 It's our 10th Anniversary! 24 Carrot Writing started as a four person accountability group of pre-published KidLit writers who met monthly at a coffee shop to share goals. Amanda Smith wondered if a wider swath of authors might benefit from the topics and tips we shared. Did we dare? It felt daunting. But after months of research and preparation, we launched the 24 Carrot Writing blog on September 29, 2014. Since then, all four members of the original group have become published authors, we’ve written 219 blogs, interviewed 69 authors and industry professionals, hosted 93 guest bloggers, reviewed 87 mentor texts, and expanded our community of four to hundreds. On this momentous milestone, we’ve reflected on the most significant takeaways from ten years of hosting and invited members of the carrot patch to share what they love about 24 Carrot Writing.  Open Hearts and Supportive Hands Founding Member Amanda Smith I am not naturally a brave person. I tend to be a wallflower, side-liner, introvert-chicken. But 24 Carrot Writing has taught me to be brave enough to say “yes.” Saying yes to a coffee invitation by a fellow NESCBWI conference-goer led to my writing family – women who always encourage me to stretch myself to be braver and better. Saying yes to a vague idea for a blog about carrots led to a community we love and cheer and celebrate. Saying yes to illustrator spotlight and a graphic novel series led to interviewing numerous marvelous illustrators and creators even though I was intimidated to no end by their brilliance. (And the joy of interviewing Matthew Cordell mere months before he won the Caldecott for Wolf in the Snow.) Brave yesses included spotlighting debut authors and boosting those new to publishing, and experiencing the joy of seeing them take off and soar, some becoming household names. Book birthday and cover reveal yesses meant being part of the jittery excitement of launching a book baby. And through all this saying “yes” I learned that others also like saying “yes” - that open hearts and supportive hands reach in all directions. That our writing community is generous and kind. Making even this introvert chicken a little braver.
 Patience, Young Grasshopper Founding Member Annie Romano Okay, so I may not be young—and I am most certainly not an insect—but patience has always been a challenge for me, so stick with me on this. Writing as a career is a long game. Very few published authors are overnight successes, despite what it might seem like from the outside looking in. Being a part of 24 Carrot Writing’s kidlit community since the beginning has been a vital reminder that patience is of the utmost importance. It can be tempting to throw in the towel after several or dozens (or even hundreds) of agent rejections or a few tough peer critiques. And writing that next book draft can feel like climbing Everest when the ideas simply aren’t flowing. But as I’ve read the posts and experiences of the members here—their winding roads, perseverance through passes and unpublished manuscripts, craft advice, and cheers of support—I have been reminded to be patient, not only with my writing journey but with myself as a human (grasshopper!) as well. Giving myself the room to step back when a mental break is needed and feeling the openness to jump into writing again when my writing spirit is ready is key to maintaining the joy I find in writing. And, ultimately, that’s what writing should do: bring you joy. Whether it was a post about goal-setting, a blog on brainstorming, an inspirational book pick, or advice on how to handle a book event (even an unattended one!), the content and enthusiasm I have found being a member of the 24 Carrot Writing community has been a beacon on my most challenging days and a pat on the back on my best. I have been able to play the long game and enjoy the journey—being patient with the process—because of this vibrant group. Thank you for 10 wonderful years!
 Brave Honesty Resonates Founding Member Kelly Carey One of the biggest lessons I have learned from ten years of hosting the 24 Carrot Writing blog, is that the most honest and raw posts become the most popular. The posts that share fears, faults and failures become the most loved. The 24 Carrot Writing blog has taught me to embrace my writing journey and to be open in sharing it with my fellow writers. Artists are told to draw what you see and not what you think you see. In blogging, the same is true. I have learned that sharing what you think will impress folks or what sounds professional is not as impactful as sharing my true experiences – the silly, the embarrassing, and the cringy. The benefit of brave honesty is that it allows us to find community. A community of folks who nod their heads in agreement and who validate our feelings by showing us their matching moments. I think that’s a lesson for our writing too! When we write with unashamed candor, our readers see the heart of our story and it makes the work magical. Ten years of 24 Carrot Writing has been magical and I’m looking forward to more tricks and tips to come!
 Growth Happens When You Step Out of Your Comfort Zone Regular Contributor Kristi Mahoney I’ve been a fan of 24 Carrot Writing since discovering it in 2016. At the time, I was a wall-flower member that sipped the fantastic writing advice like tea from the comfort of behind my screen. However, in 2021, after becoming critique/accountability partners with some of the 24 Carrot founding members, I was asked to become a regular blog contributor. If I’m being honest, my first thought was –I’m not qualified. I knew the 24 Carrot Writing community was filled with many seasoned authors and illustrators and providing any sort of writing advice/info was way out of my comfort zone. Not to mention, 24 Carrot Writing is all about setting writing goals which, at the time, wasn’t one of my strong suits. Yet, I said yes. And once I saw how this yes inspired growth in every aspect of my writing, it inspired me to say yes to other things too. Would I like to go to an incredibly intimidating (yet fabulous) in-person book event? Count me in. Should I sub to a publishing house because it’s one of my monthly 24 Carrot Writing goals? Absolutely. Should I continue to submit to agents despite the possibility of another rejection? Yes. They do say that you miss 100 percent of the chances you don’t take. I have learned countless tips from 24 Carrot Writing since discovering it almost a decade ago, but perhaps the biggest lesson is this – sometimes the biggest growth happens when you do things you think you’re not ready for. Because sometimes... you really are ready.
 Be True to Yourself Regular Contributor Megan Litwin I've been reading the 24 Carrot Writing blog posts for years now, appreciating the honest, funny, and inspiring advice. I was even fortunate enough to be a regular contributing member for a while, relishing the chance to write some "Book Picks" - book recommendations with ideas on how writers can use the titles as mentor texts. The blog offers a little something for everyone, and more than once, it has offered up exactly what I needed in the moment. That’s what happened when I read Amanda Smith's post here - a post about how we sometimes need to step back in order to move forward. She writes: "In the beginning of this new year, it is worth asking yourself whether your writing routines and goals still serve you and to strip away the excess until only the necessary remains." At the time, I was feeling pulled in many directions, between my writing and book promotion and blogging and school visit work. Amanda’s words reminded me that all I really need to do is what is truly necessary. That will look different for everyone, of course. But for me, I immediately knew it meant consistent writing and strong work in schools. Those were MY necessary. And so I stripped away some things…including my regular presence as a blogger here, preferring instead to remain an enthusiastic reader. Among so many other things, the gracious, generous, insightful 24 Carrot Writing Crew has helped me to define who I am and where I want to go in this beautiful book world.
so much over the years. I find that the articles, while short and quick to read (which I appreciate!) go beyond surface advice.I always learn something new when I read a post on the blog. One that I’ve referred back to a number of times is Anika Denise’s post Marketing Beyond the Book Launch Party, from 2018. I learned so much from it when I was getting ready to launch my first picture book in 2020, and still refer back to her timeline and tips. Thanks for that post, and so many more!
Thank you to all our contributors, guest bloggers, and mostly to you, our readers and supporters. Whether you are new to 24 Carrot Writing, or whether you’ve been rooted in our patch from those very first tentative blogs, we are so grateful that you are part of this nourishing community.
1 Comment
germinate, while Jaya, whose hours are quite different, would greet her dogs and have her coffee. Then we got on Zoom together at a set time and said hello. We each wrote silently in our homes for an hour or two, turning the sound back on at the end to read our work to each other, offer commentary, and talk over stuck points.  Working together like this kept us to task, eliminated procrastination, and eased the loneliness that writers suffer from--that everyone suffered from during Covid. It was joyous, and we each sprinted through a draft of our novels that spring, summer, and fall. Susan’s completed novel, A Sky Full of Song (Union Square Kids, 2023), has since won many honors, including the Sydney Taylor Honor Award and the Western Writers of America Spur Award. Jaya’s novel manuscript won a LitUp fellowship for diverse women writers from Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. When the two of us talked over our novels-in-progress, we often talked about other things too, of course. One day Jaya told Susan a story about being a very small child in Brooklyn and choosing a Christmas tree for the apartment. She wanted a BIG tree and her stepfather wanted a SMALL tree—and in the end they happily settled on one each thought was just the right size. Susan was charmed and said immediately, “That should be a picture book!” Jaya, who was then working on a young adult novel, said, “I don’t write picture books.”  Susan was more experienced writing picture books, so she played around with the idea and wrote a draft of the story. Jaya read it and changed it, Susan tweaked it again, and so on, back and forth. We talked it over sentence by sentence and word by word, and that’s how our co-authorship started! The book became Nisha's Just-Right Christmas Tree (Beaming Books, 2024). Susan suggested a preliminary authors’ note that she later thought wasn’t so good. Jaya wrote an alternate one, which Susan loved, explaining things about cultural mixing in her family of origin. (Jaya is the child of one Hindu parent and one Christian parent.) Susan loved it as it was, but Jaya knew that Susan also came from a culturally blended family, and she urged Susan to write about cultural mixing in her own family for the authors’ note. Now there’s a story in there about—wait for it!—the French word for “grapefruit” and how it embarrassed Susan once as a little girl! We encouraged readers to think about various forms of mixing that happen in their own families. How We Collaborate Now Since then, the two of us have written two more picture book manuscripts. Now we work a bit differently. For the most recent one (which is again about Nisha), we brainstormed together about story situations, chose one, and in conversation worked out some of the broad outlines of the plot. Then, separately, we each wrote a story draft. We emailed them to each other and talked them over on Zoom. We talked about what we liked most about each other’s drafts and, sentence by sentence, we worked out a combined version with the best parts of each. Over several sessions we revised and tightened the story. It was a lot of fun and intensely collaborative. Now it is with our agent. Fingers crossed that she likes it! Challenging Aspects of Co-Authorship Susan: We are both the kind of writers who care about every word. Sometimes we each think our own version of a passage in a draft is better. For the partnership to work, you have to decide what really matters to you and be willing to let go of the parts that don’t. Jaya: Since we have known each other so long and so well, it is a temptation for our “check-ins” to become full-blown conversations, and the actual writing gets short shrift. We often have to reign ourselves in and get back to work! Susan: BUT it was during one of those digressions that Jaya told me the story that became Nisha's Just-Right Christmas Tree! So maybe there’s no wasted time after all! Benefits of Co-Authorship Jaya: We have continued to work together ever since. We know each other’s work intimately. We have very similar writing styles and values, including emotional honesty, respect for historical and cultural accuracy, and regard for the nuances and cadences of language. Over the last five years, we have each learned an enormous amount from the other, and our vision and our writing is far better for it. Susan: It isn’t you alone with the empty page! Your ideas bounce off one another. You come up with things you wouldn’t have thought of on your own. Your literary world stretches and expands. You have someone else encouraging you, or even pushing you, to do something you wouldn’t have done on your own.  Last Thoughts on Collaboration Jaya: If the first kind of partnership is like paddling two kayaks in sight of each other but on separate sides of the river, the second is like being in a double kayak, navigating the river together. Susan (who loves kayaking): Ooh, nice metaphor! Jaya Mehta has a Ph.D. in English literature from Yale University, and taught both English and Indian literature as a college professor. She won a LitUp Fellowship from Reese's Book Club for a YA novel manuscript in 2022. She is the co-author, with Susan Lynn Meyer of Nisha's Just-Right Christmas Tree. She lives in Chelmsford Massachusetts, among all the animals left behind by her college-aged twins. She loves observing wildlife, cuddling with her two dogs, attending storytelling events, travelling to foreign countries, and playing board games with her family during which her husband and son cheat madly. To learn more about Jaya visit her website.
Susan Lynn Meyer is the author of three middle-grade novels: A Sky Full of Song, Black Radishes (Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2010), and Skating With The Statue of Liberty (Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2016). She is also the author of four picture books: New Shoes (Holiday House, 2015), Matzah Downstairs (Kar-Ben Publishing, 2019), Matthew and Tall Rabbit Go Camping (Down East Books, 2008). Her works have won the Sydney Taylor Honor Award twice, the Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award, the New York State Charlotte Award, and the Western Writers of America Spur Award, as well as other honors. They have been chosen as Junior Library Guild selections, included among Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, and translated into German and Chinese. Susan is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Wellesley College and lives outside Boston. Visit her online at www.susanlynnmeyer.com. To purchase Nisha's Just-Right Christmas Tree click here.  Guest blog by Carrie Finison I write fiction picture books that often feature animal characters. Reading (and writing) these books requires a certain suspension of disbelief. Bears that make doughnuts? Sure! A tortoise that walks to school and carries a lunchbox? Why not? Pig construction workers? Nothing wrong with it! Suspension of disbelief comes with the territory AND YET even in fiction there are times when sticking to the facts and being accurate is important. As I worked through the first few drafts of my book Pigs Dig a Road (Penguin Random House, 2024), I quickly realized that I knew next to nothing about how a road is actually constructed. If I didn’t want to be constantly corrected by a bunch of 4-year-old armchair experts, I would need to do a lot of research to make sure the book depicted the stages of building a road accurately. I knew that kids wouldn’t mind seeing a pig driving a bulldozer, but they WOULD mind if the bulldozer was doing the wrong job.
 At the library, I was also able to find a couple of VHS tapes (that I couldn’t play) and a DVD (that I could play) that showed the process of building a road from start to finish, with lots of footage of big trucks in action. This leads me to my second tip: YouTube is your friend! After watching the DVD from the library, I thought perhaps similar footage might be available on YouTube. I typed the search phrase “road construction for kids” and sure enough, I found a TON of videos showing bulldozers, excavators, graders, dump trucks, compactors, and rollers all doing their jobs, and all clearly explained. All of this research helped me to develop the text for the story and add details that would be both fun and accurate. It also helped me to create illustration notes that I hoped would guide the illustrator a little in terms of the road-building steps. This leads me to a third tip: If you HAVE done research and there’s something that you feel is important to depict accurately, it’s a great idea to include illustration notes and even visual sources.
And, here’s a final tip: when you need more information, consult the experts. The key word there is WHEN you need more information. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, or some blend of the two, going to an expert should never be your first move. You will be able to ask better, more informed questions if you are already knowledgeable about the subject matter. As it stood, I didn’t need to find an expert for Pigs Dig a Road because there was more than enough information in the books and videos I found, but I wouldn’t hesitate to find someone and ask questions if needed. As fiction writers, I think it’s important to reflect upon our stories and think about where the suspension of disbelief that we’re asking of the reader feels OK, and where it won’t work. Always, we must establish the “rules” of our fictional worlds up front. A talking potato can work if it is introduced on page 1 of the story. A talking potato showing up on page 16 in an otherwise normal world will feel out of place and wrong, and will take readers out of the story. Similarly, when kids know a lot about a subject – whether that’s trucks, or trains, or schools – and are approaching your book as a fan of that subject, they want to see you get the details right. Otherwise, they may call you out in the middle of story time. That’s motivation enough to hit the books!
|
Peruse blogs for advice and tips from KidLit creatives.
Categories
All
Archives
October 2024
Click to set custom HTML
Click on the RSS Feed button above to receive notifications of new posts on this blog.
|
RSS Feed