This is part 2 in a 2-part post:
People often ask me:
how do you become a children’s author?
Everyone’s journey
is different, of course (my usual answer). But I’m pretty sure the journey is
seldom straightforward, or what people expect.
For one thing, a
writer’s life is lonely, there’s no other word for it. You have to be able to
sit for hours and hours, with only your imagination and your computer for
company. You have to be able to lose yourself in your head, so a penchant for
daydreaming is important. I sometimes wonder what I must look like, sitting at
my desk (or on my couch, or at my dining room table), staring at a laptop.
Distant, self-absorbed
and pretty dull, no doubt.
Reading a lot is important, too. And maybe a degree in something like English, or
communications, or even writing (not an option when I was in university), but even
those things probably aren’t essential.
More important
than any of that, I’d say the most crucial element in becoming a
children’s author is an absolute belief
that stories matter. You have to care.
Can you teach that?
Can you learn it? I’m not sure.
I guess you either
feel it, or you don’t.
When my children
arrived in the mid- and late-nineties, I was still a full-time gainfully
employed copywriter. Then in 2000, I went freelance (there was a buyout offer,
with a monthly retainer from my ex-employer, and with two little kids at home,
it seemed perfect).
For the next five
years, I did continue to write copy, lots of it (I still do write copy, for clients when they ask, I love it and always will). Like every other parent who decides to go freelance and work from home, I knew the family bank account would take a hit.
It did. I knew I’d miss the daily connection with other adults. I did, at least
a little. I also expected it to get harder and harder to find new copywriting clients
once I was working full time at home. It was.
All pretty
forseeable. But what I didn’t expect, what I couldn’t have known, was how much
I was going to absolutely LOVE reading to my kids. Or how much fantastic
children’s literature had been written in the two decades that had passed
since I’d stopped reading kids’ books.
Like most writers I
imagine, I read everything I could as a child. The Narnia series (dozens of
times), the Hobbit, Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, John Christopher and John
Wyndham, then later, Lord of the Rings, I read it all again and again.
But there was no Robert Munsch, no McHale, Rowling or Riordan. It was all to
come.
Wow. Reading
children’s books to my kids was like discovering a new planet. We were lucky
enough to inherit an older cousin’s huge children’s library, and we had
hundreds of the finest books (my sister-in-law spared no expense) from the ''80s
and '90s, filling the shelves. Picture books (Corduroy Bear, what a delight!),
early readers (25 Magic Treehouses, all of the Berenstein Bears, Franklin the
turtle, dozens of Goosebumps), then middle grade books (Tuck Everlasting, the
Bobby Pendragon books, Jacob two-two and so on and so on).
Then like some
special gift, along came Harry Potter. I have a confession:
I read each Harry Potter book in the entire franchise before my children did.
When the last book came out, my children (who were tweens by then) couldn’t find
me. I locked myself in my bedroom, and spent a twenty-hour read-a-thon,
finishing the series. I didn’t feed anyone, or cook anything, or answer the
door or the phone, or make eye contact with the outside world.
I just read.
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| Thanks to Emma Dolan for the drawing of Gargoth |
It mattered to me,
deeply, what happened to Harry, Hermione and Ron. I really, really cared.
Just like my willingness to read Franklin’s Blanket ten thousand times, or
Dinosaur in the Park (a weird little picture book that my son and I adored,
about a dinosaur-shaped garbage can that comes to life), or any of the other
books we read together for years, I deeply, passionately loved them all. I
believed in the story.
Then it happened. My
future came calling.
On Christmas Eve of 2004,
my children, husband and I were walking through a snowy downtown Toronto, on
Queen Street’s east end. We ducked into a small antique shop. My family
wandered around, and I was drawn, like something was calling me, to the back of
the store. A funny glow was coming from a stairway, beckoning me.
I was drawn to the
staircase, and there … on each step, lit by a candle … were dozens of
gargoyles.
Yes, gargoyles! I
watched the little statues in the flickering candlelight, and was struck by how
… alive they looked. One of my children called me, and I looked away. When I
looked back at the staircase, I gasped: I was sure that the gargoyles had all
switched places while my back was turned!
That night, I put my
children to bed with sugarplums and gargoyles. I started a bedtime story about
a little gargoyle in our backyard. He was lost, scared, sad, and naughty. He
got the little girl who lived in the house in trouble, but the adults couldn’t
see him. After a few nights, my children were asking for more stories about the
gargoyle. Where did he come from? Why was he there? Why was he sad?
He had a huge
backstory, and what amazed me was that it was all there, waiting to be told.
After a week of gargoyle
bedtime stories, my daughter said one night, “You
know, that’s good, Mum. You should write that down.”
And it was like
someone had hit me. I just hadn’t thought of writing a children's book before, but she was absolutely
right. This little character came to me, fully formed, into my head. And into my
heart. He had a story to tell, and there he was, just waiting for me to tell
it.
I cared, I really,
deeply cared, about him. So I told his story. It took me a year of Saturday
afternoons, trying to figure out if I could actually tell a story with a
beginning, a middle and an end. When I finished my first draft (64 pages), I got
my daughter (ten at the time) to read it. She spent a few hours in her room with my
manuscript, and I kept trying not to hover outside her door. I was really
resigned: if it’s no good, at least I tried, I thought.
Finally she emerged
from her room, and said flatly, “How did YOU write this?”
And that’s how I
became a children’s author.
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