Topic 13: What Else is Out
There?
Introduction: David
September 2, 2014
Hi
everyone,
It has
been a long while since Sandy Asher and I added to WRITERS AT WORK, the series
in which we visit informally about various aspects of being writers. To refresh
everyone’s memory of previous conversations, here’s a list of topics.
WRITERS AT WORK
September 2010 The Care
and Feeding of Ideas
October 2010 Obstacles
to Writing
November 2010 Reality of
Rejections
December 2010 Editorial
Suggestions
January 2011 Perils
and Joys of Writing in Many Genres
February 2011 Pros and
Cons of Having an Agent
March 2011 Wrestling
with Endings
May 2011 Dealing
with Speaking Engagements
June 2011 We
Get Letters – and Lots of Email, Too
January 2012 Regarding
the Emperor’s New Clothes
March 2012 About
this Business of Internet Publishing
June 2013 Making
On-line Challenges Work for You
So now we take up a new topic: WHAT
ELSE IS OUT THERE? And why is this timely? Because even during the short span
of these chats the publishing world has undergone changes that impact writers
around the world. Living by the philosophy that there will always be a need for
good writing in some form, we find ourselves constantly contemplating the
market, seeking ways to peddle our peaches (as folks around here used to say).
We hope that you will join us on each of the
next four Tuesdays as we post Parts 1-4 of our conversation. As always, it’s an
open forum that invites comments and shared experiences. I’ll go first next week
on September 9. Hope you’ll join us.
* * *
WRITERS AT WORK
Topic 13: What Else
is Out There?
Part 1: David
September 9, 2014
Sandy, I think there’s more to surviving as a
writer than reacting to perceived changes in our niche markets. Maybe it has to
do with our need to communicate about something that feels important. In
previous WAW sessions I described how I began as a short story writer and
segued to writing for children, beginning with picture books and, over the
years, adding nonfiction, poetry, and educational books.
In this first part of WHAT ELSE IS OUT
THERE, I want to talk about my journey into educational books that began in
1997. At the time many teachers were expressing concern that they were expected
to teach poetry but had little or no personal or professional experience in
writing poems. After several such conversations I wondered if I might write a
how-to-write-poetry book for classroom teachers. This, I think, is an example
of two principles: write about what you know, and write about what interests
you.
But guess what? I had no more idea how to
write an educational book for teachers than many of them had about writing
publishable poems for trade books. We loved the same kids but spoke to them in
different languages. I had never been a classroom teacher. Had never taken a
course in education. Never read a book written for teachers. The only teachers’
conferences I’d attended were to speak, not to listen and learn. Did I have a
lot of nerve or what!
Many years earlier I’d gone to England
to research a book I meant to write about English history. I came home
discouraged but wiser. I didn’t know enough about my subject to ever write well
about it. I scrapped the project. In this case I knew my subject but wasn’t
sure how to translate from “writerly” to “teacherly.”
I needed to partner with a teacher, someone
with national name recognition. Then I thought of Bee. Bernice Cullinan. Dr.
Bernice E. Cullinan, professor at NYU, former president of International
Reading Association, Poetry Editor-in-Chief for Boyds Mills Press, the
publisher of my books of poetry. Bee loved my work and I loved her. I spoke
with her about partnering on a book to help teachers teach poetry. She agreed.
Then I thought of Wendy
Murray, my editor at Instructor, a publication of Scholastic.
In 1994, Wendy had published a poem of mine with a brief article on writing
poems. Since then Wendy had left the magazine side to join the educational book
group. Next time I was in New York
I pitched the idea and Wendy liked it. Back to Bee to outline a table of
contents and agree on what I would write and what she would do.
We each wrote an introduction. For the
sections that followed I introduced and explained various elements of poetry.
Bee provided commentary and activities for use in the classroom. So far so
good.
Then we came to the part of my outline that
dealt with verse. Bee struck it out, explaining that elementary children were
not ready for verse and only free verse would work in the classroom. I put it
back in. Children, I insisted, are perfectly capable of playing with rhyme and
rhythm and most of their favorite poems are structured language rather than
free verse.
She said absolutely not. I said absolutely
yes. She said she would not have her name on a book that had verse in it. I
said I would not have mine on a book that didn’t. We called for a meeting with
our editor. Poor Wendy!
Back in New York we met in a conference room at
Scholastic. Wendy sat midway along one side of a long table. Bee and a doctoral
student of hers sat at one end. I sat at the other end. The meeting was
stressful but it eventually ended with an agreement that verse would be
included in the book if teachers (to be consulted) thought it was a good idea.
They were, they did, and it was.
When I sent my next poetry manuscript to
Boyds Mills Press, Bee was still too upset with me to edit me. Instead, my
friend Jan Cheripko was thrown into the breach and edited my book, Wild Country. He did a fine job.
My “Bee” book came out in 1999 as Easy Poetry Lessons that Dazzle and Delight.
Our long suffering editor felt compelled to write a note to go on the credit
page, something you seldom see. Here it is in full.
“Four years ago David Harrison and Bee
Cullinan decided to write a book together, going on the hunch that their
different perspectives – that of a poet and of a teacher – would complement
each other nicely. But they quickly discovered in this arranged marriage of
authorship that their views on teaching poetry were remarkably different – and
that they sometimes clashed. Bee favors free verse and questioned introducing
too many details of structured verse to children, while David doggedly defended
his belief that teaching iambic pentameter and the like wouldn’t turn children
into staunch poetry phobes. Faxes, Fed-Exes, and phone calls flew back and
forth between the three of us, revision upon revision towered like stacks of
Saltines in our offices. Teachers were called upon to read drafts and give
their views. Poems and lessons were added, deleted, tweaked, and debated until
days before the production deadline. In the process, we reexamined our beliefs
about teaching poetry and wound up with richer, broader perspectives. And in
the end, Bee and David wrote a book that offers an eclectic mix of their
sensibilities. This is its beauty and its strength. Too often in educational
publishing we deliver one school of thought on a topic, and tune out others.
Working with Bee and David taught me a lot about the wisdom of editing with an
open mind and about the power of sticking to one’s convictions. Their passion
as educators and poetry lovers is remarkable, and it produced a fine book. (And
a whopping strain on my fax machine.) – Wendy Murray,
editor”
Our book has done well. Bee and I kissed and
made up long ago. She told me she had learned that verse is not a bad thing for
children to write. I told her I had learned that teachers want less philosophy
(from me) and more information with direct application in the classroom. Bee
and I remain friends. She invited me to write the poetry chapter for the 3rd
edition of Children’s Literature in the
Reading Program, co-edited with Deborah Wooten (University of Tennessee),
and published by International Reading Association. I’m currently working on
the poetry chapter for the 4th edition of the book. These days I
belong to the major educational organizations and read their journals. I often
present on educational issues at state and national conferences.
So, Sandy,
my story has a happy ending. But there is a lesson in it. Be careful what you
wish for. Or at least be prepared to take a few lumps along the way when you
choose to investigate WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE!
* * *
WRITERS AT WORK
Topic 13: What Else
is Out There?
Part 2: Sandy
September 16, 2014
“Historians don’t
hug.”
That was my husband
Harvey’s observation when he joined me for one of my conferences years ago and
realized why I couldn’t wait to get to my events while he simply trudged off to
his as a professional obligation of his long career as a professor of history.
People who write
for young people hug. A lot. We don’t read one another’s work with an eye
toward getting published by refuting it.
We do respond to one another’s work, usually in small groups – and,
okay, sometimes with an editor as mediator – but the goal is never self-serving
or competitive. We can’t write one
another’s books, poems, or plays, and we’re enthusiastic audiences and
readers. So when we get together, we aim
at making the dream each of us dreams for each of our own creations come
true.
Respecting children
and their literature, understanding the challenges and frustrations of our
chosen field, working toward the same goals, we get close. Close enough to hug. It’s an excellent perk of the job, don’t you
think, David?
That closeness
takes on a slightly different importance in playwriting, which is my main
“what-else-is-out-there.” I majored in
English and only minored in Theater, so I was never fully in the loop. When we moved to Springfield, MO,
I worked alone and mailed scripts out, much as I did with stories, articles,
and poems. Winning a few playwriting
contests helped get those particular plays produced once, but what about other
productions in other theaters? There
were many long dry spells. It took me
years to uncover the big secret:
theatrical producers and directors tend not to take chances on new
scripts unless they feel a personal connection to the playwright.
Why? Because theater is a community effort. Sure, as book-writers and magazine-writers,
we encounter editors and art directors and marketing people. But we rarely get to meet them, and we
certainly don’t interact with them on a daily basis. They go about their jobs, sometimes with our
approval and often without it. In live
theater, the cast and crew are in one another’s lives for hours a day, every
day, for weeks, months, even years of rehearsal and performance. The four members of the Children’s Theater of
Charlotte’s Tarradiddle Players just spent an entire school year traveling the
southeast together in one van, doing 110 performances of my adaptation of “Too
Many Frogs” plus other plays for
other ages, day in and day out, weekends included. Can you imagine the in-your-face closeness of
that? A cast has to be chosen for
compatibility, patience, and endurance as well as talent. And often with a new script, the playwright
is in the room from auditions through rehearsals through at least the opening
performance. Not much will be accomplished
if everyone gets on everyone else’s nerves.
It wasn’t until I
began participating in theater conferences that I learned how the business
really works. And I do mean
“participating,” sometimes as a panelist but often less formally. At conferences dedicated to children’s
theater, sessions tend to be hands-on. A
technique is presented and then everyone stands up and does it, as if they were
children in a class or audience. At this
summer’s American Alliance for Theater and Education conference in Denver, for instance, I
found myself wearing a rooster mask and enthusiastically greeting a series of
imaginary mornings. You just never know!
And you never know
where such antics will lead. I’ve had
more than one director whom I’d never met before come up after a session and
tell me, “I like what you had to say in there.
I’m interested in working with you.”
One such occasion springs immediately to mind because the ramifications
went way beyond being commissioned to write one new script. It involved the director of a children’s
theater in Salem, OR.
Our casual conversation during the break between two sessions led to a
plan for working with senior citizens and middle-school students to create an
original script about growing up in Oregon. The deal included two trips from Missoui to
the Northwest, which just so happened to be where my son was living. Nice perk (and, yes, more hugs). This experience also led to commissions from
other companies for other community-based scripts that have taken me to Omaha, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago
. . . so far.
Another serendipidous AATE meeting was with the director of a
children’s theater in York,
PA. “I’ve been watching you,” she said, after
inviting me to lunch. “I’d like you to
do an adaptation of Little Women for
my theater.” Apparently, directors are
constantly running auditions, even when no one in the room knows they’re
auditioning! This director and I have
been friends ever since (hugs!), and working with her in York, PA, meant
visiting a mutual friend in neighboring Lancaster, someone we’d both met at
conferences (more hugs!). And that led
to my moving to Lancaster after Harvey retired – and
working on three new plays with these two friends since.
Showing up, as we
know, is Step One of success in any field, but more so in theater, I think,
than almost anywhere else. Networking at
these conferences make a huge difference.
Participating in more than one each year means really getting to know
both the regulars and the newcomers and getting thoroughly inside the
loop. Besides AATE, there’s One Theatre
World, New Visions/New Voices, Write Now, and more. Getting involved with local theater groups,
onstage or behind the scenes, is another great way to show up, learn, and
network.
I’ve long suspected
that one could be a hermit living on a mountain top and maintain a book or
magazine writing career, as long as there was some way of getting one’s
manscripts off the mountain and into the hands of editors. No one would care how long one’s beard had
grown or how often one took a bath. Not
so in theater, where a certain amount of hugging is practically a
requirement. It’s a matter of getting
out there to become part of “what else is out there.”
Willingness to don
a rooster mask and crow on cue is considered a definite plus.
* * *
WRITERS AT WORK
Topic 13: What Else
is Out There?
Part 3: David
September 23, 2014
“Don a rooster mask and crow?”
Really? Sandy,
I think I’ll stick to poems and stories! But I would like to hear a recording
of a roomful of playwrights limbering up their barnyard chorus. Hmmm. Maybe you
could make a recording and play it as background music for a staged sequel to Too Many Frogs called Too Many Roosters. Just a thought.
So now it’s back
to me. In Part 1, I wrote about my decision in the late 90s to break into the
educational market. I had a reason, a plan. My logic was to become better known
among the university folks who teach children’s literature and write about
authors and poets who create it. I wanted to go to the source so that new
teachers would already have an idea about my work. I got my share of comeuppances
along the way but teachers are above all generous so I had plenty of
help and encouragement as I toiled along unfamiliar pathways.
It didn’t take
long to learn some important differences between writing for kids (via trade books) and writing to teachers about kids (via educational
publications). For example I learned that trade book authors “speak” at
conferences while educational book authors “present.” The way in which national
conferences treat trade book authors has changed during the past fifteen years.
These days fewer of us are featured in conference programs. Looking back, I
made the transition almost without realizing at the time that I’d made a lucky
choice which gave me a second option.
Sandy, as we’ve mentioned before, nothing is
easy or uncomplicated about this business no matter whose yard we’re playing
in. One of my early initiations into the educational market was learning how to
write and submit a proposal to present at a conference. I went online,
downloaded a submission form, blinked and swallowed rapidly, asked myself,
“Why? Why?” and tackled the blanks. Who was I? What did I propose to present?
In what way would my presentation be useful to classroom teachers? What credentials
could I offer germane to the occasion? Who should attend my sessions? And on.
On my first
submission, I was accepted but conference planners paired me with another
presenter and told us we’d each have half of the allotted time. The other party
and I were strangers. She was repelled by the requirement of sharing,
especially with a trade book writer! After a terse exchange, she contacted the
conference chair and refused to appear. I got the whole hour. Nanner nanner
nanner. Next I was paired with a different professor, again someone I didn’t
know. We met for the first time a few minutes before going on. We got through
it but it wasn’t the most professional act you ever saw.
Then came a
conference where I met Mary Jo Fresch at an authors’ reception. She’s a
professor of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University and loves children’s
literature. Our friendship was immediate and it wasn’t long before we not only
started presenting together but writing books too. We now have five titles in
print and are working on a sixth. Our presentations draw well. Our current
proposal, which includes two others, is already submitted for IRA in St. Louis next year. There
is never a guarantee of acceptance. One year at NCTE (National Council for
Teachers of English) Mary Jo, Margaret (Peggy) Harkins, and I packed a large
room. Every seat was taken and people sat on the floor along the walls while
others in the hall craned to look in. The next year NCTE turned down our
proposal which, by the way, included one of the big names in education, a man
who is a frequent keynote speaker.
I sometimes remind
myself that this was my “what else is out there” plan to find new work and
become better known in educational circles. It has taken on a life of its own
but in the beginning I envisioned it as a way to promote my name and my trade
books. On with my story. There’s the matter of money to pay for these
conference trips. By the time I learn if I’ve been accepted, many of my
publishers have completed their author support budget for the year. If I don’t
present, they won’t help me. But if I don’t tell them in time, they can’t help
me. If I present at more than one conference during the year, they may not be
able to help me. Universities tend to provide conference funding for their main
professors as part of the “publish or perish” big picture. Trade authors have
no one to turn to if our publishers can’t help. Sandy, I’m not whining about this. Okay, I’m
whining, but not BIG whining, just LITTLE whining. If we want to play in
someone else’s neighborhood, we have to play nice and accept their rules. I’m
glad I made the effort and happy to have become part of the educational
publishing crowd.
Sandy, I’m about ready to pass this back to
you, but there’s one more point I want to make. It’s another aspect of the
educational writing business. I find myself doing a lot of pro bono work. I am
delighted, flattered, and honored when asked to contribute something to a
journal or book. Recently I wrote a chapter in a book for classroom teachers.
Of the twenty-one authors, I was one of two not involved directly in education,
mostly at the university level. The other author was James Cross Giblin. Did I
work hard on that 20-page, 5,600 word manuscript? You bet I did! I wanted it to
be my best effort and I worked hard on it for a good many weeks. How much was I
paid? Not a dime.
Not long ago I was
invited to write an article for a planned issue of a respected journal. Four
professors and a number of others were involved and everyone worked hard. Chalk
off another several weeks. When all was ready, we had a nasty jolt. The
journal’s editor resigned and was replaced by someone with different ideas
about the direction the journal should take. Our issue was cancelled. I have a
good article now, taking a long nap in a file.
That’s it. What
else is out there? Plenty. Writers write and we’re a curious lot to boot. Over
the years I’ve gone from fiction to nonfiction to poetry to how-to books to
digital publishing to educational publishing. The list of possibilities is
long, my friend. I wonder what we’ll try next?
* * *
WRITERS AT WORK
Topic 13: What Else
is Out There?
Part 4: Sandy
September 30, 2014
Uh-oh, David. Sounds as if you’ve wandered awfully close to
the Forest of People Who Do Not Hug at those academic gatherings. You’ve accomplished great things there, but
hold tight to your map so you can find your way back out!
As for me, my
latest adventure in discovering “What else is out there?” has taken me deep
into hugging territory. In fact, it’s
all about hugging experts: very young children.
And it was my granddaughter, a hug specialist, who led me down this
marvelous path when she was three years old.
It all began in
December of 2008. My daughter and
son-in-law had been offered free lodging in London
over the holidays while U.K.-based friends traveled back to the United States
to visit their own family. Their house
had a spare bedroom, airfares to England were affordable in the dead
of winter, and the grandkids would be in residence, so, of course, off we went.
But before leaving
home, I went on-line and booked tickets for three shows being performed during
out stay by theater groups who specialized in work for young audiences. My daughter, granddaughter, and I would attend;
the grandson was still too young for live theater, so he would spend that time
with his dad and granddad.
All of the
performances were professional, and each was unique. One was almost wordless, but visually
beautiful as it explored nightfall, bedtime, and falling asleep from a child’s
point of view. Another was a raucous
adaptation of a Raold Dahl story I’d never heard of, “The Giraffe, the Pelly,
and Me,” complete with huge puppets and a Keystone Cops kind of frenetic
energy.
And then there was
the third, “How Long Is a Piece of String?” created and performed by Tim Webb’s
astonishing Oily Cart Theatre. The other
performances were excellent and well attended.
This one was a life changer. This
was “What else is out there?” with frosting and jimmies and a cherry on
top! It featured a kind of theater for
the very young that was new to me, but not to Oily Cart and their Artistic
Director, Tim Webb. They’ve been
creating and touring new works for 30 years now, specializing in theater for the
very young (0 – 3 and 3 – 5, mostly), and in theater for young people with
special needs.
No, that is not a
typo. They do theater for children under
a year old, and their parents, of course.
In small groups. They also do
theater for no more than a handful of seriously challenged children and their
caregivers at a time, and I believe they’ve done one piece where the audience
consisted of one child at a time, plus caregiver(s). No need to take my word for it. Visit their website at http://www.oilycart.org.uk, follow them
on Facebook, and, to see clips of
actual performances, search for them on YouTube.com. I recommend starting with “Oily Cart + String
Trailer,” “Oily Cart + Air Trailer,” “Oily Cart + Blue,” and “Oily Cart + Blue
Balloon” for examples of their work with and for all of those populations. You can also see interviews with Tim Webb,
Artistic Director and resident genius.
Okay, so there we
were – daughter, granddaughter, and moi – on a cold, crisp December afternoon
in London, excited about going to the theater but completely unaware of what we
were about to experience. When about 15
children, mostly 3 – 5 year olds, and their accompanying adults had assembled
in the lobby, we were instructed to put one hand on a red string and follow it
to where the play would be taking place.
This took us to a cavernous black box theater space. I knew immediately something extraordinary
was about to happen because there were all sorts of string-related gizmos,
designs, and contraptions on the walls and a musician was singing us to our
seats while playing – what else? – stringed instruments. What followed was something called “full
immersion” theater, an approach in which children become an integral part of
the play and fully experience the world of the story through their senses –
sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.
At first, I was
holding my granddaughter’s hand and leading her into the experience, but within
five minutes, all of the children had left their adults behind and taken up
residence in the world of the play. The
Pied Piper has nothing on the Oily Cart company! And then the magic took over for me,
too. Seated with the rest of the adults
in the center of the room as the action moved around us in all directions, I
realized this was great theater for everyone, child and adult. It had everything: a clever story well-acted,
delightful music, and spectacular visual imagery – heightened by the
breathtaking sight of our own little ones totally enjoying themselves as they
learned to care for yarn doll babies, worked the Rube Goldberg-style gizmos,
rowed a boat while being spritzed by water, crossed a rope bridge, bathed their
babies in cascades of multi-colored bubbles, and finally tucked them into a
caravan of cribs to be reunited with their String Parents.
I fell madly in
love – with Oily Cart, with “How Long Is a Piece of String?” and with the
concept of full-immersion theater for the very young. I returned home determined to write that kind
of play. My picture book Here Comes Gosling! seemed a good place
to start – children could join Froggie and Rabbit in a variety of activities
involving their senses. (We’re more
restrictive about serving children food here in the U.S., so “taste” ended up as
pretend-eating rather than actual ingesting.)
At an American Alliance for Theatre and Education conference, I read the
book at a Playwrights Slam session and announced that I needed a theater group
to work with me on developing a full-immersion script for the very young. Patricia Zimmer, a professor at Eastern Michigan University,
came forward immediately, saying she’d worked with a large Head Start school in
her area before and could see this as a great match.
It was! We took Patricia’s university students into
the Head Start classrooms to test out my ideas with real, live 3 – 5 year olds
and later performed the finished play for them.
I will never forget the moment when the children were gathered around a
red-and-white picnic blanket, playing “Dance and Freeze” with Froggie, Rabbit,
Goose, Gander,
and baby Gosling and giggling madly while their parents and teachers grinned
ear-to-ear in the background. “I did
it!” I thought. “They’re experiencing
this dance at this picnic in this imaginary world because of the words I put on
a page.” And then I thought, “How can I
ever again write a play in which preschoolers don’t get up and dance?”
Well, I calmed
down, of course. And so did they, sitting quietly to listen to Froggie read a
story before filing out through the greenery-decorated archway that had led
them into this new world and would now take them back to their everyday
lives. After other productions in Austin, TX and Bentonville, AR,
the stage version of Here Comes Gosling!
is headed toward publication by Dramatic Publishing Company. I hope it keeps a
lot of little people dancing for a very long time.
I’m now working on
a new script for the same age group, “Chicken Story Time.” Through “full-immersion theater,” very young
children discover “what else is out there.”
And so do I!
Hugs, everybody!
* * *
