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Laurie Ann Thompson

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New year, new commitments

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I’m usu­al­ly pret­ty big on reflect­ing on the past year, re-eval­u­at­ing, and set­ting goals (not so much res­o­lu­tions) around the start of each new year. Start­ing into this year, though, I just didn’t real­ly have any. Am I just hap­py where I’m at—coasting along with mag­a­zine arti­cles but no books con­tract­ed yet? Cer­tain­ly not! But every­thing I came up with—everything I know I need to do—sounded too big and too scary for me to actu­al­ly com­mit. Me, a com­mit­ment-phobe? Not gen­er­al­ly, no. I was con­fused and dis­heart­ened by my appar­ent total lack of resolve. And, I was begin­ning to lament that Jan­u­ary was half over and I STILL hadn’t come with any rea­son­able goals that I felt I could stick to.
Enter serendipity.

 

First, I stum­bled upon a rel­a­tive­ly new blog writ­ten by a new mem­ber of the NFforKids Yahoo group, Car­ole Bruce Col­lett. One of her posts men­tioned that she’s doing the Word­Press  Post A Week 2011. Intrigued, I checked it out. Wow, they not only ask me to com­mit to post once each week in 2011, they also send reminders, prompts, and inspi­ra­tion! Okay, maybe I can do that. I mean, I will do that! So, watch for at least a post each week. I won’t promise they’ll all be good, though!

 

Then, I saw a post about the sec­ond annu­al Pic­ture Book Marathon on SCBWI West­ern Washington’s Chi­nook Update blog. Par­tic­i­pants com­mit to write 26 pic­ture books dur­ing the month of Feb­ru­ary (leav­ing just two well-deserved rest days). One of the things I was try­ing to com­mit to was writ­ing every day, writ­ing more new work, writ­ing just for fun. But all of those things were too big. One month, 26 pic­ture books? Mea­sur­able. Doable. 26 days. And they offer “train­ing” emails! (Are you sens­ing I need a lit­tle hand-hold­ing?) I got in just before the first train­ing email, and I am psy­ched! But I won’t promise ANY of these will be good!

I love the writ­ers’ com­mu­ni­ty that is grow­ing out there in cyber­space. I love the sup­port and encour­age­ment I get from “the tribe,” even those I’ve nev­er met, and may nev­er meet, in per­son. ‘Tis a fab­u­lous thing we do, and ‘tis done by fab­u­lous peo­ple. Thanks for reading!

Some recent reads: great narrative nonfiction

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Most of my recent read­ing has been cre­ative or nar­ra­tive non­fic­tion.  Before the hol­i­days, I was read­ing THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND by William Kamk­wam­ba and Bryan Meal­er. I’m in awe of, and frankly a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ed by, the lev­el of detail they go into. I don’t think I’d ever be able to inter­view a sub­ject enough to get that kind of back­ground. Of course, in this case, the sub­ject is also one of the authors, so maybe that col­lab­o­ra­tion is the secret.

For Christ­mas, my hus­band got me Jean­nette Walls’ HALF-BROKE HORSES. It’s fic­tion, but was heav­i­ly researched and based on the true life sto­ry of the author’s grand­moth­er. I think a non­fic­tion writer can learn a lot by study­ing this book. The writ­ing is sim­ple, engag­ing, and beau­ti­ful all at the same time. The biggest take-away from this one, though, is voice. As a read­er, you can hear the grandmother’s voice and feel her per­son­al­i­ty while you’re read­ing, and that, in turn, allows you sneak peeks inside her char­ac­ter and go beyond what the author is telling you directly.

San­ta brought my daugh­ter Jim Murphy’s AN AMERICAN PLAGUE: THE TRUE AND TERRIFYING STORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC OF 1793. (San­ta has good taste in books, no?) This book is pure non­fic­tion, but it reads like a nov­el. The strong devel­op­ment of the set­ting feels like you are right there Philadel­phia (thank good­ness it doesn’t have scratch and sniff stick­ers!). The ten­sion is ris­ing at a fever pitch (for­give the pun) as the fever itself spreads. And the writ­ing is pure poet­ry. Check out this clos­ing para­graph of Chap­ter 2:

“On Sat­ur­day, August 25, a sav­age storm hit the city, bring­ing winds and tor­rents of rain. Water cas­cad­ed of roofs, splashed loud­ly onto the side­walks, and ran in bur­bling rivers through the streets. The howl­ing wind and pound­ing rain made a fright­ful noise, and yet through it all a sin­gle, chill­ing sound could still be heard—the awful tolling of the church bells.” [they rang the bells to announce a death]

My tech­ni­cal writer/journalist ten­den­cies would have been to say some­thing like, “x num­ber of peo­ple died that day.” Con­cise, fac­tu­al… and bor­ing! The para­graph above does so much more. Then, the clos­ing para­graph of Chap­ter 3 kicks it up anoth­er notch:

“Philadel­phia was a city in pan­ic and flight. It did not even help when May­or Clark­son act­ed on anoth­er rec­om­men­da­tion from the Col­lege of Physi­cians. The tolling bells that had so thor­ough­ly ter­ri­fied every­one were ordered to remain still. The great silence that fol­lowed did lit­tle to com­fort those left behind. It was too much like the eter­nal silence of the grave.”

Chills, right? And that’s only Chap­ter 3.
I also love the design of this book. The fac­ing page of every new chap­ter is a pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion of a pri­ma­ry source rel­e­vant to the chap­ter: a news­pa­per page, let­ter, gov­ern­ment report, etc. You can gloss over them if you want with­out miss­ing any of the sto­ry, but you can also find your­self rev­el­ing in the thrill of going through the pri­ma­ry source mate­r­i­al for your­self. I love that they chose to do it this way, espe­cial­ly in a book for children.

Final­ly, I recent­ly read the pic­ture book BIBLIOBURRO by Jeanette Win­ter. This book is so sim­ple, so con­cise, but yet so beau­ti­ful­ly told. The art­work is gor­geous, but it’s also a mas­ter­piece of say­ing every­thing you want to say, and noth­ing more. What struck me as par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing about this one is that she chose to tell the whole sto­ry in present tense, even though the point in time changes part of the way into the sto­ry! And it works.

Anoth­er thing that struck me about this book is the sub­ject. It’s about some­one no one (at least in the U.S.) has ever heard of deliv­er­ing books to remote vil­lages by bur­ro. Hav­ing been told that you can’t sell a book these days about some­one no one has ever heard of, no mat­ter how inter­est­ing their sto­ry is, I’m thrilled to see that a respect­ed pub­lish­er like Beach Lane Books took a chance on this one. I hope they con­tin­ue to seek out those inter­est­ing yet under­re­port­ed sto­ries that more of us need to hear about.

What are your recent non­fic­tion favorites, and what makes them stand out for you?

Writing to Change the World

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Recent­ly, Vic­ki Cobb post­ed on the I.N.K. (Inter­est­ing Non­fic­tion for Kids) blog about writ­ing to change the world. I’ve been pon­der­ing this post for days. On one hand I think all authors, espe­cial­ly those of us who right non­fic­tion for kids, are try­ing to change the world to some degree (maybe more than Vic­ki alludes, even). Yet that seems like such a lofty, overblown, and, dare I say pre­ten­tious?, goal–one that many of us would hes­i­tate to say out loud (thank you, Vic­ki!). After all, as begin­ning writ­ers we are told over and over again, “Don’t teach!” Of course, non­fic­tion by its very nature must teach. So I’ve strug­gled with bal­anc­ing my desire to teach, inspire, empow­er and yes, influ­ence young read­ers with the need to remain impar­tial and sim­ply tell the sto­ry. Not enough emo­tion and the writ­ing is dry and bor­ing. Too much pas­sion and it comes off as overzeal­ous and preachy. Strik­ing a healthy bal­ance is where the work, and the mag­ic, lies.
Today I attend­ed a writ­ing inten­sive offered by Car­men T. Bernier-Grand. One of the exer­cis­es she had us do was sim­ply to make a list of the rea­sons we we write. Here is what I wrote:
Why do I write? I write:

  • to empow­er children
  • to give kids a voice, espe­cial­ly those who haven’t yet felt heard
  • to teach
  • to help kids dis­cov­er their authen­tic selves
  • to help them hon­or and respect those authen­tic selves
  • to share what is impor­tant to me with future generations
  • to make the world a bet­ter place going forward

In short, I do write to change the world, one read­er at the time. I guess I’ll just try to keep it a secret from the kids.

    SCBWI conferences: so many kinds of awesome

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    I’m final­ly start­ing to be able to come down from the high that was last week­end’s SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton’s Writ­ing and Illus­trat­ing for Chil­dren con­fer­ence. After an extend­ed peri­od of not enough sleep, too much forced extro­ver­sion, and total detail over­whelm, I expect­ed to be exhaust­ed, but instead I was com­plete­ly ener­gized. It was so many kinds of awe­some for me. I actu­al­ly broke into tears dri­ving home (the good kind, to be sure), and I’ve been walk­ing around with a sil­ly grin on my face ever since.

    First of all, just being in the same room with that many peo­ple who care about the same thing I do is a gift. I’ve felt that at every writer’s con­fer­ence I’ve ever been to, and that in itself is rea­son enough to go. As a recov­er­ing pleas­er, I guess I’m still a total suck­er for validation.
    More than that, though, was the shift in my own real­i­ty. I had three  goals for this conference:

    1. Try to relax and enjoy the moment. I have a strong per­fec­tion­ist streak and can be a total con­trol freak some­times, but this year I was able to (most­ly) just let go and make the best of it.
    2. Con­nect with peo­ple rather than their roles. I have always felt self-con­scious around the faculty—those gate­keep­ers and suc­cess sto­ries whom I so admire and respect—but this year I felt like I could’ve brought all of them home to my messy house for beer and burg­ers (prob­a­bly more of a tes­ta­ment to their humil­i­ty and grace than any per­son­al growth on my part!).
    3. Get more com­fort­able speak­ing to a crowd. I have always been ter­ri­fied of pub­lic speak­ing, but this year it was not only easy, it was actu­al­ly fun!

    I’ve wished and worked for these qual­i­ties all my life, and they final­ly chose to man­i­fest them­selves last week­end. I feel like Lai­ni Taylor’s Mag­pie Wind­witch, stuff­ing my most nox­ious demons into a fine glass bot­tle and pound­ing the cork in tight—banishing them to dark­ness where they can no longer exer­cise their evil powers.
    So, the trick now is to go back to the soli­tary work of writ­ing and revis­ing with­out the task list spread­sheet, inex­orable dead­line, or gold­en “boss” pin. I can’t del­e­gate any­thing away to my more com­pe­tent friends, no one will be stop­ping me in the hall to thank me for my efforts, and there will be no stand­ing ova­tion when it’s done. But I still have more goals to achieve (and more demons to ban­ish), so it’s back to work I go with a renewed sense of con­fi­dence and optimism.
    How about you: did you have pre-con­fer­ence goals, do you feel like you achieved them, and what’s up next on your to-do list?

    Ah, sweet rejection

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    My goal for this year is to receive as many as rejec­tions as pos­si­ble. I can be a little—okay, a lot—perfectionistic about where and when I send out sub­mis­sions, so the inten­tion of this goal was to push me to accom­plish the part of pub­lish­ing that I can con­trol, sub­mit­ting, and let go of the part I can’t con­trol, sell­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this has­n’t worked out so well, as it seems most places either aren’t even read­ing the work or are only reply­ing if inter­est­ed, and are thus deny­ing me of the small sat­is­fac­tion of the rejec­tion let­ter as proof I did SOMETHING. So, I think I will have to revise my goal and tweak my process so that I can cel­e­brate, and tan­gi­bly see, every sub­mis­sion, whether I receive an answer or not. How do you do that with­out wast­ing paper? I’d love to hear your ideas!
    There’s some good news, though (well, kin­da)! Yes­ter­day I received a rejec­tion let­ter for a very begin­ning-lev­el easy read­er I’d sent to Scholas­tic’s Cart­wheel imprint. I sus­pect­ed it was prob­a­bly not per­fect­ly right for them, but I love them so much I just had to try (fight­ing that per­fec­tion thing again). Well, it was a rejec­tion, but it was per­son­al­ized, friend­ly, and dis­cussed my par­tic­u­lar man­u­script and why they decid­ed to pass. In fact, I have to agree with their assess­ment, although I still believe there’s a place for this man­u­script with a dif­fer­ent list. So, yes, it’s a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, but I’ll still send out a big vir­tu­al thank you to Scholastic/Cartwheel. I final­ly have some­thing for the rejec­tion file, and can at least rev­el in the suc­cess of failing!

    ‘Suc­cess is going from fail­ure to fail­ure with no loss of enthu­si­asm.’ —Win­ston Churchill

    A poem for writers

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    For St. Patrick­’s Day, my daugh­ter had some fun writ­ing lim­er­icks. Here is my favorite:

    Writ­ing
    Write I will,
    for­ev­er still,
    you, me
    cre­ativ­i­ty is the key,
    Oh, write I will.

    Ah, a girl after my own heart. I guess the apple does­n’t fall far from the tree in this case!

    Sunday Scribblings #194: People Who Dared

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    The prompt over at Sun­day Scrib­blings today is dare. My first instinct was to write a spon­ta­neous short fic­tion vignette—that is what prompts are all about, right? But, while I con­sid­er writ­ing fic­tion a use­ful prac­tice to improve my skills as well as a reward­ing cre­ative endeav­or in its own right, my real pas­sion is non­fic­tion. So, today I’ll share the true sto­ries oft­wo peo­ple who dared.

    First up: Flo­rence Nightin­gale. We all know her as the “lady with the lamp,” the hero­ic nurse who tend­ed British sol­diers dur­ing the Crimean War. But her sto­ry is so much more inter­est­ing than that. Even as a child, she nursed her dolls, pets, and even the local poor. As a young woman from a wealthy fam­i­ly, she did not have to work. She was attrac­tive, and had many mar­riage pro­pos­als, one from a man she tru­ly loved. Yet she turned them all down to do the work she felt com­pelled to do. In Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, nurs­es were con­sid­ered to be among the low­est lev­els of soci­ety: igno­rant, dirty, and often drunk. Flo­rence ded­i­cat­ed her life to chang­ing this per­cep­tion, not only car­ing for her patients with ten­der ded­i­ca­tion, but also by lob­by­ing for and mak­ing sys­tem-wide improve­ments in hygiene, admin­is­tra­tion and record-keep­ing, sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, report­ing, and hos­pi­tal con­struc­tion. She dared to defy the expec­ta­tions of every­one around her, and ini­ti­at­ed a new order in health care.

    Sec­ond: Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah. He was born in 1977 in Ghana, West Africa, with only one leg. At the time, dis­abil­i­ty was con­sid­ered to be a curse. His father left, and friends urged his moth­er to kill him. She did not, and instead raised him the same as able-bod­ied chil­dren, doing chores and going to school. As a young man, he was dis­turbed by how many dis­abled peo­ple were forced to beg to sur­vive. He decid­ed to show his coun­try that peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties could do use­ful things. In 2001, he dared to ped­al a bicy­cle almost 400 miles across Ghana, with one leg. He drew the atten­tion of the peo­ple, the media, and the gov­ern­ment offi­cials. In 2006, Ghana’s Par­lia­ment final­ly passed the Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ty bill, which stat­ed that peo­ple with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties are enti­tled to all of the same rights as the rest of the country’s cit­i­zens. “I want to spread a mes­sage to change per­cep­tions,” he said, “and the only way to do that is to lead by example.”

    These are two of the true sto­ries that give me the courage I need to con­tin­ue to dare to make my own mark on the world by writ­ing about and shar­ing them with oth­ers. How about you—will you dare to make a dif­fer­ence in the world? Come on—I dare you!

    Magical realism assignment: garden prompt

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    In the inter­ests of push­ing myself out of my com­fort zone, I recent­ly fin­ished a class in mag­i­cal real­ism. It was dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from any­thing I’ve done (or even read, real­ly) before, and the results were, well, inter­est­ing. The final assign­ment was this: “For this assign­ment, take the notion of a gar­den (well tend­ed or neglect­ed, your choice) and play with its real­i­ties. Find the most mun­dane aspects of it and ele­vate them to mag­i­cal heights. Take the mir­a­cle of a seed and turn it into some­thing ordi­nary and bland. Jux­ta­pose ideas to rebel against expec­ta­tion. A gar­den, after all, is not what you see above the sur­face, but what builds it from beneath.” And here’s what I came up with:

    Inva­sive Species

    She doesn’t even know I’m here, in her beau­ti­ful gar­den. But I’ve been hid­ing in plain sight for years. At first, she could not have noticed, no mat­ter how hard she tried, how care­ful­ly she tend­ed her plants and flow­ers, turn­ing the soil and pulling weeds. I once was but a seed, deep under the ground, waiting.

    Final­ly, the time was right. I split my shell silent­ly, send­ing my ten­drils out into the gar­den, urg­ing them to take root wher­ev­er they would. I knew she would not see me then, either. She loved her gar­den, but she cared for it spo­rad­i­cal­ly at best. Once a year she would give it a good look, fix­ing the most obvi­ous prob­lems, and mak­ing a note to watch the rest. But the rest of the time, she took its boun­ty com­plete­ly for grant­ed, play­ing with her young daugh­ter on the patio or rock­ing with her hus­band on the swing. By the time she noticed me, I was sure, it would be too late. The gar­den would be mine.

    My ten­drils con­tin­ued to spread, silent thieves in the night. Some found fal­low soil, with­ered, and died. But oth­ers took root in her fer­tile ground. I could feel them wind­ing their way through the flow­ers, steal­ing their nour­ish­ment, chok­ing them out. It fed me, and I grew.

    Even­tu­al­ly, feel­ing among the flow­ers, she noticed me—a small lump that did not belong there, had not been there last time she looked. Had it? I could see the recog­ni­tion on her face, the brief wave of pan­ic. I was afraid too, it was too soon, too soon. My roots were not deep enough yet. They could still be pulled if one knew how.

    Denial. Best friend to all that is evil. She had looked me in the eye, and decid­ed to ignore what she knew to be true. “I am too young, too busy, to have to deal with this,” she told her­self, and she pushed my exis­tence to the back of her mind. She was not yet brave enough to face me.

    “Grow, grow!” I urged the ten­drils, just begin­ning to bloom into full-grown plants in their own right. “The gar­den is almost ours.”

    Any idea what I’m talk­ing about? Think it needs an end­ing, or is it bet­ter left right here?

    No, no, no #NaNoWriMo for me!

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    The big top­ic in the writ­ing world this time of year is NaNoW­riMo, Nation­al Nov­el Writ­ing Month, in which aspir­ing writ­ers are encour­aged to churn out 50,000 words of rough draft in 30 days. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype, but after weeks of con­sid­er­a­tion and days of ago­niz­ing, I’ve final­ly decid­ed NOT to do it this year. I’m extreme­ly tempt­ed to push myself to attempt some­thing I’ve nev­er done before (fin­ish a novel)—I am very com­pet­i­tive and I do love a good chal­lenge, after all. Plus, I know I’d learn a lot about myself and my writ­ing in the process, which would be both excit­ing and use­ful. And, you nev­er know, at the end of it all I just might have some­thing worth pur­su­ing further.
    So, what’s hold­ing me back? Well, besides a nice help­ing of typ­i­cal writer­ly fears (which is just anoth­er rea­son TO do it, of course), there’s a nag­ging lit­tle bit of actu­al self-knowl­edge that can’t be ignored. It feels so inap­pro­pri­ate that I’m embar­rassed to admit it, espe­cial­ly here, in such a pub­lic forum. But, I sup­pose it’s time to come clean and be hon­est with you all: I’ve nev­er had a burn­ing desire to write a pure­ly fic­tion­al novel.
    the magic of first booksI am most drawn to two par­tic­u­lar kinds of lit­er­ary mag­ic. One is help­ing a child learn to read by pro­vid­ing some­thing inter­est­ing enough for them to work through at a lev­el that is acces­si­ble yet just chal­leng­ing enough to increase their skill (begin­ning read­ers: fic­tion and non­fic­tion). The oth­er is help­ing a child under­stand the world around them through books that are meant to be shared with a par­ent or teacher, books that will open up a dia­log between young chil­dren whose val­ues aren’t yet defined and the adults help­ing to shape those val­ues (board and pic­ture books: fic­tion and nonfiction).
    I love read­ing all kinds of fic­tion, and I am keen­ly aware that a well-writ­ten nov­el can expand a reader’s world­view in ways that short­er works often can­not. Good fic­tion can illu­mi­nate truth with a spot­light effect that can be dif­fi­cult to achieve in non­fic­tion. I admire nov­el writ­ers immense­ly and feel blessed to call many of them friends. Per­haps some­day I’ll even decide to try to join their ranks. For now, though, the audi­ences I most wish to con­nect with just aren’t ready for nov­els. I’ll have to fol­low my own kind of magic.

    Halloween Word Challenge 2009!

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    Kim­ber­ly Bak­er, super­friend and mem­ber of the dynam­ic trio, has chal­lenged me to a war of words. She knows I need a swift kick in the *** to get a first draft down (espe­cial­ly of a fic­tion novel–gasp!), but she may not know just how com­pet­i­tive I can be. Even if I lose, though, I win, since it’s just the incen­tive I need to make some good progress before our amaz­ing fall Week­end on the Water retreat in November.
    As part of the deal, we’re offer­ing our­selves up for pub­lic humil­i­a­tion… um, I mean, account­abil­i­ty. If you want to cheer us on (or scoff at me for my pathet­ic attempts), you can fol­low our progress here.

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