From Avi: As I did last summer, I’ve invited 13 admired middle grade authors to write for my blog for the next three months. I hope you’ll tune in each Tuesday to see who has answered these three questions. You should have a list of terrific books to read and share and read aloud by the end of the summer … along with new authors to follow!
Your favorite book on writing:
This is not a book about the craft or the business of writing, but there’s plenty of material about that.
As a young writer, I worried about if I was a real writer. Was I writing the right things, the correct number of words or pages a day? Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande is one of the only books I know that describes how writers write, and one that verified my experience. Brande talks about first surrounding yourself with stimulus for writing, doing research, reading other writer’s works, visiting locales for your book. Then she mentions an incubation period — purposely not focusing on the work, doing something bland and methodical instead, what she calls having “a floor to scrub.” During this monotonous activity, ideas begin to pop up, seemingly from nowhere — and that is the time to sit down and write. Written in 1934, before left and right brain theories, and what we know now about the subconscious, her book describes both how writers use their conscious and subconscious brains, and the importance of daydreaming and doing monotonous action to nurture writing.
Reading aloud from my books:
Comics and graphic novels don’t often read well aloud because the text is too intertwined with the illustrations. But when I first started writing Lowriders in Space, I wasn’t sure if it would be a graphic novel or a picture book, so I wrote a narration that would work for both, and that read well aloud. For a comic, of course it’s best to share the art too (use a projector if you’re reading in a classroom). But as a librarian, I’ve observed many parents reading Lowriders in Space to their kids, even preschoolers, just like it was a picture book. For younger kids, I also recommend Ten Ways to Hear Snow, because it’s fun to make all the different snow noises, and to invent some of your own.
Where do you write most often?
Cathy’s most recent book celebrates the beauty and diversity of life in the Arab diaspora throughout the year.