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 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!

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 waiting for? (11/06)

Half a year since I last posted about this, I'm still waiting for more things than I'm working on. Including:

My first glimpse of the art for The Day-Glo Brothers.

News from editors about several manuscripts:

• My biographies of James (picture book) and Smith (middle grade), which are both with the same editor. This editor gets them, I think, but there's a big difference between "gets" and "buys."
• My middle grade novel, Arbor.
• My proposal and sample chapters for Pasta.
• My picture book/graphic novel series P.O.

Copies of the books nominated for the Nonfiction Picture Book category of the Cybils.

The next big industry/literary event I plan to attend: the Texas Library Association annual conference in San Antonio in April.

Next summer, when -- a year before The Day-Glo Brothers' publication date -- I'll get cracking on a full-fledged web site, curriculum guides, and whatnot.

This, that, these and those

The details are out regarding my next highly anticipated (by me) public appearance. Here in Austin on Friday, August 4, I'll join Nathan Jensen, Janice and Tom Shefelman, and recent compadres Anne Bustard and Mark Mitchell on a children's literature panel at the conference of the Texas Christian Schools Association.

At the same conference, another local author, Lindsey Lane, will be celebrated for Snuggle Mountain, the honor book for the 2006 Children's Gallery Award.

In other developments, I've put the (possibly) finishing touches on Arbor, a middle-grade novel that I first "finished" in 2003. At my agent's suggestion, I took another pass at it this spring and made some further tweaks this past week. I had forgotten how much I enjoy that story -- I've got some really high hopes for it.

When I last wrote about Toast, I was still trying to catch VR for an interview. Well, we spoke two Fridays ago and had a great, warm conversation. My CB and VR interviews have made the story much richer than it was before. I'm now trying to get a new draft finished by Wednesday, in time for Don to read it at our next critique meeting. After that, I'll have about a day and a half to make further changes in time for my agent's monthly manuscript-reading week.

Meanwhile, there's been some progress on the submissions front. Smith, James and Pioneers all went out to an editor this week. I've been told not to expect a reply right away, which was not the case when another manuscript -- P.O., perhaps a picture book, potentially a graphic novel -- went out this Tuesday. It came back the same day. But those were six suspenseful hours, let me tell you.

I'm taking a long weekend, so have a great, safe July 4th (and 1st, 2nd and 3rd), everybody.

It's three, three, THREE rejections in one!

Yesterday I got a big "No, thank you" on James, Smith and Pioneers, all from a single editor. She seemed to like my subjects a lot more than she liked my writing style, which is somewhat troubling -- I come up with new subjects every week, but my style changes a little less often.

Oh, well. This means a new chance with a new editor -- maybe three new chances with three new editors -- starting next week.

And maybe, to quote Duke Ellington, "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young." Of course, it was funnier when he said it, because he was in his 60s at the time. And famous.

Biblio non grata

Besides the good news about Tony Persiani, there was another bright spot last week: An editor at a major house is interested in both my Smith manuscript and my Pioneers proposal, and both will be heading her way soon.

Speaking of Smith, even though the current version of the manuscript is, in theory, "finished" (and even though I have, in theory, "moved on to other projects"), I read another book about him last week, a brand-new memoir by someone who knew him well. And I'm relieved to say that this new account has made me only more intrigued and enchanted by him, and glad I decided to write about him in the first place.

One interesting thing about the book itself, though, is that the list of suggested reading completely ignores the only full-fledged biography that's been published about him. This can't have just been an oversight -- the biography came out from a major publisher just a few years ago.

I've been aware of some grumblings about that previous book -- displeasure among those who admired Smith that the author delved (necessarily) into his personal life and addressed (unnecessarily) a baseless and particularly ugly allegation, which the author ultimately dismissed. I wonder if that explains the biography's exclusion from the reading recommendations in the memoir, or if there's more to it than that.

Pioneer days

Three years ago, I applied for an SCBWI grant for a nonfiction picture book I'll call Pioneers. I didn't get the grant, and since my plan was to spend the grant money on a research trip necessary to complete the manuscript, I set Pioneers aside and focused on other projects (The Day-Glo Brothers, Smith, James) instead.

Well, now I'm back at work on a proposal for Pioneers -- not for a grant application, but to shop around to editors. I've revised the synopsis, mostly by adding in a bit about how the book would fit into the market (vertically, with the spine facing out). And I've totally redone the writing sample.

Turns out, the "picture book" sample I'd written three years ago was more for a middle-grade text, and a fairly dry one at that. I've drastically shortened the length, removed the un-punchy parts, gave it a new beginning, and tried to make it work for the first 3-5 pages of a picture book.

We'll see how it goes. I think Pioneers would be a fun project, and it would certainly be an educational one for me, since the topic is one I know relatively little about (just enough to know that I'd like to know more). I just hope it isn't 2009 before I get back to it again.

Mr. Smith gets back into circulation

Word came from Agent Erin this week that my latest revision of Smith did the trick, so this middle-grade biography is ready to make the rounds among editors. This will be the first manuscript that we've sent out as a pair to an editor I wasn't already working with, and I'm excited to see how the process works.

The one last thing I needed to do was put together my bibliography for Smith, which I took care of late last night. So, now I think I'll reward myself with a little break.

...

Well, that was nice.

This morning I was up at my usual 5 a.m., sending out interview requests for the proposal I'm working on for E.F., which would be for young adults. Meanwhile, I'm waiting on a bunch of library books to help me get started researching another YA project I'd like to propose (it's so new, I don't have a pseudonym for it yet), and I also need to completely rewrite some sample text for Holiday, another picture book biography I want to pitch.

Good thing I'll be fortifying myself today with some BBQ.

What to do?

This may well be a very short-lived condition, but for the first time in well over a year, I don't have a nonfiction revision roosting at the top of my to-do list. Earlier this week, I sent Agent Erin my Smith rewrite, and with James dispatched to an editor last week, that takes care of my major, non-Day-Glo projects of late.

So, how to fill my time?

• Compiling and burning a companion CD for my Smith manuscript. I don't do this for all my subjects (though I guess I could), but Smith was a musician whose work is not as well known as it should be. Obviously, I'm trying to change that. Does a companion CD enhance the experience of reading a manuscript or expose its flaws? Guess I'll know soon.
• Resuming work on my marketing database for The Day-Glo Brothers. Does anyone know a good children's bookstore in Cleveland?
• Getting back to my research for E.F.
• At last revising, maybe, a picture book fiction manuscript that a friend critiqued last fall. I think it's going to take me a long time before I'm even ready to write a proposal/sample for E.F., and I've got to be writing something in the meantime. It could be this one. Or maybe that middle-grade novel.
• Insisting to Agent Erin that I really am focused on nonfiction. It just depends on what the meaning of the word "focused" is.

The true length of a "two-day" conference

It's feeling more like a week and a half, if you ask me. Maybe more.

Before I started prepping for San Antonio, I was humming along in my efforts to get Smith into shape by a February 13 deadline. Then I started making arrangements for this and that, and work on the revisions dwindled.

They still haven't picked back up to my satisfaction. There have been notes to decipher, follow-up e-mails to write, F&Gs to staple so that Sky Boys doesn't get mixed up with Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!, and so forth. I'm off my exercise schedule, and I haven't been getting to read anything in the evenings beyond the boys' bedtime stories.

Not that I'm complaining. Much. Mostly, I'm just trying to imprint on my own brain that there's a lot more to these conferences than the days I'm actually there, and that next time I'll need to keep in check my expectations for how quickly I'll recover.

Chapter 4 divided by 3 equals...

Another area of my Smith manuscript that needs some work is my division of its 13,000 words into chapters. I've currently got six, plus an introduction, but it's not enough.

The first couple of chapters feel like the right length -- four double-spaced pages each. But the rest of the manuscript consists of 8- to 12-pagers that just seem to go on forever.

When I wrote this most recent draft last summer, the organization made sense thematically. Each of the six chapters covered a distinct developmental period in Smith's life, art and career. And if I was writing for an adult audience that was already familiar with Smith, this organization would probably work, with a little tightening and brightening (and snappier chapter titles than "Chapter 4").

But most young readers won't know the first thing about Smith and will probably need some convincing that he's as important a figure as I think he is. That's where having more and briefer chapters might come in handy -- each chapter's beginning, when the narrative has already been briefly interrupted, could offer a chance to make a little more of my case.

Plus, shorter chapters are easier to digest, a fact that was driven home to me last night when I read Sneed B. Collard III's recent The Prairie Builders. It's an excellent book, a joy to read. The chapters are so focused and engaging that the end of each came as something of a surprise, rather than as a relief. By that standard, Mr. Smith and I still have a ways to go.

Hey, it's me!

The past couple of days, during my lunch-hour re-reading of the manuscript for my Smith bio, occasional phrases have jumped out as sounding particularly like... me.

I love it. I'll be reading along, thinking, "Well, anyone could have written this," and then I'll come to one of those phrases, and I think, "Hey, I wrote this!"

Trouble is, they're a little too occasional, so when I get around to revising, I'll need to make sure those moments aren't quite so few and far between. Maybe I'll just cut everything that's not so distinctive, and turn this from a middle-grade biography into a few dozen lines of free verse.

My three pseudonymous friends

Late this past Friday night I put the finishing (for now) touches on the latest version of my James manuscript and sent it off to my agent. An editor is already interested, so I could have sent it directly to her, but before I did I wanted it to get a reading untainted by way too many hours of staring at index cards and spiral notebooks.

Also, like a pet cat with a dead bird it caught, I wanted to show off my latest effort to my new handler. I hope the new draft is better received than most dead birds are.

One-year-old F was sick for several days after Christmas, so I spent a lot of time with him slumped on my shoulder while I read a recent book about E.F. and slathered it with Post-It flags (in Day-Glo colors, I'll have you know). I've since started reading a second book and expect a third to arrive from Amazon this week. So, my research for E.F. is well underway, and I'm even more excited about the topic than before.

On my lunch hours this week, I'll be revisiting the Smith manuscript I revised last summer. It's filled with facts and as many quotes as a semiarticulate, taciturn man (Smith, not me -- I don't think) could muster. But now I need to add a certain personal spin to his story to make it come alive. On the other hand, that sounds fairly involved -- maybe I should be saving it for a five-day work week...

Warts and all

Something I'm still trying to figure out with my nonfiction is how far to go with the "warts and all" approach.

Obviously, it's important to me that young readers know about the people that I'm interested in writing about, or else I wouldn't be writing about them. And with one notable exception, I can't think of any children's biographies that were written about horrible people precisely because they were horrible people. We tend to write about people we admire, or at least about those whose stories are meaningful to us.

But people aren't perfect, and what I struggle with is how much to dwell on those imperfections. Is it dishonest to frame a story so that it avoids having to deal directly with those flaws? Is it lazy to save up those shortcomings for the author's note so that they don't disrupt the flow of the narrative? Would a children's biography in which the author goes out of his way to poke holes in the subject be any fun to read?

I wish I had better answers than "maybe," "maybe," and "probably not," but at the moment I don't. I sure hope I do by the time I finish new drafts of Smith and James.

Clued in

I somehow managed to get within a month and a half of the ALA Midwinter Meeting without realizing that it's going to be just down the road in San Antonio. And unlike with the IRA show in San Antonio this past May, exhibits-only registration is priced quite reasonably. So I'm going.

(If you haven't been to one of these shows, the term "exhibits" can be a little misleading. It's not as if they'll be displaying a prehistoric librarian perfectly preserved in amber -- we're talking trade show booths, albeit booths piled high with new books and giveaways and populated with real, live editors and marketing folks.)

In other news from the past week, I heard from an editor that Smith still isn't working for her, had lunch with Don Tate (thanks for picking up the check, Don), interviewed a former Rolling Stone editor about James, and began lightly delving (if one can delve lightly) into E.F. I'm skeptical that I'll get much more done before Christmas, but I'm OK with that.

Class act

I missed Mr. V's book-signing debut last night, as I had a debut of my own. I made my first visit to a class -- Austin Community College's Writing for Children -- as a children's writer. I was astounded at how fast the 45 minutes went by, and by how much I enjoyed myself. I was especially tickled by one student's bulging eyes when I mentioned that my first submitted version of The Day-Glo Brothers was 6,200 words long. Obviously, the class had already covered the minor fact that most picture books are under 1,000 words.

I'd started to become a little resentful of the time eaten up by my preparations for the class, but this morning I'm so glad that I did take that time to get ready. And now it's a two-way race between my ACC honorarium check and the first half of my Day-Glo advance -- one of them will become the first cash money I've received as a children's writer.

I know I wrote a couple of weeks ago that my manuscript had gotten its sign-off from the powers-that-be at Charlesbridge, but I'm delighted to report that earlier this week I got word from my editor that we'd worked out the last two lingering editorial details. "We are officially done," she said. Nothing could have sounded better.

Meanwhile, an editor interested in Smith has asked me for some supporting information to help convince potential doubters at her house that Smith was a nationally significant figure, rather than one who would resonate only regionally. So, this a.m. I spent a chunk of time pulling together market research -- yes, market research. Of the "people who care about Smith's work are 129% more likely than the average US consumer to read The New Yorker" variety. I could have told her what kind of coffee they prefer, but didn't.

At lunch yesterday I continued working on a new version of my James manuscript, and also got caught up on some recent back issues of Publishers Weekly. I found a couple of editorial staff changes I'd missed, which may come in handy at the end of the year. Come the last week in December, I aim to get back on the submitting-to-editors train if there hasn't been progress on the agent front.

Mr. Smith goes to the editor

With notes in hand from a couple more critiquing buddies, I've polished off another draft of my chapter book biography of Smith and sent it along to an editor who's already seen two earlier, shorter versions.

How much shorter? One thousand words and 5,500 words, versus the 13,500 words I just sent her.

I've got high hopes for this one. Because more is better, right?

All revising, (almost) all the time

When I finished a critique of a friend's novel at 6:45 Saturday a.m., I officially cleared my other projects out of the way as best as I can so I can focus on my Day-Glo revisions. At least for now. I've got my Smith manuscript to touch up a bit more and send off, but only after I receive a couple more critiques. Aside from that and the occasional blog post, I'm all about revising.

But... but... but...

I couldn't resist replying this morning when I heard from a would-be source for my James project -- a guy I'd contacted over a year ago but had never been able to get in touch with. (Let's hear it for long-term projects!) But it was just a small e-mail, and surely whatever conversation that develops -- by phone or otherwise -- won't take up too terribly much of my time.

Oh, and I also picked up, um, four novels today at the library (during a lunch hour otherwise devoted to revising, I swear): Avi's The Mayor of Central Park, Dan Gutman's Honus & Me and -- to my surprise and bewilderment -- Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now. Wasn't I just telling someone over the weekend that I couldn't care less about YA right now? I guess by "right now," I meant Saturday afternoon, because here I am Monday evening, totally absorbed in Speak.

Weekend wrap-up

Good weekend. Took both boys to see Madagascar (talk about scat...). Went to a birthday party for two boys in a family of 11. Wow. Played in the sand until it got too hot yesterday, and set off sparklers and watched fireworks from our backyard once it cooled down.

Along the way I made some revisions in Smith, finally using the comments some of my critiquing buddies sent along ages ago -- they saw things I wouldn't have caught in 1,000 reads. I know, because I'm pretty sure I've hit that mark by now.

I also got myself signed up for Yahoo's childrens-writers list and promptly received seven introductory messages. That alone makes me wonder if I've bitten off more than I can handle.

And I got my first decent exercise in weeks, with a couple of three-mile strolls with F and a two-mile run with our dog. I'd forgotten just how useful those walks/runs are for clearing my head and setting my priorities, not just in my writing but in all respects.

I now know what I'll be submitting for the October critique (assuming I get a slot), and to my delight I found some of it already written (by me, no less) several months ago and tucked away in a spiral notebook. Can't beat that.

Sleeping in

For me this morning, that meant staying in bed until a few minutes after 6. It's better than 5, which is when my alarm gets me up most days, but it's not exactly the leisurely, luxurious start to the day that one (I) might have imagined. No one to blame but myself, though -- everyone else is still asleep.

Yesterday rocked. I put a requested picture book MS into the mail to someone a friend had referred me to. I had thought she was a "mere" editor, but it turns out she's quite a bit higher up in the organization -- glad I figured that out before I sent it.

Even better was the reply I got to a nonfiction MS I had sent out a while back. Two versions of the same story, actually, and the editor is interested in seeing a new version that combines elements of each of them. Dovetails nicely with additional research I was planning on doing anyway, and guarantees that I won't sit around wondering what to work on next.

Not much danger of that, though. I need to revise Smith with previous and pending comments from critiquing buddies. I need to figure out what to submit (or -- gulp! -- what to write) for the October SCBWI conference; the submission deadline is later this month. I'm expecting revision notes on another MS any day now. And then there's the MS I mentioned yesterday, which still holds up -- I need to figure out who to inflict that one on.

And it's off!

Finished my Smith draft this morning and sent it out for a critique. There's now a reasonably good chance that I will let myself sleep in on at least one of the three days in the long weekend ahead.

Busy Monday

Speaking of querying via e-mail, I sent one out early this a.m. and immediately heard back from the editor, thanks to the "out-of-office" auto responder. (There's quick, which is good, but then there's too quick.) She's at ALA, of course, but until I got the reply I'd forgotten all about it. One of these years...

Before getting to the business of querying, I got to the business of finishing Chapter 5 in my latest draft about Smith. One more to go, and then I can get the latter half of this draft into circulation among my critiquing buddies. Then I can implement their comments on the first half, which I've been sitting on for nearly a month now.

I also got my registration in the mail for the stupendous-looking October conference that the Austin chapter of SCBWI is putting on. I signed up for a critique, too, which means that within the next month I need to pull something together to submit. I'm already working with an editor on Smith, and I'd rather come up with something new than delve into the archives. We'll see.

All this and a full day (and then some) of working at my salaried job. No wonder I can't think of how to end this post.

The gift of gab

What with it being Father's Day, I guess I couldn't complain too much when I had to fulfill my fatherly duty of taking possession of a cranky toddler at 5:45 a.m. Besides, typing one-handed, I made more progress on Chapter 5 of my "Smith" rewrite in the next 15 minutes than I had in the previous 45 minutes of having both hands free. I don't get it, but I'll take it.

The family took me out for Tex-Mex for lunch. Both boys were preternatually calm, even though I was the one having the margarita, and it allowed my wife and me to have an actual adult conversation. We talked through several aspects of Smith's life that I'd been struggling to get across in this chapter. Her questions forced me to think and clarify and summarize -- they did me a lot of good that I bet will pay off when I sit down to write in the morning. The store-bought goodies I received were nifty, but that conversation was this year's best Father's Day present.

From here to taciturnity

This morning I finished a draft of Chapter 4 in a chapter-book biography of a fellow I'll call Smith. It's been slow going, and not just because I'm a poky writer. I've got a knack for stringing quotes together, but Smith -- as fascinating a character as he was -- never said much. He was taciturnity personified. I don't know that he ever wrote a letter. He was in the public eye from his early 20s until his mid-80s and didn't even give a published interview until he was in his 50s. After that, what he did have to say was not terribly introspective, and fairly inarticulate.


Contrast that with another biography subject I've been working on. We'll call this other guy James. James wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Also in the public eye from his early 20s to his mid-80s, James came in writing and kept it up until nearly the end -- books, magazine articles, radio shows, documentaries, and massive amounts of letters. Lately I've been reading letters he wrote as a teenager -- the actual letters, not reproductions -- and feeling infinitely more like a historian than I ever did while pursuing my B.A. in history at the University of Texas.


What's most interesting to me is how spending a lunch hour researching James seems to fuel me up for writing about Smith the next morning. I just wonder how, once I finish writing about Smith, I'll ever manage to organize all the material I've been able to gather for the next draft of my manuscript on James.