August 1 Newsletter - Monthly Mash-up
A picturebook birth; working link to article about 50 Ideas; two free posts from the archives; polls on writing vs promoting time
News: AUDIO
I’m beginning to post Unschool pieces with an audio component for those who like to listen to something on the bus or the way to work, or whose eyeballs are tired of reading. (Me, at end of day.)
I’ll work my way through, recording the archived 425 posts. If you’d like a particular post available in audio soon, please let me know. Check out the Indexes on the homepage. (Click on The Unschool title—top of page—to go there, and note the four Indexes in the lower right-hand corner.)
Last month I shared a link to an article by my friend
, a generative list of 50 writing prompts. I realized later that the link was only usable for those who have Medium memberships—sorry! Walter has since posted the article on his Substack newsletter, which you just might want to sign up for.Walter lives in Wisconsin, and is a full-time working writer.
Read that slowly: a full-time working writer. They exist.
He writes fiction for adults and children, memoir, articles, and more. He posts work daily and publishes regularly, takes care of his children, and fixes his wonderful old home—I’ve seen photos of renewed floors and re-painted walls!
And he has dedication and generosity for the writing community. Respect!
Prompt
Let’s make this the prompt for August. Check out Walter’s article and, using one of his 50 topics, write a short piece, and post right here in the “leave comments.”
What I most appreciate about his ideas is their openness. One hundred and two of you could write from the same prompt, and we’d be reading 102 different stories.
Please note that I may be on a hike when this is posted… if I’m not showing up for responses. I look forward to reading and posting thoughts once home—
One of the Unschoolers, Sheryl McFarlane, who frequently takes part in our picturebook workshop, has recently published THE BLUE CANOE. She graciously came on board with my request to share responses to a Q&A about the process of writing the book, as well as her new love for drawing—
For those of you who write longer stories for bigger folk, do read—it’s useful to see the layers of drafting. Note how each draft is dedicated: from ideas to lyrical tuning. Note the YEARS in between, and Sheryl’s patience—yes—with the project. It applies to all writing…
Thank you, Sheryl!
— Can you tell us about the genesis of this story? How the idea came, and how you proceeded with it—that is, something of your picturebook process?
The Blue Canoe, my newest picture book, took several years and multiple edits to write. I wish I could say that after a career of more than thirty years and nearly 20 books, I have become an efficient expert at the craft of picture book creation. Sadly, I’d be lying if I did. I am a slow writer!
Years ago, when my children were young, my husband and I bought some land on the marshy end of a small lake on one of the gulf islands. We built a camping platform to pitch a tent and a small dock to launch the $25 beat-up, grey canoe a neighbour had sold us. We patched it, bought life jackets and paddles and started taking our three girls out canoeing. That time on the lake together was magical.
Fast forward to about ten years ago…I was doing a practice with my dragon boat team on a local inlet when I noticed a dad canoeing with a young child. He was teaching her how to paddle. It triggered a flood of memories of canoeing with my own children when they were small.
I started to think about picture book possibilities. When I got home, I dug out some old photo albums, but there wasn’t much from that first summer on the lake. I guess we were pretty busy! I started to make notes about teaching the kids how to get in and out of a canoe, about different strokes we taught them, and the plant and animal life in and around the water, how to fish, how to pull leeches off safely, etc. I looked up bird calls, river otter habitat and family size, native and invasive frog species, dragonfly stages, water lily species, etc. I took several runs at where to go with the story but wasn’t satisfied with any of them. I even came up with an awesome alliterative title, Blue Canoe. Still, I couldn’t figure out what the actual story was. I knew the setting but not what to do with it. Since picture books are aimed at younger audiences these days, I didn’t want a story about anything scary like dumping the canoe or kids having adventures on their own. But I knew I needed some sort of structure. After a while, I put my notes and scribbles in a file and moved on to something else.
A few years later, one of my daughters was pregnant with her second child. My granddaughter was excited to welcome a new sibling. She didn’t seem particularly anxious about the new baby, but it did get me thinking about “new baby” anxiety. I imagined how a mother/daughter new baby conversation might go if a child were both excited and anxious… it wouldn’t be a start to finish conversation, but one that was somewhat drawn out with some sort of activity occurring to break the conversation up and give some processing time… perhaps baking bread, or a walk in the woods? But what activity would work, and how could it add another layer to the complexity of the story? After all, there are a lot of “sibling reactions to a new baby” books out there already. I needed a new take.
I started flipping through some old notes and story ideas. (Yes, I keep a file of bits and pieces and I highly recommend it.) When I came across my lake canoeing notes, I knew that a mother/daughter conversation about their changing family would work perfectly with canoeing. Reflections, questions and concerns could naturally be broken up by the sights and sounds as they paddled the lake. Finally, I had a way into my story that I felt I could work with.
I sat down and wrote my first complete draft in a few hours. Sometimes, but not always, I am able to get a story down quickly. This is primarily because I’ve spent so long thinking about it. I would never say this story only took me a few hours to write since that doesn’t accurately reflect my process and I don’t believe it reflects most people’s reality. Do not underestimate non-writing writing time!
Many of my picture books have minimal dialogue, but the subject and the characters in The Blue Canoe determined that dialogue was an important vehicle for this story. The mother/daughter conversation deals with many of the big feelings children have around new siblings. I wanted the child and mother to have a conversation about how a new baby would and would NOT change things. Yes, Mom would be busier. And yes, there might be less time. But Mom reassures her child that her love is a constant and that she will ensure that their connection to canoeing and nature will continue. In addition, dialogue gives Mom an opportunity to reinforce the idea that people can and are different with different interests and aptitudes without being pedantic. As well, I wanted the child to have a conversation with her imagined future sibling. (Illustrator, Laurel Aylesworth added a teddy bear as a coming-soon baby stand in, making the concept visually concrete for young children. This is a perfect example of how illustrators can bring new things to a story.)
While I do not use a lot of dialogue in my picture books, most of what I write is deeply rooted in our relationship with nature. As a former teacher, I wanted to layer in as much lake ecology in The Blue Canoe as I could, while including animal families that children might naturally encounter… baby birds in a nest, a family of river otter and a family of ducks. I was even able to include a mini-ecosystem of a nursery log which either parents or primary educators could easily follow up on to extend the learning. Nature provides us with such rich opportunities for learning!
Of course the first draft was too long. My first drafts are always too long! This is usually obvious to me once I let it sit for a bit before tackling a rewrite.
In the second draft I focused on striking a balance between the child’s excitement about their ‘coming-soon’ baby and her anxiety about how it might change their lives. That meant ensuring that the child had some processing time as they paddled. This worked perfectly as an entry into the sights and sounds of paddling, but pacing this out was important. I used to use a large tagboard to create a 32 page story spread cutting out the words and pasting them into the appropriate pages, but these days I use Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s free 32 page template. It’s available on her website
https://debbieohi.com
along with lots of other tips and helpful resources. I highly recommend using a storyboard layout for pacing. It’s really helpful and makes you think of a story in terms of plot and page turns.
My next editing pass through was all about balancing enough ecology to enrich the story, but not so much that it bogged it down. So the mosquito larvae being eaten by dragonfly larva didn’t make the cut. Neither did the leech scene below.
But, we have to watch out for leeches here. They’re little worm-like bloodsuckers. They usually feed on fish or frogs, but sometimes us. Mom isn’t squeamish. She’ll tell you at least five cool leech facts while she uses her fingernail to break it’s suction, nudge it until it lets go, then fling it away.
In my last edit, I worked on the the rhythm and flow of language. Lyrical language is one of my trademarks, and probably my favourite part of the editing process.
“Every cabin day is a blue canoe paddle-on-the-lake-day”
became
“Every cabin day is a paddle-on-the-lake day.” It’s not a big change, but try reading each out loud. The first just sounds more clunky. I often read aloud passages at this stage of writing. Most picture books are read out loud, so it’s really helpful to “listen” to a manuscript as well as read It. The two quotes below are another example of improved drafts.
“Mom steers us through reeds. We’ll watch for deadheads or lazy dragon flies sunning on lily pads. Dragon flies dip and dart after mosquitoes.”
became
“Mom steers us through the reeds and rushes. Lazy dragonflies sun on lily pads, and pond skaters skip across the water like miniature rowboats.”
Once I had that edit complete, I sent it to my lovely agent, Stacey Kondla of The Rights Factory. She suggested a few small changes and once we made them, we sent it out into the world. Of course, getting a manuscript accepted is almost always the start to a whole other editing process!
Memories, like canoeing with my children when they were young, can be a powerful writing tool as you can see in my newest book, The Blue Canoe. In many of my books, a poignant memory has been my starting point for a story. My very first book, Waiting for the Whales, began with the memory of following my grandfather around his large garden and eating the raspberries. The thing to keep in mind though, is that memories are like the root system of a tree. The roots are not the tree… nor is a memory a story. My grandfather had never seen a whale, nor even an ocean. Unlike the grandfather I wrote about, he had never been more than a few miles from where he was born in the Ottawa Valley. But the emotional truth that has kept that book in print for more than 30 years is derived from that memory. I can only hope that the emotional truth of The Blue Canoe will stand up as well. And no, it never seems to get easier.
— Lately you've begun to draw! Can you tell us a bit about that? Does this new piece bring something to your writing?
Yes, lately I have begun to draw. A couple of years ago I went away for two weeks with three artists on a self directed creative holiday. Each of us prepared a couple of workshops to share. Mine were writing workshops and the other three women each presented workshops in their areas of expertise. For the first time ever, I tried print making, abstract painting, collage, and paper folding art. It was fabulous! I learned so much… especially that art is not an endpoint but a process, at least for me. Enjoying the act of creating art was my biggest take away. I know so many writers who are also fabulous artists. That’s not me, but I’m ok with that.
And now, I’ve taken up drawing!
I recently had a meeting with a fellow Grandmothers for Africa member (a group associated with the Stephen Lewis Foundation) and she was showing me the sketch journal from a sailing trip to Japan she had done. It was lovely and I remember thinking that I wish I could do something like that.
Then, a few days later, a bookseller here in Victoria at Ivy’s Bookstore posted a video clip on their social media platforms about sketch journals. As a life-long journal keeper, I thought, hey why not give it a try! I popped into the bookstore (I love bookstores!) and she introduced me to Sketch Your World: A Guide to Sketch Journaling by Kimiko Sekimoto.
I have been having so much fun with it. Someone suggested that I can do my own art for my books. Nope! I have worked with wonderful and very talented illustrators. They help to make our books shine. This journal sketching is not meant to replace anyone or propel me into a new career. It’s another way to see the world, and another way to grow. I like that. It’s also a reminder of how much I don’t know and how much more in life there is to learn. I like that too. I have no idea if it will make any difference in my writing. Maybe, and maybe not, but it’s fun and interesting and inspiring. That’s enough for me.
Happy writing,
Sheryl
Alison’s note: to order THE BLUE CANOE from your local independent bookstore, use the ISBN (book number) 978-1641709156
The ISBN for the sketching book is: 978-4805316849
These numbers make it so easy to order from your local! Phone it in, and it’ll be delivered asap. I just email my favourite store—even easier.
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Two from the archives:
and also with AUDIO:
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These two polls will provide feedback for a post. This is something I’m struggling with, and I can only guess that many of you do, too.
NOTE: This first poll is for “Where’s the mix for you AT THIS MOMENT?”
AND: What would you like for this mix to be in your writing life?
Happy summer writing, Unschoolers!
Alison
Thank you so much Alison! I appreciate you!
Sheryl's description of the writing process, and especially recognizing that she had the notes and location but not the story, was very informative AND reassuring.