Emotional Transference
The other morning I was driving into Portland (Maine) early, and a seagull flew low over my car, calling out in that distinctive seagull call (“kark! kark!”) and, as I usually do when a seagull does this, I thought of Dorson Plourde.
And that, right there, is the magic of writing.
Let me back up. In the summer of 2019, Justin Colon of PBChat (picture book chat, a monthly discussion on Twitter) asked me if I wanted to be one of the picture book mentors for the first PBChat mentorship program. Sounds fun! I thought, without, honestly, looking too deeply into what he was asking of me.
So I was surprised (I shouldn’t have been: Justin was clear about the process, I just chose not to pay attention) when I received ninety applications to be my mentee (I don’t enjoy that word), that I had to go through in just a few days, because the timing overlapped with a vacation I had planned.
My experience was similar to what agents and editors do every day — I wanted to give every submission the respect and attention it deserved, while also being as efficient as possible. I was 25% of the way through the pile when a manuscript made me laugh out loud, and its concept was so hilarious and delightful, that I thought, “Ok! Done! I found my person!” (It was Nicole Sharkey, with her amazing Alpaca Picnic manuscript.)
But I still had dozens more manuscripts to read, and it obviously wasn’t fair to not read them at all just because they randomly fell after Nicole’s manuscript in the pile. Finding Nicole’s story, which was glowing and practically dripping with sparkly effervescent hilarity, helped me work quickly through the other stories. They were good, but they weren’t Nicole’s. Which is to say, they didn’t affect me like Nicole’s did.1
Then: I had only two manuscripts left. I was breathing easy, knowing I had found my mentee (again, that word is weird). I read the second-to-last manuscript and actually cursed out loud. Because I had found another one.
This manuscript was Dorson Plourde’s Garbage Gulls, and it was so unlike anything else in the pile. It didn’t make me laugh; it’s not that kind of story. Instead it opened up a portal and shoved me right through. It was dreamy and ethereal, and yet was also about seagulls eating garbage.
That’s how I ended up choosing two PBChat mentees mentorship recipients.
Ok, so let’s break down what happened, because it’s quite simple, and also difficult to pull off. Both of those manuscripts were inventive and well-written. Both of their application forms (which is what we got instead of a query letter) clearly laid out why they wanted me as a mentor (whereas other applications answered the question “Why are you applying to this mentor” with “I’ve never heard of her but I just looked her up and she seems good” which wasn’t a deal breaker, but wasn’t a deal maker, either). But the big thing both of these manuscripts did was make me feel something, and in both cases, something quite big.
So there you go, all you have to do is make the reader feel something.
If you think of it, this is the magic and the wizardry of being a writer, that we can take an emotion out of our bodies, write words, and, via those words, transfer that emotion to someone else who is another place and time. It almost doesn’t make any sense, how it works, but in the best books, this is exactly what happens. (Along with transferring images, scenes, and people, although I would argue that the emotional transference is the foundation underneath all of those other things.)
Yes, ok, but how?
The short answer is that you, the writer, have to feel something when you’re writing. As someone who literally googled “how to feel feelings” not that long ago, I get it, it’s not easy. That google search led me to the six basic emotions, as well as the Hoffman Feelings List, which are both helpful when you’re considering how to be a human being who feels things, and also how to be a writer who transfers emotion. If you’re transferring an emotion, it’s probably one of the ones on those lists (The Emotion Thesaurus is also a great resource).
Yeah, ok, but, again, how?
Indeed. How, when so often the feelings you’re having when writing are hope that this book will sell or despair that the writing is not going well, how do you drop into the story and get the right emotion in there? Here are the two ways I have made it work:
Get the story down first, and worry about the emotion in revision. This especially works if I’m trying to transfer joyful hilarity. Get the story down first, add the funny bits in after.
Take the prevailing feeling in my own life, and write that into a story. Now, granted, in the last few years, that could make a doozy of a bummer of a picture book. But it gave me something to start with. I could look at, say, a story about characters caught in a fire, and see if any other emotions had gotten stuck in the story, and then tease out that emotion, instead.
Like I said on Tara Lazar’s blog, it often comes down to getting still for a moment and thinking about what your character is feeling. And then feeling that feeling yourself.
For me, layering in transferrable emotion is the ultimate goal, but it can take time to get there. That’s what revisions are for. If your gut is telling you the story is flat, think about what emotion you want to give to your reader, and then figure out how to get it in there.
When it happens, it’s magic. When I see an alpaca, I think of Nicole, and when I see a seagull, I think of Dorson, and it’s not really because those animals showed up in their books. It’s because their books made me feel, and that emotion is still in my body, and a reminder of those stories brings up the emotions in a lovely bit of magic.
That’s what stories do. What a wonder.
Importantly, the other stories didn’t affect me the way Nicole’s had. Much of this process really is so subjective. You have to reach the editor who responds to your story. There might be some who don’t respond, and then suddenly, someone who does. You only need that one.
Substack!
The time has come (that is, my subscriber size is at the point where this makes sense) to move from Mailchimp to Substack. Mailchimp has been wonderful! Truly! But Substack makes more sense for this type of newsletter.
What will this mean for you? If you're already subscribing to my newsletter, you can remain a subscriber, and you will get the same monthly email, with all of the sorts of information that's in this one:
an essay (along with the audio version),
a link roundup, and
books I've read.
Another bonus of moving to Substack is that it is much easier to go back and read old newsletters, since they’re all right there on my Substack page, and there’s even an app if you want to read it on your phone (I know, I know, I wish there was a service that offered all of this to you in the form of an analog paper book, but not yet). (Although all of my book recommendations did not come through in the transfer. You’ll have to believe me when I say I’ve read a lot of great books the last few years, and be content with getting new recommendations going forward.)
And! There will now be the option for becoming a paid subscriber, which will give you bonus content, such as:
the ability to comment on posts and chat with each other there,
access to occasional Q&As and discussion threads,
occasional extra essays, and
other extras I haven’t thought of yet (let me know if you have ideas!).
There is also a level of paid subscribership (what Substack calls the “founding member” level) I haven’t activated (yet?), where you would pay more ($125, say), but you might get something like a picture book critique or copies of my books. Let me know your thoughts on that.
If you don’t want to or can’t pay to subscribe right now, that’s fine! You’ll still get the same content you have been getting already. I’m excited to play around with this new platform. More fun stuff to come as I figure it out!
Thoughts and Links
What's that? You want a video of me reading Rick the Rock of Room 214 to you? Here you go.
Lindsay Eagar’s superpower as a writer is creating entire worlds I could never have imagined, and then making me fall deeply in love with everyone who lives there. I just finished her 2023 YA The Family Fortuna, and it is yet another book full of magic and wonder. Pre-order it now.
I liked Cal Newport's deep dive into the art of saying no, including some questions to ask (devised by a group of scientists) to figure out whether to say no to something.
Here's Wendy MacNaughton on how to have fun.
Took me until now to listen to this episode of You're Wrong About on the invention of email, and at the end they played a clip of this 1997 information VHS called The Kids Guide to the Internet. Worth watching the first few minutes both for the theme song and for the kid saying, "Now that I've gotten on the internet, I'd rather be on my computer than doing just about anything!" with great enthusiasm and positivity for the wonders of the internet, as the parents nod happily.
I can't remember who told me about the Wordloaf Substack, but I've learned a lot from it (learned a lot about bread) (it's all about bread). In particular I realized I had gotten lazy about feeding my sourdough starter. I started feeding it more regularly, and it has already made a big difference in giving my loaves nice big airy holes. I also like this mega post about bread equipment.
Books I read recently and loved
Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.
