DOES THE MUSE KISS A FROG?

I once heard a speaker at a conference for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators comment that in the market at the time, Winnie the Pooh would not sell. Talking animals were out. Today’s published books offer a number of talking animals, so as ideas do, that one has come around again.

How do we keep up? By sharing experiences with like-minded writers. By talking with teachers and librarians. By looking through the children’s section of bookstores. By reading Publisher’s Weekly, which biannually publishes a special edition featuring children’s books for the coming season. Some bookstores sell copies of Publisher’s Weekly on their magazine racks. Children’s librarians will usually allow you to glance through the library’s copy, but not to remove it from the site. Don’t forget to explore publishers’ websites to study current covers and book descriptions. And of course, read, read, read to the children in your life.

Watch children and really listen to them. Their particular take on the world can surprise and enchant you. Most of us make mental notes of cute comments to share with friends and family, or of funny and sweet anecdotes to enliven letters to grandparents. If we look ahead, we make a note of those incidents for the future. Growing children love to hear stories about themselves when they were tiny.

As writers, we may find a trove of ideas in such captured moments. I try to see and hear my granddaughters both from a grandmother’s and from a writer’s point of view. For example, three-year-old Elizabeth recently blew a noisy raspberry on her baby sister’s stomach and said, “I put a smile on her tummy.” Pure gold! The muse was listening and now I’m working on a picture book that will turn the incident into a story.

The muse was also listening when I stood on the porch of our hundred-year-old farmhouse one rainy spring evening while frogs began to sing. When a car drove by on a nearby street, the swoosh of tires silenced the chorus. After a time of stillness, gradually the frogs began to sing again.

Years had passed since I attempted to write a book for children. When my own three grew into adults, my interest moved to novel writing. But in reading to my granddaughters, I found interest reawakening and while I listened to the chorus of frogs grow in volume that spring evening, the muse jabbed a sharp elbow into my ribs. “Counting book,” she said.

I hope you’ll look for ONE FROG SANG to be published by Candlewick Press this very March of 2007. It took a lot of persistence to find the perfect home for this book. Many of the editors my agent approached were already publishing as many counting books as their houses could support. Now that I have a finished copy in my hands, I am delighted with the book. I couldn’t have asked for better illustrations, but yes, those early rejections were discouraging.

We’re going to talk about rejections in another column—what you can learn from them and how you can use that. I just want to say now that if you really believe in your manuscript, while you may want to put it aside until you can read it with fresh eyes, never give up just because it isn’t right for the first markets you approach.

Once an idea locks onto you, look at it from every direction. I doubt there’s any story that can’t be made better given time, thought and research. Whenever my father was caught telling an exaggerated anecdote, he always said cheerfully, “It’s a poor story-teller who can’t make a good story better.” There is truth in that (if not in the entirety of those anecdotes). My agent is forever telling me, “Let this simmer for awhile.” (I find that advice wise but extremely difficult to follow.)

Most ideas will be made better with research, however simple the idea may seem at first grasp. For even the brief text of a picture book, details make the story. The illustrator will certainly provide visual details. The words you use will do the same.

When I researched frogs for my counting book, I learned they make their songs by sucking in air (those inflated throats) then blowing out sound. The first line in the counting book became a joyful description of that process. It’s also the last line, since the book comes full circle to one frog singing.

Research told me that croaks, chirps, etc. are meant to attract mates. So in ONE FROG SANG, when all ten groups of frogs croak, rah-beet, chirup and ka-whoomp together, “All the frogs sing for love,” a line my editor and I especially like.

In hope that children will enjoy different sounds for each group of frogs in the counting book, I walked out to our stream and tried to hear phonetics in the bull frog’s deep, “Woomp, woomp.” How to spell out their calls on paper? What about those frogs croaking in the grass? What exactly do they sound like? “Riv-et, Rah-beet.”

A cruise through the internet provided audio clips of various frogs. And my agent contributed, “Preep, preep,” a frog song new to me.

I first wrote the story as one frog, two frogs and so forth up to a group of ten frogs, all of them falling silent when interrupted by the car passing by, then the first frog starting again. The manuscript was way too short. How could the material be made long enough for a book?

Then it struck me—the muse with her sharp elbow—what goes up, comes down. After the car startles the frogs, each group falls silent, one group at a time, slipping away or huddling or crouching while the reader counts backward from ten down to one. Finally, “The moon wonders down on the stillness.” Then the first line circles back and one big frog restarts the whole raucous chorus.

For the muse to kiss a frog and produce a prince of an idea takes work from the writer. If you keep all your senses alert, that quest can be as much fun as a search for hidden treasure. And in many ways, even more rewarding.

At the start of this column, I mentioned SCBWI. I strongly urge those interested in writing for children to consider becoming a member. You do not have to be published to belong. Besides an information-filled web site and eighty US and international chapters, the organization publishes a semi-monthly newsletter and an annual Publications Guide to Writing and Illustrating for Children listing publishers’ current needs. An annual summer conference is held in California in the Los Angeles area and an annual winter conference in New York City. Many regions have chapter websites. Many hold their own smaller, but no less enthusiastic regional conferences.

Writing is an isolating experience. Through SCBWI, you can meet people with the same problems and enthusiasms, learn current trends and market interests and immerse yourself in the world of writing for children. You can also join an SCBWI list serve to share in that world through your computer. For more information, visit www.scbwi.org.

I would love to hear your feelings on this subject or on any other aspect of writing for children. Questions? Thoughts you’d care to share?  Please email me at shirleyp@softcom.net.

I hope you will take a look at ONE FROG SANG when it comes out this month.