{"id":128,"date":"2012-03-14T13:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T13:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/14\/even-more-my-books\/"},"modified":"2015-05-23T23:17:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T23:17:10","slug":"even-more-my-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/14\/even-more-my-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Even more my books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Agnes last week who posted the link to The New York Times<\/i> Sunday Book Review review of Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It<\/i>, which came out yesterday. For those of you who missed it, here it is again: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/11\/books\/review\/bookshelf-poetry.html?_r=1&ref=books<\/a>. And for you poetry buffs, there was an amazing essay in The Atlantic<\/i> online at: http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/entertainment\/archive\/2012\/03\/why-poetry-should-be-more-playful\/254188\/<\/a>. I\u2019m delighted to say the book has gotten a marvelous send-off!<\/p>\n

Now for more questions from Charlotte. Here\u2019s the first: Did you get annoying non-writers asking to read it (your manuscript) when it was so rough it wouldn’t have made any sense to anyone?<\/i>
\nNo. My non-writer friends were encouraging about my new and then not-so-new and then unending endeavor, but no one asked to read. I asked the children\u2019s librarians at the main branch of the Brooklyn public library to look at my first effort. They did and were enthusiastic and set up a reading for children – who got bored and wandered away mid-reading. The librarians stuck around to the end, though. The book was never published, but it was lovely to have that little cheering section wishing me well.<\/p>\n

And the second and third: Did anyone ever say something so mean (well-intentioned or not) that it still haunts your writing confidence today? Not a publisher, I mean (I remember you said in Writing Magic you got a terrible letter about Ella<\/u> when you were starting out…), but a friend?<\/i><\/p>\n

No one did. I did take a class in getting published that was taught by an editor, and she was discouraging to all her students, so I didn\u2019t feel singled out. The terrible letter wasn\u2019t for Ella, it was for a picture book manuscript called Sweet Fanopps<\/i> about a kingdom that had forgotten how to sleep and had lost all the words associated with sleep. When sleep is rediscovered no one has language to go with it. Fanopps<\/i>, of course, means dreams, and I invented other sleep-related words. Poodge<\/i> was the one for sleep. In the course of the letter the editor misspelled Fanopps<\/i> as Fanoops. Tut tut.<\/p>\n

And more: What did it mean (monetarily and emotionally) to be “able to quit your day job”? Or is that too personal a question?<\/i><\/p>\n

Not too personal. Money first. I quit seven months after Ella Enchanted <\/i>came out and two months before it won the Newbery honor. I was fifty years old, and I had worked for New York State government for twenty-seven years. At fifty-five I would collect a small pension no matter what happened with my writing career, so I had a measure of security although I had five years to get through. My husband and I decided to risk it. My friend, the wonderful young adult author Joan Abelove, who was supporting herself as a technical writer, promised to teach me technical writing if I needed something to fall back on, which I still feel grateful for. But luckily the Newbery honor came along and my prospects improved and have stayed pretty darn good.<\/p>\n

Now for emotional. My work with New York State government mostly had to do with welfare. By the end my job was administrative and I was in an unhappy patch. I was glad to leave. But I\u2019m a social person, and I worried about the solitary life of a writer, so that\u2019s when I started my workshop, and I continued to take a writing class and participate in a critique group. Naturally I was delighted to be able to devote myself to writing, but sometimes I missed feeling part of a shared enterprise, which is what my job gave me.<\/p>\n

And: Do you still muse about characters whose books are written and over?<\/i><\/p>\n

Sometimes I think about Ivi in Fairest<\/i>. Because I wrote hundreds of pages that I tossed, I know much more about her than the reader does. For example, I wrote a scene in which she worries to her brother (cut) that she won\u2019t be a good queen. And one in which we see Ivi\u2019s mother\u2019s mindless approval of Ivi no matter her deficiencies. I wrote scenes between her and Skulni in which she tries to win his approval and he toys with her.<\/p>\n

And I wonder about the future happiness of Addie and Rhys from The Two Princesses of Bamarre<\/i>. His life span is so much longer than hers. She\u2019s going to get caught up in the drama of ruling and he in his wizardly studies. What will they share?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also Irma Lee from Dave at Night<\/i>, with her over-protective mother and the Great Depression on the way. Dave, who\u2019s known nothing but poverty, will be okay. But Irma Lee? And I left Mike with tuberculosis. I don\u2019t even know if he lives.<\/p>\n

Then, on December 9, 2011, Melissa asked, …How come you never self-published Ella Enchanted<\/u> since it was taking so long?<\/i><\/p>\n

Ella Enchanted<\/i> didn\u2019t take that long, only a year or so, and it was rejected only once. It was the many other manuscripts that nobody wanted. All but one of them (Dave at Night<\/i>) were picture books, and I would have had to find an illustrator. Also, self-publishing, although possible, wasn\u2019t as available as it is now. Print-on-demand was in its infancy, I think. There were no online booksellers, so I would have had to try to get stores to carry my titles, an uphill battle. The opportunities in self-publishing are much improved today.<\/p>\n

On October 5, 2011, Lizzy wrote, ….If you had started writing Ella Enchanted<\/u> today instead of a couple years ago, how different would you think the story would turn out? Do you think that it would turn out as a totally different story, or would it stay around the same?<\/i><\/p>\n

Hard to speculate. If I\u2019d written all the other books first and was working on Ella<\/i> now, it would certainly be a different book. I once heard the wonderful children\u2019s book writer E. L. Konigsburg (author of the Newbery winning From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler<\/i>, and many others) say in a speech that you can only write your first book once. She may have meant something else, but what I understood was that you have a wealth of ideas stored up from however many years of living and reading, and the riches come pouring out in a first book. After that, you have to work harder. I think I had two first novels: Ella Enchanted<\/i> and Dave at Night<\/i>, because each drew on different parts of my writing imagination. And two other books have felt utterly fresh, Writing Magic<\/i>, because it was my first nonfiction venture, and the new book, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It<\/i>, because it\u2019s entirely unlike anything else I\u2019ve done. If I were writing Ella<\/i> now and I\u2019d delayed writing until now, well, I can\u2019t guess what would come out. Who knows what I would have done in the intervening years.<\/p>\n

More about my books next week, but, looking ahead, I think that will be the final post about them, at least for the time being.<\/p>\n

Charlotte\u2019s question about the future fate of some of my characters got me thinking about sequel possibilities, which led me to these prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219    J. M. Barrie\u2019s Peter Pan<\/i> leaves Peter unresolved, and he\u2019s kind of a tragic figure at the end. Write the rest of his story. You can give him a sad or happy ending, but make the outcome settled for him.<\/p>\n

\u2219    What happens to Jack and Jill after the nursery rhyme? Jack\u2019s skull is cracked, I think. Does he live? How badly injured is Jane? Are they modern protagonists? Or when else do they live and possibly die? Continue their tale.<\/p>\n

\u2219    How does Pinocchio\u2019s story go after he becomes a real boy? Write it!<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Agnes last week who posted the link to The New York Times Sunday Book Review review of Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, which came out yesterday. For those of you who missed it, here it is again: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/11\/books\/review\/bookshelf-poetry.html?_r=1&ref=books. And for you poetry buffs, there was an amazing essay in The Atlantic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[138],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":406,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}