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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

What Do You Write? – by Jim Hill



I’ve just returned from my first stint as a graduate assistant for the Writing for Children & Young Adults summer residency at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and it was fantastic. Ten days of lectures and readings from the top-notch faculty and graduating students (Yay, Craftographers!). Not to mention the after-hour socializing with like-minded folks who live and breathe children’s literature. Truly, it’s like a Fantasy Writers Camp for (alleged) Adults. My brain is still buzzing with the stories and ideas I heard. So good.

But there’s that one question that comes up again and again when meeting another writer for the first time (not just at VCFA but at conferences or any gathering of writers).

“What do you write?”

Record scratch. Silence.

As crazy as that question makes me, I’ve asked it as many times as I’ve been asked. It’s a natural opening line. It’s a veritable Sorting Hat for Scribes. And I find it nearly impossible to answer succinctly.

Don’t get me wrong, I can give you a pretty decent elevator pitch for my current WIP (or three other projects sitting in the drawer), but somehow the question begs a bigger response. It tugs at my philosopher’s soul. It’s one of the few times I want to go deep and not glib.

What do I write?

I used to toss out the sound byte answer “middle-grade boy humor” and that generally satisfied whoever asked. And maybe that’s all that’s needed, but that answer rings in my ears like the sound of a prison door slamming. I just locked myself up and threw away the key. Where’s the parole board? Do I get a phone call? A cake with a file? Because the truth is I write so much more than that, and I hope I always do.

I started down the kidlit path as a former computer game artist looking to make picture books (PSA: Picture books – the Gateway Drug of Children’s Literature™). I wrote a bunch of manuscripts, and then one morning I started a middle-grade book because… well, because the character came to me and wanted out. And he didn’t fit into a picture book. I’d tried that. Marshall’s story was bigger than a picture book, and his sister was meaner.

The Gateway Drug had worked. It turned me into a wannabe novelist.

I still wrote picture books on the side. And poems. I attended conferences (the Cape Cod Writers Conference, NESCBWI, SCBWI, and the Big Sur Writing Workshop). My ambitions grew along with my reading list. My favorite authors didn’t limit themselves to one story format. Why should I?

I admired the way Adam Rex jumped between picture books, middle-grade, and young adult. M.T Anderson’s range was staggering. From Whales on Stilts to Feed to Octavian Nothing. Maybe my hubris was only outstripped by my naiveté, but I didn’t think that writing across formats was a bad thing. How did I come to that idea? Two reasons:

Write the story you want to read.
Write the story that’s begging to be told.

I sat down that fateful morning to work on a picture book and this sentence popped out instead:

“I didn’t know it, but M.Alice had already ruined my life by the time I got to the bus stop that morning.”

Nope. Marshall’s story wasn’t going to be a picture book, and there was no turning back.

When I wrote the (then) opening lines for the Age of Supers, I knew it wasn’t a middle-grade boy humor book. 

“I slap the door open, hit the sidewalk and accelerate. I don't know why I want to run, I just know I have to get away from school. I'd have ditched early, but last time they said they'd flag my chip if I did it again, and then I'd have nowhere to go anyway. Unless I want a one-way trip to the 'claves. Which I definitely do not.”

Harper was a seventeen-year-old-girl on the run from something. Maybe it was from preconceived notions of genres and manic pixie dream girls. I knew there was only one way to find out.

Write the story you want to read.
Write the story that’s begging to be told.

So what do I write? A lot of things. YA novels, MG novels, poetry, picture books, scraps of dialogue, funny titles, the odd character name filed away for future use, and way too many Facebook updates.

What do you write?

10 comments:

  1. Jim, I enjoyed reading your wandering path! I've been on a journey of discovery myself and learning the kind of writer I am as I write each book (that begs to be written!). I am mystified by the authors who write in one genre for one age-group and wonder what THEIR story is behind that.

    I started out writing thrillers for adults and now write middle grade - I've finally summed it up as "I write thrillers for grownups and kids" and folks seem to get that in a nutshell. They can embrace it and then move on.

    Funny, as a friend said a year or so ago - you are a fantasy writer. And I never thought that as to me it was always about the characters! I was always writing the story I wanted to write...but they are all outside the realm of real. And I'm ok with that. Picture book development is another mystery to me I want to learn about...I have plenty of friends who write them to show me how they create their magic! :)

    Here's to more books for you that beg to be written...and less FB updates. LOL!

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  2. As a brother omniscribe, I raise my glass to you, Jim.

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  3. Thanks for sharing your path.

    I want to be a full-scale writer -- PB to adult! So far I'm just published with PB and MG but I do have some stories to tell for YA and adult as well. My role models who cross age groups are Jane Yolen, Kate DiCamillo, Alice Hoffmann, Jacqueline Woodson...

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  4. Thank you for this, Jim. It makes me see it's not others who pigeon-hole me, it's me! And none of has has to write just one thing. I write contemporary women's fiction, reviews, plays, lifestyle features, and also, way too many Facebook updates.

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  5. My quick and easy answer is "I write fiction and non-fiction for all ages." Not exactly great self-marketing, but I can always go into more detail depending on the audience.

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  6. My quick and easy answer is "I write fiction and non-fiction for all ages." Not exactly great self-marketing, but I can always go into more detail depending on the audience.

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  7. My quick and easy answer is "I write fiction and non-fiction for all ages." Not exactly great self-marketing, but I can always go into more detail depending on the audience.

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  8. Back when "brand" was all the talk, I worried if I'd be able to work on ideas that interested me or if I'd have to walk some narrow line. M.T. Anderson had a post at Cynsations years ago that really showed me it was possible to write broadly.

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  9. What a funny, insightful article, Jim. Love your thoughts and voice here.

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Thanks for adding to the mayhem!