. While I never planned to be a teacher, it seemed a natural fit. I teach college freshman and older students. Of course, now all the students use computers to read texts and compose their essays. And iPads, and even their phones. Most of them are proud to proclaim they have never used a pen or pencil. I make them print out the research and drafts, and have them write out their annotations and corrections on the paper. I make them experience the words and the organization in order to determine how everything fits together. They don’t always appreciate the experience. But their essays are usually better for it.
As Julia Cameron once said, “When we write by hand, we connect to ourselves. We may get speed and distance when we type, but we get a truer connection – to ourselves and our deepest thoughts – when we actually put pen to page.”
You might be interested to see more:
“
Why Writing by Hand Could Make You Smarter”, by William Klemm. Psychology Today. March 14, 2013.
Julia Cameron Live, "
Morning Pages: why by hand?. The Artist’s Way." October 4, 2012
Bobbi Miller
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| Image from Morguefile |
When I was a kid, I had no thought of being an author OR a teacher! As the youngest of four girls, I was always one of the students when we played school. As I think of my sisters, Miss Trunchbull comes to mind—ha! I never ever got to be the teacher! (On the plus side, this helped me become an early and voracious reader). And while I loved to read, it never occurred to me that real people wrote all those books I devoured.
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With my big sisters, Janet (left), Gail (center),
and Patty (right). I'm the peanut in front. |
When I started college, I planned to be a veterinarian. My first creative writing class killed that plan, and I knew I would do something with books, reading, and writing. That something turned out to be LOTS of things.
First, I became a magazine editor. When the publication was sold, I decided to try teaching (I was certified for Secondary English). I taught 8th-grade English for two years, and it was exhilarating, exhausting, and life-changing. I knew I did not have the stamina to stay in it for the long haul and try to be an amazing teacher while dealing with administration, assessment (even back then!), politics, and parents. But I loved my 8th graders and their wild creativity—and the books we were constantly reading.
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| Our two daughters, ca. 1998 |
A seed was planted.
I wonder what it would be like to write kids’ books?Then my husband and I moved to Minnesota. While doing freelance writing for grown-ups, I held part-time jobs over the years as a copyeditor, a personal care assistant for young adults with disabilities, a teacher in our school-age latchkey program, etc. When we had kids, the thousands of books we read with them nourished that seed and helped it grow:
I want to write books for kids.So, of course, I joined SCBWI and set to work learning how to do that. In October of 1999, I went to a local SCBWI conference, where two editors from educational publishers spoke. Because I was conference volunteer, I got to be one editor’s helper and I got a manuscript critique with the other. I ended up writing books for both companies.
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BookSpeak! Poems About Books
(Clarion, 2011) |
I had been submitting (bad) picture book manuscripts and magazine stories for a couple of years. I had a few children’s credits, but I really wanted to write a book. So when Jill Braithwaite (who was an editor at Lerner at that time) asked if I would be interested in writing an upper-elementary biography, I said, “Sure!”
Even though that was by far NOT my first choice.
And thus began my history of writing children’s books. To date, I have written about 110 nonfiction books for the educational market, 12 poetry collections, and two rhyming nonfiction books. In fact, my newest book,
Water Can Be..., comes out on April Fool's Day, and we're doing a giveaway of it here on TeachingAuthors.com! You can enter using the Rafflecopter widget at the end of the post. Enter through April 1, 2014, the pub date of
Water Can Be...!
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| Water Can Be... comes out on April 1! |
One of my biggest surprises has been how much I get to still teach. I teach adult writers through conferences like SCBWI’s, the 21st-Century Children’s Nonfiction Conference, and the Loft Literary Center’s Children’s and Young Adult Literary Festival. I have taught in-person and online classes on writing for children, finding publishers to submit your work to, and more. A colleague, Lisa Bullard, and I also mentor children’s writers through
Mentors for Rent, an hourly-based critique and coaching service for children’s writers.
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| At a school visit in 2013 |
I also get to present to educators and librarians, which I love! I’m usually spreading poetry joy—in fact, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to present at the UNLV conference. I can’t wait. Presenting through IRA, ALA, and NCTE have been highlights for me.
And I get to connect to kids, too, through elementary author visits and young authors conferences. I have a blast getting kids excited about reading, writing, and poetry. And I don’t have to assess them or do any of the other ongoing tasks teachers have to keep up with.
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| A Leaf Can Be... (Millbrook, 2012) |
Don’t get me wrong, teaching is still hard work! But it’s immensely satisfying, too. I look at how much public speaking I do now and think, Wow. Not bad for someone who was so terrified of public speaking I put it off until I was a senior in college! (Though I was not quite as bad as my best friend, who had to calm her nerves with a glass of wine before our 8 a.m. speech class on presentation days.)
My work as a teacher and an author are entwined in my mind. I can’t imagine one part of my career without the other. If I weren’t a writer, I obviously wouldn’t be invited to speak to teachers and writers and students. But if I didn’t do the teaching, I do think my writing would suffer. Getting out there and being in schools, with kids, helps me stay in touch with kids’ real lives today, especially now that my own two are officially adults—gulp.
And…that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about my writing journey!
--Laura Purdie Salas
a Rafflecopter giveaway 
Today’s
release of the hands-on how-to book for middle grade and young adult writers Writing Irresistible Kidlit (Writer’s
Digest) gifts Moveable Type literary agent and KidLit.com creator Mary Kole
with yet one more title: Teaching
Agent-Author.
Subtitled The
Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers, Mary’s
interactive book offers up a bevy of agent-learned tricks, treats and best of
all tools certain to help writers learn and hone their craft as well as their
world. She shares writing exercises,
candid commentary and a collection of book excerpts and personal insights from
bestselling authors and editors who specialize in the children’s book market.
Mary joined
Movable Type from the Andrea Brown Literary Agency where she distinguished
herself as an inventive and entrepreneurial agent. Her books include author-illustrator Lindsay
Wards’ When Blue Met Egg (Dial), Emily Hainsworth’s YA debut Through to You (Balzer
+ Bray) and Dianna Winget’s A Smidget of Sky (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). KidLit.com was named one of Writer’s Digest’s
Top 100 Websites for Writers; over 50,000 readers visit the site monthly.
This being
Halloween, a favorite holiday of just about every children’s book writer and
teacher I know, I consider Mary’s answers to my questions both below delicious,
calorie-free Treats and writer-friendly Tricks, plural.
For one more
Treat, be sure to read below of our TeachingAuthor Book Giveaway of the 2013 Children’s
Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market (Writer’s Digest) which includes two of
Mary’s articles - “Crafting
a Query” and “Building Your Author Platform.”
(1) How did you become
a Teaching (Agent) Author?
I became an agent after reading for free at an agency to learn more about the
publishing business. But I've always been passionate about teaching others, so
I knew that I wanted to pass on what I was learning to writers. The publishing
business is often difficult to wrap one's head around, so I wanted to pull back
the curtain a little bit. I understand things better once I articulate them and
explain them to others, so the teaching aspect of my work has also been
invaluable to me.
(2) Why and how did
your book come to be?
I started out as a writer, so part of it was definitely yearning to be a
published author. But the book also became a personal challenge: Do I have
enough to say about the writing craft and can I say it in a way that it earns
its keep on my readers' writing reference shelves hope the answer to both
questions is "yes," of course, and I'm excited to see the reactions once the book is out in the world. Since I was doing a lot of programming and
teaching for Writer's Digest, publishing the guide with them was a natural fit
and the process of actually getting the book deal was easy. The process of
writing it, though, took a lot more stress and work, but I'm very happy with
the finished product.
(3) What are the Top
Three problems you note in manuscripts when you’re reading as an agent?
Beginnings are tough to do well, and I often notice that writers don't start
with a strong sense of the present moment and present action. A lot of
beginnings have tons of backstory and info-dumping and not enough conflict to
hook a reader in. In terms of character, writers can always work on motivation
and objective--a really strong reason for characters to be doing what they're
doing, and an overarching goal that they work toward in the story. In a prose
sense, I often find myself giving the following note: "You are saying
something fundamentally simple in an overly complicated way." Not
everything needs to be a showcase for Writing-with-a-capital-W. Sometimes
there's style in simplicity.
(4) What are the Top
Three writers’ questions you receive at www.kidlit.com?
Other than that, I've been answering writing questions on the site since 2009
and there are a lot of different concerns that writers have. I don't
know if I can pick the runners up in terms of popularity.
(5) Please share a
favorite Writing Exercise.
To really help writers individuate characters and think about voice, I like to
ask them to describe the same scene or landscape from the POVs of two different
characters. Think about syntax, word choice, what each character notices and
how. This often drives home the point that each fictional person is unique and
has a very distinct lens that should inform every choice that a writer is
making.
(6) You’ve worn so many
hats while residing in the Children’s Book World! Which do you love wearing the
best?
I'd love
to say "reader" but, to tell you the truth, there is no better way to
frustrate one's love of reading than to actually work in publishing, where you
are reading more than you ever thought possible and under time constraints. So
I'll say that my favorite hat is "cheerleader," because there's no
better feeling than believing in a project and championing it through to
publication.
Thanks, Mary Kole, for the opportunity to bring you and your
new book Writing Irresistible Fiction to
the attention of our TeachingAuthor readers.
Happy Halloween!
Esther Hershenhorn
P.S.
Trick or treat? You
bet! We’re giving away one copy of the 2013 Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s
Market (Writer’s Digest)!
You must follow our TeachingAuthors blog to enter our
drawing. If you’re not already a
follower, you can sign up now in the sidebar to
subscribe to our posts via email, Google Friend Connect, or Facebook Network
blogs.
There are two ways to enter:
1) by a comment posted below
OR
2) by sending an email to teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com with "Book
Giveaway" in the subject line.
Just for the fun of it, and since we’re offering a Writer’s Book, share your #1
chocolate Trick or Treat candy. J
Whichever way you enter, you MUST give us
your first and last name AND tell us how you follow us. If you enter via a
comment, you MUST include a valid email address (formatted this way: youremail
[at] gmail [dot] com) in your comment. Contest open only to residents of the
United States. Incomplete entries will be discarded. Entry deadline is 11 pm
(CST) Wednesday, November 7, 2012. Winners will be announced Friday,
November 9, 2012. Good luck to all!
Posted by Jeanne Marie Grunwell FordThere is a certain loneliness in growing up as an "army brat," moving from place to place among other habitual movers, most of them wary of forming permanent attachments under the relentlessly transient circumstances. As an only child, I was also one of the few kids I knew who lacked the company of siblings. My grandmother did live with us, and she shared a
Posted by Mary Ann RodmanI've always been a writer. I taught myself to read from television commercials, "back in the day" when they included a lot of print on the screen. I landed in first grade knowing such essential words as "mouthwash,""antiperspirant" and phrases like "space-age technology" and "ring-around-the collar." Since I could read for myself, no one ever read to me. Better than any
Thanks Esther and Mary Kole. This interview is packed with so much I can't let myself spend time on this comment; I have to get to work!
Mary
Please enter my name for the chance to win the 2013 Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market. A tremendous tool for any aspiring writer. I love the favorite tip about writing a scene from two differing points of view, a great lesson.
My full name is Carl Scott and I follow this blog by email so I'm dead easy to find at : carlscott(at)prodigy(dot)net(dot)mx
Thanks for the interview and for making a copy of this invaluable resource available.
I ordered Mary's book last week and have read half of it already. I have no doubt I'll be rereading and referencing often. Please enter me in the giveaway.
I follow through email feed at
sbrehlhce(at)yahoo(dot)com.
Thanks for a great interview, giveaway, and for spreading the word about a book evry writer should have and use!
Thanks to all who've entered our Book Giveaway. Carmela has forwarded many of the entries that - don't - appear here.
So far Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - my #1 favorite - is ahead, but M & M's are closing in.
Is there an Ohio reader who would like to enter? :)
Thank you for the giveaway. You've been so generous with them in the past weeks. I follow you on Google Friend Connect. Thank you for the informative post full of good tips, Esther and Mary. My favorite Trick or Treat candy is Nestle's Crunch. I always want some leftovers!
Excited about these two great resources for writers! Can't wait to read Mary's book, as I have been a dedicated blog follower and her posts are very helpful.
My favorite Halloween candy is also Reese's Peanut Butter Cups!
- Cathy Mealey
Thanks for the great post Esther! I took Mary's webinar through writersdigest.com earlier this month, it was excellent.
Heather Brady
hhbrady2005 (a) yahoo.com
Midnight Milky Ways - dark and delicious!
Mary critiqued my picture book once. She was encouraging! Her words have kept me in the game for the past year of revisions. Thanks!
I appreciated this quote:"You are saying something fundamentally simple in an overly complicated way." Not everything needs to be a showcase for Writing-with-a-capital-W. Sometimes there's style in simplicity." I have to remind myself of that quite often. Thanks!
Julie
[email protected]
I've followed Mary for some time, and love all the advice she gives. It's fantastic to see her here as well. I follow Teaching Authors via email and would like to be entered into the drawing. Email is creatingcuriouskids [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks! Kirsten Larson
Thanks for the great post, interview and information! I'm looking forward to adding Mary's book to my resource shelf.
Snickers all the way....