Teen Writers Bloc

As we reflect on our time at The New School this month, I am predicting a repeating theme: yes, this degree and endeavor was worth it for ME personally, but I wouldn’t say it’s ALWAYS worth it.

In the course of my time at The New School, I managed to finish three complete drafts for three separate novels and start countless others; I landed an awesome agent, Kate McKean; and I sold my first book in a two-book deal to Bloomsbury. I am 100 percent certain that this would not have happened if I had not taken the plunge, moved across the country and gone back to school. However, I also don’t think I would have reached these goals, and certainly I would not have reached them so quickly, if it weren’t for my classmates. And that’s the problem. Who you end up in class with is completely luck, right?

Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be. When I think about it, our class did practical things that lead to it’s effectiveness. So maybe we should talk about actual steps that will make an MFA, especially The New School Writing for Children MFA, worth it.

1. Write WAY MORE than required. You’re only going to be submitting every few weeks, but you need to write everyday. In my first semester I imposed a two hour a day rule on myself and I was disciplined. I would come home from work, turn my phone off, disconnect my internet, and set an alarm. Then I would sit at my computer until the alarm went off.  By the time I was required to submit my first ten pages, I had close to 80. When it was time for me to submit, I would then go back and edit the ten pages I was going to send. I would have a much better sense of the shape of the whole because I had so much more written. This made it much easier to weed out the helpful criticism during critique.

2. Find a small group of serious writers from within your class and form an extra critique group. Meet regularly and be dedicated to it. Sona, Corey, Dhonielle, Amy and I did this for the first two semester and Sona, Corey, Alyson, Dhonielle, Lenea and I have done this for the final semester. This has been incredibly valuable to me because I get more written with more deadlines, because I get to have a dialogue about my work, and because I get invested in voices outside my own. It’s easier for me to have a realistic (and not overly negative) opinion of my own work when I’m very invested in others’ as well.

3. Start a project together. I think we would all agree that Teen Writers Bloc helped us to become a unit. It also gives us a way to stay connected to each other and our writing after we graduate.  And, when at times we were perhaps a bit frustrated with some select teachers, Teen Writers Bloc helped us feel supported and reminded us that there is a larger purpose to our writing than what’s happening in class.

4. After the first semester, your classmates are going to know your writing better than your teachers do, because they will have read more of it. Find the voices from your classmates that are helpful to you and listen to them. Listen to your teachers, but remember that they’re only with you for a semester. So you also need to find helpful critiquers among your peers.

5. Find the classmates who really know the business and talk post-drafting. Talk about query letters, agents, publishing houses, promotion, and other aspects of the business. Share agent stories. Share queries. (Heck, Sona basically wrote my query for me, and Mary helped me land an agent.). Get invested in each others’ careers because different people have different strengths. Use yours to benefit the entire class, and then tap on others’ shoulders.

6. Trade full manuscripts before your query. You need someone to read from beginning to end, not just in little spurts, and your best bets are going to be the people in your class, provided you have invested in their writing and careers as well.

7. Become friends. Go for drinks or coffee. Take a walk. Throw a holiday party like Corey did for us first semester. Ultimately, this was a positive experience of most of us, but with a huge side of frustration, disappointment, and lack of control. That’s what happens when you’re really passionate about your career. You will need your friends to commiserate and celebrate with, because no one else will understand what you’re talking about. And because sometimes you need to get a good gripe out before you can get back to work.

Photo Credit: Institute Childrens Lit

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If you asked me today whether I would do The New School’s Writing for Children program over again, my answer would be an unequivocal yes. Thanks to the program, I’m now part of an amazing community of writers that I know I’ll be part of for the rest of my life. I’ve completed four novels, and my writing has improved immensely. Though I had already sold my first book by the time I started the program, I think that my MFA experience has greatly enhanced my lifetime career prospects.

So if you asked me whether you should do the New School MFA, I’d say yes, right? Well, not so fast. You see, the reason that my experience here has been so fantastic is my peer group — the twelve fantastic writers I’ve had the honor of working with over the last two years. Over the last two years, we’ve pushed each other and supported each other so that each of us has reached greater heights than we ever would have without the group. Though we had three talented writers for workshop instructors, it was the comments of our peers that we most trusted, and it was our peers’ writing that we most learned from. The New School provided the structure for the thirteen of us to come together. But what else did The New School provide? What would the program have been like if it were just the program, and my classmates had been different? This question has left me wondering whether the program will be as amazing for others as it was for me.

For anyone considering whether to do the MFA, this is what The New School Writing for Children program consists of: Two literature seminars taught by fantastic New York editors, three peer-driven workshop classes led by talented authors, and a thesis advisor. That sounds good, but it doesn’t exactly add up to two full years of instruction, worth two full years of tuition. The school offers three semesters during which MFA students take classes. For one of those semesters, Writing for Children students (but not Fiction or Poetry students) must take a literature seminar outside their genre. When some of us complained about the lack of a third Writing for Children seminar, the administration presented it as both an issue of lack of funding for the missing class and as a good thing for us, because Writing for Children students need exposure to other genres to become well-rounded writers. If the out-of-genre requirement had applied to all genres, I would have been okay with this and possibly even supportive, but as it was, I found it insulting. The insult was compounded by the fact that not one of the fiction seminars we ended up taking included a single YA book on the reading list. I’m guessing that everyone reading this blog agrees that YA literature is, in fact, real literature and that YA writers are, in fact, real writers. Plus, I’ve already ranted on this blog about how unhelpful I found my literature seminar to be. Suffice to say that I didn’t feel that our tuition money was wisely spent on our out-of-genre requirement.

And now we come to the fourth semester. During the fourth semester, MFA students take no classes whatsoever. We meet with peer groups and work with a thesis advisor on a creative thesis. The New School requires a “literature project,” but Writing for Children students typically use a paper that we write in David Levithan’s first semester literature seminar to fulfill that requirement. So the school demands full tuition simply for advising on the creative thesis. Don’t get me wrong, I loved working with my fabulous thesis advisor, Susan Van Metre! But I know the school isn’t paying her my full tuition. So I think the fourth semester is a rip-off.

Finally, there’s the problem of low expectations. If you wanted to, you could graduate from the program without ever having completed a novel. The thesis requirement is only fifty pages. You could literally write only fifty pages in the entire program and still graduate.

What does this mean? Basically, I think the program is a crap shoot. If you get lucky and end up with a fantastic class, then the program will be well worth it. But if you get unlucky, and you end up in a class that’s less cohesive and motivated, then the program may not be worth the money. Personally, I chose to come to the program because I wanted to make being a children’s author my lifelong career. But if I hadn’t been able to attend the program for whatever reason, I would still be writing. I would even still be celebrating the release of my first book (Wuftoom, on shelves May 8!) I suspect that many of my classmates would also still be writing and still have achieved at least some of their successes. The program enhanced our careers, but it didn’t write our books for us. Success in the program requires a fire from within, something no amount of money can buy you.

Image credit: The Fabulous Riddhi Parekh!

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I’m crazy. Or… maybe it’s my life that’s crazy. Or maybe it’s a little bit from column A, a lot bit from column B.

Now that we’ve hit April and we only have one month left of our MFA program (eeps!), we at TWB are looking at the idea of “spring cleaning.” And boy, do I need some of that. Actually, it’s more like I need a full-time professional organizer, like one of those people on Hoarders.

Here are just a few of the things I’m currently juggling:

- Near full-time job as a writer for a pop culture website.

- Edits (and behind-the-scenes stuff like back cover copy and character and scene descriptions for the cover artists) on my first novel, which will be published by Sourcebooks Fire next year.

- Writing my current work-in-progress, which is a tricky endeavor indeed.

- Working on edits for my thesis with my thesis advisor Sarah Ketchersid.

- Contributing to my various blogging projects, including TWB!

-Working with my awesome critique group (holla Amy, Caela, Mary, & Riddhi!) each week.

- Starting a new manuscript-critiquing business with the fabulous Dhonielle Clayton.

- Other. (In this case, “other” includes such things as finding time to see my husband, friends, and family, cleaning my apartment, paying attention to my dog, and sleeping.)

The good news is that, though my schedule is filled to the brim, it’s filled with good stuff. I was able to quit several of my part-time and freelance jobs so that I don’t really have to do much bull**** work anymore. That was the first step in my spring (life?) cleaning process. Step two is getting organized. Writing lists, setting iPhone reminders, banishing the word “procrastination” from my life. I think I can, I think I can…

In a perfect world, I would be able to work on my own books full time. And hopefully someday that will happen. But until then, it’s going to have to be “spring cleaning” – all year round!

Futurama photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox

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I think it’s safe to say that my three favorite female authors writing today are and will probably always be Sarah Dessen, Toni Morrison, and J.K. Rowling. Many of my previous posts discuss Ms. Dessen and her amazing body of work, her ability to create realistic characters and put them seamlessly into relatable conflict during their ‘teen years.’ I’ve also posted about Ms. Morrison before. She is extremely talented and has the ability to write clean and powerful prose while weaving themes and tropes intricately into her novels without being too overbearing, but still drawing the reader into the tale she has crafted. The Bluest Eye had an enormous impact on my life, as did Beloved and Song of Solomon. They are haunting texts for sure, but as an aspiring author I often dove into them curious about how she was able to write such focused, detailed and purposeful narratives.

That said, I probably haven’t mentioned Ms. Rowling before, because most likely I figured there was no need. I think everyone can understand the enormous impact she and those following in her footsteps (Hunger Games, Matched, and other series-laden franchises, anyone?) have had on the literary world. She is probably the most successful author on the planet, except for maybe James Patterson, Stephen King and Toni Morrison, and that’s a big maybe. And the most inspiring thing about her is the fact that she believed in her creation, her characters and their story, despite the fact that few others did at the time. She persevered through tons of rejections, just like most writers do, and it ended up paying off for her many times over.

When I mention that I’m getting my MFA in Creative Writing, a lot of people that I respect are encouraging, but there are still those who say it’s foolish to pursue a writing career and that it’s a career where you don’t make any money and one that is completely impractical — as if I didn’t already know or hadn’t heard all of that before. But the longer I’m in this program, the more I realize that the most important thing is to be committed your craft, despite the naysayers (and there are many), and to go after your passion. There may never be another J.K. Rowling, such a groundbreaking phenomenon may never repeat itself, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that every author has to make a commitment to her craft, block out those who tell her no, and run towards what she wants — just to see if maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to make her ambitions a reality.

Book cover image courtesy of Vintage

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Hurray for women! And especially hurray for women authors!

In honor of March being Women’s History Month, we at TWB are taking a look at our favorite groundbreaking female authors from history and today. My favorite female author from the past came to me immediately, but choosing just one from the present was a hard one for me. But after weighing all the wonderful merits of today’s female authorial world, I finally reached a decision.

Jess’s Favorite Female Author from History:

Jane Austen! Duh. Not only was the woman a total genius, she managed to write six amazing novels (and publish four while she was still alive) while living in a less-than-ideal time for women who wanted to work outside of the home. And on top of that, she managed to use her stories to somehow get away with making thinly-veiled and oftentimes scathing observations of the society in which she lived.

Jane figured out something long ago that many of us writers are just only starting to realize – in fiction, anything can happen. Though she desperately wanted to fall in love and get married, it never happened for her. So she made certain that her characters would get to live the life she always wanted for herself but could never have. Elizabeth, Emma, Elinor and Marianne, Fanny, Catherine, and Anne all live get their “happily ever after” – even if they do face some obstacles along the way.

Jess’s Favorite Female YA Author Today:

Laurie Halse Anderson! The woman is a genius, ‘nough said. One of the main reasons I love Laurie is that she isn’t afraid of the scary issues. Speak, her first young adult novel, is about a 13-year-old girl who becomes mute after being raped. Wintergirls is about eating disorders and self-mutilation. Catalyst is about incest and death. Twisted is about depression and suicide. Yeah, not exactly light reading, but these stories are so, so important and I commend Laurie for tackling them so beautifully and astutely.

Happy Women’s History Month, everyone!

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I had several favorite female authors when I was growing up. One was Ellen Conford, who usually wrote about pre-teens and teens going through problems that were familiar to most of us, such as first love and being bullied, and the unfamiliar, like finding out you’re the long lost princess of a small country. But no matter what the subject was, Conford’s characters always had confidence and a sense of humor.

I read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin for our seminar class last spring, but I was already familiar with her works. When I was in the sixth grade, I discovered The Westing Game in my local library and I loved how it was a mystery book just for kids. I searched for more works written by Raskin and found similar books like The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues and The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel). These last two also had mystery themes, which appealed to me.

But out of all the female authors whose books I’ve read, Judy Blume is definitely one of the most well known. Her stories, sometimes viewed as controversial, dealt with the pains of growing up. Comparing her books to some of the ones that are available now, the subject matters seem almost tame.

I can’t say I have a favorite female author now, but there are two that have definitely caught my attention. The first is Laurie Halse Anderson. My first experience with her was reading Wintergirls in David Levithan’s seminar class. Wintergirls was well written and Anderson skillfully caught the pain of her main character who was suffering from an eating disorder. I was inspired to read Speak and Catalyst. In each book, Anderson knew how to express the isolation and confusion her narrators felt without overdoing it.

The other author is Libba Bray, who came to David Levithan’s class as part of an author panel to speak to our class. She had a great sense of humor and I hoped that was apparent in her writing as well. It was. Bray had a knack for picking unusual topics for her stories and giving them a twist. Going Bovine had a 16-year-old male narrator who contracts a life-threatening disease and goes on a quest for a cure with an angel, a video-gaming dwarf and a garden gnome for his companions. I thought Bray did an excellent job writing from the point of view of a teenage boy. Beauty Queens is about a group of teenage beauty pageant contestants whose plane crash lands on a deserted island. Bray uses just enough humor to let the situation still feel serious, yet believable when the contestants find ways to use their various pageant skills to survive.

I’m sure there are so many more excellent female authors that I’ve never read. Any recommendations?

Book cover image courtesy of Penguin Group USA

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March is Women’s History Month and what better way to celebrate the power of women than in recognizing their accomplishments — both fictional and not — in the field of children’s lit?

After all, we have an wide array of women’s superstars in our industry, from Katniss Everdeen and Hazel Grace Lancaster to JK Rowling and Judy Blume.  And this parade of women marches far back behind the page. The majority of literary agents representing children’s’ authors are women; the majority of editors putting kids lit on the shelves are women; the majority of authors and aspiring authors putting words on the page for teens and young people are women.

When people discuss careers dominated by women, they usually mention eduction, nursing, fashion, etc.  It’s a growing list and it’s wonderful to be able to add the very alive world of children’s publishing to it.

But all of this adds to the mystery of the New York Times Best Sellers List.

I first noticed this a few weeks ago (February 12th to be exact) when I was reading the paper with my dad. He was discussing how the adult’s Best Sellers List tends to be the same authors over and over again, and I posited that that was probably true of the children’s list as well. But that’s not what I noticed when I checked that week’s Book Pages. Instead, I noticed that the list of names was as follows: John, Rick, Random, Brian, Jack, Shel, Rick, Brian. Not one woman’s name on the list!

Because my own short time in this industry has been so dominated by women — eleven of our twelve classmates, four of my six professors, my agent, my editor, and all of the other agents and editors I spoke with are women — this seemed strange. But I figured it was just a current trent. Probably just a fluke.

So I crunched the numbers. I listed every author on the Best Sellers List over a year’s time, but I excluded the non-fiction titles (i.e. The Lego Handbook), which don’t seem to belong on this same list as The Fault in Our Stars or The Red Pyramid anyway. Here’s what I found:

*41 weeks of the year, there were more men than women on the list

*8 weeks of the year, there were more women than men on the list

*4 weeks of the year, the list was evenly split between the genders

*6.2 was the average number of men on the list

*2.88 was the average number of women on the list

*4 weeks of the year, the list was topped by a woman

*48 weeks of the year, the list was topped by a man

I have to admit, this shocked me. What’s going on? Obviously, it feels like we should be aiming for a 50/50 split, which we’re far from.  But considering the majority of qualified authors are women to begin with, it seems like the data should swing in the other direction. How is this possible? Why would this be?

I have been trying to fill in the reasons ever since, but I haven’t gotten very far.

Perhaps there is a gender-based reason for this. Perhaps men are simply better at publicizing themselves and pushing their ideas toward the big money. Perhaps men tend to be more focused on reaching a broad audience or perhaps they are more likely to define success through becoming a Best Seller. Perhaps the fact that there are fewer men out there to push means that more people rally behind them.

Or maybe the reasons are more benign. Maybe it’s simply the old lore that girls will read about anyone, but boys prefer to read about boys, so men automatically end up with double the audience. (Although in my time teaching for boys, this proved to be entirely untrue.)

Or maybe it’s even simpler than this. Maybe it’s just that the recent super-stars are Rick Riordan and Brian Selznick, so there are men who often appear on the list multiple times in the same week. And maybe these numbers would look completely different in a year when the rage was Twilight or The Hunger Games. 

But no matter the reason, it seems a mystery worth exploring during Women’s History Month.

Photo Credit: croniclebooks.com

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My grandmother used to work at a library as a book mender, and she would always bring me home the most beautiful old copies of books that she’d saved from the destruction of time, and age, and old binding glue. One of these books was a battered copy of Little Women.

I loved that book so much I refused to read the last page, so that it never actually ended. In fact, I still have not read that page, though I probably would now — but I’d want to read it from that particular copy, which is packed up somewhere in my parents’ attic. Louisa May Alcott’s story of the four March sisters allowed me to imagine what it might be like to have sisters. Marmee was like a second mother. I wanted so badly to have Jo’s courage, though it was Beth who was my favorite — I cried like a baby when she died. I’m even named after Amy, because my mother studied art and loved drawing. Louisa May Alcott created a world I so badly wanted to live in, a world of proposals and petticoats, but also of the strength of family, and the belief that nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. She was an incredible woman for her time, and she wrote incredible female characters — Jo March was the first living, breathing juvenile heroine to act from her own convictions and individuality, rather than the stereotypical young woman depicted at that time. And even though her world was nothing like mine, I could relate to the struggles of growing up and trying to figure out who you are.

Now, other worlds have enticed me — worlds of magic and strange creatures, of battles between good and evil. And these worlds were predominately written by men, until J.K. Rowling came along. Not only did she bring fantasy to a broader spectrum of readers than the genre ever reached before, but she opened the door to female fantasy writers everywhere, allowing them to join what used to be a pretty exclusive all-boys club. Because of her, women no longer have to use their initials to write fantasy for fear no one would by a “boys” book written by a woman. She was certainly an inspiration to me.

It took me so long to discover this path my life has taken, to realize that in writing I’ve really found my true passion. And it wasn’t until I actually sat down and wrote this post that I realized I probably wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t for these two extraordinary women.

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So this is our last semester at The New School. Regular readers of this blog will already know that our sole task this semester is to complete a “thesis,” which according to New School criteria, must consist of “a manuscript of 50 to 70 pages of stories or other fiction or nonfiction, or a completed children’s book in a state appropriate for publication.” As a former attorney, I can’t help but point a few things out. First of all, what do they mean by “children’s book”? I mean, this is a “writing for children” program. All we write are children’s books. Do they mean “picture book”? If so, why don’t they just say that? Okay, let’s assume for the sake of argument (because I have to get to the argument) that by “children’s book” they mean “picture book.” That would mean that the criteria were written by people who had no idea what a children’s book was, but let’s leave that aside. Fine. If I choose to do a picture book for my thesis, I’ll make sure it’s in a state appropriate for publication. But what if I choose to do a manuscript of 50 to 70 pages?

The single comma in the above sentence indicates that there is no requirement of publishable quality for such a manuscript. If they wanted to say that such a manuscript had to be in a state appropriate for publication, they should have said: “a manuscript of 50 to 70 pages of stories or other fiction or nonfiction, or a completed children’s book, in a state appropriate for publication.” Could it be that the nice folks who wrote out the criteria didn’t know where to put their commas, even though they presumably teach writing? I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that. The only rational conclusion is that they meant exactly what they said; that’s the way the judge would see it. Are you getting my drift, readers? That means I can write absolutely anything that takes up 50 to 70 pages and consists of stories, fiction, or nonfiction. There’s nothing about word count. There isn’t even any stated requirement that such manuscript pages consist of writing for children.

Now, if you read this blog, you probably also know that most of us weren’t happy with our literature classes last semester. That was because they made us take classes that consisted solely of adult literature, and not only that, most of it was typical MFA nonsense. It seemed like most of the professors chose their books from a bin marked “Whaaaat?” Assuming that by “stories” and “fiction” they mean the kind of thing we had to read last semester, and incorporating the official thesis criteria, I’d like to share with you the first draft of my thesis project. There’s not enough space in the blog format to get the full effect, but picture one giant word per page.

Thunk Weel

We thunk a thunk weel thusly. Under the broad sky

of diamond silver gems and then

the little children, of which I was one

dreamed

in the field next to the weel.

The weel the weel!

I thunk it thusly, thunk I did!

Those dreams of weels and thunking which

therefore THE END IS NEAR REPENT!

To any publishers who are desperate to acquire “Thunk Weel”: Please contact my agent, Kate McKean.

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Moving into our final semester I only have one thing on my mind and that’s getting as much writing done as possible. You might have noticed that this is a constant goal of mine that isn’t always easy to execute. While I recognize its importance, that hasn’t stopped me from getting distracted by work, class and other aspects of life.  So this semester, I’m looking forward to working with my peer group—Mary, Kevin, Jane and Molly—to help make writing more of a priority in my life. As I reflect on the last three semesters, I find the thing that has been most valuable to me has been the relationships that I’ve built over the course of the program with my classmates. Watching them evolve as writers and begin to treat writing like a full time job has made me put into perspective what it is really going to take for me to reach my ultimate goal of completing a manuscript by the end of the semester. Each semester has brought an entire new set of challenges for me but with the support of my peer group, I’m hoping that I’ll continue to overcome whatever issues may come my way.

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