Help! I've Forgotten How to Write a Book!

Buoyed by my recent success (after a stretch of discouragement) in writing my most recent book, The Last Apple Tree, and selling it to my favorite publisher, I thought, hey, this was fun! I think I'll write another book!  

So I gathered up my trusty clipboard, pad of paper, and Pilot P-500 pen, and prepared to start thinking about what my next book should be.

There was only one problem.

I had forgotten how to write a book. 

Now, given that The Last Apple Tree will be my 63rd book, in a career spanning 40 years, plus my good-sized stack of unpublished and unpublishable books, you might think this is the kind of thing one would remember. Alas, you would be wrong. I believe it was Eudora Welty who said, "Each book teaches me how to write IT." But not how to write the next one.

Still, in case it might jog my memory, I dragged out the notes I had made when I was groping toward The Last Apple Tree.

They are, to put it mildly, a mess. I started out jotting down something I had heard on NPR about the origin of song some 270 million years ago. Ooh! And then I wrote random things like, "firsts and lasts" and "noise and silence" and "noise pollution" and "FINDING YOUR OWN MUSIC." Plus unhelpful questions like: "How can this be made kidlike?" and "What can children do?" 

Page 2 of the notes was not much better:

By this point, I recalled that my plan HAD been to write something about heirloom apple trees. So I wrote lines like "orchards involve planning for the future" and "man plants a tree that will outlive him." This was barely a start, so I wrote, "but who are my characters? what is their story?" Yes, these would indeed be useful things for an author to know! More random notes: "2 dif. families" - "quiet book - but: something big? some big loss?" 

On page 3, I start listing possible candidates for the "big sad thing": death, Alzheimer's, family shame, poverty, prison, bad thing in family history . . . 

The pages of notes continued to accumulate, with more questions I struggled to answer: "HOW WOULD THIS TIE IN TO APPLES?" "What ELSE is going to happen?" "What do each of them WANT?" and some encouraging comments to myself such as "I am starting to love this book!" By page 11 of the notes, I was urging myself to start actually writing the thing: "JUST START WRITING - PLEASE DO THIS!" followed by the crucial question: "but: where does the book BEGIN?" 

I did start writing, and I see on p. 14 of the notes that the writing is going badly. "MY WRITING TASK FOR TODAY  - figure out why I have so little interest in this book and how to fix it!!!" with a list of  "THINGS I STILL (think) I LIKE" and another list of "PROBLEMS WITH THE STORY - MANY!! Then, later on the same page in huge capitals: "HELP!!!" Then many pages headed "SALVAGING THIS BOOK" and" SALVAGING THIS BOOK, CONT'D" with the agonized question "SHOULD I THROW OUT EVERYTHING SO FAR?" And many sad-face emojis. 

I went on to produce a total of 51 pages in the same tiny, scribbly writing, over a period of months, as I continued going back and forth between actual writing and reflecting on what I had written and what I might write next. And then: I had a full draft! And my writing group, the Writing Roosters, read it and gave me heaps and heaps of comments, and I made heaps and heaps of changes! And then my agent loved it, and my editor offered a contract on it, and I've now done three more rounds of revision/edits for her.

So did re-reading these old notes help me remember how to write a book? Sort of. The main thing they helped me remember was that WRITING IS HARD! WRITING TAKES TIME! EXPECT FALSE STARTS! EXPECT A ROLLERCOASTER OF SELF-PRAISE AND SELF-DOUBT WITH OCCASIONAL DARK NIGHTS OF THE AUTHOR'S SOUL! 

That was helpful, after all. 

I might as well jump on that rollercoaster today.

Spring Comes at Last to Rainbow's End

Today is the first day of May! Hooray! So as I (almost) always do on the first day of a month, today I start a new life.

It's also a new season, as spring has finally come to Valley Lane in Six-Mile Canyon where I live with my True Love in a funky treehouse-sort-of-house called Rainbow's End. 

It was only this past weekend that the weather was so lovely that David and I could sit on the deck for much of the day. 

The hummingbirds have returned from their winter migration, so I filled the feeders we bought last year with nectar of four parts water to one part sugar, and we hung the new feeder for the pygmy nuthatches and Stellar's jays that we bought from a local bird store with the assistance of a pleasant and knowledgeable young man whose advice proved entirely correct on every point. What joy it is now to see the birds flocking to our bird buffet, as we sit with mimosas and David's fresh-baked sourdough bread spread with delectable fromage d'affinois. Yesterday two deer lingered on the hillside, nibbling the coarse wild grass that is now making the rocky cliff emerald green. Forgotten is the toil of shoveling those 66 steps from the January snows that refused to melt, or trying to drive up the steep, icy hill at Coffin Corner, and talking more and more often about "when we move back to town." We love it here, we love it here, we love it here! We want to live here forever!

So at the heart of May's new life: savor spring in David's arms.

But addicted as I am to productivity, I have two writing goals as well. First: produce a good draft of a book chapter I'm writing on "the library as a liminal space in children's literature" for a scholar friend's edited collection. I've already hauled home dozens of books from the public library, read them all, and taken 43 handwritten pages of notes about them. But now I need to make notes on the notes! And think of something I actually want to SAY! 

Second: start brainstorming ideas for a next children's book of my own. Some of my writer friends have dozens of ideas buzzing about in their feverish brains. I don't. I have little teensy scraps of things that might become ideas someday, but actual ideas come to me ONLY when I sit down with clipboard, pad of paper, and pen, and write at the top of the pages: IDEAS. Then, and only then, do a few pitiful ones start creeping out from their hiding places. I plan to spend all of May just gathering enough pitiful ideas that a few might grow into something that could become a real, live book.

Progress on both goals starting today!

Resume regular font. 

Just When I Thought My Career Might Be Over . . . It Wasn't

I have given many motivational talks throughout my long career as a children's book author, cheering on fledgling authors through disappointment and discouragement. But I found out (to my shame) that it was harder to say these cheering things to myself when I was the disappointed and discouraged one. When the book I thought was my best book ever was published to fewer accolades than I had hoped, and when the next book (equally brilliant in my humble opinion) didn't get published AT ALL, I started to wonder if maybe it was time for this old gray mare to put herself out to pasture. 

But then (as everyone in the universe knows by now) I fell in love in March of 2022, and suddenly everything that had previously seemed impossible started to seem possible again. Finding late-life love after loss does make one inclined to believe in miracles! And this new man turned out to be someone with a gift for brainstorming ideas - particularly, he informed me, ideas in fields he knows nothing about. 

When David offered to do a brainstorming session with me, at first I balked. "But . . ." I tried to tell him as kindly I could, "your ideas are going to be DUMB! And then I'll feel embarrassed for you! And I won't adore you in the same way ever again!" He replied, "Of COURSE my ideas will be dumb. That's what happens all the time in brainstorming. But I think something will come unstuck for you."

So last April we brainstormed together. And he was right. I came unstuck. I had identified some features of the kinds of books I like to write - books that are "Claudia Mills" books. He typed them up on a sheet of paper; all the teensy writing here was my thoughts as they bubbled up in the course of our long conversation.

Two of the items scribbled on this page spoke most deeply to me: 1) heirloom apple trees in need of saving (my previous book, The Lost Language, was about endangered languages in need of saving - I have a weakness for people who try to save things, even if their efforts to do so are ultimately doomed); 2) an intergenerational oral history project (oral history involves saving STORIES - so more saving!!). 

I began to grope... and to make voluminous notes... and then, timidly, to write. I read the first pages to David, and he offered just the right mix of big-picture questions about the story, smaller insights about particular details, and unfailing, enthusiastic encouragement. In December I shared the finished manuscript with my writing group, the Writing Roosters, for their many challenging comments. I revised mightily and sent the book to my agent right before Christmas; he sent it out to my editor at the start of the new year. She responded - a career first for me - within HOURS, saying she had only meant to take a peek, but had to finish it, and loved it... and a week later - also a career first for me - I had the  offer for publication. 

Several rounds of revision remained, and it takes forever to get a contract finalized and signed, but I SIGNED IT YESTERDAY! The Last Apple Tree is set for publication in summer of 2024. I love the brief description of the book in the contract (which I didn't write): "The Last Apple tree, a middle-grade novel work of fiction, approximately 240 pages, about memory, generational grief, and the importance of difficult truth." Ooh! I would like to read this book myself!

Here are the flowers David brought home for me on the day I got the email with the official publication offer, perched atop a stack of all my notes for the book. 

With The Last Apple Tree now in production and the bulk of my work on it completed, he asked me the other day if I'd like to have a brainstorming session for a new book. Um - yes??!!

A Middle-Aged, Semi-Retired Academic Ponders Her Future

Years ago, when I was still a full-time, tenured professor of philosophy, navigating the rewards and frustrations of that career, I came up with this instruction to myself: "Do more of what you love, less of what you hate." That remains good advice for me now as I ponder the future direction of my professional life - and perhaps for you, too - for all of us.

Do more of what you love, less of what you hate.

Some things I love about the academic life:

Talking with people I love who love the same books I love. 

Writing thoughtful, insightful (but also critical) articles about the books I love.

Teaching eager, motivated students about the books I love.

Some things I hate about the academic life:

Academic politics, conflicts, "call-outs," MEANNESS!

Jumping through other people's hoops, especially hoops held by anonymous strangers.

Feeling like a failure, a fraud, a fake - the "imposture syndrome" known to almost all academics.

How can I get more of the former and less of the latter?

Well, one of the bad things about decades in a profession is feeling a bit worn out and washed up. But one of the FABULOUS things longevity provides is LOTS AND LOTS OF WONDERFUL FRIENDS. Some of my children's lit scholar colleagues are retired now - not just retired from the university, but retired, period. But others remain extremely active in the field, filled with ideas galore for organizing conferences, arranging symposia and discussion groups, and soliciting contributions for volumes they are editing on all kinds of delicious topics.

So: I no longer have to submit my work to scholarly journals for double-blind peer review, where usually one reviewer is kind and encouraging, and the other one is... not. On my most recent submission to a prestigious journal in my field, the first reviewer wrote, "This is a fascinating and informative article that stands to make an important contribution to the scholarship [on topic x]." Reviewer #2 wrote, "One of the key issues the author should consider addressing in revision is the essay’s overall lack of purpose and coherence."!!!! Ouch!!! This, after my having published - I just counted - some 50 academic articles and book chapters over the last forty years! So I'm hardly a wet-behind-the-ears newbie! Should I try to revise this piece to please Reviewer #2, who went on to provide a full page with half a dozen similar comments, all scathing, and who will likely prove impossible to please? Or should I declare myself done-done-DONE! with trying to please all the Reviewer #2s of the world forever?

Farewell, Reviewer #2! I have realized that I can write - and publish - heaps of lovely academic articles just by working with fellow scholars who already like me and value what I do. They will want revisions, too, of course; they have appropriately high standards of their own. But this doesn't feel like jumping through endless hoops of fire. It feels like joyous collaboration with people I know and respect.

I may continue to attend academic conferences, but smaller, friendlier ones. I will continue to teach, but at smaller, friendlier places. Hollins University (pictured below), where I have taught regularly for many years, offers graduate programs in children's literature that are BLISS for students and faculty alike. I told a new faculty member who was arriving as I was leaving from my first stint of teaching there, "You are entering the portals of paradise."

More of what we love, less of what we hate... sounds pretty good, no? 

To Think or Not to Think: That Is the Question

My recent posts have focused on my search this year for some form of "closure" on my decades-long career as children's book writer and scholar. Note that "closure" does NOT have to mean full-out retirement or complete bailing on the work and world that I have loved. But it will likely mean closing at least some chapters of my story to make way for the chapters that follow.

These posts have struck a chord in many readers of my age cohort, but also prompted some affectionate questions of the form: "Um - aren't you, well, OVERTHINKING all of this?" One friend wrote, "Why must you decide? Why not just follow your whim? Follow your gut, follow your heart, follow how you feel when you wake up each morning." Another wrote, "Just amuse yourself with unapologetic, unjustified fun in whatever form it takes." A third advised me to "wait and see what happens."

This is excellent advice, of course, but something in me rebels against it. So here is how I am THINKING through the question of how much to be THINKING about all of this!

Well, first of all, I like to think. People who become philosophy professors are usually people who enjoy thinking. And I'm particularly drawn to thinking about - I might as well admit it - ME. I have long discussions with myself in my trusty little notebook, where I pour out my troubles and then write, "Little notebook, help!" and then the little notebook proceeds to give me excellent advice.

All my writing - creative and scholarly - begins with my sitting down, pen in hand, and deliberately and self-consciously thinking about what I want to write. I NEVER EVER have an idea just pop into my head. I get ideas ONLY when I sit down with clipboard, pad of paper, and pen and write at the top of the page IDEAS. While I am not 100 percent a "plotter" as opposed to a "pantser" (one who flies by the seat of her pants) in creating a book, I'm closing to the plotter end of the spectrum (though not in a mechanized way). If I just waited to see what I ended up writing, I don't think I'd ever write anything.

Most important, though, is that what I'm thinking about so hard these days is the relationship between writing and publication - and all that the search for publication involves. I'm a writer who cares about having readers who aren't just me. Even when I write in a journal - oh, this is a narcissistic confession! - I imagine future biographers reading it! When I write poems, I want to share them at least with a few friends. Do I want to get poems published? Well, I sort of do. Do I want this enough to research poetry journals and jump through the hoops required to submit my work, knowing that I will face a 15:1 rate of rejection to acceptance? I'm not sure. I AM sure that I would never just wake up one morning and FEEL like doing this. Doing this is not FUN. But I might decide that doing an UN-fun thing that I DON'T feel like doing will result in future satisfactions worth doing it anyway.

I have LOVED publishing books! I have ADORED it! After 62 published books, it is still a joy to hold a brand-new published book BY ME in my hands. But the publication process involves much rejection, self-doubt, competition, and critique by total strangers. I'm at a season of my life where I need to THINK about whether, for me, the joy outweighs the misery. Of course, this is the kind of thing I can change my mind about, day by day. When I gave up my tenured position in the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado, almost ten years ago now, I knew this was an irrevocable decision. The decision whether or not to keep on writing academic articles for POSSIBLE publication is not. Ditto for the decision to keep on writing  children's books for POSSIBLE publication. Maybe on Monday I would wake up thinking I will take a few more whacks at a children's lit article - and on Tuesday decide I can't stand it - and on Wednesday give it a few more whacks again. But in this last third of my life, I'd like to have a bit more of a PLAN than this - because publication is more likely to turn from POSSIBLE to ACTUAL with serious, sustained effort than with waiting for the muse to visit. 

For now I THINK I need to keep on THINKING. But this is enough THINKING about THINKING for today!

More Thoughts on "Closure" - Slammed Door or Gently Closing Gate?

One of my first realizations when I began to ponder what "closure" might mean for me in this stage of my career as writer and scholar is that "closure" is akin to "enclosure" - not just what is fenced OUT, but what is fenced IN, enfolded, protected - not just what I DON'T want anymore from my career, but what I DO. 

I do NOT want to give up everything I love most! But I need to find a new way to love it, appropriate for this season of my life.

I have wanted to be a writer from the moment I could first hold a pencil or a crayon. 

I even included an "ad card" at the end to publicize future titles - precocious marketing maven that I was.

Sixty-two published books later, I'm certainly not ready to say farewell forever to writing - and not just writing for myself, but for others to read - and yes, writing for publication.

And yet... I can't help but notice how much the world of children's book writing is changing. There is a rightful demand for and appreciation of new and diverse voices telling new and diverse stories - hooray for that! But I'm neither new nor "diverse" in the ways diversity is commonly understood. There is an almost insatiable demand on the part of young readers for graphic novels - an exciting literary form, but not "me." Stories for young readers are becoming ever more filled with (fun!) murder and (fun!) mayhem, but I'm not a murder and mayhem kind of person. My idea of a gripping survival story is a shy seventh grade girl surviving the middle school dance. And authors are increasingly expected to become adept self-promoters on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and platforms I haven't even heard of yet. 

My beloved Stoic philosopher Epictetus tells us, in so many words, "If you want to go the banquet, you have to flatter the tyrant. If you don't want to flatter the tyrant, then don't go to the banquet." It's as simple as that. But of course, what we want is for what worked for us forty years ago to continue to work for us now. Ain't going to happen. I have no right to expect it to happen. It's so good in so many ways that this is NOT happening! 

But still...

So I need to figure out how to keep on writing the way I want in a world that may or may not want what I write. Can I find a way to change while still being true to who I am as a writer? Am I willing to do this? (Tentative answer: not really!). Or can I find a way to gain sweet satisfaction from writing with altered expectations (I think this is the more promising route!). 

I don't want to slam the door on my writing life. But on some parts of it, I think I'll be closing a gate... gently...

Reflections on "Closure"

I read a piece of blogging advice some time ago. One thing it said was: "If you have a lapse in your blogging, don't call attention to it with any explanations (for who cares?). Just jump back in." Well, as I ignored the rest of the advice ("make sure to repeat lots of key words so you rise up in the algorithms for Google searches"), I'm ignoring this one, as well. 

I drifted away from blogging toward the end of last year as part of a larger reconsideration of my entire career as a children's book author and scholar - of my entire LIFE! But now it's the first day of a new month, time to start a whole NEW LIFE, so here is the post I would have written on January 1, if I had been in a blogging mood then.

My poet friend Molly Fisk promotes the practice, not of making a resolution, but of choosing a word for a new year: a word to ponder, to reflect upon, to live with as a thought-provoking companion. Actually, she says sometimes it's not so much that you choose the word, but the word chooses you.

The word that chose me was "closure."

I was discouraged about my career as children's book creator and as children's literature scholar. The world of both authors and scholars was changing so much, and I was feeling too old and weary to change along with it. I was also (joyously) distracted by suddenly, shockingly, stunningly, falling in love in a totally life-transforming way. So: did I even WANT to be part of this changing world? And if I did, did it still want ME? 

One of my friends found out her husband was retiring when she heard him say, in a phone conversation, "Well, I guess it's time for me to hang up my spurs." Maybe it was time for me to hang up MY spurs and ride off into the sunset. When I took early retirement from my career as a tenured philosophy professor almost a decade ago, I told myself not to think of this as "retirement" but just as a career change. My self-given command was: "Do not go gentle into that good pasture." Now I found myself asking, "What's so bad about the pasture?" The pasture was starting to sound awfully alluring. It might be time to think about discovering some satisfying form of closure on the life I had lived for so long. 

Another poet friend offered a writing prompt for January 1 that went like this: "fences that close, fences that open, pastures beyond." Ooh! THAT'S what I needed to be thinking about for this new year!

I've been thinking about this for two months now. In future posts, I'll share some of what I've figured out about what closure is coming to mean to me - and how different this is from what I thought it would be. Maybe it isn't closure at all? But whatever it is, I think I'm liking it....