The Stuff I Took to Encore

Across from the sign-in table at Encore was a table of books for sale, by the people giving presentations.  And uh-oh.  All of them were novels.  I stood there with my heart in my stomach wondering how I could have so thoroughly misread the event info.  YA novels are awesome, and I would like to write some myself eventually, but right now my focus is on picture books.  And I'm the dweeb who shows up to a convention of novelists with a portfolio full of picture book art.

So I asked myself "What would Castle do?"  I marched (slunk) in, walked proudly (circled warily) to an empty seat, and laughingly introduced myself as the only dork in the room who was working on a picture book.  And I was immediately informed by some very nice folks that I wasn't alone, and in fact there was another picture book writer there at our table.

I can't say that I did a great job of working the room there at Encore, but thanks to the wonderful woman who made me feel so at home there at that first table, I came out of my shell enough to have a dozen good conversations.  For my first-ever convention, I think I did pretty well.

My big honkin' portfolio thing made me feel very conspicuous at first; but after showing it off a bit, I flipped to feeling like I really had my act together in the stuff department.  This is what I brought along:

Instead of going with the standard plastic artist's book, I used a scrap book.  It was, surprisingly, more professional looking.  Also, cheaper.  A bit heavy, though.

Inside: pockets with samples of the development art for my manuscript, and the manuscript itself.  Tucked into the front window are business cards, regrettably made in haste.  

My business card design, alas, was a sad wreck.  Never use a cheap laptop with crummy screen to produce colors!  Also, calling yourself an author is a faux pas if your work has not yet been published.  Technically, if you count self-publication, I am an author.  But since my goal is to be published by an actual publishing house, I should still be calling myself just a "writer".  Oops.

Also tucked into that front flap is the World's Smallest Dummy Book.

The World's Smallest Dummy Book!  Amusing that the crowning glory of my portfolio is small enough that it should come with a magnifying glass.  But I was able to use that as an ice-breaking joke, and just about everyone I showed it to read it with enthusiasm.

Why is it so small?  It's not a final dummy book, of the sort I would send to potential publishers.  It's what I put together as a test, to make sure the text works in 32 pages, and to match the text with images for the first time.  This is how I made it:

Those are three-by-five cards, with the text of the manuscript taped on.  I sketched out the images onto these cards with a sharpie.  Then I photocopied them.  I then cut-and-pasted the photocopies some more, setting up pages with fronts and backs properly aligned, and then I had that mess copied on double-sided prints.  Then I cut out the pages and stapled them.

I would love to show the interior sketches here, but at this point I need to keep the art off of the internet if I ever hope to get it published.  Kerfoo.

I got some ego-boosting compliments from Encore-goers about my art, which doesn't surprise me given that I was a trained illustrator in a room full of mostly non-artists.  But, surprisingly, I also got great compliments on my verse!  There was one person who told me that my verse didn't sound at all forced.  Coming from a writer, I treasure that feedback.

Moving forward, I would like to hook up a critique group in my area.  I got a couple of leads there at Encore.  I assume it'll take a while for that to happen, though.  In the mean time, it is time for me to move along to the final dummy book.  But in order for that to happen, I could really use a giant cork board so that I can pin the full-sized sketches on the wall in order.  Kind of like this:

Hey, lookie there!  Those are some big sheets of homasote freshly covered in white paint.  Now I just have to bribe my husband into holding them up while I screw them onto the walls.  Then my studio will feel pleasantly like a classroom back in RISD's illustration building.  I never thought I would miss that neglected old tub of a building enough to imitate it.  Next thing I know, I'll be beating on a piece of pipe with a wrench to simulate the noises made by the radiators.

Spider

I spotted there upon the wall

A spider climbing up,

A hairy, giant thing she was,

And so I grabbed a cup.

I pushed her in with newspaper

And moving carefully,

I took her outside to the yard

And gently set her free.

Professionalism in Writing

Yesterday I attended my first ever conference-type event: Encore!  That link may not work for non-members of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, so the short version is that Encore! is a repeat of a previous event's most popular workshops.

I have been letting the adventure percolate through my brain all day to try and figure out where to begin writing about it.  And poof!  An internet acquaintance known as the Bitter Homeschooler revised a blog post about people who make stupid assumptions about homeschooling.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with SCBWI, or Encore!  But the revisions she made were in response to some feedback I had sent her.  Or, possibly, the changes were inspired by other feedback that was similar to mine.  Either way, it was quite a delightful surprise.

In my sordid past I spent time at ConceptArt.org, a forum in which aspiring artists can get help in becoming professionals in the entertainment industry.  It was considered good form there for all members to spend time in the critique area. As an illustration major, and as a professional artist in the games industry, you would have thought that my feedback would have been welcomed.  Instead I was regularly yelled at by angry amateurs who insisted that I was wrong.  The language was regularly sarcastic, sometimes florally abusive.  Many people just never bothered to reply.  (I'm sympathetic!  As a big scary professional, I must have scared their pants off.)  I can't remember being thanked for my feedback (which the Bitter Homeschooler did), or at the very least thanked for my time.  It must have happened, but it wasn't the norm.  I wrote hundreds of critiques there.  I left when I realized how bitter the experience had made me.

Contrast that to a sprint review at my workplace.  My team would watch as I navigated through a fresh environment.  Their job was to point out every last pimple and wart.   Conflicting opinions were noted and weighed.  And then a to-do list was made.  The following day I fixed stuff.  Easy!

Okay, okay, so I admit I sometimes sulked over changes I had to make.  Criticism is hard to endure even in the most professional of settings.  But on the internet, a critique that arrives from a mostly unknown person, unexpectedly and unrequested?  That's license to tar and feather them, in absentia,  in front of an appreciative audience.  Preferably with gobs of steaming sarcasm.

The author of the Bitter Homeschooler reacted to criticism with a level of professional grace that I know I didn't consistently exhibit in my own professional art life.  And it was a rant that she so gracefully edited.  Rants and grace go together like nails and water balloons.

I know this is important to the Bitter Homeschooler, because her mild-mannered alter ego is trying to get herself established as an author of young adult fiction.  All I can say is that if this is how she responds to the comments of near-strangers on the internet, she is going to flourish when it comes to taking the criticism of an actual editor.  So my hat is off to you, Bitter Homeschooler!  You aren't as bitter as you would like your readers to believe.

And I seem to have wandered quite completely away from the topic of Encore!  So let me bring it back by saying how deliriously happy it made me to be invited to not one, but two critique groups!  What a thrill it was to be in the company of people who are as hungry for critique as I am.  The aspiring and successful writers of SCBWI are not internet nitwits!  I can't wait to meet with more of them.  Walking into that busy ballroom at Encore! just about scared my pants off, but it was well worth it.

Red Wings, Part 2

I have to admit, when a children's book makes my brain churn as much as The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, I have to love it, even if I loathe my interpretation of its message.

Yesterday I wrote about my own hissing dislike of Red Wings.  RebeccaFrog, who had introduced me to the book, left some delicious comments in reaction to my reaction.  Completely unrelated, she also drew my attention to a  "cute" little picture being passed around Facebook: a sweating rhinoceros, on a treadmill.  Behind the rhino, taped to the wall, is a picture of a unicorn.

The rhinoceros picture alone is a tragically poignant and humorous summing up of our culture's attitudes towards beauty: we torture ourselves to look like starved supermodels who themselves are Photoshopped to be more thin and lovely than nature can manage.  But the real kicker was the caption on the image: "Never give up on your dreams."

Before I touch that, let me flip over to a fragment of an interview I caught on public radio some months ago.  The scientist being interviewed had spent time studying happiness in America.  He had data showing that our typical happiness over time takes a walloping nose dive when we are in our twenties.  Then it goes up again.  There might have been dips in the teen years and at midlife-crisis time, but I do recall with certainty that the major dip corresponded with the transition from life as a college student to life as a real adult.  And after that point, happiness went mostly up, and up, and up.

And what happens to us when we get out of college?  We get a job, get married, have kids; and we face the ultimate dark truth that we can't be the astronaut or the rock star or famous artist that we had fixated on being for so very long.  But then we reset our goals: get a promotion, go to the beach with the family, buy a house.  Once our goals are no longer out of reach, we become happy again.

 The notion that we, as rhinoceroses, should never give up trying to be the mythical unicorn is a recipe for a future in therapy.  If you make the achievement of an unreachable goal the necessary step to becoming happy, then you will by definition never be happy.  And yet our society places an emphasis on binding happiness to the achievement of goals.

But the flip side of our culture are the cultures around the world that do place an emphasis on finding happiness in what you are given.  But so often these cultures involve gross inequalities and human rights abuses.  It is one thing to find a zen peace in accepting that you will never get to ride on the space shuttle; it is quite another to ask a child bride to find joy in the abusive relationship she has been put into against her wishes.

But here is another complication: people appear by and large to be happier when they make an irreversible decision than when they are permitted to change their minds.  Once again, this comes from an interview I caught on public radio that, dang it, I have no link to.  Sorry!  There was a study involved, and the implications were creepy.  (Which college?  Which career?  Career or family?Divorce! Abortion!)  The author of the study went on a bit about how we tie our happiness to achieving our goals, and how as a culture we don't like to admit that we can also successfully convince ourselves to be happy when we fail to reach our goals.  And the reason we don't like to go there is because we see that sort of happiness as being fake.

I'm as indoctrinated as the rest of my generation of goal-seeking affluent white Americans, so when I see a story from 1945 about a bunny who gives up on a dream to instead accept his lot in life, my reaction is to hiss at it.

My more delayed reaction is to put the book on my Amazon wishlist.  I do believe I want a copy of The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings on my shelf.  It will sit right next to The Giving Tree, which will be the topic of a future blog post.  Red Wings isn't necessarily one I will pull out to read to my kids, but it will be on my mind as I try to figure out what stories I can tell that will help guide future generations to neither entirely accept their lot in life, nor tie their happiness to the achievement of shoot-for-the-moon goals.

Red Wings

Some years ago, in the BC era (Before Children), I was wandering the back rooms of an antique store with a friend when she picked up a copy of the little book pictured above, gave a squee of joy, and shared her fond memories of having read it as a child.  I loitered in that room and read the book.  There was no squee for me.  The book gave me cold chills.

I still feel guilty for wrecking my friend's fond memories of this book.  Having grown up with it, and not having seen it since her childhood, she did not see the dark side of this outwardly charming tale.

I'm afraid that the book doesn't exist in my otherwise extensive library system, so my retelling is based entirely upon that one very quick read there in that dusty antique shop.  The Little Rabbit who Wanted Red Wings, by Carolyn Bailey, is about a baby bunny who longs for a pair of red wings.  Against the advice of mommy bunny, he, or possibly she, gets those wings, and discovers that life with wings is rather awful.  Nobody recognizes him.  He ultimately gives up the wings and goes back to being a generic baby bunny.

I can see how this would be a cute and happy read to a child.  I can also see how such a story - published in 1945 - would help to guide little girls gently into their expected roles as future housewives and mothers.  Or nudge little boys to follow their fathers' footsteps into the factories or mines.  Or indoctrinate black children so that they wouldn't get uppity ideas into their heads.  And all of this is done so gently and cheerfully!  Because obviously teaching children to aspire to great things or different things or difficult things can lead to - oh no! - bad experiences!  We wouldn't want those bad experiences in our children's soft and cozy futures, now would we?  We wouldn't want our darling baby bunnies to grow up into fascinating people whom we don't recognize, now would we?

I must admit, Red Wings stung me doubly because since my earliest childhood, wings have been a potent symbol to me of my own future freedom.  As I progressed from grade school to middle school to highschool, my educational track pushed me deeper and deeper into misery.  I fantasized about dragons and winged unicorns, about my hundred-pound backpack turning into wings, about growing wings to save me from falling when the cliff of graduation finally came along.  I was seven years old in 1985 when Mr. Mister released the song Broken Wings, which echoed through my childhood and is possibly to blame for my wing obsession: take these broken wings/ and learn to fly again/ learn to live so free.  Had I read The Catcher in the Rye during my teen years, I would have added wings in my mental image of the drama out there on the rye field.  Instead, I painted pictures of dragons chained in dungeons, or with torn wings.

I finally did find my wings as an adult, in the form of a career making art for games, in (finally) dating and falling in love, in having the free time to paint and play and choose my own path. I have even jumped out of an airplane in exploring what my wings can do.  Twice!  I am in love with my metaphorical wings!

If I succeed in getting my current manuscript published, I hope that some graduate student out there will analyze it, because I have taken all of this wing business and folded it up and crammed it in there.  I would like to get the wing metaphor over with so that I can move on to telling stories about topics other than dragons and wings.  At least some of the time.

Perhaps someday I'll even write a story about bunnies.