Written for The Prairie Wind column, “Tales from the Front,” September, 2002.
For years I thought a transformation would occur if I published a book: I would finally become a Children’s Book Writer – undeniably, officially...nay, legally. And so I put more emotional energy into getting published than into learning, and I was less of a writer for it.
Now that I’ve had a publication, I wish I could go back and talk to the unpublished me, the writer who desperately wanted to appear in print. I’d tell myself that I was missing the point entirely. I’d say, Don’t be in a hurry to do anything but learn. Keep writing, go to conferences, read, and worry less about being published.
The unpublished me would have been thoroughly annoyed.
There was something about creating that first manuscript 13 years ago – a board book dummy with die-cut holes on every other page, animals, and a character named Sally – that made me think, I ought to get this published. To this day I marvel that it took me nearly a decade to think instead, I want to learn how to do this well. Would I buy a hunk of marble and a chisel, carve a single sculpture, and expect to sell it? No, even I am not that naïve. I would probably just sculpt, enjoy the process of learning, and happily chat with friends and acquaintances about how I had taken up a new hobby. If I intended to make a career of it, I would expect to study for years.
But I knew sculpting was difficult, whereas writing fiction seemed not to be. Meaningful prose seems so attainable when you read something by, say, Katherine Patterson. How simple is a slim, sweet story in the hands of Kate DiCamillo? Tying loose ends in a complicated plot must be effortless, judging by Louis Sachar. Besides, I was highly educated. I had written creative essays in school, hadn’t I? I brimmed with earnest desire and ideas. What more could editors want? Why was it taking so long for them to discover me?
Then I gradually learned what Jane Yolen might call a Secret of the World: after years of writing, reading, and attending SCBWI meetings, my publishing chances were growing independently of my anxiety about them. They were growing because I was practicing, finding things to say, and meeting people. I was becoming more professional without knowing it; I was becoming more interested in writing than in being published.
I began to think of myself as an apprentice, rather than as an unpublished author. This focus on learning freed me to absorb some essentials: to show, rather than to tell; to cut unnecessary prose; to realize that plot is not what happens to the characters, but what happens inside of them; to understand Richard Peck’s mantra that the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise. This focus on learning continues to free me from the stagnating notion that I have “made it,” now that I have had a book published: even as I learn, I don’t know enough; I absolutely don’t read enough; I am still lacking formal writing instruction. Each day I get inches closer, but I fall miles from my goal – to write something that children will carry with them as they grow and experience the world.
Lately, I call myself a children’s book writer. But it’s not because of a publication. Rather, it’s because I’ve truly accepted the lifelong apprenticeship: to write, to read, and to learn from others.
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