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by Sara Wigal for IngramSpark, February 12, 2018: Here are some tips for how to make sure your book is going to compete in the marketplace.

If your manuscript draft is complete, then you’re most likely celebrating getting each and every word down on paper. 2018 is your year and your book is coming out! With IngramSpark’s print-on-demand and global distribution, you’re ready to print your book and sell it to the masses! . . . Or are you?

So many writers get caught up in the writing process that they completely forget that there are many steps between finishing the writing and putting a final book on a shelf or online. Being able to independently publish has changed book publishing for many talented writers—overstepping the traditional process of finding an agent and publisher means that for IngramSpark authors, getting to your book’s birthday can be expedited greatly.

However, there are some steps that you as a writer should never skip over, no matter how you choose to publish your book. At a publishing house, the editorial and proofing process can take a year, so having patience with your own book’s journey through this portion of the production process is vital to creating a wonderful book. The process that traditionally published writers go through has many valuable steps that are vital to putting a modern and polished product on the shelf, and IngramSpark authors have access to all of these same tools!

Here are some tips to make sure your book is going to compete in the marketplace.

1. Use Beta Readers. When you’re “done” writing, make sure you have beta readers. These are friends or writing group members that will read your first draft and provide you with feedback. Take their suggestions to heart! It can be really hard to take criticism (hopefully your beta readers give the constructive kind), so give yourself enough time to hear them, consider the suggestions, and then implement appropriate changes. Don’t rush.
2. Be Your Own Book Editor. No one ever wants to hear this, but taking some time away from your book in between editorial rounds is really helpful to many authors. That may mean one month or even more of not re-reading or tweaking anything at all on your manuscript. Giving yourself time to get out of a headspace of thinking about it all the time will mean that returning to the book with fresh eyes is possible. This enables you to edit yourself. But you can’t do this without a bit of space first, and a period of time in which you don’t look at the book at all.
3. Get A Professional Book Editor. You may want to go through a few rounds of beta readings. Once you’ve gotten as far as you can off of these kind editorial volunteers, it’s time to hire a professional editor. There are several types of editing a book goes through, and these are the three types of editorial that are most common for a book on its journey toward publication. Not every book needs every type, and a professional book editor can help you determine which types of editing your manuscript needs. They are:
   1. Developmental Book Editing looks at the “big picture” of your message and makes sure things are best organized to flow logically and express your ideas and themes, and if it is fiction, plot and characters. Developmental edits also hone in on general issues with the language (would that character talk that way?) and compare your book to others in its genre to make sure things seem consistent with what readers will expect.
   2. Substantive Book Editing really focuses on readability. After you’ve done a developmental edit and you know your basic ideas are being expressed properly, are there any specific ways in which individual sentences or paragraphs can be reworded to stay in line with that ultimate vision?
   3. Line or Copy Editing checks for grammatical issues, proper punctuation, and making sure that in general the book is consistent with itself (spellings of the names of characters don't change halfway through, for example).
4. Proof the book. After you are done editing, give yourself enough time after you upload your book to IngramSpark to proof a single printed copy. Make sure that your page layouts look right, there aren’t errors from the design layout, etc. This can be a tedious process with several rounds depending on how complex your book design may be, so be patient.

Once you are satisfied that this book looks like what you want on bookstore shelves and other readers are used to seeing . . . go ahead and pick your book’s birthday (also known as a publication date) and celebrate. Remember, you will want to start working toward your publicity goals for several months before that birthdate, so don’t forget to keep that in mind as part of your planning process as well!

“We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we’ll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them.”

BY MARIA POPOVA for BrainPickings

On November 16, 1983 — just two weeks before her 65th birthday and twenty years after winning the prestigious Newbery Medal — Madeleine L’EngleMadeleine L’Engle (November 29, 1918–September 6, 2007), author of the timeless classic A Wrinkle in Time, delivered a magnificent lecture at the Library of Congress. To celebrate Children’s Book Week the following year — the year I was born — the Library’s Center for the Book and the Children’s Literature Center published L’Engle’s talk as a slim and, sadly, long out-of-print volume titled Dare to Be Creative! (public library) — a magnificent manifesto of sorts on writing, writers, and children’s books, as well as a bold and beautifully argued case against censorship.

L’Engle begins by making a point about children’s capacity for handling darker emotions that would’ve made Tolkien proud, one that Maurice Sendak has also asserted and Neil Gaiman has recently echoed. L’Engle observes:

The writer whose words are going to be read by children has a heavy responsibility. And yet, despite the undeniable fact that the children’s minds are tender, they are also far more tough than many people realize, and they have an openness and an ability to grapple with difficult concepts which many adults have lost. Writers of children’s literature are set apart by their willingness to confront difficult questions.

For that reason, L’Engle argues, editors and publishers often attempt to remove these difficult questions from the get-go — a form of preventative censorship, the kind the great Ursula Nordstrom meant in her witty and wise lament that children’s book publishing was run largely by “mediocre ladies in influential positions” unwilling to deviate from the safe route. L’Engle recounts her own brave resistance to such pressures, even in the face of repeated rejection:

Many years ago, when A Wrinkle in Time was being rejected by publisher after publisher, I wrote in my journal, “I will rewrite for months or even years for an editor who sees what I am trying to do in this book and wants to make it better and stronger. But I will not, I cannot diminish and mutilate it for an editor who does not understand it and wants to weaken it.”

Now, the editors who did not understand the book and wanted the problem of evil soft peddled had every right to refuse to publish the book, as I had, sadly, the right and obligation to try to be true to it. If they refused it out of honest conviction, that was honorable. If they refused it for fear of trampling on someone else’s toes, that was, alas, the way of the world.

Though she did eventually find a publisher who believed in the book heart and mind, this still left the question of the general public, where ignorant self-appointed censors lurk. Decades before the golden age of mindless online comments and TLDR-mentality, L’Engle recounts a tragicomic incident:

Recently I was lecturing in the Midwest, and the head librarian of a county system came to me in great distress, bearing an epistle composed by one woman, giving her all the reasons she should remove A Wrinkle in Time from the library shelves. This woman, who had obviously read neither Wrinkle nor the Bible carefully, was offended because she mistakenly assumed that Mrs. What, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which were witches practicing black magic. I scrawled in the margin that if she had read the text she might have noted that they were referred to as guardian angels. The woman was also offended because they laughed and had fun. Is there no joy in heaven! The woman belonged to that group of people who believe that any book which mentions witches or ghosts is evil and must be banned. If these people were consistent, they would have to ban the Bible: what about the Witch of Endor and Samuel’s ghost?

The woman’s epistle went on to say that Charles Wallace knew things that other people didn’t know. “So did Jesus,” I scrawled in the margin. She was upset, because Calvin sometimes felt compulsions. Don’t we all? This woman obviously felt a compulsion to be a censor. Finally I scrawled at the bottom of the epistle that I truly feared for this woman.

In a sentiment that Milton Glaser would come to echo decades later in his beautiful meditation on the universe, L’Engle drives home the point of this parable:

We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we’ll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them.

She adds an important disclaimer on the difference between censorship and discernment:

We all practice some form of censorship. I practiced it simply by the books I had in the house when my children were little. If I am given a budget of $500 I will be practicing a form of censorship by the books I choose to buy with that limited amount of money, and the books I choose not to buy. But nobody said we were not allowed to have points of view. The exercise of personal taste is not the same thing as imposing personal opinion.

With a riff on T.S. Eliot’s famous line from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” — “Do I dare disturb the universe?” — L’Engle reflects on the role of reading, and taste in reading, in her own life:

The stories I cared about, the stories I read and reread, were usually stories which dared to disturb the universe, which asked questions rather than gave answers.

I turned to story, then, as now, looking for truth, for it is in story that we find glimpses of meaning, rather than in textbooks. But how apologetic many adults are when they are caught reading a book of fiction! They tend to hide it and tell you about the “How-To” book which is what they are really reading. Fortunately, nobody ever told me that stories were untrue, or should be outgrown, and then as now they nourished me and kept me willing to ask the unanswerable questions.

She offers another autobiographical anecdote that sheds light on how our righteousness works:

One time I was in the kitchen drinking tea with my husband and our young son, and they got into an argument about ice hockey. I do not feel passionate about ice hockey. They do. Finally our son said. “But Daddy, you don’t understand.” And my husband said, reasonably, “It’s not that I don’t understand, Bion. It’s just that I don’t agree with you.”

To which the little boy replied hotly, “If you don’t agree with me, you don’t understand.”

I think we all feel that way, but it takes a child to admit it.

That righteousness — which bears the markings of the fundamentalism Isaac Asimov memorably bemoaned — is what L’Engle believes flattens culture and robs us of its richness:

We need to dare disturb the universe by not being manipulated or frightened by judgmental groups who assume the right to insist that if we do not agree with them, not only do we not understand but we are wrong. How dull the world would be if we all had to feel the same way about everything, if we all had to like the same books, dislike the same books…

Perhaps some of this zeal is caused by fear. But as Bertrand Russell warns, “Zeal is a bad mark for a cause. Nobody had any zeal about arithmetic. It was the anti-vaccinationists, not the vaccinationists, who were zealous.” Yet because those who were not threatened by the idea of vaccination ultimately won out, we have eradicated the horror of smallpox from the planet.

L’Engle examines the heart of zeal, often driven by our failure to grant ourselves the “uncomfortable luxury” of changing our minds. She agrees with Bertrand Russell’s assertion that we are zealous when we aren’t completely certain we are right, in a reflection that brings it all back to children’s books and the art of disturbing the universe:

When I find myself hotly defending something, wherein I am, in fact, zealous, it is time for me to step back and examine whatever it is that has me so hot under the collar. Do I think it’s going to threaten my comfortable rut? Make me change and grow? — and growing always causes growing pains. Am I afraid to ask questions?

Sometimes. But I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.

Like Asimov, who found in science fiction a way to make points he otherwise couldn’t, L’Engle sees in fiction a sandbox, a safe place for asking those uncomfortable questions:

Writing fiction is definitely a universe disturber, and for the writer, first of all. My books push me and prod me and make me ask questions I might otherwise avoid. I start a book, having lived with the characters for several years, during the writing of other books, and I have a pretty good idea of where the story is going and what I hope it’s going to say. And then, once I get deep into the writing, unexpected things begin to happen, things which make me question, and which sometimes really shake my universe.

L’Engle makes a heartening case for the presently accepted idea that what makes science interesting — what makes it meaningful and culturally significant — isn’t its certitude and all-knowingness, but its “thoroughly conscious ignorance,” the very not-knowing that Donald Barthelme memorably argued was also at the heart of writing. L’Engle reflects:

I’m frequently asked about my “great science background,” but I have no science background whatsoever. I majored in English Literature in college. We were required to take two languages and one science or two sciences and one language, so of course I took two languages and psychology. Part of my reluctance about science was that when I was in school, science was proud and arrogant. The scientists let us know that they thought they had everything pretty well figured out, and what they didn’t know about the nature of the universe, they were shortly going to find out. Science could answer all questions.

[…]

Many years later, after I was out of school, married and had children, the new sciences absolutely fascinated me. They were completely different from the pre-World War II sciences, which had answers for everything. The new sciences asked questions. There was much that was not explainable. For everything new that science discovered, vast areas of the unknown were opened. Sometimes contemporary physics sounds like something out of a fairy tale: there is a star known as a degenerate white dwarf and another known as a red giant sitting on the horizontal branch. Can’t you imagine the degenerate white dwarf trying to get the red giant of the horizontal branch?

L’Engle ties this not-knowing back to the question of censorship in writing for children:

Perhaps one of the most important jobs of the writer whose books are going to be marketed for children is to dare to disturb the universe by exercising a creative kind of self-censorship. We don’t need to let it all hang out. Sure, kids today know pretty much everything that is to be known about sex, but we owe them art, rather than a clinical textbook. Probably the most potent sex scene I have ever read is in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary where Emma goes to meet her lover, and they get in a carriage and draw the shades, and the carriage rocks like a ship as the horses draw it through the streets. How much more vivid is what the imagination can do with that than the imagination-dulling literal description!

I do not believe that any subject is in itself taboo, it is the way it is treated which makes it either taboo or an offering of art and love.

It is the writer’s duty, L’Engle argues, to continue reclaiming complex ideas from the grip of simplistic taboo:

The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians — because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize injustice and to speak out loudly about it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people.

[…]

So let us look for beauty and grace, for love and friendship, for that which is creative and birth-giving and soul-stretching. Let us dare to laugh at ourselves, healthy, affirmative laughter. Only when we take ourselves lightly can we take ourselves seriously, so that we are given the courage to say, “Yes! I dare disturb the universe.”

The whole of Dare to Be Creative!, should you be so luck to track down a surviving copy, is a masterpiece of thought and spirit more than worth a read.

“That’s how an artist can best speak as a member of a moral community: clearly, yet leaving around her words that area of silence, that empty space, in which other and further truths and perceptions can form in other minds.”

BY MARIA POPOVA for BrainPickings

by Norm Schriever, for the BookBaby Blog

I break the writing process into two parts. Part one includes planning, organizing, outlining, researching, reading, and taking copious notes. The second (and most important) part is writing.

A dear friend of mine from college recently reached out via email with a request. “My goal this summer,” she wrote, “is to start writing a book! Any advice on time management would be appreciated.”

She’s much smarter than I am – and a far better writer – so soon enough, she’ll be giving me writing advice. But until then, I figured I’d offer counsel based on what has worked for me.

Identify your high-energy time

I’m a morning person, so my high-energy, high-focus time is first thing in the morning. I get most of my meaningful work done before noon, and when it comes to my book writing and creative time, it all has to be first thing in the morning. That won’t work for everyone, but identifying your optimal working hours is a good first step.

Develop a writing ritual

My writing ritual involves rising way too early, freebasing coffee, playing great tunes on the stereo, and getting down to business. When I first started, I tried putting in long writing days, but that was counterproductive. I never have a problem filling the page, but clarity and focus are the real goal, not just hours invested and word counts. I focus on a one-hour slot that I dedicate to writing first thing every morning. Ideally, I turn my Wi-Fi and phone off, so no email, social media, etc., so I don’t become distracted. If I get into the groove, I can write longer than an hour, or come back to it later in the day. If you stick to a similar plan, you can write a book over the summer, one hour a day, five or six days a week.

The writing process, Part 1: Plan and organize

Loosely speaking, I break the writing process into two parts when I’m writing a book. Part one includes planning, organizing, outlining, researching, reading articles about the craft of writing, and taking copious notes. Because inspiration sometimes hits when you’re in line at the bank or in the middle of the night, I jot ideas down as a memo on my iPhone or in a notebook and refer to them later. But the organization part really helps keep me on track and prevents me from devolving into a crazy person spewing nonsense (OK… the jury is still out on that one). This part can be done after the designated hour – in the morning, at night, or whenever. It doesn’t require the same focus as part two.

The writing process, Part 2: Write!

The second part of writing a book (and the most important) is writing. I’m not being a wise ass. During the designated writing hour, the goal is to get started and not stop. When I start a book, it’s impossible for me to sit down and jump in with “Chapter one page one… The night was hot and humid…”

I begin the writing process with a stream-of-consciousness brain dump about the ideas of the book: the themes, conflicts, dialogue, and especially the characters. Well in advance of actually writing any material that will serve as the actual words of the book, I’m purging my mind of ideas and developing them with these brainstorming sessions. Since characters are so important, I’ll spend a lot of time on characters, fleshing out their lives and desires, values and fears, quirks and characteristics. Ninety percent of that will not end up in the book, but I believe it is important to really know and understand your characters before you set them into action.

The natural flow

So every morning I’m just hacking away at this, fingers on the keyboard for an hour, without many breaks, and then one day it just happens: I start producing the content that will be in the book. Whether it begins with page one or whether I’ve jumped to a pivotal scene or important piece dialogue doesn’t matter: I’m writing.

Ease off the pressure and high expectations

For me, great is the enemy of good. If I feel a ton of pressure to write well, it comes out like crap. So by practicing first, and then focusing on one scene or conversation or whatever to get started, I remove that pressure. I also remind myself daily that the goal is just to get started, not produce a polished, finished book. Everything will be edited and rewritten, several times. So that way I’m not worried about making mistakes or writing crap, and I’m free just to be productive.

A percentage breakdown of the book writing process

This isn’t exactly scientific, but for me, the book writing process is 10 percent preparation and 30 percent writing the first draft. The other 60 percent is spent rewriting and editing (that process sucks, by the way).* But it’s encouraging to know you are fixing mistakes and tweaking your text to get it to a place where someone will actually enjoy reading it!

*Mary Alice Deveny note: Love this clear and concise distillation! Want to take a positive stand on your comment: "The other 60 percent is spent rewriting and editing (that process sucks, by the way)." I find this part of the process makes me a better writer, so I love it.

Related Posts
Write Your Book Using The Time Blocking Method
Planning And Productivity Tips For Busy Writers
How Much Physical Description Is Enough When You Create Characters?
Don’t Start Cold – Five Ways To Ease Into Writing A Book
Develop Your Characters’ Goals And Discover Your Story

About Norm Schriever

Norm Schriever is a professional blogger, expat, cultural mad scientist, and enemy of the comfort zone. He’s the author of Amazon best-selling books including The Book Marketing Bible, which he wrote to inspire and empower new and self-published authors.

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"We've become lopsided living only in our heads. Writing, in order to serve the soul, must integrate outer craft with the inner world of intuition and feeling."- Catherine Ann Jones, New York Times

Our world is made up of stories. If you don't like the one you're in, write a better one. Like your Soul, the soul of story is a combination of craft and magic, a uniting of head and heart. We live in a world of too much separation and pain, which, for many writers, can be ended by illuminating the oneness of life, through creating powerful characters that live in our individual and collective psyche, awaiting release. Writing is a powerful tool of self-exploration.

Every story has a sacred dimension not because of gods but because a man or woman's sense of self and her world is created through them. These stories orient the life of a people through time, establishing the reality of their world. Thus meaning and purpose are given to people's lives. Without story, we do not exist. The Way of Story is how we discover who we are. 

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Join master story teller, Catherine Ann Jones as we discover the the how's and why's of writing great stories that have impact and resonance through personal experience and the inspiring insights of other artists, writers, poets and painters. You'll leave this class more prepared than ever to create stories that enlighten and empower action. That's the only thing that can help transform a highly dysfunctional and dangerous world. The writer has that kind of potential power whether writing memoir, short stories, novels, plays, or screenplays. Are you ready to soar into your potential as a writer and help co-create your piece of a new paradigm world? Then join us on our journey to great writing by registering here and now. You'll be very glad you did.

This 16 week course will teach you to develop story, character, & theme into a coherent, emotionally consistent, & marketable story outline. For writers of all levels & all narrative forms including plays, screenplays, stories, novels, & memoir. 

 

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• Balancing craft with intuitive skills
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• The Way of Story as a Life PathCombining solid craft with intuitive skills

  The first purpose of writing is to clarify and reveal something in your self, but the only way to do this is to get it out of yourself. The second purpose of writing is to share it with others, providing a mirror for humanity at large, as a modern day shaman. From Shakespeare to Star Wars, from Dante to le Carre, the way of story is a journey of discovery forged by discipline and craft. Though it is craft that transforms the initial raw inspiration into form, storytelling begins within, and is as much as part of our past as our genetic structure.

Craft alone is not enough. The Way of Story Writing Course offers an integrative approach to writing narrative, combining solid craft with experiential inner discovery and intuitive skills, to guarantee a good story along with the intangible inner dimensions of writing. The transformation of good writing depends on making it one's own from within.

Storytelling is not only the root of film, theatre, literature, and culture, but of the life experience itself. The listener maintains touch with his mythic self and the truths there represented. In losing touch with our myths, there may be a danger of losing touch with ourselves. Today, in modern society, there is a fragmentation which separates most of us from our central core or soul. With all our progress, perhaps something has been lost which earlier cultures knew to value: the soul connection.

"I am often asked by clients and The Way of Story workshop participants, how to choose which story to write. The important guiding line is to choose a story you have a strong emotional connection with. Generally speaking, people go to movies or read in order to feel. Just remember that it is the emotional power of your story that will ultimately determine its success." - Catherine Ann Jones

Stories written by formulas rarely move us, and consequently fail. They are too generic, not about specific people. The challenge is to discover the meaning for your self in the story you have chosen, and then adopt the necessary form that can be meaningful to others. One might say, first, the passion, and only second is craft necessary to birth an authentic and great story.

It is passion in a relationship or marriage that will sustain it for years through thick and thin. Similarly, it is passion in a story that will sustain the writing process through the weeks, months, and sometimes years of completing the work.

It is my belief and personal experience that whenever you follow that inner guide, the world will respond, often magically.

The essence of Art is to use the outer form to convey an inner experience. This sacred thread, your inner most being or Soul, binds you emotionally to what you write, and if given respect, will lead you on to the desired end. Stories written from this center will move mountains -- and even create livelihoods.

Craft alone is not enough. The Way of Story Writing Course offers an integrative approach to writing narrative, combining solid craft with experiential inner discovery and intuitive skills, to guarantee a good story along with the intangible inner dimensions of writing. The transformation of good writing depends on making it one's own from within.

Storytelling is not only the root of film, theatre, literature, and culture, but of the life experience itself. The listener maintains touch with his mythic self and the truths there represented. In losing touch with our myths, there may be a danger of losing touch with ourselves. Today, in modern society, there is a fragmentation which separates most of us from our central core or soul. With all our progress, perhaps something has been lost which earlier cultures knew to value: the soul connection.

"I am often asked by clients and The Way of Story workshop participants, how to choose which story to write. The important guiding line is to choose a story you have a strong emotional connection with. Generally speaking, people go to movies or read in order to feel. Just remember that it is the emotional power of your story that will ultimately determine its success." - Catherine Ann Jones

Stories written by formulas rarely move us, and consequently fail. They are too generic, not about specific people. The challenge is to discover the meaning for your self in the story you have chosen, and then adopt the necessary form that can be meaningful to others. One might say, first, the passion, and only second is craft necessary to birth an authentic and great story.

It is passion in a relationship or marriage that will sustain it for years through thick and thin. Similarly, it is passion in a story that will sustain the writing process through the weeks, months, and sometimes years of completing the work.

It is my belief and personal experience that whenever you follow that inner guide, the world will respond, often magically.

The essence of Art is to use the outer form to convey an inner experience. This sacred thread, your inner most being or Soul, binds you emotionally to what you write, and if given respect, will lead you on to the desired end. Stories written from this center will move mountains -- and even create livelihoods.

"So I worry. Except when I’m writing. Then I know what I’m doing. So then I’m happy."

Ursula K. Le Guin was a major influence in my own path to reading fantasy, primarily her brilliant Earthsea books, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea, a story of a school for young magicians long predating the Harry Potter series. I always saw her, with some native pride, as eminently American, a voice (along with Peter Beagle) for the writing of literary fantasy that could withstand the test of time, whose work could measure up to the British masters J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and others.

In this interview, we discussed some aspects of her writing process, including her strong sense of place, a subject dear to my heart.

Le Guin, who passed away Jan. 22, 2018, was also an insightful writer on the topic of narrative, story, and meaning in literature. I’ve quoted her often in my teaching of the writing process, where she especially influenced my perspective that great writing is more story than plot. As Ursula K. Le Guin noted in her book of advice for writers, Steering the Craft, plot is not the same as story. “Plot is merely one way of telling a story, by connecting the happenings tightly, usually through causal chains. Plot is a marvelous device. But it’s not superior to story, and not even necessary to it.” She also wrote:

“Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.”

Her passing is sad, but she left such a lovely, thoughtful, groundbreaking canon of books. It proves the value of literature, that such writing can be shared over great distances, and even beyond the life of a writer, to influence us, one by one, as we read.

On to the interview, which I conducted by phone:

Martin: I wanted to talk to you especially about writing Earthsea. My first question is what drew you back to that world, years after writing Tehanu, which you called at the time the “last” book of Earthsea?

Le Guin: Well, when I finished Tehanu, I really thought I’d probably come to the end of the story. And I had in many ways. I got them together and so on. But, I did leave a big unanswered question at the end of the book: who is the child Tehanu, who or what is she? The dragon [Kalessin] has called her “daughter.” What does that mean? So there were a lot of questions hanging. At the time I thought, well, that’s alright, you don’t have to answer all the questions at the end of a book.

But as time went on through the ’90s, I kept thinking about Earthsea, and I found myself going back in its history to find out some questions that puzzled me about the way things are in that place.

For instance, like why aren’t women allowed to be mages; why can they only be witches, and despised for it? Things like that. So I questioned why was it the way it was—and what was going to happen next?

And I began getting answers. In other words, I began getting stories.

So those became the collection, Tales from Earthsea. And the last one of them, “Dragonfly,” leads right into the new novel, The Other Wind. It’s answering that series of questions.

You know, it’s like exploring a country. You’ve been over this mountain range, but there’s another one. You want to go see what that one looks like. And to discover the country in between. And—well, of course, nobody really can do but me. That’s another thing—to have this feeling of, well, it’s up to me.

Martin: A feeling of obligation?

Le Guin: I think responsibility might be the word. Of course, I have gotten a good deal of feedback on the Earthsea books. People really did want to know what happened after Tehanu. In fantasy, the readers—both children and adults—want to know things. And they are not shy about asking what they want to know.

Martin: How you go about it? Things start in your imagination somehow, and then they become some kind of story, and then you start to link these together…..

Le Guin: A lot of the linkage takes place subconsciously. Well, some of it, you have to sit and figure out. It’s a hard question to answer, because I never understood the processes of making a story. But, you sort of see where the story’s going in a general way. Once again I’ll use the landscape metaphor—it’s like you’re standing on a hill and you can see some of the country ahead. You don’t know exactly how you’re going to get where you’re going. And you might not be all that sure of exactly where you’re going. But you have a some sort of general map in mind.

So what I’ve done with these later stories is—well, with all of them really—is just plunge in and find out what is going on.

Of course, soon the characters begin to lead you. You have to find out what they say and what they do, and let them do it. You can’t push them around. You can’t be in total control—or else you’ll lose that input from your own unconscious, which comes through the characters.

Martin: Jane Yolen says she writes stories to find out what happens.

Le Guin: Tolkien said he wrote the whole Lord of the Rings because nobody else would. It’s a wonderful reason. You write a book that you want to read.

Martin: I was reading your story, “The Bones of the Earth,” and in it, the mage talks about standing on the island of Gont and imagining the deep, physical roots of the island, and he realizes that all the islands of Earthsea are connected, far under the water. Which is a very striking image for the writing of Earthsea, because you’ve got a series of stories and books with a lot of deep connections.

Le Guin: Yes. And the sea is what connects the islands—and the sea is what separates them. Both.

Martin: And it’s still very mysterious to people. The connections aren’t always as obvious as with some writers—as linear, that is. Some writers just map everything out from the beginning and lay it out and there it is.

Le Guin: No, a lot of the connections in all my work remain mysterious to me. Sometimes I see them explained by an intelligent, sensitive critic, and I say, “Oh, wow, is that what I was doing?’ I really think that’s a very common experience for writers.

Our business really is not that. We aren’t critics. We’re storytellers. So our business is just to get the story right. And in a sense, the intellectual connections are such that we don’t have to make them if we’ve made the emotional ones.

And if the place is coherent. That sort of a touchstone word in fantasy, isn’t it? The fantasy world, no matter how large or how small, has to be internally coherent. It can’t contradict itself. It can contradict the real world, happily! But it has to follow its own rules. Be consistent.

Martin: I hear you mention the word ‘true’ in the sense of stories being true. Do you mean true to their own fantasy—or do you mean true in a larger sense?

Le Guin: Yes, partly, “true” in the senses of being consistent and coherent—true to themselves. And if you start a moral question or an emotional problem—following it through. Not just slapping an easy answer on to it. But to follow through. In other words, that they are morally and emotionally true or valid. True to human experience. Even if the stories are extremely fantastic.

Martin: Where does Earthsea come from? From inside you or is it something that’s out there beyond you … ?

Le Guin: To me, Earthsea is something that when I look wherever it is you look when you’re writing a story, that’s one of the landscapes I see. So it must be partly a map of me. But it seems—I feel more as if I just went there, rather than it was me. It’s more like I was a traveler in that country, finding out things and observing.

Martin: So when you write, how do you put yourself then in that frame of mind that you see or find Earthsea?

Le Guin: Well, one thing that many people can relate to, including a lot of kids, is this:

One of the first things I did when I wrote the very first story about Earthsea which was published long ago—let’s see, is that “The Rule of Names” or “The Word of Unbinding”? Whichever one came first. Anyway, there were two small stories that came long before the Earthsea books.

And when I was writing one of those stories, I drew a map of this place with all these islands. And that was the beginning. And you know an awful lot of kids draw maps of imaginary places. And some grownups go right on doing it.

Martin: We might have to use the term “so-called” grownups.

Le Guin: [laughs] Well, that’s alright. But look at Tolkien, he was pretty grownup. And he drew very careful maps all his life, right? And made up languages too.

Sometimes when I’m lecturing, I ask “How many people here drew maps of imaginary countries when they were little?” and sometimes more than half of the people put their hands up. This is a way of somehow exploring a part of yourself, I guess.

Martin: I wanted to talk a little bit more about “The Bones of the Earth.” A wonderful story—I really enjoyed how you mixed the everyday, the mundane chores, with the huge, cataclysmic, big event of the earthquake. That story is as much about gathering eggs as about earthquakes.

Le Guin: Well, it seems to be important to me to keep my wizards and witches grounded in ordinary life—just the kind of really gritty, plain things that people have to do to make a living in most places, most times. I don’t know why that is. I couldn’t give you a simple answer why that’s important to me, but it has been right from the start.

Ged starts out as a goat herd, you know, in a really poor little village. So the whole wizardry—and all the magic and the beauty and glory of the magic they can do—grows out of this very gritty, ordinary ground. It just makes it real to me, I guess.

Martin: That story is literally about mud.

Le Guin: There’s a lot about mud in that story. He has to walk right into the mud and then he has to go right into the ground. Yes, so that one takes you back down to the ground.

Martin: It has a beautiful image at the end where the mage Ogion lies down on the ground and weeps. And he makes little more mud.

Le Guin: Yes, yes. Now you see, he just did that, I didn’t think that up. I swear I didn’t. He just did it.

Martin: So that all just happens?

Le Guin: When the story’s carrying you, like then, yes, it’s like riding a horse or a ship or something. It takes you where you need to go. And that is such a wonderful feeling.

Martin: It’s like athletes who train, or musicians—after a while their bodies know just what to do without thinking about it consciously. I play the fiddle, and I can play a tune not thinking about it—my fingers seem to know what to do. I can watch them in amazement.

Le Guin: Yes, I have a daughter who’s a cellist. And I often use that analogy with young writers, who say “Well, what do I do to be a writer?’ And I say, well, you write.

And before you write, you learn your language, the way a musician learns the notes and the chords and so on. You learn grammar and syntax and the rules of your language. And some of them kind of look real crestfallen [laughs]—“Oh, we thought you became famous instantly.”

But practice of an art means mostly practice, doesn’t it?

Martin: For a story like “The Bones…,” do you contemplate specific themes or images—like mud, for instance—before you start?

Le Guin: No, those themes and motifs just begin to show up in the story. Often they are the part that comes without my even noticing them. Until somewhere along in the story, I’m looking ahead, or I’m casting back and revising a little and I say, “hey, look at that—look at that mud. That belongs here!” Then I might be a little bit more conscious about it. It’s mostly in revision, I think, that those repeated motifs, in the musical sense, get heightened and brought out a little.

Martin: That really became a story about friendship. It’s almost like the earthquake is, well, not really incidental, but it happens and is over in a few paragraphs.

Le Guin: Yeah, well, I’m not very much of an action writer. I’m a relationship writer. So it’s the relationship between the mage Dolce and his student Ogion. And also, the almost untold relationship between Dulce and his teacher, who was a woman, curiously.

So there’s a relationship and a shadow of the relationship. And then, of course, those who know the first book of Earthsea know that Ogion is Ged’s teacher. So there’s a shadow going forward as well. So I’ve got three relationships there.

Martin: I also think of your stories being very much about a sense of place. What can you tell me about that?

Le Guin: Yes, it’s very strong in my stories. A lot of my stories really start with the discovery of a place—and who lives there. That’s how the The Tombs of Atuan began. I took a three-day trip, my first trip, into the Oregon high desert. I’d never seen country like that or anything remotely like it in my life. And I came back knowing that I had to write a book about it. And the place then sort of gave me the people. How that happens though, I don’t know what to say.

Martin: I think then it must be, well, it’s what starts you.

Le Guin: Yes. I respond intensely to place and the mood of a place and the atmosphere of places and so on. After all, place has something to do with community often and therefore with people really understanding each other. But there is a magic of place that I think many, many people feel. That’s why so many people really want to go see Stonehenge or whatever. Because there is something about the place.

Martin: At the same time, at least in non-native culture, place is often undervalued in America. I think people don’t realize how much place has created them, and their character.

Le Guin: No. Of course, we were sort of a people born on the run. We’re getting away from here, and we’re going to keep moving west. It may not be entirely accidental that I am a child of California and Oregon. You can’t go any farther west. But it was a pretty good place to settle. I feel very deeply and very strongly connected to California and Oregon. I’m really rooted here. And that has increased during my life rather than lessened.

Martin: Growing up in your family, with your parents’ interest in traditions and native ways, was that as strong an influence as it seems to be in your work?

Le Guin: Oh, it must have been. It was a good childhood for a writer. There were books all over the house, and people talking about books, and people telling stories orally. And my father talking to Indian friends who were telling him stories, so they could be preserved—this whole atmosphere of respect for story, for the word—my life was full of it. It was a good start for me—seeing this commitment to bearing witness, in a way, to the native cultures of the region. These people lived, and this is how they lived, and the only way we have to save that, really, has been words.

Martin: And in the case of Ishi, that eventually was all that was left.

Le Guin: That’s right. It is all that is left now of a great many Californian people who my father knew. He knew many members of people who now, literally—they’re all gone. When he got here in 1900, he saw that happening.

But, too often people today are content to think, oh, the old poor Indians, they’re all gone. Well, they’re not. Some peoples are, but the Indians are here and they are more here than ever. And anyone who laments the passing of the Indians—nonsense. They’re a very powerful, vital part of American society.

But their languages are in great peril. Most languages with less than millions of speakers are in peril. We’re losing languages is just as bad as we are losing species.

Martin: Yes, exactly. Speaking of small languages—did you read Tolkien at an early age?

Le Guin: Well, I was born in 1929, and he hadn’t been published yet. I didn’t read him until the ’50s, so I was well in my thirties. And I was just—oh, man! I was bowled over. But I was glad that I hadn’t read him as a child because he probably would have had such an overwhelming influence on me. I had already begun finding my own voice, you know, so that he didn’t just blow me out of the water the way he might have done.

Martin: When I think of The Hobbit, I often think about the subtitle: There and Back Again. I just love that phrase.

Le Guin: That phrase, There and Back Again, does really describe Tolkien’s writing, which is highly rhythmical. It’s there and then back, like a pendulum beat. It’s moving, you’re going forward. It’s a walking beat, that’s what it is. It’s a marvelous phrase about his own work.

And his journeys are always spirals. You do end up back home. But of course home is different from what it was. Yes, you come back, but hopefully it’s not just a closed circle, but sort of a spiral. You’re coming back on a different level—to a somewhat changed place.

In one of my books, somebody says the important thing about life is coming home, as long as you understand that home isn’t a place you ever saw before! It’s a little bit like Heraclites saying you cannot step twice into the same river.

For instance, in The Lord of the Rings, when they get home, things have spiraled down badly in the shire. And it takes a lot of hard, gritty work to restore it to anything like what is was.

Martin: So you have returned yourself, to writing about Earthsea.

Le Guin: Because of unanswered questions. And curiosity about relationships. And about characters. I was curious, before I started writing The Other Wind, about what is happening to the young King. Being king is kind of tough on people. It tends to change their characters. So how’s he doing? It was very interesting to find out.

Martin: How much of this interest comes from your readers?

Le Guin: What’s useful to me, I have to say, is their encouragement. To know that people love the stories—that they read their own lives into the stories in different ways. Whether or not they read the book the way I intended—whether or not it means to them what it means to me—really doesn’t matter so long as they find it nourishing. And when they tell me about it—there’s just no doubt about that feedback from the audience keeps an artist happy and working.

And so many writers get so little feedback. That’s one nice thing about writing science fiction and fantasy is that you have these active, verbal people reading you who are very likely to write you a letter. People responding—telling you what they think about what you said. That’s really cool.

Martin: Why is that?

Le Guin: It’s partly because this is genre fiction—and people aren’t afraid to do it. People are afraid to write the great [“literary”] authors because they seem, you know, they’re big names with much critical applause and stuff like that.

But we who write in genres like fantasy and science fiction, we’re not set apart in peoples’ minds by academic barriers. And there is a real community of people who love fantasy and science fiction. They tend to write each other mostly, but they also write their authors and keep in touch with them.

And particularly for a young writer who doesn’t know whether anybody’s ever going to listen to what they write—to get this kind of feedback can just be incredibly encouraging and decisive.

Unfortunately, science fiction and fantasy mostly just don’t get as much academic attention. In academe, there’s still a lot of English professors who just cannot admit that Tolkien is one of the great writers of the 20th century. They just can’t. They never will. They just haven’t learned how to read him.

Fantasy and science fiction were cut out of respectability long ago, early in the century, in English literature—not in French though. And they haven’t really got back in yet, although there’s now a lot of good people teaching fantasy and science fiction in the colleges.

When I teach workshops in writing, I often do teach only fantasy and science fiction, partly because for a new writer, you can get published. And the other thing is that there is a community that you can enter in these fields which can be very, very useful to a young writer. You meet other writers and you meet your readers. Maybe just electronically or by letter, but maybe also face to face. And I think this is healthy for artists.

Martin: So after The Other Wind, are you thinking about coming projects? Or are you taking a break?

Le Guin: I’m doing what I do between projects—which is worry. You know, I never know what’s going to happen next. And the only way I can arrive at it is to worry my way to it. So, that’s what I’m doing now.

A lot of writers say they hate writing. I love writing. What I hate is not writing. All the time you have to wait between stories and books—and you do. You just can’t do it all the time. Most of us can’t.

So in between—yes, this is when you worry. “Am I going to write something?”

“What’s it going to be?”

“Have I gone dry?”

“Should I do this, should I do that?”

So I worry. Except when I’m writing. Then I know what I’m doing. So then I’m happy.

Philip Martin is an award-winning author and editor of many books for adults and young readers. A past acquisitions editor for The Writer Books, he is also the author of A Guide to Fantasy Literature, The Purpose of Fantasy, and a number of books of advice for authors, including How To Write Your Best Story. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he directs Great Lakes Literary, offering support services for emerging writers.

Dear Parents, Teachers, Librarians, Writers, and Gift-Givers,

Looking for the perfect picture book?

You’ve come to the perfect place 🙂

There are millions of great books out there, but sometimes it’s hard to find just the right one.  How do you know if a book is worth lugging home from the library or, even more important, worth your hard-earned money?

Perhaps you need a book on a certain subject for your child, or to enhance a curriculum unit in your classroom or homeschool.  Perhaps you’re looking for a gift and aren’t sure what would be appropriate.

Below you will find instructions for participating in Perfect Picture Book Fridays, links to browse Perfect Picture Books in different ways, as well as an alphabetical list of books by category and title with suitable ages in parentheses.

For your convenience, the list is presented first by theme/subject/category (alphabetically), then by title (alphabetically) so you can search for a particular book or see at a glance all the books that have been done. Please scroll to find the list you want. Some are older books and some are newer, but every single book is highly recommended.  In addition, they all include resources for expanding their use at home and in the classroom!

Know a great book that’s not on the list that you would highly recommend?  Join in Perfect Picture Book Fridays or send your suggestion to susanna@susannahill.com and please let your friends know about this list 🙂

I’d also like to share a wonderful new resource for teachers created by Marcie Colleen –The Picture Book Month Teachers Guide which details how teachers can make use of picture books in all areas of their curricula.

BROWSE PERFECT PICTURE BOOKS

I’m working on creating a better system for accessing and navigating Perfect Picture Books.

Perfect Picture Books Searchable Google Sheet – Alphabetical by Title

To search for a particular author, title, publisher, date, or key word: with the google sheet open, click command+F on a Mac or control+F on a PC. A search box will appear in the top right of the page that says “Find in sheet”. Type the word or phrase you are looking for, and the sheet will highlight all matches in green. Scroll through to see all your results.

Perfect Picture Books: Titles A-H
Perfect Picture Books: Titles I-P
Perfect Picture Books: Titles Q-Z

Pinterest Boards By Theme

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN PERFECT PICTURE BOOK FRIDAYS

If you blog and would like to join Perfect Picture Books, please follow the guidelines below, post your Perfect Picture Book on Friday, and add your link to that Friday’s link list.  I will add it here.

(Please note that for the time being, Perfect Picture Books is limited to traditionally published Picture Books.  Down the road, I hope to expand to e-books and possibly self-published books, as well as books for older readers, but for now, please submit traditionally published picture books.)

1. Image of Book Cover – required (for pinning to Pinterest)
2.  Give us the book title, author/illustrator, publisher, year, fiction or non-fiction, and intended audience age
3.  Tell us the themes/topics of the book (e.g. sibling rivalry, or, fairy tales, or, ocean life.)
4.  Give us the opening sentence or page and a 1-2 sentence synopsis.
5.  Link to any available resources you know of to expand this book’s use at home or in the classroom (e.g. links to classroom guides, coloring pages or other activity sheets, or fun activities that can be done in conjunction with the book like a leaf collage or an egg carton caterpillar etc.) and/or list your own ideas.
6.  Link back to the Perfect Picture Books page of my blog.

Books used will be linked to your website and/or blog, and that link will remain active in the data base/archive along with the book.

If any of this is unclear, please feel free to view any of my Perfect Picture Book Friday posts for example.

You are welcome to do more than one post per Friday, but PLEASE DO NOT PUT MULTIPLE BOOKS ON ONE POST (it makes it very hard to link)  Thank you 🙂

THE LIST! (ALPHABETICAL BY THEME/CATEGORY/SUBJECT)

Each of the links below will take you to the corresponding Pinterest Board which shows all the listed books in that theme/category/subject.  (This project is underway and not even close to complete, so I thank you for your patience while I update!)

Abundance
Acceptance/Tolerance
Accidents
Adoption
Adventure