What am I waiting for (12/07)?

The shortlist of Cybils nonfiction picture book finalists, which I'll help judge.

Official word that publication of The Day-Glo Brothers is 12 months away, at which point I'll start working in earnest on a full-fledged author website. (My wife, by the way, has been justifiably raving about this one.)

An editor's verdict on J.R.

The posting of the complete schedule at the Texas Library Association conference.

After the holidays, when I'll try to convince some of my local author friends to let me tag along on their school visits.

The right time to pick the brains of the librarians at the elementary school just down the street.

The right time to try my hand at writing a "Cadenza" for Horn Book.

The right time to pitch a children's nonfiction panel for the 2008 Texas Book Festival.

The right time...

The Something Something of So-and-So

Fuse #8 recently had lots of good things to say about The Puzzling World of Winston Breen. Around the same time, we had The Transmogrification of Roscoe Wizzle checked out from the library, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was sitting atop a stack of books that 8-year-old S was ready to part with.

Not long before, I'd been thinking about The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing and The Invention of Hugo Cabret and the similarity of the structure of those books' titles -- The Intriguing Noun [or Adjective-Noun Combo] of Catchy Character Name -- with the title I came up with for my J.R. manuscript (The Blankety Blank of Blank Blank Blank).

Now I'm wondering, is this an overused approach? I bet there are other such titles I've missed. Which have you noticed?

What am I waiting for (3/07)?

News from editors on Pasta, James, Smith and P.O.

Submission (or revision) news on J.R. and Arbor.

Word on whether, where and when I'll be traveling to do some on-site research for one project or another.

The Cybils post-mortem. Get your comments in now.

The receipt through Interlibrary Loan of an obscure figure's autobiography -- a book that might well be a crushing bore but might also inspire yet another research project. The two are not mutually exclusive, you know.

Official confirmation on a couple of fun pieces of news that I can share with you all.

The arrival of my very first issue of Horn Book, which I ordered over the weekend. It seems like it wasn't very long ago, when I was first getting started in this business, that subscribing to Horn Book seemed like a total cart-before-the-horse extravagance.

What are you guys still doing there?

Satchel Paige once said, "Don't look back: Something may be gaining on you." For me these days, it's more like, "Don't look back: A pair of old manuscripts may still be sitting there waiting for you."

With J.R. out the door and Pasta still making the rounds, I've recently turned my attention to Arbor, a middle grade novel that's been in the works for about a dozen years. Half of that time, it existed only in my head, but that still leaves a long history of development on paper. I've been happy with Arbor for a long time, too, but parts of it still aren't clicking with editors, so I've gone back and worked some more on the first few chapters, where I think the problem lies.

Then there's James, a biography I began researching about five years ago. On Monday, I read four "final" drafts of considerably different tellings I've tried along the way in attempts to make the story resonate enough with editors for them to want to help me shape it further. The most recent draft, which I last touched a year ago, I like very much. Still, I may be on the verge of yet another approach to James' story.

The thing is, I don't mind. I feel like my writing has come a long way over the years, but I really want these old projects to come with me.

What am I working on? (2/07)

At the moment, not so much:

The ending of J.R., still. I'm now on the third version, since version 2 -- dashed off Friday evening while waiting for my takeout order of cheese enchiladas -- turned out not quite as brilliantly as it seemed to at the time.

Arbor, again. I've been working on this middle-grade novel for years, and the latest round of editorial feedback showed that it's still not quite where it needs to me. What's funny, though, is that the main thing I need to work on is something that hardly of the editors mentioned at all -- my main character. I figure that when your main character doesn't seem to register with editors one way or another, that's not such a good thing.

What am I waiting for? (2/07)

News from editors on S.V.T., Pasta, James and Smith.

P.O.'s return to circulation.

The right time to travel a few hundred miles east for some on-site research for J.R.

Anything that may develop from an animation studio's recent out-of-the-blue inquiry about one of my projects.

TLA!

J.R.'s been drafted!

I just finished the first complete draft of J.R., which will soon be in the hands of two key readers -- my wife and my agent.

Many thanks to those who chimed in with their support earlier this week as I struggled with how to end the thing. I think I managed to strike a balance between hopefulness and jaw-dropping realism.

But what I know for sure is that I'm done with the thing for now, and can take the weekend off.

I could, anyway, except that this great idea for a new picture book came to me yesterday morning...

The feel-bad picture book of the year

With a self-imposed deadline of one week from tonight, I need to figure out how on earth to finish my first complete draft of J.R. -- not to find time to finish it, but literally how to conclude the manuscript.

More often than not, it seems I have some inkling of an ending in mind fairly early in a project, and I write toward that ending. I picked J.R. as a topic because his life and times are fascinating, but the more research I've done, the bleaker the story becomes. I didn't set out to write a downer, but at this point, I'm not sure how to avoid it.

So maybe I shouldn't even try. Surely there are some examples out there of picture book histories or biographies that succeed despite -- or even because of -- the depressing nature of the stories they tell. Right?

Right?

What does a children's writer have to do to get noticed around here?

As I did a sort of pregnant-woman waddle into the elevator at the university library yesterday, carrying an 11-inch-tall stack of books in front of my belly, I kept hoping someone would comment on them. Something like, "Wow, that's a lot of books you've got there."

"Yes," I would have replied. "I'm writing a 1,000-word children's story."

But nobody asked. Sheesh -- it was like they were used to seeing someone carry a stack of books through the library.

So that's what I'm doing

Last night, while getting in order the next two lists of books I'll need for my J.R. research, I realized just what I'm trying to accomplish with all this digging beyond the man's autobiography: I'm trying to become intimately familiar with elements of his life that were so commonplace to him that it never would have occurred to him to write them down.

Researching doggedly, writing doggerel

Earlier this week I sent my critique partners the first draft of my manuscript for J.R. No one besides me has seen it yet, not even my wife (my usual first reader), and it's not even a complete draft.

J.R. is a picture book biography covering the first quarter-century or so of my subject's life, and so far I've gotten him only to age 21 -- there are some momentous developments I still have to get to. I've been working on this project pretty much exclusively since early November. What's taking me so long?

Three things. One is that my subject's autobiography is maddeningly light on personal details for much of the period that I'm focusing on -- especially maddening when compared to his blow-by-blow accounts of political maneuverings he witnessed. So, it's taken an unusual amount of research (with more still to come) just to flesh out my own understanding of his circumstances.

On top of that, whenever my subject quotes someone in his autobiography -- be it about his personal life or his political one -- whatever that person actually said is buried within a too-eloquent reconstruction undertaken by my subject when memoir-writing time came half a century later.

An example:

A few weeks later I met the bride on the street and asked her how she and her husband were getting along. "Splendidly," she replied. "He is now acting all right. I now have no cause to complain of him and am of the opinion that I shall have none in the future."

So, it's taking me some time to cut through all of that -- but without making up quotes more to my liking.

Finally -- and part of what attracted me to this project in the first place -- there was so much historically significant and relevant stuff going on during the years I'm covering that it's a major challenge to figure out what to leave out, what to incorporate, and how to keep myself from writing another 6,200-word picture book manuscript.

My solution so far has been to take a more verse-like approach than I ever have before, at least as far the formatting I'm using for this draft.

By breaking my words
into partial-line sections,
I seem to be succeeding
at being more economical
with what I choose to say.

It's kept my word-count down (below 1,000 so far), but the downside is that what I've written may well -- and rightfully -- be perceived as doggerel. I'll know more after Saturday.

Crowing about research

My research for J.R. has fanned out considerably these past few days as I've temporarily moved on from my subject's autobiography to a stack of other books about the time and place that he lived.

Most of these books are only partially related to his story, which means I'm spending a lot of time in the indexes, finding the most interesting parts, and zipping through those (this is preliminary research, I should add) with notes about other books I should track down. As a result, I'm jumping from book to book with a sense of completion that's not so common for a plodding reader like me, and the whole thing is loads of fun. I feel like a crow bringing shiny things back to his nest.

So, I'm enthusiastic about this project. But just how enthusiastic? So enthusiastic that yesterday morning when I suggested to my wife that, for research purposes, we add a 550-mile extension to our family's upcoming 300-mile round trip to NASA's Johnson Space Center (you know, since we'll already be in that direction), it sounded eminently reasonable.

To me, I mean.

What's next? Who knows?

Whatever else 2007 may have in store, it doesn't look like I'll be spending much time ginning up ideas for writing projects. Instead, I'll just need to figure out which one to pursue next.

I've gotten encouraging editorial news lately on several of the projects I've got in circulation. Revision notes are supposedly forthcoming for both the James and Smith manuscripts. My Pioneers proposal has elicited interest in seeing a complete manuscript. And my Pasta proposal has met with a request for an additional couple of chapters.

On top of those are a trio of nonfiction projects that haven't been pitched to any editors yet (including J.R.) but which I'm itching to tuck into, along with long-on-the-drawing-board ideas for a couple of middle grade novels.

This is a happy situation to be in. I vividly remember a loooooong period a decade or so ago when I wanted badly to write something but had no clue as to what, or even any idea about how to figure that out. I sure don't miss that feeling.

What am I working on? (11/06)

It's been a long time since I've offered this summary, so thanks to Tim for suggesting I get back to it. Here goes:

I'm doing very, very preliminary research for J.R., the next picture book biography I hope to write. "Preliminary" as in slowly reading a big ol' academic history of the period in which he lived, a book with only a handful of mentions of J.R. himself. Once I've absorbed all that, I plan to move on to J.R.'s autobiography -- but boy, is it hard keeping myself from jumping right to it.

I've revised S.V.T. and resubmitted it to my agent, but I'm still thinking of tweaks, so I'll be storing those up over the weekend and passing those along.

My role in getting the Cybils off the ground -- while extremely limited compared to the effort that others have been putting into it -- has squeezed out the rest of my writing work and much of my blogging. But I think it's for a good cause -- I recently saw a writer/illustrator make what I call the "nonfiction face" when the conversation turned to books about real, true-life stuff. In shedding light on the best nonfiction picture books (among other types) out there, perhaps the Cybils can reduce the occurrence of nonfiction face:

From Cybils to sikyifriykyiwas

The children's book awards now have a name and a web site: the Cybils. Now, head on over and get to nominatin'. And if you want to be considered for a non-fiction picture book committee -- either to narrow down the nominations, or to select the winner -- let me know right here in the comments.

***

I enjoyed a flashback to my youth yesterday through a couple of bedtime chapters of Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, which I hadn't read in 25 years. (I read sequel Superfudge aloud to my own fourth-grade class, so school visits should be a cinch for me.) But as much as I enjoyed it, 7-year-old S enjoyed it more, devouring the whole thing and getting all excited when I told him there were other Fudge books. I'm so glad I thought to bring home Tales while S, like Peter Hatcher, still has a 2 1/2-year-old brother.

***

I got some useful and encouraging feedback on my new manuscript, SVT, from my critique group on Saturday. I've got another set of eyes looking at it, and then I'll figure out my next move, but I'm still very much in love with it.

***

SVT must have met my need to get silly and make stuff up, because I've now been drawn far deeper into JR, the topic I'd been considering for my next picture book biography. Before I really started reading up on the subject, I'd thought it was something I might want to write about, eventually; now, I feel like it's something I have to write about, now.

***

Finally, if you've always wondered what a sikyifriykyiwa sounds like, wonder no more. Yesterday, I learned of Wesleyan University's Virtual Instrument Museum, which is packed with sample sounds and videos of chordophones, aerophones, membranophones, and idiophones. "Idiophones?" Who knew?