Writing a first draft

After many months on the road with book events and college visits and writers’ conferences I’m finally home for the remainder of the summer and writing a new story. As much as I love the process of starting with nothing but a blank page and an idea, I’ve been doing this long enough that I know how long its going to take me to get to a solid story that is ready to take into the world. And for that reason I have found great comfort in one of the birds that shares my yard.

Last year this bird built a nest above my porch. It looked like this–a marvel of avian engineering.

And this year I have seen no fewer than five failed attempts at a nest all over my yard. They look like this.

I kind of love it that even a bird doesn’t get something as elemental to bird-ness as building a nest right the first time. He did eventually succeed and we have baby birds about ready to fledge now. But I’m going to take these sagging collections of grass and twig as permission to make this first draft as messy as it needs to be. And I hope you will too.

New Representation

I am very happy to announce that I am under new representation with Fiona Kenshole at the Transatlantic Agency. I thought long and hard about what I really needed from a literary agent, and I’m very pleased to be in partnership with such a thoughtful reader with a global outlook on children’s literature. I am looking forward to many productive years ahead.

Diversity in the Bookstore

I work at my local independent bookstore and it’s been an education in all sorts of ways. I’m astonished by how often people are buying a book for someone they don’t know very well. I’m touched by all the people who come in just to make a face to face connection with one of the booksellers or to pet our store cat, the beautiful and heroically patient Molly Bloom. And I love it when a flock of middle schoolers descends in the middle of a hot chocolate date and settles in the picture book section to sip cocoa and read aloud to each other. I think of Annie Blooms as a warm and welcoming place. But I had an experience over the summer that has me rethinking my assumptions.

One day last summer a pair of sisters, one about 12 and the other 4 or 5, came into the shop fresh from the yogurt place across the street. The older settled into the cosy chair in the back with a YA novel and the younger rocked the dragon and sang to herself. This sort of thing happens all the time. About 30 minutes later the mother of these girls came in visibly agitated and asked if her girls had been good. I assured her they had, pointed out other children shopping without their parents, and told her that we love to encourage independent browsing by young readers. It took much more than the usual amount of reassurance to soothe her. I would have just put it down to a mom having a rough day. I’ve had plenty of those myself. But this mother was black. And it made me revisit what I know about the black experience in a retail environment. For many black people their retail interactions are negative, and sometimes overtly threatening. It made me think about whether this bookstore is as welcoming as I want it to be. For one thing, none of our booksellers are black. I know quite a few booksellers in the region and honestly I can’t think of a black bookseller anywhere in town.

This brings up lots of questions for me. Does that lack of black booksellers all by itself make a bookstore a less welcoming place? Does the overall negative retail experience make a black family less likely to bring the family to a bookstore for recreational browsing, even if the bookstore itself is not overtly racist to it’s black patrons? Would a black-owned bookstore make a difference? Why are there so few minority-owned bookstores? And what would make minority ownership of a bookstore more likely?

So often when there is a discussion of diversity in children’s literature the bottom line tends to be “those books just don’t sell very well.” It seems to me that most of the energy in the We Need Diverse Books movement is on the production end of the equation. And yet I don’t see how meaningful change can be made with out as least as much, if not more, attention on the consumer end of the bookstore experience. I wish I had answers. I’m not even certain that I’m seeing this problem as clearly as I might. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments. I do hope going forward that we have as many conversations about the retail end of diversity in literature as we do about the publishing end.

A discussion on diversity in Children’s Lit

I’ve been following the discussions about the representations of slavery in children’s literature all day and have found much to think about and much I’d like to discuss with people who have thought about the issues of diversity in children’s lit for a lot longer than I have. So I’m very happy to know that there is an opportunity to engage this important conversation here in Portland. It’s free and sponsored by Portland State University. The panel discussion will be next week January 28th at 7:30 at University Pointe in room 102. I hope to see you there.

A Book Birthday for The Turn of the Tide

I’m happy to be celebrating my book birthday tonight at Annie Blooms books in Multnomah Village. This is a day I’ve been working toward for almost five years and wanted to take a moment to thank some people who have meant the world to me on my writing journey.

My critique group has been faithfully meeting twice a month, reading and commenting on draft after re images vision of this story and many others that may never be published. I’m grateful for their keen eye and unwavering support. Thank you Cheryl Coupe, Cliff Lehman, Lyra Knierem, Barb Liles, Amy Baskin, Robin Herrara, Nora Ericson and Michael Gettle-Gilmartin.

This particular story had much to do with the sailboat Bill rather impulsively bought almost 20 years ago, a boat he lovingly repaired and refurbished and on which we all learned to sail. Ever since I read The Wizard of Earthsea when I was a kid I’d wanted a sailboat of my own. And I have loved sailing and wanted to write a story about it for ages. I was so happy when this one came together. So thank you to Bill and our kids for sailing with me and testing out a bunch of the maneuvers that are in this story just to make sure they are possible.

And of course thank you to my agent Stephen Fraser and my Random House editors Michelle Nagler and Jenna Lettice. A book is a magnificent thing and you have made this story so much more than I could have on my own. Thank you.

And finally thank you to teachers and librarians and independent bookstores who have been wonderful over the years in bringing my books to the attention of young readers.