Last January, Katie and I attended the NYC conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. As anyone who’s ever been to a conference of 1200+ people can imagine, it was a weekend of contagious energy, slightly numb rear-ends, and spinning minds. No doubt Katie and I could both write endlessly about all the things we thought about at the conference and have discovered since. Today I’d like to talk about ideas and where to find them.

Surely, lots of ideas come from our own experiences or people watching or imagining what-if situations. But Regina Brooks of Serendipity Literary Agency gave me a new idea (though it may be old hat to you). She suggested writing about a current news headline from a child’s perspective. Now I scour the paper for ideas and have a clipping file.

Here’s a sampling from today’s Jackson Hole Daily, a local paper in my hometown:

Latin Resource Center rings in Cinco de Mayo

How ‘endocrine disrupter’ chemicals negatively affect us

4 students killed at Syrian university

Pepsi revives Michael Jackson promotion

and my personal favorite,

Inmates take on cats as pet project

What a range of topics — some political and disturbing, others emotional and heartfelt. And don’t forget, humorous. Think of all the places you could run with any of those headlines. Endocrine disruption could be sci-fi or dystopian. Pepsi and Michael Jackson might inspire a dance-off for a middle grade novel. A dual language book about a community Cinco de Mayo celebration would be fun as well as informative.

The recent news of student deaths in Syria is both shocking and severe, and I apologize if the inclusion of that headline seems to cross some invisible line. But to say that kids — albeit older young adults — wouldn’t be able to handle such a topic would do those readers a disservice. Writing about emotionally and intellectually charged books can be done tastefully and without judgement. Take, for example, Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. The book details a teen’s journey during Stalin’s forced relocation of Lithuanians during World War II. Ms. Sepetys’s story is heartbreaking, but so important and eye-opening. So, do not be afraid.

I encourage you to experiment with headlines – for your writing, teaching, or whatever else you do. As for the headlines above, they’re fair game. Let’s see what you can come up with.

I’ve found that I love scouring the paper (and yes, it’s actual paper and not internews, and  yes, I do read the articles) and my clipping file is overflowing. So I say, Thank you, Regina!, and hope that someday I might do one of those headlines justice.

-Joanna

I recently read that the writing process takes place all the time, not just in front of a computer or with pen in hand. And of course, I wondered if this was true for me. I covet my time with a notebook or at the keyboard, because that is when the ideas get recorded and fleshed out. And I’d gripe about all the time I wanted to spend that way but couldn’t because life — parenting, cooking, etc. — kept getting in the way. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I am often writing without any physical tools.

On a recent trip to Southern Utah, a completely new idea came to me while I was hiking. Looking back, I can’t even recall what ignited the spark of this story. Regardless, the idea spun around in my head while we are hiking desert trails and making s’mores and driving across the open, stark country. Today is Paul Theroux’s birthday; he is a well-known travel writer. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that writers should leave home in order to write. I think he was implying that travel allowed writers an escape from the pressures of writing (representation, finances, publication, etc.) but I also think that travel can help spark new ideas, even when a writer isn’t looking for one. And there I was, hiking through slot canyons with my toddler, ruminating on this new idea, feeling the characters come to life, testing out the voice, and realizing all the nuance this story would require.

Rumination is a good word for it. Because I am chewing and rechewing an idea to test its viability (in my eyes, of course). Each time I revisit it, some new twist or realization comes with it, and it becomes increasingly digestible as a story. Okay, enough with the ruminant metaphor.

The point is that knowing that the writing process is ongoing, can occur without a computer, has freed me from the trap of not having enough time. Of course, I’ll never have enough time to write. I always seem to want more, especially as more  and more ideas form in my head. But I can work on them anytime — in the car, on a bike ride, at the grocery store. This flexibility becomes crucial at some point, because then when I come back to the keyboard or pen, the ideas flow freely and I spend considerably less time staring at the pushpin holes scarring the wall. And truthfully, few of my stories have come to me while I was sitting at the computer. Most have come while I was doing something else, forcing me to silently repeat the plot or opening lines so that I wouldn’t forget them before getting to a computer.

Do you write in your head or do you pull from your subconscious while typing away? How does time away from your life — through travel — affect your writing?

Many writers these days reveal that writing was their childhood dream. I always wanted to be a writer. That’s not true for me, at least I have no distinct memory of it. I wanted to be a park ranger or maybe a surgeon. Let’s skip the surgical dream, since it never came true. But I did become an interpretive park ranger in Yosemite National Park, and recently I’ve noticed how similar that job is to the one I’m aspiring to now. I found a thought provoking quote from science fiction writer Brian Aldiss that helped me see the connection between my two lives.

There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.

– Brian Aldiss

In my previous career as an interpretive ranger, my goal was to make people think and to make them wonder. Connecting people to the cultural and natural history of national parks meant asking people to reflect on what it means to be human, how humans fit into the bigger world around us, and just how remarkable that world is. When I was a ranger, visitors joined my walks or snuggled close to my campfires, to hear what I had to say about the park. The commitment on their part was short–maybe an hour or two. Mostly, I addressed a choir of already loyal nature lovers and park supporters (you know who you are). And hopefully, they came away thinking and wondering, or at least having enjoyed a good crepuscular howl at the moon.

As a writer, I strive for the same goal. But the parameters are different.  Rather than using inspirational scenery to draw people in, I must develop abstract landscapes through the written word. It’s a different experience, and in many ways significantly more difficult, than my previous work. In Yosemite, I relied on an existing history, raw material if you will, to draw inspiration from and only had to find the magic within the material before me–cultural stories and natural events–in order to pull people in and inspire them. Now, I spend time crafting an entirely new world–even if the story has a contemporary setting. Most days I’m writing at the computer and very often in my head, mulling over scenes and characters and storylines, and I spend an awful lot of time staring at certain points on my wall in search of inspiration. How I miss the glorious days of a life spent outside! But I love the process of pulling something out of nothing, or at least out of less. And, of course, I love seeing how close I can come to inspiring reflection and wonder with my writing.

Come to think of it, I read books for the same reasons. To think and wonder.

Why do you?

While you consider this, I’m going outside. My new work-in-progress, Momentum, is a based in a ski town. The snow is melting fast and I could use a bit more snowy inspiration. Guess I’m not stuck inside or without raw material after all.

-Joanna