Judith L. Roth's Blog, page 4

Cat imagery

Words are an excerpt from Serendipity & Me. Picture is of Jasmine, inspiration for Serendipity.

Teachers and their inexplicable gift

I come from a full parentage of teachers. My mother finally retired at 80. My father retired once, but can’t seem to live without the classroom, so he’s traded substituting for teaching. Still at it, at almost 88 years old.

You’d think teaching would be in my genes. But it is nowhere to be found.

It’s not over there, either.
(art-Pascal Lemaitre, from Goodnight, Dragons)

I tried it once. I took on a music teacher position at a private school, going from classroom to classroom, kindergarten through 8th grade. It was a disaster. I only survived the kindergartners for a week. (I couldn’t figure out how their brains worked.) I hung in there with the rest of the grades for as long as I could–two months.

It’s not that I don’t like to impart knowledge. I do! I kept the private piano lessons going after quitting the rest. Teaching one person at a time, no matter the age, was fine. When you focus everything on one person, it feels like a relationship, not a scary job. And there’s no crowd-control involved because there’s no crowd.

                This is what it looks like to me when I look out at a classroom….

I admire people who have the gift of teaching and use it. I watch amazed in classrooms as I see teachers encouraging, herding, containing, proclaiming, moving an entire group of kids into an educable hour. How do they keep track of so many people at once? How do they organize all that material so each day is filled with learning? I can’t even grasp how they speak in that teacher’s voice that rises above the others, clearly and with authority.

Teachers–I salute you. Enjoy your summer. I know you will already be dreaming up ways to inspire your incoming students.

Simmering

I’m starting to write a funny, slightly-romantic MG novel. It occurs to me that since my first two novels (unpublished) were also supposed to be funny and sort-of romantic, maybe this is a bad idea.

On the island of Murano.

But it’s an idea that started a year and a half ago, was half-tried, discarded, and has come back around, fully formed. I take this to mean��it’s an idea that wants to be written. And it’s an idea that’s been simmering, working itself out beneath my conscious mind.

It’s an idea whose time has come. I hope.

An idea that arose because of circumstance.

I just got back with my husband from a trip celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary. I took a similar trip with my little sister a year and a half ago, celebrating her new life. The first trip sparked the idea, the second trip fulfilled all the necessary research.

The first trip spawned a first page whose voice was–awful. Right before the second trip, I tried another voice. And suddenly, the book seemed like a do-able thing.

It’s nice to know my mind can work on it’s own without me bossing it around. And sometimes (always?), that’s the best way to write.

How much revision can one story take?

An infinite amount, if the writer is stubborn and persistent.

Case in point: I now have a novel manuscript that used to be a��mid-size novel-in-verse that was once a short novel-in-verse that was once revised to a different gender that was once a picture book poetry manuscript that was once a poem. Got that? Two editors��(maybe three) asked for revisions at various points, which lead me to hope for a contract. But it hasn’t happened so far.

Now the novel is out on submissions again, this time in prose, and almost three times the length of the last novel-in-verse rendition.

Why don’t I throw in the towel? Because my agent says he loves it. And more importantly, because my oldest son is the inspiration behind a boy who is passionate about soccer. It’s his turn for a dedication page in his honor.

Early trophy

In Italy with some of his soccer team, far right

Drooling over cups at Camp Nou, FC Barcelona

Newspaper shot, high school game

Goodnight, Dragons board book giveaway

The padded board book version of Goodnight, Dragons came out a month ago and I am finally getting around to a contest.

Valentine’s Day is a week away. It’s time to share the love of a huggable book. If you write a comment below, you will get your name in the drawing for a free board book of Goodnight, Dragons. If you share the contest on a social media platform (tell me where you shared in your comment), you’ll get another chance to win. Contest open to U.S. only. (Sorry–those postal rates to other countries are ridiculous.)

Contest closes at the end of Valentine’s Day, West Coast time. I’ll post the winner the following Monday. (If you win and I haven’t gotten in touch with you, it’s because I don’t have your contact information. So send me your email. Or just add it to your comment when you enter.)

This version has everything the hardback version has except the title page. So you can use it with the story time kit with no adjustment.

The story time kit is free to download (see tab at top of page).

Good luck, everyone!

How to know when a picture book should be a middle grade novel

The easiest way to know when a picture book manuscript should really be a novel is to have an editor tell you so. This is what has happened to me with three picture books so far. I’m hoping I’ve learned enough from this that I can share some of the whys with you.

My��picture book subjects��were:

1. A motherless girl who finds a stray kitten, told in poems.

��

2. A boy who is passionate about��soccer, told in poems.

Me with my little sister

3. A girl whose little sister is sick. (Don’t worry; mine isn’t.) You got it–also told in poems.

For the kitten story, an editor wrote, “I think you have more to say about this girl and her father.” She suggested a novella-in-verse. I asked myself, “Do I have more to say about them?” And the answer was��Yes. There was a lot going on behind those 15 or so poems and that relationship.��I wanted to find out what it was.

So��reason number one: Depth. ��Have you only scratched the surface��of the story and the characters with your picture book manuscript? Are there intriguing possibilities you could explore? You will probably also need to��make your characters older.

For the soccer story, the age of children who were being read picture books, or even reading them themselves,��wouldn’t be passionate in the same way, and certainly not as skilled, as the character in this book. So the audience for the book was older. Therefore, the book should be of a length appropriate for this age group.

Same soccer-playing guy as the redhead above. Also my son.

Which leads us to reason number two: Age appropriateness. Are your characters’��skill sets and��interests beyond the age of most young children?��If your characters are too young for a middle grade novel, make them 9-14 and see what else happens to your story then.

For the sick sister story, an editor was concerned��that the��appendicitis limited the story’s appeal, and that the nontraditional structure already limited its saleability. This wasn’t a suggestion to move it to a novel, but it reminded me that another editor had suggested making it a book with chapters about the sisters. That would solve the problems, as novels-in-verse are an easier sell than picture books with the story written in poems, and the appendicitis would no longer be the main storyline.

So reasons number three and four: Subject Matter and Story Structure. Is your subject matter not universal enough for a picture book? This will limit sales to customers and to editors.

Anything more universal and less sophisticated than a box?

Is your story structure more accessible in��novel form? Is it too sophisticated for a picture book? You can either find a more universal subject and write it��more in keeping with a picture book, or you can take the story to a longer form for middle graders.����������

The joy for me in moving a picture book to a novel is that these are already characters I love, and now I get to spend more time with them and get to know them better. May it be so for you, too.

Another Christmas poem

Writing update

A writer’s historical journey

In 2012, I wrote a post asking what I should work on next. I listed three possibilities of novels I’d already started. Two and a half years later, I’ve written 2 out of 3 of those novels. (By “written” I mean in a substantial enough form to send to publishers. I don’t mean they’re published. Or finished. Because once an editor has accepted one, there will be plenty of revision. Because I’m not Roald Dahl. Or whoever that writer is who manages to send in perfect manuscripts. I’m sure I heard there was one.)

I started with the historical novel. Managed to fix the middle and workshopped it with four of my writing friends. Rewrote it. Took it to a revision conference in California. Rewrote it. Meanwhile my agent sent it out in both forms. I got lots of interesting comments, including a publisher who wanted me to revise, but who has been silent since receiving the revision. An editor who’d shown interest at the California retreat decided the revision had too many coincidences. She didn’t say what those were. So THREE PRAYERS is back on the shelf, awaiting inspiration for another rewrite.

A shelf inside Liezel’s house.

I developed the soccer novel-in-verse into an entirely new book. It continued to get looks in this form, but several times was rejected because no one could believe that a boy who liked soccer would read poetry. I kept resisting the suggestion that I change it to prose. But with this last suggestion, the editor took the time to take out the line breaks and show what the first five pages would look like if the words stayed the same but the spacing was different.

Keyboard to screen, the beautiful game.

Maybe if it had been the first time this suggestion was made, it wouldn’t have swayed me. But seeing the prose version on the page like that was helpful. And I was worn down. And finally convinced.

So I tried it. And I continued on, revising using her five single-space pages of suggestions for more development. And I’m happy to report that, barring a few tweaks after my final readers’ comments come in, I’ll soon be ready to hand this off to my agent.

Number one on that old list, THE OTHER JESSAMY, is languishing. I look at it and love it and have no idea where to go with it. Someday….

Meanwhile, I’m working on another novel-in-verse that began as a picture book. If this doesn’t sound familiar, I haven’t talked about this trend yet. (Note to self: post on this subject.)

This new MG novel-in-verse is tentatively titled, ZOE, HERSELF. It’s a story about sisters. Stay tuned….

 

 

Goodnight, Dragons becomes–presto chango–new board book

Before the sad news that Goodnight, Dragons will go out of stock, came the happy news that Goodnight, Dragons will become a padded board book. If you don’t know what that is (I didn’t), it’s like a regular board book, only the cover is made so it’s kind of soft and squishy.

A chubby book for chubby hands. Release date is January of 2015.

Two sample copies arrived in the mail yesterday, and they are so adorable (my agent’s description) that I’m thinking this could have been the very first format. It seems like it’s the best incarnation of Dragons one could imagine.

Woodland creatures photobombing the new format.

I took a picture of the two books with woodland creatures that are featured in Goodnight, Dragons  to make the picture more charming. (Disclaimer: these are actors portraying the animals in the book, not the actual animals.) But really. This book design is charming enough by itself. Then why, you ask, don’t I just show a picture of the book? Come on. Look at those little stuffed faces!

Disney*Hyperion kept the shiny title and added a shiny oval picture on the back taken from the front flap of the original picture book. The words pretty much sum up the theme of the book:

 

So if there’s a dragon in your life right now, you might want to give them a hug.

Meanwhile, I’m just going to hug the book.

Want to get published? Get to know this word: Persistence

I’ve just gotten back from a wonderful children’s writers conference on Mackinac Island in Michigan. It’s magical there…my friend got her first glimpse of it after we walked onto Main Street from the ferry, and she said, “It’s just like downtown Disneyland.” And I said, “Except it’s real.” There are no cars on the streets. You travel by foot, or by bicycle, or by some kind of horse transportation. (Although in winter, I hear they use snowmobiles.) It’s a step back in time.

Mackinac Island shuttle

The conference was also a step back in time as I realized I was once again learning my craft and back to the wishing-and-waiting time of getting published. It’s been over three years since I had a book accepted for publication, and not for lack of submitting. I have two novels going the rounds, along with numerous picture books. It feels like an impossible road to travel with no idea what will come next. With no idea whether publication is once again an impossible dream.

Road along Mackinac Island shoreline

But I didn’t get where I am for lack of trying. It took about 25 years of submissions before I finally broke into the world of fiction publishing. Not a drop in the bucket. So I’m well-versed in how to do this wishing-and-waiting thing. Fortunately, I have a longer lifespan than a butterfly’s.

In the Butterfly House on Mackinac Island

Hopefully, I still have enough time to wait. And it’s not going to break me to keep trying. Not like some thiings might.