Are You Asking the Wrong Questions?

by Jenny Ramaley

If one were to grow up with a father who escaped the Nazis in 1939, one might absorb the stories and perhaps grow up with a slightly darker take on the world than, say, someone with a bit less horror in their family background. That someone might grow up to write children’s books filled with sad but resourceful children who survive the alleged loss of their parents and numerous unsavory characters and dangerous situations. That someone might be Daniel Handler. You might know him better by his nom de plume, Lemony Snicket, who has sold more than 60 million books as author of the dreadfully successful “A Series of Unfortunate Events” in addition to other adult, YA and picture books. In case you’ve lost track of Mr. Handler, who plays a mean accordion by the way, he began a new book series last year. In “All the Wrong Questions”, Lemony now fills the roles of main character and author.

 

Since our Wednesday blogs pertain to ‘writing’, let’s cover what Mr. Handler, who happened to be in Pittsburgh on Friday to speak at the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Kids and Teens Event, says about writing. His love of books is deeply ingrained and by the age of 10 he was quite picky about what he read – choosing to hurl the ‘moralistic treacle that passed for children literature’ across his attic bedroom. He wanted to read about terrible things, about series of unfortunate events or all the wrong questions, but no one was writing those types of stories. Back then, children’s books featured plucky heroes who were unpopular with the (fill in the blank) crowd because of certain differences, but the bullies got their comeuppance at the story’s  rousing end, or plucky heroes dealing with near-death illnesses that they overcome with the help of a dear relative.

Even at a young age, Daniel knew all those stories were nonsense. There will always be cliques that ignore you. Bullies never get their comeuppance. And certain things will kill you whether you’re plucky or not. Horrible things can happen again and again.

 

With an outlook like that, it’s much easier to see how the Baudelaire youngsters got into such a mess. But what’s even more noteworthy is that even after 13 volumes, their story WAS NEVER NEATLY RESOLVED WITH A ROUSING END. Why? Because Mr. Handler believes questions are more interesting than endings wrapped up with a bow.

 

That is, as long as you don’t ask the Wrong questions.

 

When Daniel asked his father, “Don’t you think you were brave to escape the Nazis?”, the father, who always answered a question with another question, asked, “Do you think I was braver than the ones who didn’t make it?” The right question was “Where did Grandma hide the diamonds? The ones that got them across the border and bought food and help.”

The next time you find yourself mired in the middle of a story, frustrated and ready to pull out your hair, stop and think. Are you or your characters asking the Wrong Questions? A slightly twisted perspective may be just what you need.

Hollywood and a John Green Story Come to Town

by Jenny Ramaley

From Sisters of the Traveling Pants to Harry Potter to Twilight to Hunger Games, Hollywood loves kidlit fiction. Hollywood also loves Pittsburgh. Did you know that?

 

My out-of-state sister and brother-in-law were visiting the day I read in our local paper that film crews would soon start filming John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars, right here in our area. We were all in the living room when an older pickup truck stopped in front of my house and watched two lanky young guys lope up my sidewalk. Turns out they were scouting locations for the main character’s home, and thought my house looked homey – but more importantly – noticed our flat front yard, a rarity in the hilly Pittsburgh area. Could they take a look at the inside of my house?

Hmmm. Normally that answer would be “are you out of your mind, buddy”, but ‘Greg’ volunteered his driver’s license while my brother in law slipped out and photographed his license plate, so I let him come in. He went through every room taking pictures – he was a real nice guy. Since my sister was visiting, some rooms were picture perfect – while other rooms were piled with all the detritus from the neat rooms. Greg swore he could see past the mess and assured me he’d seen a whole lot worse. It was kind of . . . exciting. But having had some past brushes with Hollywood from my screenwriting days, I knew not to get my hopes up that Shailene Woodley would be roaming my hallways with an oxygen tank anytime soon.

Not to go on and on, but our house just wasn’t what they needed. We heard later that they found a house about a half hour away with flat terrain that better suggests the Indiana location where the story is set.  Cynthia, a Route 19 Writer who lives on my street, had her bathroom scouted – yep, they just needed a specific bathroom layout – but she didn’t meet the location needs either. She did, however, sell the services of her environmental company to the location scout, and a few days later was overseeing water sampling in a mucky pool that was being used for a different film project - a horror story where 'bodies' were floating in the water, and they needed to make sure the water was safe for cameramen to stand in. Ah, Hollywood.

 

Although our houses didn’t meet the bill, the church at the top of our street did get the nod for filming the scenes where the teens’ cancer support group meets. The crew is keeping things low-key, but I suspect they’re filming today – street parking is blocked off with orange cones, and guys were off-loading crates that look like camera equipment in the back corner of the parking lot.

Best of luck to the film project – John Green does such a great job capturing teen angst, and this story has the added challenge of intertwining cancer and the specter of early death into the characters’ lives. Shailene Woodley did a great job with George Clooney in The Descendants. I can’t wait to see how this story is brought to the big screen, and how hilly Pittsburgh is transformed into suburban Indiana.

 

A Dose of Vitamin E (for Emma)

What a great weekend! The Route 19 Writers invited Emma Dryden of DrydenBks to come work with us and critique our work. And boy, did she! In this and future blogs, we’ll share some of what we learned from Emma. But first we want to share some pictures and give you an idea of how much info, fun and food 11 writers and one editor can cram into a weekend.

 

This is Emma. In every single picture taken of Emma, she’s talking with her hands. Cynthia does that, too. Wonder what that means  . . .

 

We gathered on Friday night at Judy’s house for a salmon dinner, conversation and the first critiques. Emma reviewed the synopsis and first 10 pages for two novels, both YA contemporaries. While we are a darn good writers group that provides supportive, constructive but kind criticism for each other, it was so helpful to have a seasoned pro arrive and nudge us to work harder and smarter.

Emma has edited nearly five-hundred books for children and young readers. She understands the challenges of writers who want to create great, compelling books for children and young adults. But before a writer can reach an audience, she/he has to get published. Emma helped us step back and ask ourselves some basic questions – who is your audience for this book? Do toddlers want to see a book with a little baby main character or do they prefer to see toddlers like themselves? Or if your characters are graduating from high school you'll be losing some of the YA high school audience and venturing into NA (new adult). Is that who you want to reach? 

Basic writer/craft topics were also addressed. Even though our group boasts published authors and fairly advanced writing, Emma informed us that we were missing the mark on synopsis writing. Oops!

E Tip #1: A synopsis is not a pitch, a tease or an outline – it’s meant to communicate your main character’s emotional journey – their want – and major plot points. Don’t just jam in a bunch of details about time and place. And you can’t forget to put the category (picture book, YA fantasy) and word count in the upper right hand corner.

 

On Saturday, Miss Kitty hosted all of us at her house. She read us a book to get us in the right mood. We had a fab lunch after a morning of reviews. We finished up crits in the late afternoon despite bombarding Emma with questions all day. One of our poets is considering getting into self-publishing so Emma pointed out pros and cons about that route vs. traditional publishing.

 

Coriander kept Emma’s seat toasty whenever Emma got out of her seat. That’s western Pennsylvania hospitality.

 

This is Miss Kitty capturing the ever present Stinkbugs that plague western Pennsylvania. They're an odd little bug – harmless, stinky if squashed. Maybe they're writing little stinkbug novels and wanted some tips from Emma, too. Emma assured us that New York has bugs, too. They have cockroaches. Which makes stinkbugs seem sort of okay.

We ended the day over glasses of wine and hanging out at the kitchen table. Having Emma there chatting about the market and social networking do’s and don’ts felt totally comfortable. It felt like all of us had made a great new friend.

E Tip #2: Quit stalling. Get a website. Get a Facebook. Follow Tweets from your favorite agents. It’s called social networking for a reason - be social and network!

Thanks for a great weekend, Emma.

 

If your writers group is ready to get nudged to the next level and would like to talk to Emma for a dose of Vitamin E, she can be reached through her website .

 by Jenny Ramaley

 

An Evening of Stardust, Hope and Secrets

by Jenny Ramaley

Pittsburgh is a great city on so many different levels. Rock solid people, great food, hidden architectural gems tucked into neighborhoods, and an endless bounty of learning opportunities. Of these, my favorite is the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures series featuring children's writers --  “Black, White & Read All Over.” In the past I’ve posted articles on seeing John Green and Gayle Forman. The lectures are great fun. Good writers are generally good speakers and the latest visitor was exceptionally entertaining -- the creatively versatile, inimitable Neil Gaiman. What made the night extra special was that Neil wasn’t on a speaking tour. He knows Dr. Drew Davidson, from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, who convinced him to come and talk about the 15^th anniversary and re-release of Neil’s book, “Stardust” -- for one night only. The Music Hall at the Carnegie Museum was packed. How cool is it to see authors treated like rock stars?

Neil talked about getting his initial inspiration for the book after accepting an award for his comic “Starman #19” at the 1991 World Fantasy Convention in Tuscon. If you’ve ever spent time in the desert away from city lights, you know what he’s talking about when he tells of seeing a lone shooting star against a “thick black vehement night’ filled with stars. He thought ‘what if it was a blazing diamond streaking across the sky . . . or a girl with a broken leg? (in case you haven’t read the book, I’ll stop here.)

Neil shared a bit about the writing process for the book. He told about buying a new old fashioned fountain pen and notebook, settling in to housesit at Tori Amos’s quirky bridge/house to write, and dictating into a cassette machine so his collaborator could illustrate the story as he wrote. To go from the handwritten word to typing it into the computer acts as an editing step for him, since he refuses to type any sections he feels aren't worthy of the time. After the book was printed and released, the model Claudia Schiffer fell in love with the story and nudged her director husband, Matthew Vaughn, into making a movie. (Robert DiNiro in drag is supposedly fabulous.) The film has done very well outside of the U.S. but Neil says he often ends up apologizing for all the extra ‘stuff’ the movie people added when they ‘mucked about’ with the story.

The audience was also treated to a reading from his new book due out in June (“The Ocean at the End of the Lane”). It started out as a short story, and deals with a few members of the Hemstock family – reoccurring characters sprinkled throughout several of his books, including “The Graveyard Book.” Then the story turned into a novella, then a very long novella, and surprised him by ending up as a novel. Be forewarned. Neil determined by the end of writing the story that although this book focuses on young people, the story is too dark for children. During the Q&A he clarified his thoughts on when a book is for children and when it is for adults. Using his book “Coraline” as an example, he explained that while parts of that story are dark, Coraline was a hopeful character and certainly not helpless (Okay for Kids); the new book gets quite dark and in it the child is truly helpless (Not Okay for Kids). Hope = children. Remember that. And if the youngsters are drawn to this new book, he assured us that the first two chapters are quite dull and will surely turn off any child who attempts to read it. We’ll see about that in June.

Truly an entertaining evening. But here’s the best part. Neil Gaiman told us a secret about an upcoming project. And he asked the hundreds of people to not post this tidbit on line and keep it to ourselves. And, since the packed auditorium was filled with Pittsburghers, I’m betting his secret is safe.

And hopefully he’ll come back.

Sarah Dessen is coming in January. I’ll report on her next month.

Hot Potato: E-Quality

by Susan Chapek

E-publishing, particularly e-self-publishing, is a burning hot topic this summer. Blogs and discussion boards are fired up for and against (Verla Kay's Blue Board thread "all the buzz about e-books" stretches 14 pages and claims 6050 hits as of this writing.)

I'm not here to persuade writers to e-s-p, nor to argue that they shouldn't. I want to focus on one powerful argument against it. How will readers be able to find the best—or even the good—e-s-p books among hundreds of thousands on offer? Popularity filters already exist. But where's the Quality Filter?

Replies to this argument tend to express merely a general optimism about how these things tend to evolve and sort themselves out naturally on the Web.

Cold comfort.

Because the objection is valid. Customers (especially for Kidlit) want Quality, and they want to find it quickly and easily. Quality Filters for e-pubbing in general, and e-self-pubbing in particular, won't work until they're at least as efficient and reliable as the filters we have in traditional publishing.

So—what Quality Filters exit in traditional Kidlit Publishing?

• Agents. (Because most slush stops here nowadays.)
• Publishers
• Awards
• Reviews
• Teachers and librarians
• Bookstores, real or virtual
• Word of Internet and Word of Mouth

(As I listed these, I realized that most of these filters are weakening these days. Bookstores are closing; review publications faltering; educators and libraries struggle with tighter budgets; marketing departments wield a powerful veto over editorial choices. Even the prize committees are under attack in recent years, from those who object to their criteria or its application.)

Do any of the same Quality Filters operate for e-s-p books?

• On-line publishers? The ones I've seen seem geared to adult genres.
• On-line bookstores? Neither reliable (provide only favorable professional reviews) nor efficient.
• Teachers and librarians? Huge potential, once they figure out a system to share ratings.
• Internet word-of-mouth (blogs, clubs, ads, social networks, etc.)? Need their own Quality Filter!

So I'd like to propose several possible E-Quality Filter models that can be created quickly, by the existing Kidlit community itself.

1) Pay a visit to the writers' cooperative e-bookstore at http://www.bookviewcafe.com/ Here the Quality Filter is the presence of some well-known, distinguished authors. Their names suggest a level of quality for all the authors in the co-op. The big names also serve as a magnet for search engines, exposing the less-known authors to potential readers.

Kidlit writer cooperatives could provide one kind of Quality Filter.

2) The Andrea Brown Agency turned publisher this spring. See http://www.austinscbwi.com/2011/04/28/hoover-announces-debut-ya-release/ Agents are established Quality Filters, many even assuming some editorial functions. In fact, as publishing houses cut staff, it's become common for ex-editors to become Agents.

Both of those models are already up and working. Meanwhile, how about all those ex-Editors? Many are willing, apparently, to work for royalties instead of a salary. A few have truly distinguished track records, discovering and nurturing Kidlit authors. Wouldn't these patron saints of Kidlit make ideal E-Quality Filters?

3) So where's the star Editor bold enough to establish her own e-publishing imprint? I'll bet teachers, librarians, and parents would flock to that Editor's web site, assured that every book on it meets a standard of quality in writing and editing.

An Editor's online imprint could operate several different ways. In one model, the Editor only reads submissions and selects works that are ready to go. (Here's where writers find a home for those books that have been shopped to tatters but never quite sold—"orphaned" books, "niche" books, "quiet" books, experiments in new genres that don't fit a writer's previous image, novellas, short stories, or any books that—horror of horrors!—are good, but neither potential blockbusters nor prize-winners.) All that might be needed is for the Editor to connect the writer with a free-lance line-editor, formatter, and cover designer. In weeks, the book is published and listed.

In this model, the Editor would earn no advance. The (barely) delayed gratification of pay by royalties would allay suspicions that the Editor accepts every book that comes her way. The Editor's fortunes would rise or sink with her line.

In another model, the Editor might read only already e-self-published books, offer to list the ones she wants to recommend, and negotiate a commission on future royalties.

Or an e-book Editor could choose to list only books she actually edits herself.

In any model, the Editor would strive for volume, but she'd have to be choosy, or her whole line would suffer.

I'd be willing to contribute to a Kickstarter account (www.kickstarter.com/) for the Editor with a good track record who is willing to start up a business along those, or similar, lines. Oh, Distinguished Editor! O Pioneer! You who wielded such benevolent power in the market before! There are many worthy mss—some of them written by the same authors you used to publish in the traditional way—waiting for you to connect them with e-readers.