Passing the (Writing) Torch to a New Generation

A few weeks ago a small envelope arrived in the mail. The name on the return address was familiar, but I couldn't quite place it; the street was just a few blocks from my home. Hmmm.

I opened to find a card written in exquisitely tiny handwriting, from a girl (now a young woman) who had been my older son's classmate at Mesa Elementary School over two decades ago. She wrote that she still remembered how inspired she had been as a child from a talk I gave on writing to her class. She had recently rekindled her own interest in writing, begun reading my books for young readers, and had been following the Paris posts on my blog. She just wanted me to know that I was continuing to inspire her to follow her writing dreams.

Well! THAT certainly makes up for any number of recent career disappointments!

I wrote her back right away, with a handwritten note of my own, though lacking her meticulous, miniscule printing, and invited her to come for tea. Via email, she accepted the invitation, and last week presented herself at my door, with a shy smile and a Mason jar filled with flowers.

And then we talked, and talked, and talked. I wanted to hear all about her post-Mesa-Elementary life, and she was willing to share it. I poured out all I could think of to tell a young writer starting her journey to an author of children's books. Join SCBWI (the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators). Read editor Cheryl Klein's brilliant book The Magic Words. Make friends with the wonderful owners of our terrific local indie bookstores that support children's book events: Second Star to the Right, Wandering Jellyfish, and BookBar/Bookies. And much, much more.

By the end of our time together I had shared with her some of the challenges of my own work-in-progress, a creative historical-nonfiction picture book, and she (with her multiple degrees in history) ended up being the one to offer ME encouragement. We were peers and colleagues already.

The flowers are a teensy bit wilted now, but still make me happy every time I walk by them. 

I feel like a Wise Old Woman! Or actually, more like a Wise Middle-Aged Woman. Or maybe just a Person Who Has Been Writing Books for a Very Long Time and Has a Big Bunch Insights to Share. 

Of course, I've already had many opportunities to share my children's book wisdom, such as it is, with my students in the Graduate Programs in Children's Literature at Hollins University and with writing mentees through the Michelle Begley Mentor Program. Those have been wonderful experiences, too. But there was something especially poignant about this encounter with a childhood classmate of my son, maybe also because I'm increasingly wondering what the future holds for me as a professional author. This felt particularly like "passing the torch to a new generation."

Fortunately, the beauty of this kind of torch-passing is that you can light someone else's torch without extinguishing your own. It's not so much a passing of the torch but a sharing of the light, where two candles, or ten, or a thousand, or a million, just make the world that much brighter. 

In lighting Sarah's candle, I relit mine, too. Thanks to my delightful time with this new friend, I sent off my nonfiction picture book manuscript to my agent this morning!

Finding Out What DOESN'T Work Is Progress, Too, Right?

So February was a not-so-good month. 

On the plus side: 

I did write a poem every day from a photo-and-text prompt given by brilliant poet/teacher Molly Fisk in an online poetry group she facilitates every other month. I don't think any of my poems were very good, but, hey, I wrote them and forced myself to share them. I faithfully kept this commitment I made to myself.

I also forced myself to submit a batch of older poems somewhere each week. So far I haven't heard from one place, received rejections from two (though one where the editor did note which of the five poems submitted was strongest in his view), and got one acceptance. My poem "Earth and Moon" will be featured on Your Daily Poem for August 12. 

But my other two writing projects for the month led to nothing but failure. 

The first was groping toward writing some kind of thing (middle grade novel? young adult novel? adult memoir?) based on my own turbulent adolescent years during the equally turbulent years of the late 1960s. I have enormous amounts of (in my view) fabulous material that I wrote in junior high and high school, plus such vivid memories. Surely I could turn this into a book somehow?

The second was figuring out how to turn my decades- long fascination with the Lowell mill girls of the first half of the 19th century into the text for a nonfiction picture book. Right now creative nonfiction in picture book form is some of the most exciting work being published for young readers. Surely there was some story here that I could share for this audience?

Or... maybe not. 

Right now, after working steadily for a month on these, I'm worried that both would be chiefly of interest to . . . well . . .  to me. The 1960s project feels like an exercise in middle-aged white woman's nostalgia - not a booming area of children's book publishing at the current moment (and it's children's book publishing which is still dearest to me). The writing I've done on the Lowell mill girls material is so prosy and flat, filled with so much necessary but dense background material - hardly what would appeal to picture book readers.

Sigh.

And sigh.

Thomas Edison famously said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,00 ways that won't work." 

I guess I can say that February was the month of finding two ways toward publication that aren't going to work for me. 

 I'm not sure, however, whether I've found two projects that aren't going to fly, or merely found two approaches to these projects that aren't quite right. For the 1960s project, maybe I just need to distance myself more from autobiography and work on finding a plot structure stronger than my own life story. For the Lowell mill girls project, maybe I need to find some angle toward the material that will allow for a text that is simpler, more lyrical, and more kid-friendly.

Edison also famously said, "The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." But did he mean "try one more time to make this project work"? Or "try one more time to find another project that might work better"? 

I don't know. But right my plan for the month of March, which begins today, is going to be to try one more time on both these projects, as both have been dear to my heart for decades and I can't bear yet to let them go.

I will try, try again.