Oh hey, look what I found

May 24, 2011 - Stacy 1 Comment

Pictures from a recent visit to NYC by Cynthia Leitich Smith! These were taken in Feb. 2011, but I completely forgot to post them.

What’s that? You don’t know Cyn? How could you miss this unyielding advocate for children’s literature? In fact, I’m surprised you somehow managed to make it to MY site if you haven’t been to Cyn’s first. But just in case you don’t know all the cool things she’s doing, from her blog—where she interviews and champions other authors more than herself—to her main website, where she keeps a bunch of annotated bibliographies of multicultural literature broken down by communities and a whole part dedicated to children’s/YA lit resources, not to mention a whole bunch of other stuff, well, now’s your chance to check it out.

And while you’re at it, go read her books.

Beyond Orcs and Elves, part 3

May 21, 2011March 22, 2012 - Stacy 4 Comments

And finally, part 3. Read parts 1 and 2 here and here.

So now let’s talk about writing cross-culturally!

Writing Cross-culturally

A few months ago, I answered a reader’s question on my website, in which she asked, basically, “Is my character ‘black enough’?” which prompted a wide variety of responses, some voices expressing why the question itself hurt the readers, most particularly that the question comes with baggage that implies there’s only one way to be black. But much as it might be a painful process, with perhaps many mistakes made along the way, I think it’s important for us to be talking about writing cross-culturally. White writers have started to examine their privilege, have started to critically think about why they don’t include more diversity in their writing. So they start out with some incorrect ideas and a LOT of questions—and the way they ask the questions might not always be the best way to phrase something. Not to mention—getting back to that Le Guin quote that everyone has someone who is Other to themselves—that maybe black writers might be interested in Japanese culture, and East Asians might be interested in Indian culture, and all those intercultural interests that are so healthy for everyone to have.

It’s not the responsibility of your average POC on the street to explain Racism 101 to anyone who asks, and sometimes those responding have heard it ALL before. But there are ways for people who want to include a wider variety of people/cultures/ethnicities/races in their writing to figure out how to do so. In fantasy, sometimes it’s especially easy, because often our worldbuilding involves MAKING STUFF UP! If it’s not set in the real world nor directly influenced by it, why would everyone need to be white?

But then what about setting stuff in the real world, or in a world inspired by a specific culture, say, ancient China? That’s where research comes in. And as any writer knows, research means a number of different sources of information.

Read! Get educated!

I know I’m going out of order here, but this really is one of the most important things someone who’s just starting out thinking about writing cross-culturally can do. And I don’t mean just walking up to a person on the street or a random work acquaintance and saying “so, tell me about you people.” If you don’t already know and trust someone from the culture you want to write about, ask yourself why that is—both that you want to write about it, and that you don’t know anyone. Then figure out how to fix the second part of that sentence. Find museums and cultural centers if you don’t know someone from that culture and ask them to point you in the right direction. It’s their job, at least, to field such questions, and it’s a better solution than asking the only black/Native American/Asian person you know. And besides, you can’t assume that if someone’s Asian, for example, that they’re from the culture you want to write about (BIG difference between Chinese/Japanese/Korean/other Asian cultures) or that they’d have any more experience than you do with it if they’ve lived here in the US their whole lives. They might. But they might not.

So USE YOUR LIBRARY. (Aside: Our libraries are under constant threat of budget cuts right now because of the economy. If you want to be able to keep using it as a resource—and you really should—make sure to also think about advocating for it in your communities/counties/states.)

Examine your privilege before you walk this road

Normally at this point, I read parts of “Things I don’t have to think about today” by John Scalzi, an SFF author and the current president of SFWA. Rather than reproduce his blog post, I’d rather you go read it here in its entirety. It’s one author’s musings on his privilege, which I think will be a nice springboard thought exercise for anyone thinking about their own privilege—and most of us have privilege of some form, even if we’re from a poor background, even if we have health challenges, and so forth.

Get to know people outside your own “community”

This one’s fairly self-explanatory. Reaching beyond our everyday patterns to befriend people who are different than us helps us to see a bigger picture and understand others’ perspectives, even if we don’t share them.

Learn the line between “respect” and “appropriation”

Note to especially examine appropriation of Native American and other First Nations/Aboriginal cultures, whose voice has been suppressed/oppressed ever since Columbus over 500 years ago. I hear from a lot of people who want to use Native American beliefs (or often, what they believe are Native American beliefs, from a 70s-media-influenced point of view, conflating all Native American people into one spiritual-close-to-nature pot). But most Native Americans would probably rather see fantasy from other Native Americans because of their sensitivity to cultural appropriation from outsiders.

How do you know, then, whether you’re using a culture of inspiration appropriately? Nisi Shawl has a lot of great thoughts on cultural appropriation in her articles Appropriate Cultural Appropriation and Transracial Writing for the Sincere. I think the most important one from Appropriate Cultural Appropriation is the idea of the difference between Invaders, Tourists, and Guests. She says:

During the same panel which inspired Goto’s poem, audience member Diantha Day Sprouse categorized those who borrow others’ cultural tropes as “Invaders,” “Tourists,” and “Guests.” Invaders arrive without warning, take whatever they want for use in whatever way they see fit. They destroy without thinking anything that appears to them to be valueless. They stay as long as they like, leave at their own convenience. Theirs is a position of entitlement without allegiance.

Tourists are expected. They’re generally a nuisance, but at least they pay their way. They can be accommodated. Tourists may be ignorant, but they can be intelligent as well, and are therefore educable.

Guests are invited. Their relationships with their hosts can become long-term commitments and are often reciprocal.

I think those are important distinctions. You may start as a Tourist, but learn enough and you might be invited as a Guest. But it’s an invitation that comes from the host—you can’t demand an invitation. But I think the occasional outsider writing as Tourist, as long as you’re learning, is an important part of this step of the process we’re in, working to build awareness and bring out more SFF books for young readers that feature POC.

But go read BOTH articles! Both have more to say than I can express here without just repeating what she already said so well.

And I really don’t have much more to say on how to write cross-culturally. Really, what I’d like you to take away from this for your writing is to consider who the readers are, where they come from, the issues involved in reaching all readers and potential readers, and then for you to become advocates for diversity in whatever way is appropriate for your writing. But let me leave you with this thought on appropriation from Ursula K. Le Guin from that same book, The Language of the Night:

“If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself—as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation—you may hate or deify it; but in either case, you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality. You have, in fact, alienated yourself.”

And for those wanting more reading, check out these links:

Resources For Writers: Writing About Another Culture

Nisi Shawl’s Writing the Other—both a workshop and a book. More info at http://www.sfwa.org/members/shawl/other/

“Appropriate Cultural Appropriation” by Nisi Shawl http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10087

“Transracial Writing for the Sincere” by Nisi Shawl http://www.sfwa.org/2009/12/transracial-writing-for-the-sincere/

Le Guin, Ursula K. “American SF and the Other,” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989.

Le Guin, Ursula K. “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989.

“Being Poor” by John Scalzi http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf

“Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today” by John Scalzi http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/10/18/things-i-dont-have-to-think-about-today/ paired with his next post on narrative usurpation, covering why he wrote the previous post, at http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/10/18/narrative-usurpation-quick-thoughts-on-the-previous-post

Teen blogger Ari’s Reading in Color blog, which reviews only books by and about people of color: http://blackteensread2.blogspot.com/ She’ll give you plenty of places to start reading if you’re just starting out—and really anytime you might be stuck and wanting more to read.

Color Online focuses on women POC writers and books for POC teen girls, including a local library one of the bloggers runs for teens in her area. They often run reading challenges to get their fellow bloggers reading and thinking about POC in children’s/YA books, though they don’t limit themselves to children’s books. http://coloronline.blogspot.com/

Doret runs The Happy Nappy Bookseller, where she reviews books about POC and raises awareness, sometimes doing features on particular themes. http://thehappynappybookseller.blogspot.com/

And the obligatory last slide for more info about me—which of course you already know if you’re here!

Beyond Orcs and Elves, part 2

May 19, 2011May 21, 2011 - Stacy 9 Comments

See here for part 1.

Many authors have broken that mold & followed Ursula K. Le Guin’s admonition to write more of the “other.” But there’s still a strong British tradition—among the biggest touchstones for kids from the 70s and 80s era are arguably Susan Cooper, Roald Dahl, Diana Wynne Jones, etc.

All touchstones for a reason—they’re REALLY GOOD books. But told from a particular cultural perspective, and there is a danger to just one single story—and if you haven’t seen that TED talk by Chimamanda Adichie, I highly recommend you googling “the danger of a single story” and watching all twenty minutes of the talk, because she has a lot of really great things to say about how important it is for ALL children to see themselves mirrored in the books they read.

Yet despite our gains in diversity in fantasy and all of children’s books, we still have a long way to go. Just in the last few years, I’m sure you’ve heard of the problems with intentional or unintentional whitewashing that goes back as far as Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. You probably know that the main character of Earthsea, Ged, has copper skin, and that all the characters in the book except for the invaders are people of color. The myth was that “black books” don’t sell, so many versions of Earthsea didn’t feature people on the cover to avoid that “problem”—even to the point of featuring dragons. There are no dragons in Earthsea. EDIT: Wait, there were dragons in Earthsea? I honestly don’t remember them! But my point is that whether dragons are important or not, Ged is not white. Whoops!

And when people were featured on the cover, what does Ged look like?

It’s easy to say that’s all in the past, but as we all know, we’re still dealing with the problem now.

There’s the question of whether “black books” sell to a “mainstream” audience (I hate this term, because “mainstream” here implies “white,” without the nuance of all the other people in the audience—74% isn’t 100%!), not to mention it assumes that white people wouldn’t be interested in reading a story that features a black (or Asian, or Native American, etc etc) character.

In a world in which Will Smith and Denzel Washington are doing just fine, why is this a problem in our books??

Several months ago I attended a panel that featured several NY publishing house editors, a School Library Journal blogger, and an NYPL librarian (sorry, it’s been so long I can’t remember who was on the panel, but someone who was there might pipe up). One thing that was brought up by someone (sorry! can’t remember who!) on the panel is that part of the problem is that we’re defining books by “black book”/“white book,” rather than “awesome mystery,” “exciting historical adventure,” “thriller,” “space adventure.” That’s what we’re working on at Tu—exciting books for young readers that are all about the story first and foremost and just happen to feature a person of color as the main character. How silly is it to assume that the hero always has to be white?

A lot of my colleagues in editorial are looking for books featuring a wide variety of characters. It’s a change that we all need to implement as writers, readers, parents, teachers, librarians, booksellers, marketing, and anyone else involved in bringing books to young readers.

Let’s look at the readers themselves for a minute.

Note that this is from 2008 or 2009 estimates from the US Census Bureau & that we’ll have a more accurate view once the 2010 data is available. I’ve heard that soon, if not now, about 50% of kids in schools across the nation are people of color, including Latinos. Right now, if you add up those sides of the pie, even in 2008 people of color were 32% of the population overall.

You might want to run by those again. I think just seeing how the green part of the pie just grows… and grows… and grows…

Why is that?

Okay, then I just wanted to show you this last thing. NOW REMEMBER—not all people of color live in poverty, and not all people in poverty are people of color. But when thinking about how kids access books—who buys them, where kids find books to read, etc.—it’s important to remember that a large percentage of those in poverty are kids of color, and that affects how they’re able to access print materials.

Note that because of the demographic breakdown, a lot of the kids who only have 1 book to share with 354 other kids will be kids of color.

And you get a pretty good picture that the majority of the book-buying public being white has a lot to do with who’s in poverty as much as any other reason. Of course, correlation isn’t causation—I’m just saying there’s a link here for us to consider, and that there’s a lot of work to do in making sure that kids in poverty also see themselves mirrored in books. There’s a privilege situation that means that most of the demographic writing books aren’t necessarily the same demographic as the kids looking for books in our schools and libraries. (I first heard of this data when Andrea Davis Pinkney shared it at the A is for Anansi conference; later I found a study that confirmed the numbers, but I don’t have the link here on my home computer.)

We often talk in multicultural book circles about the idea of mirrors and windows—mirrors to see your own experience reflected back, windows to see into another world. Author Zetta Elliott recently added a dimension to that which I like, the idea of “sliding glass doors” to walk in and experience someone else’s world. That’s what reading is, isn’t it? That’s where true interculturalism begins.

In 2009 when I was starting Tu Publishing as a small press in Utah—before we were acquired by Lee & Low—I talked to a few neighborhood kids about their reading habits. This is by no means a scientific study, and I want to warn you that often, kids at this age don’t have the vocabulary to express their feelings about reading, so it might seem like I’m leading them, but the questions I’m asking in the video are questions that use information their parents supplied to me. Let’s watch them first, then I’ll discuss.

(Ignore the links to the Kickstarter campaign—that’s from way back when we were starting up.)

The last four kids were all siblings in a multiracial family. Note how the older sister had a lot more vocabulary to explain why she likes the books she likes! I’m sure that the boys and the youngest girl will eventually find the words to explain what they mean. But I want to talk about Austin in particular. He’s actually younger than his brother by two years—he was 8 and his brother was 10 at the time of filming. So his answers do reflect his developmental place in life—he just doesn’t have the vocabulary to express his frustration. In a family of readers, he hates to read, his mom says, not only because of his ADD but also because he can’t ever find any books that he feels he relates to. He would love to read a mystery, but when he picks up the mysteries his older brother is into, he flips through them and says in disgust, “Why can’t there be any black people who solve mysteries? Aren’t there any black people in this book at all??”

Anecdotally, that is one of the many factors that might affect why some kids of color don’t read as much genre fiction: not as many mirrors in as windows, which means it’s a bigger stretch for them to go out of their comfort zone every day. And they often do that so often, that in reading for pleasure, why would they want to yet again read about someone other than themselves?

Not every kid will have a need for mirrors. But shouldn’t we be providing them for the ones that do, and windows into their world for other kids?

Business-wise, it’s easier to sell windows than mirrors. Hence, when you look at the numbers of who buys books, of course the largest number of books currently sold will be to white people picking up books in which they see themselves mirrored, right? They’re the people who buy books by a large margin, both because whites are just a larger percentage of the population but also because a greater percentage of them are in a higher socioeconomic bracket. But then, we discount that low-income neighborhoods need public libraries and school libraries and all those other places where kids should have access to books and other reading materials, too. And we definitely discount the minorities who have money and are looking for great mirror books for their kids or themselves.

But hey, we’re publishing people. We can’t change the world, but we can do something. We can get involved in our communities and do what we can in our own spheres of influence. We can hope and work toward making sure that those opportunities are available through a lot of ways, like helping local libraries retain their funding, getting involved in mentoring, donating books, or donating money to book programs like RIF (which, if you noticed recently, lost all its federal funding due to severe budget cuts). There are so many opportunities to get involved like that.

But as that side of things improve, we also have to make sure that the actual books continue to grow toward reflecting the world that kids see in their daily lives, inasmuch as that is possible in a fantasy world, right?

As Andrea Davis Pinkney said at that same conference I mentioned above, “We’re doing okay, but we have a lot of work to do.”

Next time: Writing cross-culturally. What should writers take into consideration when thinking about writing from a perspective not their own? Should they even attempt writing cross-culturally/cross-racially?

Beyond Orcs and Elves: Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy for Young Readers, part 1

May 18, 2011May 19, 2011 - Stacy 9 Comments

Here you go! The first installment. Note that this was written to be spoken, so sometimes the diction might seem a little weird for a blog post. But I’m just going to leave it as-is, because you’ll get the idea.

Beyond Orcs and Elves: Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy for Young Readers

Ursula Le Guin, way back in 1975 said:

The women’s movement has made most of us conscious of the fact that SF [science fiction, but let’s include fantasy too] has either totally ignored women or presented them as squeaking dolls subject to instant rape by monsters—or old-maid scientists desexed by hypertrophy of the intellectual organs—or, at best, loyal little wives or mistresses of accomplished heroes. Male elitism has run rampant in SF. But is it only male elitism? Isn’t the “subjection of women” in SF merely a symptom of a whole which is authoritarian, power-worshiping, and intensely parochial?

The question involved here is the question of The Other—the being who is different from yourself. This being can be different from you in its sex; or in its annual income; or in its way of speaking and dressing and doing things; or in the color of its skin, or the number of its legs and heads.

That was 35 years ago. (I know. I can’t believe it myself.) How are we doing today? I want to talk about the inclusion in speculative fiction for children and young adults of what 74% of the book-buying public might consider the Other in terms of mostly racial but also cultural differences. Perhaps this will help you in writing fantastic creatures or aliens, as well, this idea of writing the Other, but I want to focus on the human element today.

Old-school epic fantasy

Campbellian monomyth (guys who start off their adventures in inns)
¨The British tradition”: Victorian fantasists to Tolkien & Lewis
¨My elves are better than yours”
Dragonlance: The New Adventures

You may or may not know that fantasy as a genre started long before Tolkien was born. In fact, people have been telling fantasy stories for as long as there have been people. After all, the first fairy tales weren’t just what we now refer to as “myths,” creation stories and just-so stories. They were also fantastical tales told to pass the time or to warn children not to wander in the woods alone.

But let’s just start with the Victorian era, which had its own set of rules, morals and mores, body of literature, and cultural influences. We start with writers like George MacDonald, one of the primary influences on both Tolkien and Lewis, who wrote such tales as The Princess and the Goblin, The Light Princess, and The Princess and Curdie. His books drew upon fairy tales in their use of goblins, and they were fun, adventurous, and even allowed girls to have some adventure, which is kind of rare for the Victorian era!

There were also morality tales in the guise of fantasy—same as it ever was—such as Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, and the touchstone of fantasy touchstones, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

So even back then there was a wide variety of fantastical tales for children, but as often happens, when one book gets popular, a lot of imitations abound, trying to replicate the formula for success. The “British tradition” of fantasy was born not only in the UK, but also in the US.

Then we move through time, hitting upon authors like

I’m just going to let those slide on by, because I want to particularly focus in on the British—particularly Tolkienesque tradition of fantasy, which is popular not only amidst adult fantasy books—the majority of readers of which is teen boys—but also some high fantasy for children. The whole list is on my blog, which is stacylwhitman.com, if you’re interested in looking it up. I just wanted to post this to give us a better idea of where we’ve come from. [NOTE: I posted these in a text version somewhere, but I’m not sure where at the moment. I’ll have to come back and edit it with a link. Or you can just go to the tags on the side of the main page and click “booklists,” which should get you there eventually.]

So, focusing in on high fantasy—books like these:

Now, these are some books I worked on. I’ll get to them in a moment. But they arose out of a long tradition of high fantasy in both children’s and adult books.

My first job as a trade children’s book editor was at Wizards of the Coast, which some of you may know is known for its Dungeons and Dragons game. Or you might know it for Magic: The Gathering. Both games have popular tie-in fiction, and that’s what I first edited at this job: Dragonlance: The New Adventures. The original Dragonlance series by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss was published in the 1980s in conjunction with a D&D game by the same name, Dragonlance. The original books haven’t gone out of print in the 25 years since, and have spawned hundreds of books in the shared-world series, including the New Adventures, a series for middle grade readers that I edited.

Dragonlance was part of the larger body of epic fantasy work of the late 70s through the 80s—pre-Robert Jordan—that was eaten up by teens, mostly teenage boys (a trend that continues today). It’s great stuff! Kids and teens love it. Lots of adventure and dragons and elves and just a lot of fun.

One of the hallmarks of this kind of epic fantasy are worlds populated by what has become the standard fantasy races: any combination of elves, orcs, goblins, hobbit-like halflings—called “kender” in Dragonlance, halflings elsewhere—ogres, giants, and dragons (though usually the hero is a white human or light-skinned elf or half-elf, and most often that hero is also a man/boy). I think one of the reasons Drizzt is so popular is because he breaks this stereotype, though at the same time he reinforces others (he is the only “good” Dark Elf in an entire race of people). Mind you, it makes for good game mechanics (f0r this particular game) to make it easier to play characters. But it’s when individual characters have to fit a mold racially that it becomes problematic, especially now that we’re more than 25 years on from the publication of the original books, which were groundbreaking in their own right at the time.

There are some major tropes in high fantasy that we see a lot especially in older epic high fantasy titles:

Elves are beautiful, mysterious, and always good. Except dark elves, who are brooding and evil.
Kender can’t do magic.
Ogres are all evil. Half-ogres can sometimes be good.
Dwarves love to mine and live underground.
All hobbits (sometimes called halflings or kender) love to eat.
Gnomes are all engineers who blow stuff up, sometimes killing themselves in wild ways in the process.
Chromatic dragons are evil. Metallic dragons are good. They cannot change this fact by choosing to be good or evil, either.

Diversity issues have often been tackled in these books, though usually along strict “racial” lines which are really species lines. But each species was a kind of “people,” a sentient race of beings who could sometimes intermarry. All were humanoid. But it was a huge step in the right direction.

But how do we go beyond that?

Those involved with the adult book side of things are aware of these issues and many are working to address them in a variety of ways, but that’s not the focus of what we’re talking about here today. We’re going to talk about how it affects fantasy in children’s literature. So let’s look at a specific example. In Dragonlance: The New Adventures, we broke the mold a little bit. In original Dragonlance, the hobbit-like kender had a racial trait that they couldn’t do magic. Yes, an entire race of people, according to the rules of this world, were not genetically capable of doing magic.

An entire race of people were genetically incompetent in a skill which this world pretty much required for survival.

Well, not every human or elf was a magic-wielder, either, but the fact that humans and elves had the ability to choose whether or not to try to practice magic (or had the ability to find out if they were capable of it on an individual level, at least) makes it an interesting study in diversity to see that kender couldn’t do magic.

We broke that in the New Adventures, though—and some people weren’t terribly happy with us for doing it—and played with the rules of the world so that this one particular kender could do magic. There was an in-world way we explained it (he was given an older kind of dragon magic by a dragon spirit), but there you go. He wasn’t the only misfit in the group, either—the elf wasn’t all righteous and good, he was a thief. What matters is that each individual in a given group, including even minor characters, should be treated as an individual.

Part of this pattern is that much of high fantasy, at least until recent years, follows the British tradition I was just alluding to earlier—or rather, I should say, the Tolkien tradition. Tolkien did it this way and it worked so well, we should do it again and again!

Tolkien isn’t the only writer to be imitated in this way. We’ve seen it happen with every recent blockbuster, from Harry Potter to Twilight to Gossip Girls to whatever today’s new big thing is. How many boys-off-to-wizard-school books cropped up when Harry Potter first got big? But it is important to look at this tradition and realize how it’s stifled HUMAN diversity in fantasy and science fiction for young readers, and the ways in which writers are breaking that mold.

We don’t have enough time to really delve into a full analysis of each book that follows this tradition or breaks its molds, so I hope that what I say today will be just a jumping-off point for further thoughts and discussion, the end result being more writers of speculative fiction for children thinking consciously about diversity as they write.

How do we get past this old fantasy-world-trope diversity? Not in chucking elves and dragons altogether, in my opinion—it’s fun to play with made-up people and creatures!—but by examining issues of privilege and looking at how we treat individuals within groups, whether human or elf or orc. R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt broke those old boundaries—he’s a misfit. He decided to be good among a people who are dedicated to evil. That appeals to teen readers on a number of levels, but the one that stands out to me is that the character is an individual, who goes beyond the template that drow—dark elves—are expected to have in this fantasy world.

Next time: Let’s talk about whitewashing and demographics.

Chimamanda Adichie: The Dangers of a Single Story

May 17, 2011 - Stacy 1 Comment

To hold you over until I can get my own talk up, here’s an even better talk by author Chimamanda Adichie, which I told everyone to go google, “The Dangers of a Single Story.” In it, she talks of how, when she was growing up in Nigeria (it was Nigeria, right? I need to go back and watch it again myself), the books she read most often (always?) featured white kids who ate apples. So when she started to write, she wrote stories about white people who ate apples, even though she had never seen an apple. A powerful talk about the importance of finding your own voice as a writer and how important to our body of literature a wide variety of voices is.

Beyond Orcs and Elves: a prelude

May 17, 2011May 17, 2011 - Stacy 1 Comment

Now that NESCBWI is over, I will be posting parts of my talk, “Beyond Orcs and Elves: Diversity in Fantasy & Science Fiction for Young Readers” here on my blog. I will be breaking it up over the course of several posts—it was designed as a 40-minute–to–hour-long talk, and it’s just too long for one post. Not to mention I have slides I’ll be putting up (someone suggested SlideShare? I’ll have to check it out once I have time to sit down with it) which need to be incorporated somehow.

I haven’t had time, though, to sit down and split up the talk and figure out where the most natural breaks are. I went straight from a busy week last week to a VERY full weekend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (13 critiques and two presentations over the course of three days) to back to work on Monday, which has left me a little shell-shocked, and all I want to do now outside of work is to sleep. You know it’s bad when you can’t even concentrate on the Sarah Jane Adventures even though you’ve been looking forward to watching the last season!

My evening is full tonight, so it will be at least tomorrow night, if not sometime on Thursday (I’m taking the day off to be home for the delivery of my new couch, which I’m excited about) before the first post of the talk is organized. So keep an eye out until then.

The set is complete!

May 16, 2011May 16, 2011 - Stacy

Awe. Some.

ETA: Oops, the uploading ability from my phone doesn’t seem to work with my blog—probably because my blog has been broken for over a year. In fact, old pictures I’ve uploaded have disappeared from the archives. So I’m using Flickr now. Anyone know an easy way to upload directly to Flickr from Android? I can’t find an app in the App Store, and I’m not sure which 3rd-party apps are reliable. Emailing it to myself, saving it to my computer’s hard drive, uploading it to Flickr, and THEN posting it here is too many steps!

“I have this GREAT idea!”

May 9, 2011 - Stacy 2 Comments

I see this so often—most recently earlier today: A “writer”* tells his or her friends, “I have this great idea for a novel! What do you think? If I wrote it, would you read it?”

There’s no way to answer this one honestly as a friend if you’re also an editor. Because my honest answer would be no way, thanks. Unless you were Brandon Sanderson or Dan Wells or another published friend who I’ve talked with about a few ideas in the past—published authors with a track record of turning ideas into readable prose. And even then, those ideas were often only half-formed in those conversations, ideas that grew into something so much more complex and interesting once the friend actually wrote his schizophrenia novel or his chalk-drawing novel or whatever. (I had nothing to do with the germination or the development of those ideas—I just happened to be in the room, physically or metaphorically, when a conversation about what they were working on next happened at some point.)

Why?

Ideas are a dime a dozen.

It’s not the concept that matters so much as the execution. Well, I take that back partly. Worldbuilding matters in fantasy and science fiction, that’s for sure. Obviously, or I wouldn’t be giving a whole 2-hour workshop on it this weekend, and we wouldn’t have endless fan conversations about what magic system is better or which would win in a fight, pirates or ninjas.

But even a story with something as awesome as pirates or ninjas needs good execution to make it worth reading (or watching—just look at Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Though that would be an awesome Rifftrax. But I digress). And interesting characters. And a plot that holds up under pressure.

Ideas don’t matter if you can’t write the book (period) and write it well (which will require revisions—too many novice writers think they’ll be the exception because they got away with writing term papers at 3 am on the day they were due and getting an A on the first draft; novels are not term papers). Worrying about whether readers would like the idea before actually writing the book is putting the cart before the horse. If you don’t write it, talking about the idea to all your friends/the internet/that editor you just met randomly on the train is just all talk and no action—especially when the idea usually involves vagaries like a generic romance and “the characters learn that love conquers all, and they learn that bigotry is wrong.” Or “and all the kids learn that friendship is better than bullying.” Or “and they learn that they really do need their mother after all.”

Even Max learned that home was the best place to be. But that’s not why most people have loved Where the Wild Things Are for almost five decades (yes, that’s right–it’s almost 50 years old). We love it because Max makes mischief, because he runs around the house in a wolf costume telling his mother, “I’ll eat you up!”, because he goes on this fantastic journey to the land of the Wild Things where they have a wild rumpus, and because when he comes back home his supper was still hot. It’s the details that make the story a classic—the way it’s written, and in this case, the way it’s illustrated. Sure, Max learns a lesson, if you want to call it that. But the idea isn’t as important as the execution when it comes to making the book linger in the minds of five decades of children and their parents.

If you’ve gotten an idea that grabs you and you think it would make a great book, then write it. And write some more. And join a writing group, and share your actual writing with your family. Tell them about the idea after you’ve let the seed germinate.

You might say, “But what if they say it didn’t sound interesting? Why bother to write it?”

Well, then you’ve got some revising to do if their feedback makes sense to you, don’t you? But it’s your book. Don’t wait until your spouse or your coworker or your running partner with completely different literary tastes says they find your idea interesting. If you find it interesting, that should be enough for a first draft, at least. Because if it’s not, how are you going to get through multiple revisions, the submissions process, and the editing process? Is this an idea that you want to live with for the next several years of your life? Who cares what they think?

Go write it. Let the “theme” take care of itself in the telling of a great story with interesting characters and a compelling plot and worldbuilding. If you executed it well, it’ll find its audience, even if your spouse/coworker/dog walker don’t appreciate a good ninja-pirate love story.

*Usually, said writer hasn’t ever actually written anything, because they’re waiting for the “right idea” to come along before they start.

Street fair youth fundraiser

May 9, 2011May 12, 2011 - Stacy

I’m going to be out of town at NESCBWI this weekend, which means that I’m going to miss the street fair they do every year on the Upper East Side to raise money for the young women and young men in my church here in New York. The funds raised from the tag sale and carnival will go toward paying for summer camp and other activities throughout the year for the kids whose parents can’t afford it. The kids involved are from all over Manhattan, from the Financial District to Chinatown to Harlem to Inwood. Some of them won’t be able to afford to go to camp—and to experience their first time away from home in a “nature” environment—without help from these funds, and they get to provide a service to the community through their street fair booths to earn it. I didn’t make it down there last year, but I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun.

If you’re in New York this weekend, you should drop by. The girls from my congregation will be running the face-painting booth, and I believe that my previous congregation from Harlem are in charge of manicures again this year. Someone’s going to be making homemade tortillas, too, which I think I’ll miss the most! There’s also a huge tag sale, for which they specifically asked for new or gently used professional clothes (so it might be a great place to get a deal on work clothes), books, and household items.

They’re also looking for volunteers, so if you feel like getting involved, there’s a contact email below.

Here’s the announcement:

Saturday, May 14 · 10:00am – 4:00pm, East 87th Street (btwn 2nd and 3rd). Annual fundraiser for the NY, NY Stake Youth. We had over 3,000 from the community attend last year, so we can always use extra volunteers . . . but please just come and enjoy! Video from last year’s event: http://vimeo.com/22496078

This year includes:

– Tag sale (donations still accepted at each LDS church), BBQ, Live music, Bake sale, Art show, Carnival-style booths, Provident Living Fair, Shaved Ice/cotton candy, Homemade tortillas

We need:

Volunteers (either the day of, or before), People to share/promote the event on blogs/social networks/etc, and Tag sale items (you can drop off at any chapel as each has a designated room)

Please contact Mike Matthews with any questions or ways you can help: michaeltmatthews AT gmail.com OR Jay Salmon jaysalmon at gmail.com, Erik Orton erikorton AT earthlink.net or Andrea Homer-Macdonald homermacdonald AT gmail.com with any questions or help you can provide.

Milestone day!

May 5, 2011May 10, 2011 - Stacy 3 Comments

What do you see me holding here?

That’s right, ARCs (Advance Reader’s Copies) of Tankborn and Galaxy Games: The Challengers (book one of the Galaxy Games series). Soon we’ll be getting Wolf Mark as well, to complete the Fall 2011 ARC set of Tu Books! (And if you’re curious, yes, that’s my office behind me. I particularly like the “Come to the dark side. We have cookies.” bumper sticker I once got for being Editor GoH at LTUE. Note the ever-present stacks of manuscripts behind me.)

We have very limited supplies, so I can’t just hand them out left and right, but for those of you who chose the ARC option for our Kickstarter campaign, we’ll be getting in touch sometime in the near future to find out which one you want (don’t comment here with that—wait for an email). Copies will be going out to reviewers, of course—that’s what ARCs generally are for.

If you’re a librarian who will be at ALA in June, make sure to go to the Lee & Low booth (I’ll post the booth number when ALA is closer), where we’ll have ARCs for giving away there as well. If you’re a reviewer, librarian, parent, or teacher interested in finding out more about the books, I hope you’re on the Lee & Low email newsletter. If not, check it out HERE. By subscribing to the e-news, you will get up-to-date information on all of Lee & Low’s books (like Tu’s books!), including possible giveaways, resources for teachers and librarians, and other promotions and resources. Follow the Lee & Low blog, too, where we’ll share news as it comes up.

If you’re a reviewer or buyer who thinks you may not be on our list for review copies or catalogs, please contact me privately with your (in the case of reviewers) publication, readership, and other credentials or (in the case of buyers) store information so I can forward the information on to the right people.

And of course if you’re a young reader who thinks these books look wicked awesome (did I just date myself with that phrase?)—these books are for YOU, after all!—you can find out more about Tu on our website. And in case you missed it above, check out the preview of fall’s books HERE. And of course in the fall you’ll be able to find them in bookstores or order them online.

Stacy Whitman's Grimoire

Thoughts on writing, editing, and publishing books for children and young adults