From Journalist to Children’s Author

It’s a funny thing, the permanency of a book. In the past month or so, I’ve been lucky enough to hold in my hands a book that I wrote – Celia and Nonna, illustrated by Kayleen West. Lucky, because over the past few years an element of Powerball lottery has crept into the traditional publishing industry.

Will your manuscript ever make it into the hands of the one editor who loves it, who finds the story resonates? And, more importantly these days, thinks she can sell it?

I’ve always written for a living. I was lucky enough to have started in journalism more than 25 years ago, when it was a still a viable career path. I’ve written literally thousands of news articles in my time – I’m a wire journalist, which means working in real-time to constant deadlines (a bit like online journalism these days, except news wires have been doing it exceptionally well for more than a century).

Generally, those news stories have a life span of a day or so; some features get picked up by newspapers and circulate for a week. But then, they’re gone, vanished: the electronic equivalent of fish wrap, only nobody uses inky paper for wrapping fish and chips any more. I stopped collecting my press clippings when I left newspapers, around 20 years ago, and I’m not even sure where those scrapbooks ended up.

Imagine the thrill, then, when a whole box of Celia books arrived recently. Hardback copy after hardback copy, with a faint new book smell and cardboard inserts to prevent the ink on the beautiful endpapers from smudging. And heavy! We needed an extra suitcase to shlep these advance copies up to Sydney for the launch at a conference of SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. After years of seeing my work disappear into the ether, it has been uniquely satisfying to see at least one story set down roots and grow.

So how does one transition from journalism to children’s writing? Well, I am still on that journey and still have my day job. For me, the renewed fascination with kid lit began when my first daughter was born, nearly 10 years ago. We were living in New York at the time, and there was no better place to spend below-freezing winter days than tucked inside the giant Borders store on Columbus Circle, together with friends from my moms’ group.

I fell in love with the deceptive simplicity of many new children’s books, which masked an underlying brilliance (think million-seller Peek-a-Who, by Nina Laden), and the comfort of returning to reliable classics from my childhood in the ‘70s, such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

And that’s where the fascination remained for several years: as a reader. Then, through a change in family circumstances, I found myself with a little bit of time to spend on my own writing, in addition to the day job and raising two kids. I had several ideas for children’s stories (including one about bubbles, which has never gone anywhere) and knew I needed to learn more about the craft.

I took a couple of classes, one on Saturdays and then another at night school, and learned heaps about the form and structure of children’s books, character, voice, narrative arc, etc. I joined SCBWI and attended conferences, and formed a writers’ group. That group lasted exactly three meetings, so I joined another one that was already up and running. (Tip: Be Persistent.)

After about a year of writing, I began submitting, mostly through the slush pile. My successful pitch for Celia and Nonna came at a speed-pitching night run by the Australian Society of Authors, where I met my publisher at Ford Street Publishing – but that’s another blog story.

Celia and Nonna is a story close to my heart. It grew out of a time in my life when I had both elderly parents to help care for, and young children as well. The starting point of the story was that sense of nostalgia, or loss, for all the lovely things that Celia and Nonna used to do together. Memories play a central role in the book – both for Celia and for Nonna. I’m sure many of us either have strong memories of our grandparents, or watch our kids with our own parents, and wish some of those moments could last forever. They were the most difficult years of my life, but I hope this is a story that will last.

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Victoria Lane is an award-winning journalist and writer who has lived and worked In London, New York and Sydney and now calls Melbourne home. Her career as a correspondent and editor spans more than 25 years, including seven in New York where she won two journalism awards. She spent 17 years as a correspondent for Reuters, the international news wire, where she reported on fun stuff like economics.

Her articles have been published in the world’s leading media including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Celia and Nonna is her debut picture book.

Visit Victoria’s web site at www.VictoriaLaneBooks.com or Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/VictoriaLaneBooks or follow her on Twitter @vthieberger.

 

 

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Tags: celia and nonna, children's books, featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing