Faster, Author! Faster! Write like the wind!

This morning, I read this fascinating piece in the New York Times suggesting that authors write faster. Well, it actually suggested that authors who take the, say, "decade or more in between great novels" approach to writing (ahem, Jeffrey Eugenides) have less cultural capital as it were than a great, if somewhat more prolific novelist (say, Saul Bellow).  We as a culture go to and count on those whose novels reach our shelves more frequently, according to this article.

Of course, we can argue that certain writers, like certain novels, simply take more time. But this essay doesn't suggest that War and Peace should have been jotted off as a blog entry. What it does suggest that there is some amount of time that is a potential falling off point - a point where readers might look up and say "oh, I wondered what happened to him/her!" And perhaps not care. (Although I can't image that happening to Eugenides, whose Virgin Suicides and Middlesex were so breathtaking?)

But what does this all mean for the writer, or the writing student? Should we write faster?

My answer is, in short, yes.

"Writing faster" is something that actually works for me, and it's something I tell my fiction students to do as well. To clarify, what I mean by "writing faster" has less to do with the rapidity of releasing Nobel-Prize winning novels (neither I nor my students are claiming to be Bellow or Eugenides here), but rather, the time in which we produce our craft. 

Examples of "writing faster" I give to my students include: (1) freewriting with a kitchen clock/iphone timer set to 2-5 minutes (2) entering a contest aimed at producing word counts and volume like nanowrimo (3) giving yourself deadlines organized around writing groups, contests, calls for submission, and conferences.

"Writing faster," in these ways, is a means to shut down that pesky, evil internal editor who stymies our creativity and imagination before they even take root on the page. It is a way to circumvent those voices of doubt ("can I do it?"), the demands of day to day life ("but the laundry waits!"), and those annoying problems of plot and logic that have arrested many a first draft. 

"Writing faster" doesn't, however, mean editing faster. Or taking short cuts in our final product. What it does mean is permission to give form to all those fabulous, whimsical middle-of-the-night ideas on the page, to take risks, to push yourself and your writing to unknown places. To be afraid. To fall down. To grow.

So write like the wind, fellow novelists. Editing, like laundry, (and like Nobel Prizes), can come later.

Public Puking, Presidential Races and Social Justice: Props for 8th Grade Super Zero

In honor of Random Acts of Publicity Day 2011 - a fantastic idea concocted by writer and teacher Darcy Pattison I thought I would give props to the fantastic Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, who has given me so much support as I've entered the wild and wooly world of kidlit.

From her visionary Patchwork Collective mentorship group for children's writers of color, to her To Mama With Love mother's day project to the personal support she's given me as now (huzzah! huzzah! halloo! hallay!) an agency sibling with the most fantastical Erin Murphy, Gbemi (as she is known to her friends) has been welcoming, instructive, encouraging, supportive and downright inspirational.

And you know what? So's her 2010 book from Arthur A. Levine, 8th Grade Super Zero.

Reggie "Pukey" McNight is a Nerd-ling Everyman. Having begin the school year by losing his breakfast in front of the entire student body, eighth grade can only go up. Er, maybe. With his best friends, activist Ruthie and aspiring rapper Joe C. by his side, Reggie negotiates the complicated issues of middle school social politics, family conflict, race relations, spirituality, community involvement and social justice without ever being anything less than flawed, real, heartfelt and quite wonderful. Will Reggie's father get a job? Will his sister be less than awful to him? Will he be able to galvanize a group to work in the local homeless shelter? Will he have a chance in the school election? And will the most beautiful Mialonie ever look his way? You can find out by picking up a copy of this complex, hilarious, and skillfully written novel.

For other children's authors, Gbemi's book is a terrific study in how to negotiate potentially difficult social issues without slipping into a didactic voice. It is also a study in building three dimensional, dynamic characters fully located in their environment (in this case, Brooklyn). 8th Grade Super Zero is breathtakingly real, without ever losing its engagement as a story. As a reader, I was just as invested in the broader issues of how a group of students can help each other engage in their local community as I was in Reggie's romantic life or his school presidential campaign.

This excerpt from an interview with Gbemi relates her perspective on social justice in children's literature rather perfectly:

Q: Reggie finds great satisfaction in helping a local homeless shelter build community. How did your own experiences with service shape this aspect of Reggie’s story?

A: Reggie had the opportunity to see, as I did, that any type of service is a two-way street. He did not 'save' or 'rescue' anyone, and no person that he encountered acted as a talisman or magical figure whose primary purpose was to ease his guilt or facilitate his transformation to hero. He entered into relationships, with multi-dimensional people (I hope). The themes of small victories and personal action in the book were also major lessons learned in my own life. I found that there was just as much value (perhaps more) in being the person who offers a loving listening ear and a snack as there is in being the Big Speechmaker and shiny celebrity.


(smart answer, no? see why I like her and her book so much?)

So celebrate social justice and great children's literature by picking up a copy of 8th Grade Super Zero, and also blogging, linking, talking or otherwise cheering about your favorite kidlit books!

 

Dear Melissa - Interview with Middle Grade Author Melissa Glenn Haber (and giveaway!)

From From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors:

Welcome author Melissa Glenn Haber to From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors!

Melissa is the author of several books for MG readers, including  The Heroic Adventures of Hercules Amsterdam (Puffin Paperbacks, 2004, recommended for 9+); Beyond the Dragon Portal (Dutton, 2005, a Keystone State Reading Association Book Award nominee, recommended for 9+); The Pluto Project (Dutton, 2006, a Junior Library Guild selection, recommended for 11 and up).
Since Melissa’s latest release Your Best Friend, Meredith (Aladdin, previously released as Dear Anjali, Aladdin 2010) is a novel in letters, we thought we’d conduct her author interview a bit differently! Below are some questions from, erm, kind of imaginary readers, and Melissa’s thoughtful answers. (Dear Abby has nothing on this MG author!)

1. Dear Melissa, In your novel, your character Meredith types (and writes) long letters to her friend Anjali. Only problem is, Anjali has recently, and unexpectedly died. What inspired you to write a novel about a girl writing letters to her dead best friend? Were you worried it would be too dark? Signed — BFF in Boise

Dear BFF:
I mostly always start a novel because a first sentence comes to me, and that’s what happened here. Meredith just started speaking to Anjali in my head, and then I was writing this potentially depressing novel. I did worry a little about the novel getting too heavy, though it’s as much about friendship and first love as it is about death; to deal with that I tried to balance the times Meredith’s really despairing with goofier material.  (My favorite: when Meredith’s at her lowest and suddenly loses the “e” key on the typewriter).  I guess it worked, because the most common comment I hear from kids about the book is that they thought it was really funny. Which is a little bizarre.  I mean, I have books about baby sisters turning into dragons, and three inch tall boys living with mice, and kids pretending to be spies and finding out that what they pretend to discover is actually true, and it turns out that the book about the dead girl is the laugh riot.  Go figure.

2. Dear MGH, What made U decide 2 write a novel in ltrs? I mean, doesn’t everyone IM these days? xo — techwiz999

Dear Techwiz999, Ah: you discovered the secret!  I originally set the novel when I was 13—back in 1983.  That’s why Meredith is writing on what she calls a typerwriter.  My agent suggested that I update it to the present, which meant all sorts of small changes in technology (I think there are still some LP records that stayed in by mistake). I kept the typewriter in part for the reasons Meredith says (she claims it lets her write in the Heming way), but also texting and IMing are not very useful when it comes to working out what Meredith would call your Inner Feelings (TM) For that, a diary—which is sort of what Meredith’s letters become—is necessary.  It also turned out there was a major advantage to writing a novel in letters—aside from the fact that writing unanswered letters felt like a fitting metaphor for reaching out to someone who can’t reach back.  Writing in letters dealt with the fundamental problem with the first person: unless the first person is written in the present tense, the narrator knows what’s going to happen.  Here, Meredith was in as much in the dark as the reader.

3. Dear Author, In your novel, the three main characters are from three different religions – Meredith celebrates Christmas, so she seems like she’s Christian. Her friend and crush Noah is Jewish. And Anjali is Hindu. At the end of the book, Meredith even writes a letter to God. What role did spirituality and faith have in this novel? Yours Sincerely, Spirited and Spunky


To read the answer to this letter, and a few more, as well as to qualify for the giveaway, please visit here!

Say My Name, Say My Name: Writers on Naming

It started with Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant. I was reading the novel on a plane and kept wanting to turn to my fellow passengers (none of whom I unfortunately knew) and read the beautiful words aloud. These were words meant to be spoken, sung, shouted, I thought. But, for fear of being hauled off by the TSA, all I could do was keep them to myself, rolling them around and around in my mouth, feeling their heft and weight and beauty.

As I read, I kept thinking about the wonderful community of my new literary agency (The Erin Murphy Literary Agency, EMLA), and how meaningful it was to me to have so many differing communities of support around me, some who knew me well, and some -- like EMLA -- where many just knew my name. But even in that "just name knowing" - there was something so vital and beautiful being built - one more net beneath my various, precarious high-wire acts.

I was almost completely undone by one passage where DiCamillo reminds us what powerful magic names are:

Deep within herself, the elephant said this name, her name, over and over again. She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that, somewhere, in another place entirely, she was known and loved. --- Kate DiCamillo


As a writer whose 'day job' in medical humanities is steeped in examinations of intersubjectivity, what Martin Buber called the "I-thou" relationship, I suppose it's no surprise that I am particularly moved by writing regarding names and naming. As DiCamillo shows us, a name connects us to those who know and love us, those who, in the Levinasian sense, recognize our very face. 

In fact, one of my favorite writing exercises in any group I teach begins with the prompt: "Tell me the story of your name." It's a relatively low-risk exercise - certainly every person in the workshop or class has a name, and certainly every name has a story. Yet, it's an intensely personal exercise as well - calling forth stories of family, ancestry, history, identity, immigration, community, pain, loss, aspiration, and dream. Inevitably, there are tears and there is laughter when each member of the group reads aloud their own unique tale of their own unique name. And in the process, we recognize and honor the presence of each and every individual. From strangers, we become a community.

But it doesn't explain why every novel I seem to read lately has the most beautiful passages about names and naming. This week, it was Rita Williams Garcia's georgeous and powerful One Crazy Summer:

A name is important...Your name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it's a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can't be knocked down. -- Rita Williams Garcia

In the book, a name given and refused leads to the loss of a mother. A mother who herself has given birth to a new self, a new avatar, a new name.

Last night, I gobbled up DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie, in which Opal, the young protagonist, adopts and is adopted by a dog on the loose in a Winn-Dixie grocery store:

"Here boy," I said again. And then I figured that the dog was probably like everybody else in the world, that he would want to get called by a name, only I didn't know what his name was, so I just said the first thing that came into my head. I said, "Here, Winn-Dixie."

And that dog came trotting over to me just like he had been doing it his whole life. -- Kate DiCamillo


Tonight, I'm reading Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, in which the Indian American physician protagonist (hm... why does that sound familiar?) is searching for answers in the death of her colleague Anders. She has traveled to the Amazon, where she meets a young deaf boy named Easter who was the last to see Anders alive.

Marina could see him sitting on a log, a pad of paper out across his knees, Easter pressed in close beside him. Of course he could teach a boy how to make his letters. He'd done it three times before. It wouldn't make any difference to him that Easter couldn't hear. This is who you are, Anders tells him, pointing to Easter's name. Then he points to his own, This is who I am. 

Marina and her companion, Dr. Swenson, wonder at Anders teaching the boy to write both his own name, and Anders' as well. Finally, Swenson concludes,


Maybe he felt it was a way to be remembered. -- Ann Patchett



What are your favorite quotes about names?

Thembi Ngubane's Story: HIV and AIDS Acceptance

“Our parents struggled against apartheid, they wanted to be free. And it is the same with HIV/AIDS. This is the new struggle.” – Thembi Ngubane

Thembi Ngubane was a 19-year-old South African woman from Khayelitsha township, outside Cape Town. She never thought she would inspire people from around the world with her life’s story. Surely, she never thought she would continue to be an inspiration even after her death.

But when Thembi was given a tape recorder by NPR’s Radio Diaries, and asked to record the day to day experiences of her life as one of South Africa’s millions of HIV+ youth, everything changed. In light of the severe social stigma that remains around HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa, Thembi had until then been relatively silent about her condition. Even when Radio Diaries played segments of her story on National Public Radio in the U.S., she did not want her story broadcast in her home country.

Yet, in the personal to political tradition of so many social change movements in the U.S. – the 1970’s feminist movement, the civil rights movement, and now the body acceptance movements – Thembi took her personal story and connected it to a broader global movement around HIV and AIDS acceptance. She traveled to the U.S. and met with former President Bill Clinton and then-Senator Barak Obama. In March 2007, she spoke to the South African Parliament about the need to address AIDS-based discrimination in her country. Indeed, in the sheer act of telling her story, Thembi galvanized a movement around acceptance of HIV and AIDS both in South Africa and around the world.

To read the rest of this blog, please go to Adios, Barbie!