Agents, Editors, and Books!
Several new blogs have come on the scene, so I’ve updated my blog lists again. If you have a new book coming out, or want to see what’s new in the publishing world, check the new Blog Central: Children’s Book Reviewers page.
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Copyright © 2009 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Ah, serendipity! I flew out to LA last week to visit my daughter, and discovered that SCBWI Los Angeles Writer’s Day was that weekend, so I signed up to see old friends…and after lunch, I was offered an agenting contract! My new agent is Jill Corcoran of the Herman Agency. (Yes, you did read about her on this blog — one month to the day before I met her in person in LA.)
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Copyright © 2009 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Lynn Viehl’s sixth Darkyn novel, Twilight Fall, hit the New York Times mass market bestseller list, so on her blog, she’s shared her royalty statement and explained it in GREAT detail! Click over and read it!
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Copyright © 2009 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
My students come from all levels of the continuum. Some come to me when they have just started writing or have collected a few rejection letters, while others, like Tanya Lee Stone, are published and come to study a new genre or format.
Today, Tanya Lee Stone answers just three questions…
Q: When did you start writing?
A: Officially, or unofficially? Unofficially, I started writing when I was seven. And illustrating, too. Mind you, those materials are locked away, never allowed to see the light of day. But I was one of those eager school newspaper types in middle and high school who always had a pencil in hand, along with a partner in crime who, in retrospect, was a wildly talented poet. Maureen Donahue, where are you? Most importantly, I found encouragement from my teachers all the way up through college.
The official scoop? After getting my undergrad degree from Oberlin as an English major, I started working as an editor–at Holt Rinehart, Grolier, Macmillan, and ultimately as Managing Editor of Blackbirch Press. There, I edited hundreds of nonfiction books for kids and my own writing began to take shape. I was an editor for more than a decade, and loved every minute of it, but when my husband’s job took us to Vermont it was time to rethink things. That was 13 years ago, and I’ve been a full-time writer ever since.
Q: Describe your writing process.
A: I am at my best when I’m writing more than one book at a time. It must be the same gene that made me love the juggling aspect of being a Managing Editor. I work on one project for a few hours and then I switch gears. This works best for me when I am switching from one genre to the next–for example, one book is nonfiction and the other is a novel or picture book. I basically work from the time my kids get on the school bus to the time they arrive back home, unless I’m on crazy deadline and then I have been known to get dinner on the table a bit late.
Writers sometimes talk about plunging vs. plotting regarding preferred methods of writing. I am a plunger of fiction and a plotter of nonfiction, which makes good sense for me. For my nonfiction, I do exhaustive amounts of research and extensive outlining before the bulk of the writing happens. But for fiction, it’s infinitely better for me to plunge into the lives of the characters and see where they take me. To test this, I attempted the plotting approach for one novel, but as soon as I was done outlining the book, the element of surprise and the process of discovery was over. And so was that novel! I lost all interest in it after that.
I am not a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind of writer. My process involves a lot of stops and starts until I hit a certain point and then it’s Tasmanian Devil time. The stops and starts have to do with finding my way in to any given story–nonfiction, too. I circle around an idea for awhile and try various perspectives, making sure I know what is important to me about the story and where my passion lies. Once I figure that out, it’s full steam ahead. But the circling part of the process can take a very long time. And for me, both pieces–the circling and the full-steam ahead–are integral and unavoidable.
Q: Tell us about your latest book.
A: That would be Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream (Candlewick). It’s the story of a group of women pilots in 1961 who were put through astronaut testing in the hopes of proving that women were equally good candidates to be considered for the astronaut program as men. Unfortunately, their stellar test results did not win them entry into the space program–but they pushed against the boundaries of the times. There was a Congressional hearing and media attention once their story broke, which contributed to new questions being asked about eligibility requirements for the space program. These little-known women helped pave the way for the future women who were admitted into NASA’s space program many years later.
This whole project was a thrilling experience, as I was able to meet with and interview many of these incredible women and learn much more about them than I ever could have from reading articles and such. And the research put me in touch with other great women and scientists such as the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle, Eileen Collins, and Margaret Weitekamp, one of the curators at the National Air & Space Museum. I was lucky to have both of these women vet my manuscript and make sure the story was accurate, and Margaret also wrote the foreword. These stamps of approval are gratifying because even after years of doing as meticulous a job on the research as I could, it is a very complex stories that involves a lot of people, some of whom are beloved American heroes who I admire very much but who, in this instance, took what I perceive to be the wrong path.
Since April is National Poetry Month, I would also like to point people to my website, as well as Candlewick’s, as I wrote a collection of poems about these 13 women–one for each of them–that captures the essence of each one of them at the moment the flying bug bit. Candlewick has designed it beautifully, and it is available as a free download.
Thanks for having me on the blog, Anastasia!
Congratulations on the new book, Tanya!
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