In Which a New Idea Grabs My Attention

Querying right now is soul sucking. There. I said it. I don't know if there's a better way for agents to make connections to writers they want to represent. I don't blame the agents for being busy and taking a long time to respond. I do sometimes wish I could go back in time to a time when there were fewer people trying to be published and seriously pursue being published then, but time machines are not a thing. Plus, I know that I'm a better writer now so there's that.

In large part due to the soul-suckingness of querying, I've found it really hard to get into writing something new. Harbor Lightkeep is the fourth book I've queried and I didn't have this problem with the other three, but I think the very fact that it's the fourth and I'm still trying to find an agent is part of what's stopping me. Every single time I finish a book I think "Okay, this one is going to be the one." And so far it never has been. 

It also doesn't help that I recently started a part time job, teaching two year old preschool three days a week. I love the job, even with all the dirty diapers I have to change, but it does limit my potential writing time. At the very least I blame the new job, which I started in October, for me not blogging in October.

I kept telling myself I was going to finish the adult contemporary romance I started in March this fall but no matter how many times I opened my computer and stared at the document I just could not work up the energy to add to the story. I do hope to finish that book someday. I really love the world I dreamed up. But romance just doesn't light my heart on fire the way middle grade does. So I officially gave up pretending my fall goal was to finish that book.

Finally, just over a week ago, a new idea grabbed onto me. I had always been intrigued by the seed of a the 200 word story I wrote last fall for #FallWritingFrenzy and kind of wanted to do more with the idea of a grieving girl summoning the ghost of her twin. But I wasn't sure where to go with it until suddenly I was.

The original story was inspired by a photo of a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda. But, while I feel a deeper connection to Latinx cultures than I often do to the cultures of my own ancestors thanks to the combination of my degrees in Spanish and having a child in a Spanish Immersion school, I don't want to steal a culture that doesn't belong to me for an entire novel. I toyed with the idea of having the story center around Halloween and the autumnal equinox and the traditions from many cultures that involve spirits visiting our world at that time of year. But it just wasn't clicking for me.

Finally I remembered my favorite ghost story from childhood: A Christmas Carol. The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas never caught on in America, but it was huge in Victorian England and well before that so there's a rich culture to draw from. Plus, I love the idea of the veil between the living and the dead thinning at the darkest time of the year. I still have a lot of planning and research to do before I can do this story justice, but I'm finally really excited about something again. So I present to you the moodboard for what I'm currently calling #SpookyGhostTwinChristmasWIP. Although I've never actually used that hashtag since I'm taking a twitter break while I research and draft. And, no, this is not a NaNoWriMo project. It's just a project I happen to have started in November. 

In Which My Son Attends a College Visit Weekend and I Come Away with Writing Advice

 My 17yo is starting to look seriously at colleges, and this weekend he attended an overnight visit event at Asbury University, which is his current top choice and only about 45 minutes from our house. He wants to study media production, and Asbury has a very well respected program. This weekend's visit was aimed at students interested in the media program and was capped off by the college's film festival on Saturday night. For the film festival weekend, there were judges and other visitors from the film industry on campus, giving talks and meeting with students and prospective students.

I stayed for the first talk before heading home, and I was pleasantly surprised that I took a lot a way from it as a writer. Asbury is a Christian university and the talk was aimed at that audience, titled "What every Christian needs to know before going to Hollywood". The speakers, a movie composer and a producer who are married to each other, emphasized that by "Hollywood" they really meant the entertainment industry in general, which is global, and that the principles would apply wherever the students ended up.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that a whole lot of the advice applies to the creative life in general, including writing, and not just to moviemaking. It was also a good reminder that my son, who is severely dyslexic and doesn't read for pleasure (he can read, but it's a lot of work for him and he only reads when he needs the information) isn't quite as different from me as it would seem on the surface. At the core, he wants to build a life as a storyteller, just as I'm trying to do.

I won't share any of the specifically Christian advice on this general interest blog, but I thought some of the advice would apply to people of other faiths and no faith. Those points are as follows:

1. The importance of community. I've posted here about finding my writing community. Writing is most often a solitary occupation. When you're in the query trenches or agented but on submission to editors, it is also most often an incredibly discouraging occupation. If you have someone to share both your joys and your sorrows with, it's significantly more bearable.

2. Don't go into writing (they said filmmaking, but the principle is the same) because you want to be rich and famous. Go into it because you love to tell stories. That's what I try to keep in mind as I write story after story that no agents want to pick up so far. Yes, I want to see them on shelves and I hope to someday make some money from them, but it's unlikely that I'll get rich from it, which is okay. What I want to do is to tell stories that will both entertain and impact readers.

3. Show interest in other people in the industry. Don't always think about only yourself and what will benefit you. This may in the end open doors for you. I'm not sure if the "opening doors" part is quite as true in publishing, but, along with building a community of writing peers, I do think it's both helpful and important to establish relationships to whatever extent you can with writers ahead of you on the path. At least, they're more likely to read and hype your book if they already know who you are and have had good interactions with you.

4. It takes 10,000 hours of work before you become an expert in something. It may not take exactly 10,000 hours to write a novel that's good enough to get published, but in the case of the large majority of writers, it's not your first novel that ends up being your debut novel. Even if you do sell your first novel, the version that sits on shelves will go through sometimes significant edits and take a lot of work. Even established writers often say that they look back on their early published books and see all that they still had to learn. I can look back at my first three books and, even though I love the stories and hope to someday edit/rewrite them into books worthy of publication, I can see the things I still had to learn and the ways they're lacking. Not that my fourth book is perfect, but it's much better at this stage than the others were at the same stage because of everything I learned from writing them.

I returned to campus for the film festival last night, and I heard something there that was meaningful to me as a writer as well. The chair of the media communication department quoted a filmmaker whose name I immediately forgot (please tell me in the comments if you know who said this), who said "Make visible what, without you, might otherwise never have been seen." That really struck me, because that is half of why I write. First, because I love to tell stories, but second to make the marginalizations I identify with or am very close to, visible. This includes people on the asexual spectrum, girls with ADHD, and the diabetes community. Even if you don't identify with any marginalized group I still think this can apply. You might be making small town life visible, an unusual interest, an experience you've had, or something I haven't even thought of. Everyone has something unique to bring to their writing, and I believe there's a kid out there who could see a character like them in a book for the first time because of the story only you/I can tell.

To end, I'll share some pictures from the festival. I got to meet actor Joel McCreary, who played the prime minister of Genovia in the Princess Diaries as well as posing by statues of Kings Peter and Edmund of Narnia, which are actual set pieces from Prince Caspian movie. The media building as Asbury officially qualifies as a museum because of all the TV and movie artifacts it houses. They're all from projects that Asbury faculty and alumni have worked on.

In Which It Still Isn't My Turn, But I Keep Moving Anyway

 There's lots of good writing news in the middle grade twitterverse recently, and from my closer community of the #MGWaves. It feels like every time I check Twitter or Slack someone has just signed with an agent or announced a book deal. I've gotten to know some of these writers well and read works from many of them over the past year since I jumped into the writing community with both feet, and I can say with confidence that everyone I've seen announce news heartily deserves their good fortune. Most of them have been working toward this goal for years, some even longer than I have.

It's good to remember that what might look like an "overnight success story" could easily be that writer's sixth manuscript that they queried for a year and had just decided it was time to shelve when they got the full request that led to an offer. One of my friends who just signed with an agent received the email asking to set up a call to talk about representation literally 24 minutes after sending a text telling her critique partners that she was officially shelving the manuscript.

I'm still waiting for a story like that to happen to me. I'm actively querying a version of the second book I finished, which went through such a major rewrite that I kind of consider it my fourth book. I have not gotten any bites, but I recently rewrote my query and opening pages and just started sending that version a week ago, so there's still hope. In the meantime, I still have a small handful of queries out for my third book, the one that I should probably have shelved months ago, but that I keep firing off an occasional query for because I love it so much I can't bear to completely shelve it until I've run out of agents I'd like to work with who might love it. This one has also gone through not quite a rewrite but a very thorough revision including changing from third to first person since I began querying it late last year.

In the meantime, I'm plugging away at my fourth (maybe fifth, depending on how you count) book, which I currently think is the best one yet. Whether that actually proves to be the case will only be seen if I can actually finish the thing. This first draft has taken way longer than any other first draft I've ever written because I have my fingers in so many pies right now. I keep going away from it to tweak the books I'm still querying and fire off a few more. Add to that the days I just can't bear to look at it because I'm sure it must be a flaming pile of you can guess what despite my feelings about it and my critique group members' feelings about it, because if I actually knew how to write surely my inbox would be flooded with full requests.

Add in the mental fatigue from the pandemic that never ends, and keeping at the writing game can feel like a Sisyphean task. Push that boulder of a finished manuscript up the hill, and the rejections will come crashing down on you and push you right back down. So, why do I do it? Why do I keep creating these stories and throwing my babies out to the cold, cruel world? Why don't I just get a regular job that doesn't come with a regular side of rejection? Because rejection is and always will be part of the writing game. Once you get an agent, editors start rejecting you. Once you get a book in the world, readers start rejecting you. There is no stage at which a writer is entirely shielded from rejection.

First, I realize I'm in a place of incredible privilege because I don't have to work another full time job on top of writing just to keep a roof over my head and put food over the table. Yes, my kids are demanding and a 24/7 responsibility in some fashion (even the 16 year old), but it's not as if there aren't parents out there who have a full time job in addition to writing. 

It's partly because I love it. Books have always been a huge part of my life, and I've had stories living in my head as long as I can remember. It's also because I believe my stories have a place in the world that isn't completely filled. I want girls with ADHD to have a character they see themselves in. I want kids with type 1 diabetes to see a kid like them accurately portrayed in a book. I want kids who feel different in any way to see characters who are outside the norm in some way going on adventures and just living life.

Someday I believe my books will be on the shelves of libraries and bookstores. It might be a version of stories I've already written, or it might be that those stories serve as a stepping stone for me to continue to polish my craft and what ends up on shelves is now only a seed in the depths of my mind. There may be an agent reading a query that will lead to a full request and then an offer right now. The agent who eventually signs me may not even be an agent yet. 

I hate this uncertainty, and I don't always have the mental fortitude to remind myself that if I keep working and don't give up I will get there someday. There are definitely days when I spend all of my time wallowing in self pity. If I want to make it, however, I can't stay down there. I need to get up, dust myself off, and do the next thing.

This summer my family took a vacation to the Rocky Mountains. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It's also a whole lot farther above sea level than Kentucky, and the thinner air literally can take your breath away. All my family members are in much better shape than I am, and there were times we were ascending on hikes when I wasn't sure I could make it. But I did it. One step at a time. Here's a picture of me at 12,000 feet. No, I did not climb all 12,000 of those feet.

In Which I Play Catch Up

 I had established this really great trend of posting monthly and then summer vacation happened. As of today, both my kids are back in school in person for the first time since March 13, 2020. Here's hoping that will give me more time to write. Of course, I'm also mildly terrified since Covid cases are at their highest level in Kentucky since January, but masks are required in schools, they're spacing students out as much as they can, and doing a lot of cleaning and handwashing and sanitizing, so I'm hoping it will be enough.

Summer trips got in the way of me blogging in July, but they did not get in the way of me reading. Our family drove to Colorado and back as our big family trip a couple weeks ago, which meant about 22 hours in the car each way, divided over two days. Since my husband prefers to drive on long trips, partly because he thinks he's a better driver (he really is) and partly because he's prone to carsickness if he's not driving, I had a lot of time to read. I made it through my entire To Be Read pile, which had been languishing because my daughter was demanding a lot of my attention since school ended. We're still being really careful about playdates and didn't send her to any day camps, so she wanted me to play with her all the time. As an aside, parenting an extraverted kid during a pandemic is really hard.

Some of my favorites were two other books I could have recommended in my last post about MG books with queer rep had I known they existed when I wrote that post. George by Alex Gino. The book follows ten year old George, who knows she is a girl even though everyone else believes she is a boy, on her journey to find the courage to speak out about her gender identity. I also read a companion book to this, Rick, in which we see the MC from the first book two years later, starting middle school as a girl named Melissa, but through the eyes of Rick, a boy who was a bully in the first book, but is beginning to asks questions of his own about gender and sexuality and beginning to wonder, as his peers starts to get crushes and he doesn't, if he is on the asexual spectrum. Rick's metamorphosis from reluctant bully to embracing his own possibly queer identity was so great to read. I'm glad books like this exist, both for kids who can relate to them and for kids who can't.

I also read the first book in a new Rick Riordan presents series, The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim. This book is based on Korean mythology and is so delightful. I especially love that the deities at the center of the magical Korean community are goddesses.

I could go on about the books I've read, but I'll also catch up on the writing things I've done. I've sent out a few more queries for Anna Otto, including one from a late coming agent request after a Twitter pitch party that happened back in June. I've revised my query yet again since the first six queries haven't gotten me a request, and I think it might actually be really good this time. I'm hoping that, if nothing else, this books gets me a respectable number of full requests. When even your writing friends who aren't getting agent offers seem to be getting full requests left and right it can be discouraging. 

I'm still plugging away on Harbor Lightkeep, and hoping to make much more progress now that both my kids will be out of the house for six hours five days a week. My summer trip to Colorado gave me an idea for a picture book and a middle grade book, so I have yet more things waiting in line for whenever Harbor Lightkeep is out with beta readers, or if I need a break from it.

It's now been about a year and a half since I started taking my writing seriously and querying the first MG book I wrote (in retrospect, it was not ready). I was sure at that point that I would have an agent by now, probably even an offer. It turns out writing is much more of a waiting game for most people than I realized, but I'm still glad I decided to take the plunge and pursue traditional publication. I've met an amazing community of fellow writers, discovered resources to refine my craft, and found friends to lean on when it feels like it will never by my turn. I desperately want it to be my turn not just someday, but soon. But in the meantime I'm trying to find the beauty on the winding path I'm on.

In Which I Hope My Words Are Delicious Because I Need to Eat Them Again

Remember one of my earliest posts when I talked about creating diverse characters as a White writer and came to the conclusion that it's okay to write a POV character from a marginalized identity as long as I research it carefully? Well, if you're a fellow writer reading this and you think that's an awesome idea it is not my job to stop you, but, personally, in the 8 1/2 months since I wrote that post, I have changed my opinion.

This is thanks in large part to my interactions with my writing community, the #MGWaves, which includes writers from around the world and from a variety of ethnic and racial groups. The more they shared about how they feel when someone who cannot understand their experience tries to write from that viewpoint, the more I realized that I need to leave those stories to writers who know them intimately.

What does this mean for my writing? Well, in a practical sense, it meant a huge revision of the book formerly known as Anna Ono. The character is now Anna Otto and her fear of not fitting in in her new home comes not from being a multiethnic city girl but from being an immigrant from Sweden who is half American but never expected to actually move to America.

Now you're probably asking, well, why are you any more qualified to write that? You're not an immigrant from Sweden. That is true. I did, however, live in Sweden for a year so I have personal experience with what it feels like to adjust to a new country and fear you'll never fit in. I also still have Swedish friends and know the culture well. Ultimately, as writers we all need to decide what type of viewpoint character we feel like we can write. 

I doubt I'll ever set a book in Sweden, but I think that with a combination of my own experience, research, and talking with my Swedish friends, I could write such a story accurately, especially if the story was of an American kid who moved to Sweden. I think I would have a much harder time writing a story that takes place in another European country or writing an immigrant from another European country even though my character would be White. 

I think I can write a cisgender boy accurately as well as a cisgender girl even though I have never been a cisgender boy. But, while I might someday tackle a secondary character who is a trans girl or boy or a nonbinary child, I would not attempt to write a POV character who was not cisgender for the same reasons I have decided it is not my place to write a POV character who is a person of color.

Secondary characters are different creature from POV characters, I think. It's a fine line to tread between portraying a diverse world and not having characters outside your own ethnicity there as tokens, but I do think it's possible and desirable. Anna Otto has a friend who is half Scottish and half Mexican American. He was in the original book and I did not feel I needed to change him during the revision. 

If this book is ever published, it's possible that someone might call me out on some of my choices, even though I've tried very hard to be fair and respectful. It is not possible to please everyone. However, if I am honestly trying to portray our diverse world while simultaneously not stealing the stories of writers who were ignored for far too long, I feel like I have done my level best.

Just for fun, here's an aesthetic I created for Anna Otto. When I wrote the first version of the book last spring I didn't even know what an aesthetic was.

In Which My Inbox Declares Itself a "Request Free Zone" and I Try (With Only Minimal Success) to Ignore It

 I love the community I have built with other writers, especially the #MGWaves. Since it doesn't involve going in to an office or having an official "team" in any way (at least pre-publication), having a community of writers to lean on can make this life feel less lonely. Especially since my main occupation for much of my adult life has been as a stay at home mom and I don't have another profession, finding "my people" in the writing world has been especially helpful. The Waves critique my work and help me become a better writer, they cheer me up when I have bad news, and they cheer me on when I have good news.

There's just one potential problem with being a part of a community of writers. Inevitably, some of them will end up pulling ahead of you on the writing road. When we started the Waves we had all applied with our middle grade novels to Pitch Wars in the fall of 2020. Quite a few people had gotten requests. I was not one of them. Two people ended up getting mentorships. As of this writing, one of those writers has an agent, and I don't think the other is far behind. Three others have gotten agents without the benefit of a mentorship program. Five have gotten mentorships through various other programs.

Now we're in the two week waiting period for two possible mentorship/editing opportunities: WriteMentor and RevPit. The Waves are talented writers. I will not be surprised if one or more of them win a mentee spot in each contest. I do not begrudge them those spots. However, at the same time, I find myself extremely envious that I cannot seem to even get myself in the running. Other writers, both in and outside the Waves, are getting full requests from agents and requests from contests for additional material while my inbox seems to have declared itself a request free zone.

To be fair, I did come close to getting a mentorship in the Write Team Mentorship competition fairly recently. I was basically a runner up. The mentors ultimately decided another writer would be a better fit, but they requested and read my full manuscript and sent me an edit letter that was just over a page and which led me to revisions that I think have made the book even stronger. I've also gotten several "champagne rejections" for Mousecracker, in which agents have named specific things they like about the book and said my writing is very strong but said the book is not the right fit for them. However, none of them have gone on to ask for the full, so even that can feel like cold comfort when so many people I know are getting much more hopeful news.

Sometimes it's tempting to just throw in the towel and figure out what career I want to pursue that doesn't involve constant rejection. Because the fact is, even agented writers get rejected by editors and even published writers get rejected by reviewers and readers. But then I remember how much books have meant to me in my life. I remember my vision to create characters who share the invisible disabilities I know intimately so that readers who live with them can finally see someone like them as a hero in the stories they read. I remember that lots of people, some of them published writers, have told me that I'm "an excellent writer". Do all excellent writers get published? No, they don't. However, I would venture to say that most, perhaps all, excellent writers who don't get published don't reach that milestone because they gave up.

So I take a page from Anna in Frozen 2 and, to paraphrase, "Do the next writing thing". Today I sent out some queries with my shiny new revised query and pages. I also worked on putting together an initial synopsis for my WIP. I'm more of a pantser at heart, thanks in part to my ADHD, but I'm trying to get more organized so I at least have a decent idea of the path the book will follow. I'm also continually working to improve my craft by reading well written books - some of the type I would like to write and others not. As a bonus, reading well written books is also a lot of fun. Today in my reading I'm traveling to the fantasy world of Lithvas, based loosely on Lithuania, which is part of my heritage. While I don't foresee myself writing a book very similar to Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, I do at some point want to pull on the myths and legends of my Lithuanian ancestors to create my own story.

Maybe tomorrow or next week or next month or (shudder) even next year my inbox will shake off its funk and stop being a "request free zone". In the meantime, my documents full of new ideas are waiting, there's a world of good books to be read, and I just need to "keep swimming" (yes, I'm stealing a phrase from a completely different Disney movie :)) and do the next writing thing.

In Which, to My Great Surprise, I Write a Picture Book Text

 I have always loved picture books. When my kids were prime picture book age, I read piles and piles of picture books to them. Even though they're 10 and 16 now, there are still a handful of picture books that they both appreciate- particularly if they involve squirrels in my son's case and cats in my daughter's case. We still read Christmas picture books as a family during our advent readings. Both kids still have some picture books on the bookshelves in their rooms, and I saved my favorites that they didn't want on a shelf in the dining room. I have to admit that there were some I got really tired of (I can still recite Is Your Mama Llama? from memory), but it was so sweet to see my kids begin to fall in love with stories.

People who don't know much about writing often make the grave mistake of thinking that writing picture books is really easy. "Oh, that book has under 1,000 words (most often under 500 in more recently published books)" they think, "I bet the writer whipped that story out in under and house. Easy money."

Now, if you know anything about writing, querying agents, and the path to being traditionally published, you should know that that path does not, at any point in any genre or age group involve "easy money". Writing is hard work. Writing a picture book, precisely because it's so short, is in a way even harder than writing a novel. When I write a middle grade novel, I have at least 30,000 words and sometimes more than 60,000 to introduce my characters and world and take them on a journey, whether that's primarily an interior or exterior journey. In a picture book I have 500 words to do the same thing. You are likely familiar with the writing adage "show, don't tell". That's even more important in picture books. And if you're a picture book writer only and not a writer illustrator you need to leave a lot of room for the illustrator to show the story. No big scene or character descriptions like you can get away with in a novel. Your language needs to be really sparse, but at the same time vivid and lyrical. It's a tall order.

For all these reasons, I always thought I would never in a million years attempt to write a picture book. Then I shared a funny story with the #MGwaves about a time I thought there was a dog inside a vent in the kitchen and it turned out to be an alarm from an ipad sitting in a backpack below the vent. Several of them said I should turn that story into a picture book. I laughed then I thought, "Why not try?" So I wrote a story about a little girl who was sure there was a dog in the wall of her new house. And I sent it to some friends who have been writing picture books for awhile. And they didn't hate it. Actually, they liked it, and had some great suggestions about how to improve it.

It turned out I had fun writing a whole story in one sitting. So I wrote another picture book. This one was about a little girl who conquers her fear of the dark in a unique way. And that one was well received too. That's where I've stopped for now. Those two stories still need polishing before they're ready for an agent to look at, let alone an editor, but I think it's something I can do.

I'm not sure if I'll ever query an agent with one of those picture book texts. Don't get me wrong. I believe in them and would love to see them on shelves one day, but my heart is with my middle grade books. It's more likely that I'll keep seeking representation for those and look for an agent who will also represent the picture books once they've signed me for the middle grade. Or maybe I'll go wild one day and send out a picture book query. I would need to have at least one more polished manuscript to do that, since the equivalent of asking for a full in the picture book querying world is asking for more manuscripts and at least two are expected.

Either way, it's been fun to experiment with a very different type of writing and I'm glad I took the plunge. Turns out you don't know for sure if you can write something until you actually try it.

In Which I Find My Community - The #MGwaves

2020 will go down in the history books as a year full of the word “unprecedented”, won’t it? Well, in the year of an unprecedented global pandemic, I experienced unprecedented success in my journey as a writer. No, I didn’t get an agent or sign a book contract. What I did do is make a decision to take my writing seriously, complete two manuscripts, and get connected with other writers.

Right about the time I decided I’d maybe queried my contemporary manuscript to death I was reminded of Pitch Wars, and I figured, “What the heck, it can’t hurt to submit. Maybe a mentor will choose me and I’ll be able to fix whatever it is that’s stopping me from getting requests.” Spoiler alert: I wasn’t chosen. I didn’t even get a full request from any mentors. What I did get, however, was an amazing community of fellow writers. It started as a support group of middle grade writers to cheer each other on during Pitch Wars. Some people had gotten requests. Some hadn’t. Two ended up getting mentee spots. Since Pitch Wars the group has evolved into a more general writing group. We share resources, read each other’s work, share book recommendations, cheer each others’ successes (so far, three members have gotten agents since Pitch Wars ended and one has gotten an SCBWI mentorship!) and commiserate when we get rejections. The group features members from around the globe, and we’re able to be open and honest with each other and bounce ideas and questions off each other on topics that can be hard to address in the general writing world. We call ourselves the #MGwaves.

We’re doing a blog hop to get to know each other better. I’ll start with myself.

I’m Beth. I grew up in west Michigan, but have spent most of my adult life in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but only started taking my writing seriously about a year ago. I’ve since finished two middle grade novels - a contemporary and a contemporary fantasy. The second one is my true love and the one I’m querying now. I’m also honing in on ideas to take the setting and characters from my contemporary and drop them into a contemporary fantasy story. It turns out I'm better at writing contemporary fantasy than straight contemporary. Just for fun, here's an aesthetic for that hypothetical story.

I always aim to include characters who share the challenges I know intimately - type 1 diabetes (as the parent of a T1D), ADHD (as both an ADHDer and the parent of one), and dyslexia (and the wife and mother of dyslexics). The book I’m querying is THE MOUSECRACKER. It features a boy dancer with type 1 diabetes, two stuck up talking mice, and a version of the beloved Nutcracker story in which the hero is the villain. Here’s the pitch:

Prepare to rethink the Nutcracker. Twelve year old dance William is about to be schooled by a mouse, and traveling to the Kingdom of Sweets as a diabetic is just the beginning - throw in an evil prince, a kidnapped girl, and a possible war.

Here's an aesthetic for THE MOUSECRACKER.

Favorite Advice or Resource:

I’m a plantser, or, as I saw recently on Twitter, a discovery writer. Unlike a plotter, I don’t know exactly where a story is going to go when I start it, but, unlike a true pantser (someone who flies by the seat of their pants), I have a general framework for what will happen when I start. However, I always discover something new along the way. When I started THE MOUSECRACKER I thought William would only travel to the Kingdom of Sweets with one mouse. Then another mouse pushed her way into the story. I don’t really like following other peoples’ advice about how to write and structure a story, but I’ve found two resources that I don’t hate : Story Genius  by Lisa Cron and Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. These books can help me build a general framework and let me check the pace of my story without making me feel stifled.

When you’re ready to query your book, I recommend checking out the Query Shark Blog. This is a great resource for learning what does and what does not work in a query letter. If you want even more guidance, I also recommend Kathy Ver Eecke. She offers several different paid classes to help you find the perfect agent and write the perfect query, as well as an occasional free seminar on query writing as a tease to convince you to buy her other services (which I’ve never done, but which writers I know recommend).

Favorite MG Books:

This is super hard to narrow down, because I've been reading MG since the 1980's and I love so many books devotedly. I'll start with my favorite series that I discovered this year: The Love, Sugar, Magic series by Anna Meriano. Pictured below is the second of the (so far) three books in the series.

The series introduces Leonora (Leo) Logrono, a Mexican American girl from a small town in Texas who learns that the women in her family don't just run a bakery - they are, in fact, brujas concineras - witches of the kitchen would be a good way to say this in English. I love fun stories about witches (spooky stories not so much), Mexican culture (the two degrees I have and don't use are in Spanish), and baked goods (I mean, who doesn't), so this series is a perfect meld of all the things I love. I shared it with my nine year old, who attend a Spanish immersion school and shares my love for the Spanish speaking world, and I think she loved it even more than I did.

My second great discovery this year, actually over the last few years, is the books in the Rick Riordan Presents imprint. I never really thought about it as a kid, but, growing up, nearly all the characters in the books I read and loved looked like me. I mean, sometimes they were boys, and I was super jealous of Anne Shirley's red hair, but they were pretty much all white and most often middle class like me. I fell in love with Rick Riordan's takes on popular mythology and appreciated his introduction of diverse character as the books progressed, but I wanted to learn about stories from even more parts of the world - not just the ones that influence Western culture. My wish was granted when the Rick Riordan Presents imprint was started. I have loved every single book I've read from this imprint. I've introduced them to my daughter and she loves them too. I love that she's growing up reading books with characters who look not only like her, but like all sorts of kids from all sorts of cultures and places. A small selection of these books are pictured below. I'm particularly drawn to those featuring the many cultures of the Spanish speaking world, but they're all great. If you or your kids love magic and adventure you can't go wrong with any book from this imprint.

I could go on, but I'll spare you the many more pages. Sometime soon I'll post about my favorite books from my childhood.

Check out the other MGwaves’ posts to learn about them, what they write, and the awesome resources and books they recommend.

Malia Maunakea

Anushi Mehta

Thushanthi Ponweera

Jennifer Mattern

Susan Leigh Needham

Maureen Mirabito

T.C. Kemper

Sabrina Vienneau

Rebecca Chaney

Kathryn Faye

In Which I Extol the Value of Connecting with Other Writers

 Whether writing is your full time profession, your side gig, or the hobby your pursue in your few snippets of spare time that you really wish you had more time for, it can be a very lonely pursuit. Your actual creating takes place when you're alone in your office, or on the bed or couch with your laptop, or wherever you create. A rare writer might make use of some kind of community office space, but, as a general rule, there's no office filled with people to go into when you're a writer.

That's why it's so important to connect with other writers. Where would I find these writers, you ask? Why, social media, of course. Social media can be a minefield for a writer. There's conflicting advice all over the place, there are published writers making you feel like you'll never be as good as they are, there are all kinds of shiny, fun things to distract you from actually, you know, writing. However, it can also be a gold mine for meeting other writers you connect with. In my experience, the best way to do that is participate in contests, pitch events, and other writing an pitching opportunities available.

I met my first writing friends a year ago when I signed up for a workshop with Kathy Ver Eecke from getabookdeal101.com about perfecting the perfect pitch for a twitter pitch party. I didn't even end up pitching a book that month. I decided my manuscript wasn't ready. However, what did happen was that another woman who writes book for kids asked if any other children's writers would be open to forming a critique group over Facebook. I said I was interested, and, through that group, met three other writers who have been invaluable companions along the path, serving sometimes as beta readers and sometimes as more in depth critique partners. One has since moved to writing for adults, but we still have a lot to give each other.

My second, and even more amazing, find, happened when I applied to Pitch Wars this year. Pitch Wars pairs up writers with mentors who work with them to perfect their manuscript over a few months and ends with an agent showcase. Many, many times more people apply than are accepted for memberships, but there's a lot of buzz about it on Twitter during the application process, and it's pretty easy to spot other writers who are participating in your genre. I was invited into a message group of writers who had submitted middle grade manuscripts, and it was there that I really feel I found "my people". We've since moved most of our conversations over the Slack, but it remains an amazing, diverse group of people with whom I can be totally honest about issues of writing, questions about how to fairly portray characters who are different from me, and more.

Sometimes, as an aspiring published writer, it's easy to get jealous of the social media relationships you observe between published writers. This isn't always true, but often those relationships developed when the writers were going through the query trenches together. If you look around, you too can find writers in whatever stage you're in and band together to support each other. The #mgwaves have formed a bond, so I'm sorry to say you can't jump in with us, but you can find your own group of waves to catch. They might even cheer you on when you buy an ornament to represent your latest book.

In Which I Need to Eat My Words - Which Might Come in Handy Because I Can't Seem to Make Dinner and Write a Book at the Same Time

 Remember earlier this month when  I wrote  that I had stopped setting definite goals by which I absolutely must be agented or published. I was going to take the rest of the month off to read, and I had accepted the fact that I was not going to have a manuscript ready for PitMad in December and that that was okay.

Well, that lasted less than a week. I suddenly got an inspiration for my Nutcracker inspired contemporary fantasy. I knew approximately what would happen and I knew that one of the things driving the MC's desire to succeed in his quest was his desire to prove to himself that he could thrive despite his recent diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. It seems I have a penchant for creating main characters with some type of struggle. As the mother of a type 1 diabetic I am particularly appalled both by the lack of characters in children's books with T1D and by the fact that, on the rare occasion they occur, the condition is often portrayed inaccurately.

From that point on I wrote furiously. New characters appeared that I hadn't even imagined before I started writing, let alone fleshed out (when I'm brainstorming a new book my first step is always to write a background for all of the important characters). It turned out there was another important mouse, a best friend I didn't know existed, and a set of cousins from Germany.

It all went amazingly well. The book is out to beta readers as of yesterday, and, while it's not guaranteed, it's quite possible I will have a new book ready to pitch in December after all. All that contemporary and urban fantasy I was going to read? Yeah, it's still on my to be read pile, otherwise known as the end table beside the big, comfy chair I usually write in.

I'm pretty proud of myself for getting an idea and sticking with it even though it went against my original plan. You know what I'm not proud of, though? The fact that I am apparently incapable of cooking dinner while writing a book. Actually, I need to rewrite that sentence. It is really difficult for me to simultaneously work on a book I'm excited about, supervise remote learning for three kids (only two are mine, but my 4th grader has a podmate who comes to our house), and remember to do the things I need to do to cook dinner.

Monday was the prime example. Plan A for dinner was a pot roast in the crockpot. Well, as soon as I got back from my morning walk I fired up my computer so I could get to work. Between 8:30 and noon I only actually got about an hour of work time, due to a combination of interruptions from kids and my own ridiculous compulsion to check social media instead of actually accomplishing something. When I went into the kitchen to make lunch for the kids I saw the Crockpot on the counter. That had nothing in it. 

I then initiated plan B. I would put a lasagna together after lunch and stick it in the fridge. At 4pm all I had to do was heat up the oven and stick the lasagna in and it would be ready in an hour. At 4pm I dutifully went into the kitchen and turned on the oven. A little after 5 I was helping my high schooler with an assignment and went to check on the lasagna. The oven was working away - heating absolutely nothing. The lasagna, dear readers, was still in the fridge.

There was no time to both cook it and eat it before three of us had to leave for a Cub Scout meeting at 6pm. I stuck it in the oven anyway. My teenager, who was not going to the meeting, go to eat it when it was fresh. My 9 year old, who doesn't like lasagna, ate spaghetti before we had to leave, which she was going to do anyway. My poor husband and I had to wait until after the meeting and eat warmed up lasagna. 

I've been spending some time in the evenings narrating what I wrote that day to my 9 year old. Since I was done, yesterday she asked me about my ideas for my next book. My husband commented, "I'm glad that you're writing and excited about it, but could you figure out how to also make dinner when you're excited about a book?"

I will try mightily. I promise. However, I cannot guarantee that my family will not be eating cereal for dinner at some point.

In Which There Is No Deadline By Which I Must Find an Agent or Be Published

I've been putting myself under a lot of pressure lately. I started taking my writing seriously as an actual potential career about a year ago. Through joining a challenge to prepare for a twitter pitch event I connected with a group of other writers and joined a Facebook group. I decided the novel I wrote 16 years ago wasn't quite ready for prime time, so I had some of those writers read it, got feedback, made some changes (including switching the gender of an important secondary character), and decided it was ready to pitch in March.

My dream came true a couple hours into the event. An agent at a pretty prestigious agency liked my pitch, which was invitation to query. I queried with great excitement. Just so I'd have some possible competitors if this agent made an offer, I queried half a dozen other carefully selected agents. I had my query letter critiqued and made it the best I thought it could be. 

The agent got back to me saying that she liked my idea but wasn't drawn in by the opening chapters. All the other agents passed as well. Two offered personal feedback saying specifically why the opening chapters hadn't drawn them in but saying that they liked the idea. I decided that I was done querying that manuscript for the time being and that, at some point, I would pull it back out and make some major revisions.

I then started work on a new idea and got one chapter in when school was "temporarily" cancelled. Spoiler alert: my kids still aren't back in traditional school. The book is an urban fantasy featuring fairies and I decided I wanted to do more research on fairies from around the world before I got far into the writing. I had requested several books from the library - then the library closed. I decided to shelve that idea.

Then I remembered a story idea that I talked about with a friend in the last lunch out I had this year. I rolled with it, and that main character, Anna Ono, grabbed ahold of my heart and mind in a way no other character I've written about ever has. I finished the first draft  in five weeks. I was absolutely certain that this book was "the one," the book that would get me an agent and my first book deal. 

I had the book beta read, polished, and ready to pitch in the June PitMad event. I got no agent likes. Not to be deterred, I researched agents and sent out query letters full of hope. I got form rejections or nothing at all. I researched more agents and sent out more query letters. I got a few personalized rejections and changed the opening chapters based on the feedback. I changed up my query.

I got a full request, then waited and waited. The agent who requested my full liked my pitch in the September PitMad Twitter pitch. I was very hopeful. A week later she got back to me. She had liked the story, but she hadn't loved it enough to make an offer.

Even before that, I had started another book. I started the first chapter the last week of July. I figured even if it took me 2-3 months to finish a draft I could still have it beta read and polished in time to pitch in December. It's a contemporary fantasy based on The Nutcracker. I figured December was the perfect time to pitch it. Then the book stalled in chapter 4. I still can't figure out precisely how the boy and his mouse sidekick are going to save the day. I seem to be really awesome at writing 1-5 chapters and not nearly as awesome at actually completing a whole book.

So I set it aside. I went back to fairy related urban fantasy that stalled after chapter 1 back in March. I made some major changes to the main characters. I massively changed the original plot I had in mind. I got four chapters in. Then I stalled. I decided to write out a plot summary, which I've never done before. I'm about 2/3 through I think and now that has stalled. 

It's October 6th. There's no way I'm going to have a polished manuscript ready to pitch in December. If by some miracle one of the agents who has a query for Anna Ono hasn't offered representation before that I'll pitch it again, but I'm beginning to feel that it may not be "the one" after all. I still love the character, believe in her story, and want to share her with the world, but I'm wondering if her story simply isn't engaging enough to be the one that an agent falls in love with at first sight. Perhaps it's the one I'll have to bring to my agent after a different story has been accepted and say, "Hey, what do you think about this?"

I finally decided that I was done putting pressure on myself. Many writers take years to finish a draft of a novel, and that's okay. I don't need to put myself on any particular timeline. Right now I'm taking some time off writing and spending the next 2-4 weeks reading recently released middle grade urban fantasy. Maybe it will spark an idea, maybe it will just give me a deeper knowledge of the craft, maybe it will just give my brain a break. Probably a bit of all three.

Two of the writers I met through Facebook now have agents and books on submission to publishers. I know my writing is as good as theirs, and, because of that, I spent way too much time being jealous of them and setting deadlines by which I absolutely positively needed to reach the place they had reached. I'm giving myself permission to let go of that. I believe my writing is good and will someday find a place on shelves. I'm not setting a deadline on when that has to happen. 

In Which I Receive Bad Writing News, but Pizza, a Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie, and the Twitter #WritingCommunity Make Me Feel Better

Remember how I posted recently about how an agent I really liked had my full manuscript and I was hoping to hear good news soon? Well, I heard news. Sadly, it was not good news. Friday evening I obsessively checked my email for, like, the 12th time that day and I had an email from the agent. Since it was a generic "submission reply from____" through Query Manager I didn't have much hope. Many agents call to make an offer. However, I don't have any hard evidence of how this particular agent operates, so it was always possible she would send a message through Query Manager to set up a call.

You've probably figured out by now that that was not what she was doing. She basically said she likes my premise a lot but didn't love the actual book enough to want to represent it. She gave one criticism, that she felt the pace was a bit slow, but basically the problem was that she had quite a few great manuscripts to choose between and, though she liked mine, she didn't like it enough to choose it over something else. 

I'd actually been afraid I was going to get a message to that effect since Wednesday, when this agent tweeted that one of the hardest things about being an agent is not being able to represent everything she requests in full. My first thought was, "So, what category does my manuscript fit in for you? The chosen or the regretfully rejected?"

So, weirdly, because of that tweet I felt sort of mentally prepared. That doesn't mean it didn't feel like a punch in the gut, it just didn't feel like quite as hard a punch. My husband and teenage son had just left for a weekend backpacking trip, so I couldn't even go home and cry to him. I texted the news, and to his credit, he did send a nice text back. I told my 9 year old, and she was appropriately disappointed for me, especially since she really likes the book and wants it to be published, but she didn't really understand what I was going through.

The people who did understand were other writers.I tweeted about my disappointment, and the Twitter #WrtingCommunity really stepped up. So far, two days later, I've gotten 419 likes, 10 retweets, and 4 quote tweets. That blows statistics for all my other tweets out of the water. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I added up all the likes for my other tweets for the past 6 1/2 months since I joined Twitter they would not equal 419. I also got about 100 comments commiserating and/or telling me to hang in there and that I'll find the right agent someday. 

I'd still much rather have gotten an offer than a rejection, but, since I had to get a rejection, it's nice that it resulted in so much support. Particularly in the divisive political climate we live in, having 419 people, all but about three of whom don't know you, is a pretty amazing demonstration that people can, in fact, be nice to each other when they want to be.

The other thing that made me feel better was having pizza and a movie night with my 9yo. If I had not just gotten a rejection I would probably have clicked "no" when Mad Mushroom asked if I wanted a dessert before I paid for the pizza, but it's awfully hard to muster up the self control to turn down a giant chocolate chip cookie when one version of your dream has just been crushed, so I didn't turn it down. It turns out Mad Mushroom doesn't just make the only pizza my super pick 9yo will eat. They also makes an amazing giant chocolate chip cookie.

So now it's back to the querying trenches, or really just reacknowledging that that's where I still am and may be for awhile. It's also back to work more seriously on my work in progress, so that I can query that one and let the current one in through the back door if that's not the one that gets me an agent.

Most people who aren't writers have the ideas that actually writing the books is the hard part of being a writer. Don't get me wrong. It's not easy and takes a lot of work. However, it can actually be accomplished relatively quickly if an idea gets ahold of you and you have the time to let it take you where it wants to lead you. Actually getting that brilliant book you produced published and in the hands of readers, whether you're searching for an agent, submitting directly to small presses, or publishing independently, is a million times harder in my humble opinion.

To end, because I really like including pictures and I didn't take one of the pizza or the cookie and sharing a screenshot of Twitter seems hokey, here are pics of my cats. The tabby boy is Daniel Tiger and the black girl is Shadow. And before you asked, no, Daniel Tiger is not named after the cartoon character or the puppet who inspired him. He's named after Daniel Boone because he's an intrepid explorer.

In Which Writing and Supervising Remote Learning Don't Mix Very Well

 My kids are now on day 12 of remote learning. In Kentucky remote learning is known as nontraditional instruction, NTI for short. Some districts have been using a version of NTI for years on days that would otherwise have been cancelled for weather. Our district never chose to do that, but they did do "pandemic NTI" this spring after it became clear that we weren't returning to in person school. Educationally, it was kind of a disaster. My 3rd grader learned nothing and was not a fan. My 9th grader learned a little bit and didn't hate it as much, but neither kid had a good end to the school year.

The one good thing about the pretty light amount of responsibility for them was that it meant a light amount of responsibility for me as the parent supervising their learning. I started writing a new book about a week after they came home in mid March, and I had finished it by mid May.  By mid June I had gotten it beta read and revised and was ready to query. I did this by taking every single spare moment to write. I wrote while my daughter was doing her schoolwork. I sent her to watch Netflix and wrote. I brought a camp chair and my laptop and wrote while my daughter played in the creek at a local park and my son rode on the mountain bike trails. 

It was super helpful that I was passionate about my main character and felt like she was living inside my brain and demanding that I tell her story. I was able to get her story out on the page pretty quickly because it was constantly being built inside my head.

The good news about this fall is that remote learning, which our superintendent is calling NTI 2DL (the 2DL stands for differentiated distance learning) is infinitely better than the spring version of NTI. The teachers have actually received a little bit of training in remote teaching and the district has invested in technology that makes it easier to achieve. My kids are actually learning stuff. Another improvement is that we've expanded our Covid bubble to bring in a classmate for our 4th grader. The girls are both much happier this fall than they were in the spring, and, though they also sometimes distract each other, they most often spur each other on to do their best work. They can also help each other if one girl gets kicked out of zoom, which happens less than it did the first few days but still happens.

My 10th grader is also getting good content, though I don't feel like he's getting quite enough since for some unfathomable reason they've decided to do each class only twice a week. Overall, though, the kids have actually been learning new content and feeling engaged in school this fall, which is a good thing for them and for their educational futures.

It is, however, not a great thing for my writing. It turns out the average 4th grader has pretty pathetic typing skills. And, guess what, the classwork for remote learning often involves typing. This means that I basically serve as secretary for my daughter and her classmate whenever they have an assignment that involves a lot of typing. For short assignments I make them do it themselves, but, if they have to type a few sentences or more, it's so much less frustrating for all of us if I just step in and do the typing. Otherwise they're hunting and pecking for 20 minutes just to write three sentences. Oh, and this whole time they're asking me how to spell every third word, even more often if the words are in Spanish (they attend a Spanish immersion school and I used to be a Spanish teacher).

Add to this the fact that my 10th grader emerges from his "schoolroom" in the office downstairs several times a day to ask me to look over something or help him with something (because, surprise surprise, remote learning is pretty much the worst possible way to start learning a foreign language, just for instance) and I don't have very  few solid blocks of time during which I'm not interrupted. I also never know precisely when and how long those blocks will be. 

This makes writing just about impossible. I have a new work in progress started. It all began with a question that my daughter asked me last December when she was dancing as a mouse in The Nutcracker (between them, my kids have danced in 11 Nutcrackers, though, sadly, neither is currently taking dance so there would be no Nutcracker parenting this year even if not for the pandemic). She asked, "What if the mouse king won the battle?" I didn't have a great answer at the time, but the question stuck in my brain and, almost a year later, has emerged as a story that centers around a reimagining of the Nutcracker in which the roles of hero and villain are reversed.

I like the story I've come up with. I believe in it, but, since school started, I've made absolutely no progress on it. I started really well late this summer. I checked out every single book about mice (the story features a talking mouse) or The Nutcracker that our library had and I brought them with me on a visit to my parents' house in Michigan. I spent a lot of time reading on the 8 hour drive up. I also spent some time reading in the "mobile office" I set up in the back of our minivan while our son rode at one of the many mountain bike parks within a half hour of my parents's house (it turns out there's much better mountain biking in West Michigan than there is in Central Kentucky). I got an outline for the story down and even started the first two chapters.

I was so excited about how well it was going. I was hoping that, if I didn't get an agent through this round of querying my current book, I might have the new one ready to pitch during Pitch Madness in December. I figured December would be the perfect month to pitch a Nutcracker themed book. Given that we're 1/3 of the way through September and I'm on chapter 5, I think that it extremely unlikely that's going to happen. I'm crossing my fingers that the full manuscript I have out to an agent results in an offer of representation. If I have an agent there's no pressure to finish something else in time to get it ready to pitch to agents on a particular timetable. I'd still want to work on it, of course, and, if I do get an offer, I'm hoping my hypothetical agent will love my WIP as much as they love my current project. Maybe knowing there will be someone to rep it to publishers after it's done will motivate me. Only time will tell if this hypothetical situation comes to pass.

In the meantime, the one thing supervising remote schooling has allowed me to do is pursue activities that work better for me even with frequent interruptions. Starting this blog is an example of that. At least I'm writing, even if I'm not writing a story. Another activity I've been making more time for is reading. I've read some great recent middle grade books which, though they don't  related to directly to anything I plan to write, can help me become a better writer and also give me a picture of the current market. Because, like it or not, understanding what will actually sell is part and parcel of being a writer. I've also done some reading my own education (I'm slowly making my way through Stamped from the Beginning) and my own enjoyment (I just received a copy of my friend Allison's newest romance novel, Since September. 

I'm hoping this role of remote learning supervisor will just be a short blip in my life and I'll soon be back to having more time to write. Either that or I'm going to have to make my ADHD brain hyperfocus on my WIP so I actually get it done. It's definitely an interesting time in history to be a writer and a parent.

In Which I am a Majority Culture Author in a World in Which #WeNeedDiverseBooks

 As I mentioned in my first post, I was privileged as a child and still am as an adult to read books featuring main characters that are mostly like me. This is because I'm white, abled, cisgender, heterosexual, and upper middle class. I do not truly belong to any marginalized community. I know plenty of women who have experienced gender discrimination, but I have never personally felt it (though it may have happened to me without me knowing about it, of course). I identify with the neurodiverse community because I have ADHD, but I didn't even know this until I was in my 40's (I just though I was spacey and disorganized) and, because I've set up a lot of scaffolding for myself, I can "pass" as neurotypical in most situations. It's only behind the scenes that my ADHD tends to show itself.

Despite this, as I shared in my first post, I have a passion to create stories and characters to which a greater diversity of kids can relate. I love books that that portray diverse characters. I fell in love with Rick Riordan's mythology inspired books when my son was in elementary school, and I love how the Rick Riordan Presents imprint has allowed authors from diverse backgrounds to showcase stories inspired by myths and legends from their own underrepresented cultures. I also love the diverse cast of characters that Rick Riordan himself created. I've recently discovered some great series books featuring nonWhite girls as the stars. My 9 yo also loves these.

The question I face as a nonmarginalized author is, at what point does creating a carefully researched character from a culture that is not my own cross the line into cultural appropriation? Should I just err on the side of caution and only create characters who are like me as a child? I don't think so, but I do think I and other authors like me need to proceed with caution.

An example of this is Anna Ono, the 9yo protagonist from the book I'm currently querying, which I hope will be the first in a series. Anna is half Japanese and half Swedish. Her mother is an immigrant from Sweden and her father is Japanese American. Her multiethnicity first began as an accident. I wanted to create a character who was obsessed with palindromes due to both her first and last names being palindromes. Anna was easy to hit upon, but the only palindrome surname I could come up with that sounded at all reasonable with Anna was Ono, which would mean she had Japanese heritage.

I first reached out to a multiethnic friend to ask her opinion on whether it would be okay for me, as a white author, to create a multiethnic character. My friend's response was, "Maybe, if you approach it sensitively and do a lot of research." I decided to forge ahead and really own Anna Ono's multiethnic identity as a big part of the story. 

I think I succeeded. I hope I did. The friend I approached with the idea was one of my beta readers and approved of the way I approached the topic. Another friend who is a person of color and the child of immigrants said it was well done. If the book gets published I hope the readers, especially multiethnic readers, understand that I approached this character carefully and thoughtfully. I intended to create a unique character who will be loved by many and allow multiethnic kids who discover her to feel "seen" in a book, perhaps for the first time, and did not intend to imply that I know all there is to know about the multiethnic experience.

I am, of course, not the first white author to have created a nonwhite character. For a long time, nonwhite characters (the few there were) were only created by white authors. This is because white authors were the only ones being published. There's still a huge problem in the publishing industry with nonwhite authors not being represented or published at the rate they should be. There's a movement by some in the industry to begin to change that.

This is being partly addressed by the creation of a Twitter pitch party called #DVPit.  In case you don't know, Twitter pitch parties are events in which authors are invited to pitch their book in the form of a tweet during a certain timespan in a certain day using a certain set of hashtags. Agents (and some acquisitions editors) will peruse the feed. If a pitch intrigues them, they will like it, which is an invitation for the writer to submit more.

The original pitch party, as far as I know, is Pitch Madness, or #pitmad for short. This one is open to anyone. It's been followed by pitch events specific to picture books, faith based fiction, romance, and quite a few others. #DVPit is one of the newer pitch events and it's specifically for writers from marginalized communities. There's no policing. Any author who identifies with a marginalized community is invited to pitch.

There's been a controversy on Twitter recently involving a not at all marginalized author who pitched in DVPit despite not belonging to a marginalized community (and even justified it by stating on their blog that we're all marginalized in some way), got an agent through the event, and now has a book deal for a book representing a culture to which the writer doesn't belong and which presents a misrepresentation of that culture. 

I don't think I've done that with Anna Ono. I definitely did not and will not participate in a Twitter event that's not intended for me. I do feel I'm treading a fine line, however. And, no I don't share this to say "Woe is me." I enjoy a ton of advantages that are completely unrelated to anything I've done. I want to create books with characters that aren't all the suburban white kids I mostly read about during my childhood.  I hope I can do this thoughtfully and sensitively.