From the flap copy of EVERY DAY AFTER:
Trouble has rained down on Lizzie Hawkins. Her daddy has
deserted the family, her mama is silent with sadness, and the bank is after
their house.
Daddy always said Lizzie was born to succeed, but right now
she can’t even hold on to her top grades or her best friend, Ben. Bratty
newcomer Erin Sawyer has weaseled both away from Lizzie, yet Erin won’t be
satisfied until Lizzie is out of her hair for good, packed off straight to the
nearest orphanage.
But Lizzie refuses to lose what’s left of her family. With
the bank deadline fast approaching, Erin causing strife at every turn, and Mama
and Ben slipping away from her, Lizzie finds comfort writing in her journal and
looking at Daddy’s face in the heirloom locket he left her. She’s keeping her
head high and holding onto hope that Daddy returns on her twelfth birthday.
Still, she can’t help wondering: Why did Daddy have to leave? And can I save us
if he doesn’t come home?
Times may be tough in Bittersweet, Alabama, but the
unsinkable Lizzie Hawkins will inspire readers with her resilience and
determination.
I met Laura at the SCBWI Springmingle this past February. We started talking in between presentations and hit it off right away. Laura is incredibly sweet and encouraging towards other writers. I'm so excited she's willing to share her inspiring publishing journey with us.
Laura, you have such a unique publishing journey in that
you submitted directly to an editor you met at a conference. Would you mind telling us a little more about that?
I’d be happy to! I began work on Every Day After (then By the Light of the Moon) late in 2009. It
was fall of 2010 before I had a viable manuscript that I slowly began submitting
to agents and a few editors.
By last spring, I’d accrued around
thirty rejections. Sixty percent were form rejections, but the other forty
percent were personal rejections containing lovely, encouraging comments with the
dreaded “but” at the end. “Too quiet” was the typical criticism.
As a writer, I’d heard the oft-repeated
advice about not giving up on a manuscript until you’d submitted it at least
one-hundred times. Alas, I did not
follow this advice. I shelved it, believing that the current publishing market
was not in favor of my “too quiet” story, and I began work on a second story—darker
and louder—that straddled the fence between
middle grade and YA. This new story blended past events with a near-future
setting, so I threw myself into outlining and historical research. Still, the
shelved manuscript kept nagging at me. Deep down I knew I’d given up too soon, but
I was determined to wait for just the right time before submitting it again.
Several months later, the Midsouth
region of the SCBWI announced the attending faculty for their 2011 Fall
Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. My pulse quickened as I read the list of
names: Linda Sue Park (Newbery-winning author!), Ruta Sepetys (author of the
best-selling and beautiful Between Shades
of Gray), Erin Murphy (beloved agent who only takes queries through
referrals or conferences), Michelle Poploff (super-star editor of books such as
Moon Over Manifest and Hattie Big Sky), and more. It was the
conference line-up sent straight from heaven. I signed-up as soon as
registration opened, but I decided against the one-on-one critiques and extra
workshops. My new story was nowhere near ready, and I knew By the Light had been edited, revised, and critiqued to death. I
wasn’t going to put the manuscript—or myself—through that. I wanted to go solely
to learn.
Come September, I made the journey
from Birmingham to Nashville, and poured over the schedule of sessions in my
hotel room. During the conference, I listened intently, straining for any hint
that one of the attending editors or agents might be interested in acquiring a
manuscript like mine.
The first half of the day yielded
just one possibility—Erin Murphy. She liked quiet books. She seemingly
preferred them. She was placed on my submissions list. I went through the rest
of the day with no further additions. I either felt they weren’t the right fit,
or they were way out of my literary league (Michelle Poploff, anyone?).
Back at home, I resurrected the
story that had been laid to rest and gave it one last scrub through. I had an
inkling that the opening chapter wasn’t as strong as it could be, but filled
with post-conference enthusiasm, I sent a query to the lone name on my
list—Erin Murphy. I knew she was the
one. I could feel it. I was elated when she requested the opening chapters of By the Light of the Moon, and…
I was totally devastated when she
turned it down. Soon, the devastation warped into anger (not at Erin, but me)
and determination. I reworked the opening, shifting chapter one to chapter
four. I wrote a stronger opening paragraph, one I thought raised appropriate
questions and hinted at the core issues and themes of the story. It was now two
months post-conference, and my husband encouraged me to not sell myself short. At
his prodding, I printed off the first three chapters and assembled a
submissions package for Michelle Poploff. He knew I’d loved her session at the
conference and the books she’d edited. She’s super-smart, and has a list of
authors to die for. At least I’d know I tried, right? I said a quick prayer, dropped
the manila envelope into the mail, then tried to forget about it.
On the Monday after Thanksgiving,
at 8:30 in the morning, my cell phone rang. It was a 212 area code, but I assumed
it was a random sales call and let the voicemail get it. I was day-dreaming
about how nice it would be to get a call from a real, live editor when my
voicemail alerted me to a new message. I was in the car with my husband at the
time, and put the message on speaker. The female caller said, “Hello, this is
Michelle Poploff calling from Random House Children’s Books. This message is
for Laura Golden.” I grabbed my husband’s arm. I couldn’t believe what I was
hearing. She liked the opening chapters. She wanted to see the full manuscript.
She’d tried to email me several days before, but I’d never received it. I’m so
glad I didn’t. Receiving that voicemail was…I can’t even describe it.
“I knew it. I knew it,” my husband
kept saying.
I tried to calm him down. “She
hasn’t read the whole thing yet.”
But I guess he did know. Two weeks after I sent off the
full, Michelle emailed me requesting a phone call. It was set for December 13th.
I was a complete wreck, afraid I’d come off as a total idiot, and that she’d
consequently change her mind about my manuscript. My fears were unnecessary.
She was extremely gracious and warm, and I relaxed just a few minutes into the
call. She wanted to see a round of revisions, and was sending a marked up copy
of my manuscript back to me. I could look through it, think it all over, chew
on it for a while, and decide if I wanted to tackle the revisions. Of course, I
did!
I spent the next month going back
and forth with Michelle, coming up with a defined plan for revision. I sent her
a detailed, chapter-by-chapter outline on January 17, and by 2:00pm the next
day, my phone was ringing. It was Michelle calling to make an offer on By the Light of the Moon—before I’d even
completed the revisions. I was surprised, thrilled, euphoric, and any other
term of supreme happiness you can think of. The story I’d shelved months back
had finally made its way to the desk of the exact right person at the exact
right time.
Since the offer, the manuscript
been re-titled, it has grown from 34,000 words to over 50,000, and is currently
going through copyedits. Not too far from now, on a lovely spring day in 2013,
I’ll finally get to hold my very own book in my hands, and I’ll have to
re-thank my husband for forcing me to muster up the courage to submit to the
unattainable editor who ended up being the one.
Prior to this conference that catapulted you into Authordom (yes, that's a word),
what had your pre-published journey been like?
Like every other aspiring
author’s—fraught with highs and lows. I’d always been a reader, and had
tinkered around with writing on-and-off throughout my childhood, but I never
dreamed I’d become a writer. Frankly, I began consistently writing only about
six years ago because I felt I had no other talent. I can’t carry a tune in a
bucket. My eight-year-old paints better than I do. I’m not especially good at
arts-and-crafts. I tried them all, but failed to stick with any of them.
One day in 2006, I saw a print ad
for the Institute of Children’s Literature. I registered, and I haven’t looked
back. Like many other writers, I have days I feel like quitting or times I
severely doubt my ability to put together a coherent sentence, but I’m always
pulled back to writing.
Prior to the acceptance of Every Day After, I’d only achieved
publication once—a historical fiction piece about the rise of the Nazi party. It
was published in the May/June 2008 issue of Learning Through History, a
small educational magazine that had a circulation of about 10,000. It folded
shortly thereafter.
But I did what we all, at one
point or another, choose to do: keep pressing forward. And the rest, as they
say, is history.
What advice can you give to those of us still trying to
achieve our writing dreams?
Marry a husband like mine! Just
kidding.
In all seriousness, if you haven’t
already, I whole-heartedly recommend joining the SCBWI. It’s a great organization
that grants us aspiring authors the opportunity to learn first-hand from the
heaviest of heavy-weight editors, agents, and fellow authors. The resources
they provide more than out-weigh the membership fee.
Next, get thee over to Verla Kay’s blue boards.
It’s a supportive and caring community of children’s book writers (many
published), agents, and even a few editors. Have a question? Ask and the answer
shall be given to you. Need to vent anonymously? Go ahead, and more than a few
members will rush to sympathize with you (or give you a good kick in the pants,
if you need). Every one of us on the blue boards is eternally indebted to Verla
Kay for maintaining such an awesome gathering place for the kidlit community.
Next, we’ve all heard it, and we
don’t want to hear it again, but it’s so important. Read. Lots. When I slack
off on my reading, I can definitely see the quality of my writing decline.
Reading published books is like a constant refresher course in what makes
writing publishable. And don’t restrict your reading to the award-winners and
critically-acclaimed. Read widely. If you can identify the different strengths
and weaknesses of published books, you’ll soon begin spotting the strengths and
weaknesses in your own work.
Finally, and most importantly, write
what you love, and never give up. Don’t do as I did. Don’t give up too soon and
force yourself to try and keep pace with an ever-changing marketplace. If you
write what you love, it will show in your story, and soon enough, someone else
(the right someone else) will love your story, too.
If you could have any super human ability, what would it be?
Oh, my. This is the hardest
question ever. *Furrows brows, bites lip, and ponders this question for way too
long* (No, I absolutely did NOT spend days on this question! Why would you
think that?)
OK, I’d have to say the ability to
become invisible. I am the world’s biggest dork. Seriously. I am the one who
falls in front of fifty people. I am the one smiling ear-to-ear without
realizing I have broccoli stuck in my front teeth. I am the one whose mind
blanks when conversing with important people. So, it’d be nice to literally
fade into the background any time I royally embarrass myself—which is often.
By the way, I wanted to come up
with an über-cool
ability here, but my mind blanked. Again.
Yes, I can think of a couple instances where invisibility would have come in quite handy. Thank you for sharing your publishing journey with us Laura!
If you'd like to spend more time with Laura or get further information about EVERY DAY AFTER check out her very cozy website.
