Interview!!

Here's the interview I promised, with my friend Yvonne Ventresca.  She doesn't want to jinx her new project by talking much about it, but I think it's safe to say that she has jumped (at least for now) from nonfiction to fiction, and that we're hoping to hear good things on that front soon!

Yvonne Ventresca (www.YvonneVentresca.com)

• When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer? What was your very first effort? Do you still have it in your possession?

I’ve always loved reading and writing. I still have notebooks filled with hundreds of bad-to-mediocre poems I wrote as a child. Sadly, I threw away my opening chapters of a novel called The Flood. I remember writing them by hand on loose leaf paper when I was about thirteen.

•  What is it about writing for kids, as opposed to adults, that most interests/inspires you?

My favorite author as a kid was Zilpha Keatley Snyder I knew exactly where the SNY shelf of fiction books was located in the library. My best friend and I could lose ourselves for hours in books like hers. When I began to write, I realized I wanted to create that experience for other kids.

• Your first published book was about careers, “Publishing.” How did that come about? Ditto for your second book, "Avril Lavigne?"

While I worked on some of my earlier fiction, I also freelanced, writing a series of articles about careers for high school students. Having that on my resume probably helped me land the Publishing assignment, since the book profiled several careers in the book publishing field. I worked for the same publisher (Lucent Books) on Avril Lavigne, which was for their “People in the News” series.

Your website offers a lot of helpful links and advice for new writers. What's the single most important tip you would give someone who's trying to get a start?

For the very beginner, making time to write has to become a priority. It’s helpful if you can train yourself to be creative during odd bits of time (like idling in the school pick up line) instead of waiting for a block of hours to magically become free.

Once you’ve written something, finding a good critique group (or partner) is important. They can motivate you, advise you, and help make your writing stronger. You don’t want an editor to be your first reader. The flaws need to be smoothed out first, and a helpful critique group can kindly point out the weaker points. Critiquing other people’s work in return helps hone your own skills.

I also recommend joining the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

My favorite book about writing is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird . She shares lots of writing wisdom.

• For you, what's the hardest part about writing? The most fun part?

The hardest part is beginning a brand new project with lots of characters to create and blank pages to fill. There is a certain leap of faith you have to take, hoping that the ideas come together. The most fun part for me is revising once the story has a clear direction. It’s rewarding to watch the novel evolve and become stronger with each revision.

     
     That's it!  Thanks a million, Yvonne!

Back in the Saddle Again

Okay.  Kids' lit.  The ostensible reason I started this blog in the first place, and what with my obsessions with the GOP race and whatnot, I seem to have gotten off track.  I never did mention that last month I read "Dead End in Norvelt," by Jack Gantos, this year's Newbery winner.  I expect a lot from a Newbery winner, as I think I have a right to, and I was disappointed.  I much preferred "Moon Over Manifest," last year's winner, also a middle-grade novel set in an earlier 20th-century era, also featuring a lively and just-precocious-enough protagonist who proceeds to discover the secrets hidden within a seemingly uninteresting small town.  In each of the books, the narrator forges a connection with a wise older woman who holds the key to unlock the town's mysteries, which include at least one murder.  But "Manifest" makes no bones about its undercurrent of magical realism, whereas "Norvelt" professes to tell a straightforward, realistic story, but doesn't.  One major problem I have with the book is that the chief villian, who is depicted as a buffoon and seems to be satisfied to indulge in rather low-grade evil (fining the narrator's impoverished family for failing to cut their weeds, for example), turns out to be a serial killer.  But, bizarrely, this fact is revealed in a rather offhand way, as if it ranks not much higher in the general scheme of things than the killer's harmless pecadilloes.  There are a few things I feel compelled to point out about this.  First, I would have to say that I live in a much larger town than Norvelt was when the story takes place, and yet, I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of serial killers I've known among my neighbors.  And second, as a career criminal defense lawyer, I feel qualified to assert that those who commit multiple homicides are taken quite seriously by the criminal justice system, regardless of their other foibles.  This is, in my opinion, an appropriate stance, and I am troubled by Gantos' seemingly relativistic viewpoint that seems to consider murder as not much more than a public nuisance.  Not only is this perhaps not the message we might want to be teaching our 8-to-12-year-old children; in the context of the story, it simply doesn't make sense.  I also felt that the insertion of many of the book's references to historical events, while interesting in themselves, seemed quite random, and failed to either advance the plot or reveal anything new about the characters.
     In sum, my reviews are: "Manifest," thumbs up, despite some flaws; "Norvelt," thumbs down, despite some strengths.  Feel free to disagree with me.  But if you do, LEAVE A COMMENT, OKAY???

Eating Disorders

I just read Laurie Halse Anderson's new post on her blog, Mad Woman In the Forest, to which I've linked.  Read it.  And if you have a teenage daughter or friend or relative, make her read it too.  Ditto for Anderson's Wintergirls.  Eating disorders are killing girls and women, and the fashion industry is helping them do it.  Take whatever action you can to help make it stop.  Aren't there enough insane ways for people to die in this world without the addition of cultural directives to our daughters to starve themselves into oblivion?

Just One More Thing...

and then I'm done ranting about politics for a while.  I just feel compelled to point out that, contrary to what he may have said before his recent LOSSES, Rick Santorum is obviously not opposed to education.  Because at some point, every kid asks his or her parents what "antidisestablishmentarianism" means, but how many parents take the time and trouble to provide a concrete example of it?  Not many, is my guess.  So let's give credit where it's due.  And why not be magnanimous toward the guy after his LOSSES???  In fact, I've given him a new name.  Sanctum Santorum.  And now I'm done.

Can I Count on Your Support?

I don't usually post at 7 a.m., but today, I feel I must.  I've made a decision.  If the GOP primary race hasn't been wrapped up after the vote count tonight, I'm throwing my hat into the ring.  How do I stand out from the rest of the field, you ask?  It's fairly simple.  They are wimps and asswipes; I am a bold visionary. As president, I will not merely do away with the separation between church and state.  Oh, no, no no. The entire so-called "Bill of Rights:"  gone with one stroke of the pen.  Only two provisions will survive: freedom of religion (Christians only), and the right to bear arms (ditto).  Are you with me? Because if you're not with me 100%, then you're against me, and make no mistake: I will know exactly who you are.  Off the record: I also plan to bring back witch-hunts and burning heretics at the stake, but I know, I know...  not mainstream enough for right now, my campaign advisors tell me. And I'm not allowed to even mention the plans to clone Senator McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, although my team has samples of their DNA ready and waiting. None of these missions can be presented as planks of my actual campaign platform; they must remain long-term goals.  Fine.  I understand the political game.  America isn't quite ready for the full breadth of my vision.  YET.

Mood: Indigo

Not the best week I've ever had, on a personal level.  Last Sunday my father-in-law was admitted to the hospital, and he wasn't discharged until today.  On Tuesday I found out that my friend Michele's mother passed away.  Yesterday my mother fell in her apartment and wasn't able to get up by herself.  Life is short, my friends.  Art is long.
     Oh, and - totally inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, of course - on Thursday I found out that my submission to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards contest didn't even make the first cut.  I had a feeling that they were looking for edgy, which I'm not, but...  wow.  Not even the first cut.  Why am I getting the feeling that time is not on my side?
     My daughter is watching the Oscars now, and wants me to poke my head into the living room from time to time, but do I really want to see how old Billy Crystal has gotten?  I suspect it won't cheer me up.  At what point will the man acknowledge reality and start calling himself Bill?  I thought one of the few perks of the aging process is that it's supposed to lend you a bit of dignity.
     Maybe I will poke my head in for a few minutes, though.  The Oscars have become a public spectacle on the verge of crossing over into a religious obligation.  And for that, I'd like to thank the Academy.

Two Months and Counting!

     Yesterday was my two-month blogiversary.  The number of people reading my posts is creeping up, and I've acquired a follower (okay, it's my son, but I'm totally counting it).  So in order to celebrate, I'm going to do something it seems I haven't done for a while, which is to write about young-adult books.      Some months ago my daughter (age almost 16) asked me to order her some John Green novels, saying that her friends had been talking about this author.  I'd never heard of him, so I googled him and liked what I read.  I ordered "Looking for Alaska" and "Paper Towns," and then I read "Paper Towns" while she was still working her way through "Alaska," and then over the next month or so, while she was watching TV or playing video games, I read "Alaska" too.  Then when "The Fault in Our Stars" came out last month and got fabulous reviews, I ordered it too, and since my daughter is still reading "Paper Towns," I read "Stars," and finished it yesterday.  So here's my take on John Green.  He's a very gifted writer with an uncanny ear for dialogue and a killer instinct for the descriptive phrase.  But I think there are two John Greens locked inside the same body and brain, and they're constantly engaged in a pitched battle with each other.  There's the John Green who wants to be writing novels, and there's the one who wants to be creating roleplaying video games.  I think that conflict between the two is probably part of what draws teenagers to him, but for an old fart like me, it creates a whiff of disconnection.  In the world of John Green novels, events which are presented as reality could not in fact occur in  reality, at least not in any reality I have ever experienced, and I have to say that in my years on Earth I've experienced a wide range of them.  Also, in his novels, randomly encountered nurses and stewardesses and cabdrivers are often only one or two levels less witty and insightful than the main characters, and sadly, that has not been part of my life experience either.  I sometimes get the sense, reading his novels, that the people in them are fully interactive, in the way that characters in a really brilliantly-designed video game can be interactive, but that they're not actually interacting, in the way that flesh-and-blood human beings do.   And I believe that might be because both John Greens are about 35 years old and, while they are extraordinarily high-functioning (if attention-impaired) 35-year-olds, they still have a lot to learn about life, and they also need to finish working through their issues about falling helplessly in love with a larger-than-life person who, voluntarily or involuntarily, ends up leaving.  Both of which I have no doubt the John Greens will do, and move on to explore other equally life-altering kinds of experiences, and then they will be truly awesome in every way.
     Happy Presidents' Day.  Washington was an exceptionally skilled CEO, but Lincoln was The Man.  And here is my blogiversary present to you.  Follow this link and you won't be sorry:  www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html.   Enjoy!