writerjenn

Today's post covers ground from the serious to the silly, so fasten your seatbelts.

If you're feeling activistic, here are a couple of opportunities floating around the cybersphere.

To scratch your let's-fight-book-banning itch, or to speak up for a great book:
John Green, author of LOOKING FOR ALASKA and AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES, is asking for support in fighting a challenge to the marvelous LOOKING FOR ALASKA. Click on the link to see the full info.

Laurie Halse Anderson has long been blogging about the importance of running to her writing life. Now the author of SPEAK, TWISTED, and other great books is running to fight cancer as well, by looking for half-marathon sponsors to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Follow the link if you're interested.

Switching gears from activism to writing:

There's a fascinating discussion of beginnings over at Nathan Bransford's blog. I recommend reading not only the post, but the comments that follow it, for some great perspectives on what the first page of a work should do. How much action do you need? What about introducing the characters? Is there such a thing as starting off with too much of a bang? Follow the link to read and/or chime in.

And now for some comic relief:

Toon Thursday this week at Finding Wonderland features a toon based on one of my suggestions, hilariously brought to life by a. fortis. The ferret thing all started with a plagiarism controversy in which a romance writer was alleged to have dropped whole chunks of scholarly material about ferrets into a romance novel. Specifically, the romance novel's main characters engage in a long discourse about ferrets after first engaging in an act of unbridled passion. Now, I had never thought of ferrets as suitable material for pillow talk, and I still don't know that I do, but the whole story has certainly served as fodder for some wonderful cartoons.

Finally, thanks for the supportive comments about my difficulty with my current WIP. I've been working away at it, and it's still too early and I'm too superstitious to give a final verdict on how it has gone, so I'll just say I'm proceeding on. 

Must take a brief break from thinking about plot to post this link, and revisit the idea of being illustrated. As promised, the magical a. fortis at Finding Wonderland has illustrated my answer to the "Where do you get your ideas?" question. Check it out and see if you get your ideas from the same place!

No, I'm not talking about getting tattoos . . . 

One fact that often shocks beginning children’s-book writers is the amount of influence the writer has over a book’s artwork.  Because that amount can usually be described as “tiny, if any.”  An author and illustrator of the same book might never even talk.  I sometimes see writers becoming distressed over this idea.  “Can’t I put directions to the artist on the manuscript?” they will ask during the Q&A at writers’ conferences.  “Can’t I choose my own artist?”

 

This may be hardest on those who write picture books, because the artwork is such an integral part of a picture book.  And I suppose this is especially difficult for writers who have talent in the visual arts themselves, writers who might even toy with the idea of being author-illustrators.  Fortunately, I am not burdened by visual-arts talent myself!

 

At least three of my published stories have had accompanying illustrations.  (In a fourth case, the magazine’s cover perfectly represented my story, but since it was a theme issue, I was unable to determine if the illustration had been done specifically for my story, or if there was just some magical accident of synergy.)  I never met or even talked to any of the illustrators.  None of the editors told me there would be illustrations, nor did they ask for my input.  In my opinion, those illustrations range from good to wonderful. 

 

In the “wonderful” category, I’m thinking of a story I wrote called “Feed the City,” in which the two main characters are grappling with a complicated attraction to each other.  Most of the story takes place in a dysfunctional truck, as they drive around collecting food for a charity called “Feed the City.”  The illustrator, J. Buster Holiday, used a photograph of an old truck, with a logo for Feed the City affixed to the door.  I had not described the truck in much detail, except to list its mechanical ailments, but the artist found the exact truck I had pictured.  I had not described a logo for the charity or even thought about a logo; that was purely the artist’s invention. 

 

To me, there’s something exciting about seeing my ideas represented in a whole new medium, through fresh eyes.  The truck was an important “character” in the story, but I never would have thought of using it in an illustration, since I was focused on the human characters.  Yet here was someone picking that truck out of all the elements in the story, and realizing its significance.  Here was someone creating a logo for an organization that had sprung from my imagination!

 

Had I been directing the artists who illustrated my stories, I never would have come up with the pictures that they did, but their pictures worked and worked well.  They caught the spirit of the stories in ways I never would have imagined.  That’s the key: in ways I never would have imagined.  Letting go and trusting another artist with our stories is a risk.  Have I heard some writers say they disliked their illustrations or hated their book covers?  Yes, it happens.  But so many times, the risk pays off when someone takes an idea to a place we didn’t envision.  After all, that’s what happens with our stories: once they’re out there in the world, we have no control over how readers interpret them.

 

 

Doris Lessing may have edged me out for the Nobel Prize for Literature (a real squeaker of a contest there, you may be sure), but I have the honor of being one of the winners in the "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?" contest at Finding Wonderland, which I entered under my stage name of liquidambar.   Alas, I am not the Grand Prize winner, but I still get to see a. fortis immortalize my smart-alecky answer in a cartoon. Which brings up an idea for my own blog here: what it's like for writers to have their work illustrated. Tune in soon for that post, which I am not going to write tonight, since I have spent most of the day sitting in/on airports, planes, train stations, trains, and automobiles, including some really memorable moments (which felt like hours) flying in circles over Pennsylvania.