Gail Gauthier's Blog: Gail Gauthier Reads, page 8

Cybils Awards Announced

The 2015 Cybils Award winners were announced today.

Cybils Then And Now

Saturday night I got all dressed up in my Cybils shirt to meet with my judging colleagues in a Googles Hangout to discuss the middle grade fiction section of the Cybils Awards. "Typing" with blogging buddy Alex from The Children's War was almost like meeting her. Except for the part about not being in the same room. Or town. Or state.

After we finished the job we were there for, we chatted about other awards people had been involved with and whether or not we'd worked with the Cybils before. I was a first-round judge ten years ago, during the Cybils' first year. That first year, judges received masses of nominated books from publishers. The people I was communicating with loved hearing that I received bags of books to my door. I kept both UPS and FedEx busy.

You'll be hearing about all the Cybils winners next week.

This post originally appeared at Original Content.

I'm Having Trouble Understanding These Numbers

The Hot and Cold Book Categories of 2015 has some really juicy stuff. Those adult coloring books...Who would have thought?

The article says that "The classics segment got a nice bump from the publication of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, which caused a surge in sales of To Kill a Mockingbird." So I'm assuming these sales figures are not for books published just in 2015 but for back list books, too. This article also doesn't say if these numbers include self-published titles. I'm going to guess they don't, or they would have been much higher.

Okay, so now what I'm wondering about is the number of new titles published each year and how that compares with the units sold. The best number I can find for new traditional titles is for 2013, and it's around 305,000. That's the number of titles, not the number of copies of each title. What I'm trying to wrap my head around is how many individual books are out there and how many of them find a home.

This post originally appeared at Original Content.

Yes Or No?

Last fall, Nancy Tandon, a writers' group buddy, did a post at her blog called The Power of "Yes". Interesting things happen to Nancy on a regular basis. We're talking TV and teaching, people. Why? She makes a good case that it's due to her willingness to say "yes" to new experiences.

Now, I'm a big believer in attitude impacting our lives. But what really interested me regarding what's been happening with Nancy is that in time management we're advised to say "no."

Like That Woman Said Years Ago, Just Say "No"

What the time management people mean is say "no" in order to protect your time, so it's available for working toward goals. For writers, we'd be protecting our time for writing. Time is like your core in a fight and overextending yourself with nonwork-related activities you've said "yes" to are attacks on it. (You know I love martial arts analogies.) Therefore, say "no" to volunteer work. "No" to craft classes. "No" to book discussions. "No" to walking groups. "No" to a second tai chi class each week. "No" to graduate school. Those are examples from my life, by the way.

But if you're saying "no" to so many new experiences, are you missing the kinds of opportunities Nancy writes about? Are you maybe even missing opportunities that could help with your writing?

What to do, what to do?

It Depends On Your Situation, Of Course

You know how we can't create one time management plan and expect it to always work for us because our life situations keep changing? Yeah, well, those changing life situations mean we can sometimes say "yes" to opportunities. Then, when our situation changes, we've got to live like monks and say, "no, no, no."

Early in our careers when we aren't publishing and don't have marketing and promotion eating up our time, we can say "yes" to more things.
When we're working on deadlines, we have to say "no."
If an activity is a multiplier, one that hits more than one of our work/personal goals, we may want to say "yes."
If we're working a day job as well as writing, we're probably going to hear the word "no" a lot. Coming from us.
Volunteer work for a writers' organization might be a very good thing to say "yes" to because of the opportunities to meet people in our field. Then again, some of those volunteer positions are so demanding that the people holding them can't write for long periods of time. So..."no?"

A number of years ago, I had to say "no" to a writers' group, and four or five years ago, I would never have been able to say "yes" to all the professional events I've attended recently. But my situation has changed. You hear "yes" at my house more often these days.

If, like Nancy and me, you find yourself in a situation in which you can say "yes," you might want to take advantage of it. Change is constant. Your situation is bound to be different somewhere down the road.

The Best Writers' Retreat Ever

For eleven years, my husband and I have taken off for a week in January to hunker down at a resort timeshare unit that's been in his family since the 1980s. We think of it as a retreat week, when we get away from problems of all sorts. I read, he does mind-boggling jigsaw puzzles in disturbingly short periods of time, we frolic in the snow for a few hours here and there, go out to eat because I don't go near a stove unless it burns wood for looks, not heat. We can't do those things at home because of one thing and another.

This year, I had to work while retreating because I need to make some submissions this week. Last week I:

Created a fifth draft of The Mummy Hunters with the edits I did on the fourth draft before I left home.
Wrote a #@!! synopsis for The Mummy Hunters.
Spellchecked and did a word count for The Mummy Hunters.
Finished reading the second book for Cybils judging, read all of the third one, and started the fourth.
Read a load of bookmarked articles. I still have a load of them. I've got to stop bookmarking all this stuff from the Internet. Really. I do.

What A Bummer, Huh?

I worked every day, maybe an hour, an hour and a half. It was probably closer to two hours on Friday. This should have really su...su...ssstunk, given that my retreat week is supposed to be all about doing whatever I want and not very much of that. But it didn't stink. It was great.

I came away with a feeling of accomplishment, a load off my mind. I was also able to get in some practice for the new tai chi routine we're working on in class, watched three episodes of The Incredible Kimmy Schmidt, may have found a computer program I need for a personal project, hit a new snowshoe trail, and ate some quite decent poutine, as well as some rosemary ice cream, which was just as marvelous as it sounds.

Not All Writers' Retreats Go Like This

Needless to say, this was the best writers' retreat I've ever been on. Why?

The other (real) retreats I've attended were more like mini-conferences than retreats. There were presentations or some sort of activity scheduled for most of the time. I didn't come home with any work done, because there was no time to do any.
I'd been working on this project for a couple of years and was at the tale end tidy up point. If I'd been trying to generate new material, there's a real chance I'd be whining now about my ruined retreat.
I had plenty of space and quiet, which can be hard to find on official retreats.
I really could do whatever I wanted, because of the lack of presentations, panels, one-on-one critiques, etc.

I came away wondering if there is a way I can replicate this experience. But, you know, wanting to do this again sounds a lot like desire. And what does desire lead to? Unhappiness.

I will satisfy myself with being happy with last week's experience.

This post originally appeared at Original Content

Alan Katz At The Connecticut Children's Book Fair

I saved my Alan Katz post for last, even though he was the third of the presenters I saw at the book fair last month, because I had a particularly interesting experience at his event.

I had never heard of Alan until last month when I was working on the Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar. He made another appearance in this state early in November. So when I saw that he'd written a middle grade book called The Day the Mustache Took Over that looked like humor, I thought, Oh, I'll do a nice thing for this author and go to his presentation and maybe write about him because I'm so incredibly nice and I can feel so good about my niceness.

Well. This guy does not need niceness from me.

He's written several books of poetry for children. His work in one of them, Poems I Wrote When No One Was Looking, has been compared to Jack Prelutsky's. He has a fascinating background. He describes himself as a "print and television writer," and he's written for Rosie O'Donnell's show (parody songs and humor), animated series, awards shows, game shows, The New York Times, comic books... He sounds very comfortable moving among different types of writing.

Oh, my goodness. Six Emmy award nominations. And a Poetry Foundation bio.

Like Brian Floca, Alan showed us some of his juvenilia. In his case, it was a short story he wrote in third or fourth grade. I was mortified. That thing was good.

Alan did a very engaging presentation with fun for the kids and content for the adults. There was singing. I kid you not. And I didn't mind singing.

So I didn't know anything about this author. I went to his presentation, anyway. Had a good time. Was impressed. I'm going to look for new-to-me writers again when I'm at a book fair.

A slightly different version of this post appeared at Original Content.

Brian Floca at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair

Brian Floca is a Caldecott winning illustrator, but I'm a fan because of his nonmedal winning book, Five Trucks. Which, by the way, he mentioned in his Connecticut Book Fair talk on Nov. 15.

He began his presentation with a slide of his juvenelia. You know, things he'd drawn when he was a kid? I like to think that as a toddler I could have drawn ovalish figures like he did when he was that age. My guess is that our paths diverged probably around second or third grade.

Brian said that as a child, he liked to draw pictures that told stories. Just an hour or so earlier, Jane Sutcliffe talked about seeing a story in the face of Michelangelo's statue David. In both cases, we're talking about a way of looking at art. Which is pretty much all I do with art, if you didn't already pick up on that in the last paragraph.

Sandra Horning also talked about story in her presentation. In her case, it was the inside story on her books. Brian's inside story on Five Trucks? He was early for a plane and sketched trucks while he was waiting at the airport. He quoted Jack London as saying that part of an artist's job is to go out and look for ideas. But I think some people barely have to look for them. They just see them, which I think the inspiration for Five Trucks illustrates.

Brian also talked about the importance of research for artists. Part of his research for Locomotive involved driving the route of the Transcontinental Railroad. My immediate thought was, what writing project could I get started on that would involve research like that?

An earlier version of this post appeared at Original Content.

Sandra Horning at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair

Sandra Horning also presented at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair on Sunday, November 15. Sandra did what she called an "inside story" on each of her three books. Here's what was fascinating about them: The same process that goes into adult work went into her work for very young readers.

You know how the classic advice for writers is "write what you know?" Yeah, Sandra did that. With a Step Into Reading book. Not a lot of words there, folks, but knowledge of one of her interests went into it. The personal inspiration for her first picture book, The Giant Hug, is something you'd expect to hear for a novel.

I was particularly impressed with Sandra's material on her Step Into Reading book, Chicks. The page of editorial comments illustrated that these manuscripts are treated as seriously as future National Book Award contenders.

Sandra made me want to try writing one. But what about?

An earlier version of this post appeared at Original Content.

Jane Sutcliffe At The Connecticut Children's Book Fair

Jane Sutcliffe was my original reason for attending this year's Connecticut Children's Book Fair. Jane's a member of my writing group, and I've been acquainted with her for several years through the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. As things turned out, she was a morning presenter, and hers was the first author talk I attended.

Jane talked about the original inspiration for her book Stone Giant: Michelangelo's David and How He Came to Be and how researching it led to another book, Leonardo's Monster. What was particularly interesting about Jane's presentation was her description of seeing the actual David statue in Venice and seeing in the face not just beauty, but a story.

I thought Jane was not just talking about David or her books. She was also talking about how to look at art. Her description of what was going on in David's face and how it related to David's story was amazing and will have an impact on my thinking when I'm looking at art in the future.

Speaking of David's story--I was certainly familiar with Michelangelos's statue, David. And I definitely know much of David's story...David and Goliath, King David, etc. I taught Sunday school for close to a decade and David is sort of the superhero of the Old Testament. I am embarrassed to say that I had not made the connection between the statue David and the Biblical David.

Or if I had, it never hit me the way it did when Jane showed a close up of the statue's face and described what she saw in it and how it related to the story of David and Goliath.

Jane Sutcliffe's Connecticut Children's Book Fair presentation would make a great offering at art museums with children's programs. I wonder if it couldn't be extended into an art history talk for schools, too.

This post originally appeared at Original Content.

How Great Was This Year's Connecticut Children's Book Fair?

This year's Connecticut Children's Book Fair, held last weekend, Nov. 14 and 15, was particularly terrific. The four author/illustrator presentations I attended were so great that I'm going to be giving them each their own blog post. I described the fair on Facebook as being like a writers' conference but better because it was free and the author talks only lasted thirty minutes. Also, usually at a conference there's a lot of inconsistency in the offerings. Some are much better than others. But, as I said, I saw four presenters, and they were all excellent.

I got to the fair a little early on Sunday to check out Elisha Cooper's book, Train. And, yes, he signed a copy that I'm giving to a family member for Christmas.

I stopped to say hello to Barbara McClintock because a couple of years ago, I heard her speak on a panel regarding women in publishing. And, of course, she's a #CTwomanwriter.

I am an Ivy + Bean fan. I thought that was a good reason to say hello to that series' illustrator, Sophie Blackall.

I always see kids at this book fair, but I don't recall if they turned out for the actual author talks in the past. They certainly did this year.

More will be coming on the Connecticut Children's Book Fair later this week.

Another version of this post appeared at Original Content