A Word with Doug Wilhelm

Over the weekend I got this question via email from a middle schooler at Magnolia Science Academy in San Diego, California:

Do you have any advice for a new author? Because I’m writing a book (I know, I’m a kid, but I’m a pretty good writer).

Here’s my response:

1. Keep a notebook. This can be any type of notebook, big or small, plain or fancy, but it should be separate from your regular school notebooks. You can carry this writer’s notebook everywhere, or lock it up in your room at home to stay private — but try to write in it every day. Some writers just use their notebooks to jot down observations and ideas. Others keep a “freewriting” time when they write anything, really, in their notebook for, say, ten minutes, or to fill three pages. I suggest that you take the second approach mainly. If you make time, even just ten minutes, to write in your notebook each day, you’ll start to develop a relationship with it; and the more you have that, the more you’ll have a relationship with writing. Most writers’ notebooks are the place where their ideas first hatch.

At first, or before too long, writing in your notebook will start to seem like a chore, yet another thing you’re supposed to do. If you keep doing it anyway, you’ll start to look forward to spending time with it. Then your writer’s notebook can become a friend in your life — a friend for your life. But you have to give it your time and energy, especially after the first excitement of having it and writing in it start to flag. Push through that, and you’ll begin to build something real.

2. If you have a writing project you want to complete, like a story, write on it a bit every day at the same time if you can. If you miss a day, that’s okay, but do your best to write every day that you can. You may only have half an hour, say before dinner or before bed — but if you come back to your writing at this time every day, before long you will realize that you’ve really started to accomplish something. Don’t wait and think you need a whole weekend or a week to write. Instead, make it a part of your everyday life. Writing at the same time every day lets the mysterious inner rhythms of creative work start to develop and prepare to help you, each time you come to your project.

3. If you’ve written something you think may be promising or possibly good, don’t decide you’re done at that point — because that’s almost always just the beginning. Ask someone you trust for their feedback, and listen to what they say. Try to read your own work — this is very important! — as if you were coming to it for the first time. Be honest with yourself: does what you’ve written work as well as it possibly could? If you can then see how to make your work better, take a deep breath, be grateful for the insight and the ideas, and start working on the next draft.

Understand that writing is always a process. If you think, “I have to be done with this,” then you won’t be able to write well. If you can always be trying to learn how to improve your work — if you can always be open to the process, no matter whether it takes you through two drafts or ten — then you have a chance to do good work. And that’s all that any of us ever have: the chance to do good work. The more you do it, the more you’ll learn to trust the creative process, give it your best energy and be open to what it can show you.

If you want to try to get something published, there are some very good outlets for young writers. Check out these links (they’re also at right, under Blogroll): teenink and my YA author friend Laura Williams McCaffrey’s resources for young writers.

Good luck … keep a notebook … and write for fun! The more you enjoy doing it, the more you’ll keep doing it. Dreaming of publishing a book or getting famous probably won’t keep you going for all that long. What can keep you going as a writer — and all writers have to learn how to keep going — is building a real relationship with your writing, and learning to enjoy it in your life.

Early this month I had the pleasure of visiting Roth Middle School in Henrietta, N.Y., outside Rochester, where every student in all three grades — six, seven and eight — was taking part in a schoolwide reading and discussion project with my young-adult novel The Revealers. On the day of my visit, as each grade filed into the auditorium for its hourlong talk with me, a very cool slide show was projecting onto a big screen up on stage. The slides were photos of Roth students and teachers, taken during the classroom readings of my book. As each image flicked onto the screen, it was accompanied by Michael Jackson’s funky and inspiring song “Man in the Mirror,” with its lyrics:

If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

The idea, as principal Denise Zeh discussed with each grade when she introduced me, was to challenge every student, in reading and thinking and talking about this novel that portrays middle-school bullying and social pressures, to take a clear look at themselves and the role they’re playing in the school community. I think the kids got it. (They liked the song, too.)

What we had together was a powerful and memorable day — and along with the slideshow and this personal focus, one creative and quite effective aspect of the program was the school’s selection of two dozen “author ambassadors.” I met these students first, spending time with them at the beginning and end of the day; during the hours in between, they were very active in helping me connect with their fellow students.

I was so impressed with the author-ambassador idea that afterward I asked Sheryl Diana, the librarian at Roth who led the organizing of The Revealers project, to write a brief description of how this part of the project had been put together and how it worked. Below is what Sheryl kindly wrote in response. To learn more, contact her at Sdiana@rhnet.org.

Roth has posted its slide show of The Revealers “schoolwide read” online, together with photos of my visit — in particular, of my interactions with the author ambassadors. To view those great photos, click here.

Roth Middle School’s “Author Ambassadors”
by Sheryl Diana
Roth Middle School was proud to have Author Ambassadors to welcome and assist Mr. Wilhelm during his visit. We spent the month of September reading The Revealers aloud in homerooms. As librarian, I have always tried to include as many students as possible in an author visit. For Doug’s visit our teachers had the challenge of recommending one student per team, using the criteria that the student should be an avid reader or writer, or have demonstrated a special interest in The Revealers.

I received 24 recommendations (not the ten I had expected), and was able to include them all. I met with the students briefly the day before Doug’s visit and gave them general instructions.

On the morning of the visit, the ambassadors met with Doug during our 20-minute homeroom time. He asked each of them to give their name, and one interesting thing about themselves. They were delighted! At each of our three grade-level assemblies, the ambassadors from that grade met Doug in the auditorium before the rest of the students arrived. They were able to chat with Doug, and had front-row seats. A few of them chose to help introduce him.

At each grade-level lunch, the ambassadors ate at the table where Doug was signing books. They were able to talk to fellow students and to Doug during that time. The conversations were as varied as the students. At the end of the day, the ambassadors gathered in the library for an informal chat with Doug about what he’s writing now. They enjoyed every minute of his visit. One of our teachers created certificates for the ambassadors, which Doug graciously signed and distributed. They each left with a signature, even if they had been unable to purchase a book.

Thanks to Doug’s flexibility, and remarkable memory for names, every student in the school felt important and listened to that day, none more than the wonderful ambassadors!

Years ago, I was young, living in Asia, teaching English for a meagre living, and trying to write a book when I didn’t know how. I had been a newspaperman back home, and that helps in some ways: You do write for a living, but you learn to do it in a hyperated rush on deadline. You come to depend on that deadline, on that external pressure. If you leave a job like that behind — and I, living then in Kathmandu, Nepal, had left mine a long ways behind — and you’re trying to write a book on your own, you can wonder:

How do I do this?

Today, about 28 years later, I resumed working on a new young-adult novel, which if it gets published (always a big if) will be my 12th. I started it last winter. Recently I’d had to take a break, to get married on Labor Day weekend (it turns out this, like writing a book, involves a lot of work), then to work again through the first half of the story-in-progress, revising the draft, getting back to the point when the first draft stops — then to spend a week reading, making notes and trying to brainstorm the second half. Which I hadn’t started yet.

And all that is fine, necessary; but there comes that point when you do have, once again, to start writing. Today, Monday morning, that’s where I was. And no matter what I do, how well I try to research and generate ideas and otherwise prepare, when I face that blank screen I never know what is going to happen. I just don’t.

But I do start. That’s the key — just to start, and not to go back over and over but to push ahead. It doesn’t have to be great; it’s just a start. A rough draft. Once I do get started, I work on the project every day that I possibly can, from 8 to 10 a.m. if I can make that time, or later in the day if I have to. Before my two hours end, my goal is to write at least 1,500 words.

Today I did that, a little more in fact. And when I had moved on to other projects in my day, I remembered something I once read in a book. It was in a long, very wonderful novel, War and Remembrance, written by a very successful author, Herman Wouk. The book came out in 1978 and I read it not long after that, when I was living overseas and trying to write. Wouk’s novel is 1,056 pages long — and it encompasses, in a thrilling, absorbing and moving story, virtually all of World War II. I’m pretty sure I read it twice, along with Wouk’s previous novel, The Winds of War. (I was a long way from home, I had time, and they were worth it.)

One important character in War and Remembrance is an elderly, successful Jewish scholar and author who, for much of the story, is a refugee on the run from the Nazis. Amid all the adventures and dangers and horrors he experiences, this character tries to keep his work going. He mostly does, too. At one point he says, of his morning’s work, something like this: “I did my 1,500 words.”

I was impressed by that, even then. I thought, Is the real author telling us something? Is this how he got these massive, world-scale novels written — by doing his daily 1,500 words?

This morning that line came back to me. I don’t know if I’m remembering it exactly, but I’m almost positive about the 1,500 words. And I do think Wouk was telling us that this how to do it. Set a daily goal for your writing, then meet it every day.

Myself, I find that setting and meeting this particular goal, which is challenging but achievable — 1,500 words is a fairly good workout, especially if you’re finding those words inside yourself and you start out not knowing where they are — allows you satisfaction. A book is a very big project, and you may or may not be able to achieve the one you dream of; but each day you can do 1,500 words. And over time, those words do do add up. You and I may never write anything like War and Remembrance … but we can do a certain number words a day. We can.

And if we do … who knows where we might end up?