Monday morning listmaking

It’s Monday morning, but my head is already focused on Friday, when I fly to Michigan for their SCBWI Fall Conference. I’ll spend Sunday on airplanes and in airports hopscotching across to Portland, Oregon.

You can catch me a week from today kicking off Teen Read Week by delivering the 2007 Teen Author Lecture, courtesy of the Multnomah County Library System in Portland. Tuesday I will be speaking at Parkrose High School (event closed to the public, sorry), and Wednesday will be spent knitting and/or scribbling on airplanes as I head back to the East Coast.

Along with the finishing touches on those speeches, I need to get a big hunk of the revised historical off to my editor, finish going through the copyedited manuscript of next year’s non-fiction historical picture book (I can’t WAIT to show you the art!!!) and answer a bunch of email relating to NCTE that piled up when our computers were sick. Oh, and work on my new YA.

I am already tired.

If you are interested in writing and publishing books for kids and teens, go to WGTD and poke around until you find the archive interview from this morning with Putnam editor Tim Travaglini. Be patient when you listen. The first gentleman interviewed, John Stewig, talks for a bit about the upcoming workshop at the Carthage Center for Children’s Literature in Kenosha, WI. John’s voice reminded me so much of Mr. Rogers (I miss him!) that I found myself reaching for graham crackers and milk.

Tim talks about the requirements of being an editor (“take a vow of poverty… be a masochist”) as well as many of the practical business aspects of publishing. After the interview with John and Tim, the station replays an interview from 2005 with Jonathan Stroud, author of The Bartimaeus Trilogy.

If you need a boost of inspiration after listening to that dose of reality, read about Christopher Paul Curtis talking about his new book.

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