The Great Indoors (plus: the power of a critique group)
My latest picture book is available now! Go buy it from your local independent bookstore, request it from your library, or purchase it from your favorite online retailer. (Buy links are here.)
The Great Indoors is a Junior Library Guild selection, and got a starred review from Booklist. Publisher's Weekly said I "effectively voice both deadpan narrator...and leisure-obsessed animals." BCCB said Ruth's illustrations remind them of Jon Agee. Horn Book called it a "mischievous comedy."
We all know what this means. It means you should go find The Great Indoors and read it and tell me what you think (only if you love it).
Even though I have a book out today, I'm also working on other books that will come out later this year, or later next year, or the year after that. Mostly because I have a lot of ideas, but also because I want authoring to be my career, and you can't make a career unless you keep writing books.
Last week I was working on Help Wanted: One Rooster, which is a book I wrote the first draft of in 2011, and now I'm trying to get it revised so it can come out in 2020. This is a book where the first 75% of it has always been solid, but the ending never worked. I've written maybe five different endings. Some were fine, but who wants to publish a book with a FINE ending?Â
I knew what I wanted the book to do, but I had to figure out how to get there. Here's what I did to try to figure out Help Wanted: One Rooster:
read the manuscript over and over
read the edit letter over and over, and wrote a lot of notes on it
went for a walk every day, where I talked out loud about what I wanted to happen with the book (if you follow me on Instagram, you saw me doing this in my Instagram Stories)
free wrote, where I asked myself questions about the story and wrote what I thought the answer was
used the Picture Book Graphic Organizer on Rob Sanders's site to try to figure out what the plot was
I kept getting closer and closer, but I wasn't quite there. I felt like I was circling in on what this book was about. Like it was there, I could almost see it, but I was wearing the wrong glasses.
I wrote another new version. This one had a lot of art notes. Putting in a lot of art notes is something I do sometimes when I'm trying to figure out a picture book, so I can imagine how it might look with half the story being told through the illustrations. (Before I sent it to my editor, I take out most or all of the art notes. They only need to be in there for me to figure out the words. It's the illustrator's job to interpret the story on their own, not to take dictation from me via art notes.)
And then I did the most important thing: I sent it to my critique group, Carter Higgins and Elizabeth Stevens Omlor. The three of us read everything that we all write. We know how to encourage each other and to push each other. And we know enough about each others' process that we can read a story and tell where it's trying to go.
We used to (back in 2012) communicate through emails, but now we talk every day over Voxer. Because Carter and Elizabeth are in California, and I'm in Maine, we usually end up leaving messages that get listened to later, but sometimes we're all online at once, and then we can converse in real time, which is what happened after I sent them Help Wanted: One Rooster and left a message to talk through the problems I was having with the revision.
In ten minutes, we figured it out. A huge part of it was talking it out -- which is what I was trying to do by talking out loud when I walked the dogs every morning, but sometimes you do need another human to respond. Key points that pushed me toward inspiration:
"Editors sure do ask good, hard questions." (One question in particular that my editor asked me was nagging at me, because I didn't know the answer. Figuring out the answer allowed the plot to fall into place.)
"You seem to like that one new part you wrote -- can you expand that?" (Yes, I could, and that made the story stronger.)
"Have you tried writing a pitch for it?" (This was Elizabeth, of course. Elizabeth is famous for writing pitches for her stories to figure out what they're about. I even did a whole video about how and why to write pitches for your picture books based on what I learned from Elizabeth.)
"I love the idea that [a thing the rooster does that I'm not going to tell you because it's a spoiler]." (This was Carter, and hearing what part stuck out to her helped reframe and shift the whole plot.)
I had done the work, thinking and revising for days, but it was really this ten minute conversation, talking everything out loud with people I trust and who get me, that helped me figure out what direction this story could take.
A good critique group is invaluable. You can't be expected to get all the words right on your own, and your agent and editor are too busy to serve as your sole critique group.Â
If you're lucky, you'll find writers who move beyond critique group and become YOUR CRITIQUE GROUP (or whatever the term would be for critique group 2.0). You can talk to them not only about your writing, but about publishing. You can share worries and frustrations. Believe me, we all think negative things about publishing occasionally, and it is much better to share it with your special writer pals than it is to blast it out on social media.Â
Zuzu, my 10-year-old, happened to overhear a Voxer message the other day, and asked "Is this what you three talk about? Grapefruits?" Because yes, that's what we were talking about at the time. Sometimes we talk about writing, sometimes we talk about publishing, and sometimes we talk about grapefruits.
There are lots of places to find critique groups. Check SCBWI or online writing forums (like the ones at Absolute Write) to see if there's a group looking for members (either online or local). My local library has a writing group. Sometimes bookstores have writing group meetings. You can take a writing class and see if you click with any of the other students.Â
And keep your eyes open. Don't expect to find YOUR CRITIQUE GROUP (good grief, I have to figure out a better name) on the first try. I met Carter when she wrote a blog post for Design Mom about my Little Free Library, and then we both were runners-up in Adam Rex's 2012 Hallowtweet contest. I met Elizabeth when I was taking an online picture book writing class and one of the other students said, "There's a woman in my critique group who writes really weird stories. I think you'd like her."
And now, 6+ years later, here we are.