Author: beckylevine

Becky Levine is a children's book writer, working hard to strengthen her picture-books skills. She is the author of The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, a book to help you get started with a critique group, learn to revise from a critique, and strengthen your own critiquing powers. She has also published two nonfiction children's books with Capstone Press. She is currently seeking representation. Becky lives in California's Santa Cruz mountains, where she spends a lot of time sitting on the couch, knitting needles in hand, thinking through the next revision. At her day job, she writes grants for a nonprofit healthcare organization.
Posted in COVID-19, Uncategorized

What Will We Do with May?

Posted on by beckylevine

It’s May Day.

March was chaos. March was crazy. It seemed like I heard a new announcement of some significant change every day. I watched the COVID-19 counts climb and climb. All the Zooming for work and the Zooming with family and friends made me feel like I was literally zooming through every minute of every day. March felt like forever.

The four weeks of April haven’t lasted half as long as those two weeks of March. I cheated on March 31 and got my son with an early April Fools joke. Then suddenly, it was tax day, and it felt weird and irrelevant, because all the deadlines had been pushed out until July. Then, suddenly again, I was hitting end-of-month work due dates & realizing it was time to look at next-month due dates. April was the first full month of working remotely and of sheltering in place, but it felt like it came and went in 15 minutes.

And here we are in May. I am, of course, seeing all this from a place of privilege, but things are starting to feel a little more settled, a little less frenetic. Like I’ve gotten to a “usual,” as much as I wish this was not usual. The thing ism though, that another word for usual is “sameness.” And I can feel the sameness lurking in a corner of my brain, camouflaging itself as less stressful, as a comfortable routine. But I think the sameness is, eventually, going to be the thing that gets to me, that starts to wear on my energy and my optimism and my cheerfulness. Because while actively setting up a daily patterns for yourself can feel good, it’s very different when that pattern shows up to greet you every morning, whether or not you’ve invited it in.

So I’m saying to myself, What am I going to do with May? What am I going to do with June, if it comes into view looking identical to May? What new thing can I add to my days, to my nest up here on our hill, that will at least make one month’s usual look different from another’s?

I can do my work in a new spot in the house. I can do my work outside the house. I can look at recipes and see if there is anything that sounds easy and fun to make, so every meal isn’t peanut butter or quesadillas or scrambled eggs or yogurt. (Nope, not going to make sourdough.) I can tiptoe out of my humor-only reading place and see if my brain is ready to branch into something else . I can get out my drumsticks. I can learn how to knit socks with a “magic loop.” I can invite my husband to join me in a month-long cribbage tournament; we can invite our son to play Apples to Apples or Yahtzee over Zoom. I can pick something new-to-me to play with in a picture book: a biography, a concept book, or even some rhyme. (Hey, I said I could play with it; I didn’t say I had to show it to anybody.)

This is a surreal time, and yet it brings back some of the feeling I had when my son first moved out of the house–what was I supposed to do with that “extra” time? It nudges me to dream a little bit about what retirement might look like–what might I choose to bring to those days? More than anything, I wish I hadn’t been handed this time to practice, not as a result of this pandemic, not while so many people’s lives are being turned upside down with fear and pain. But this time is here, and I can choose to let the sameness take over, or I can decide to push it away with variety, change, newness.

That is, I hope, what I’m going to be doing with May. How about you?

Posted in COVID-19, Creativity

Sheltering in Place: In Which Pooh Searches for Clear Boundaries Between Work Space and Creative Space

Posted on by beckylevine

I suspect I’m going to start many posts over the next few months, if not all, in the same way: with a list of the ways in which I know how lucky I am. Possibly unnecessary, but a good exercise in gratitude for myself and (hopefully) a counter to anything I write here that leans toward whining. So…I am healthy; my family and friends are healthy. I have work and my husband has work; we are both being paid. I am not trying to juggle caring for and educating my child in the midst of all this craziness.

And, most relevant to this post, I have a my own home office in which to do both the work of my day job and my own writing. When we bought our house almost 30 years ago, there were two spaces that we could convert into offices and I ended up with the room that former owners had used as a dining room. For years, it was a wonderful place to write and when, last year, I finally picked the perfect colors, it became my dream writing space.

Dream Writing Space 2

Dream Writing Space 1  Dream Writing Space 3

Right. Lucky.

Still, now that I’m working remotely, I’m finding it challenging to use the office both for my day job and for my own writing. the nonprofit for which I work started the remote thing about a week before most other organizations, and we’ve been incredibly busy dealing with our response to the pandemic. For very good reasons, I’ve been working long hours, and–when I’m not working–I struggle to shift back to creative mode.

I’ve been doing things like taking my work laptop into another room on Friday, so that the day-job air in my office has a chance to “out-gas.” When my day-job work spills over into the weekend, I’ve tried to get  all that work done first thing Saturday morning or leave it for last thing Sunday. I’ve tried to transition to creative time by knitting for an hour while listening to an interesting podcast; I’ve started my creative time by reading a stack of mentor texts. Everything helps a little bit. Well, okay, trying to leave the day-job work for Sunday afternoon does not help–it just hovers in my brain all weekend like a guillotine ready to drop.

None of us know how long this state of affairs is going to last; I actually have “hopes” that we can stick it out longer than not, so that scientists and state & local governments have more time to do comprehensive testing, to study the results of the tests, and to at least closer to an effective vaccine. This week, I’ve been thinking that I need to get a bit deeper into acceptance that this work-at-home thing is going to be my normal for quite a while. And I think that means experimenting with some better ways for the work part and the creative part of my life to share  the beautiful space they’ve been given. Otherwise, my mind is going to stay in this mode.

I’m sure I’ll be playing around with it for a while, but the first thing I’m going to try is to set things up so I can more quickly and easily put away the tools of one type of work and bring out the tools of the other. Right now, no matter what I’m trying to do, I always feel like I’m working amidst clutter.  I’m looking at piles of project files or I’m bumping up against my work laptop. I’m moving stacks of mentor texts from couch to floor and back again or I’m  hunting around for the latest WIP brainstorming that I put somewhere safe and now can’t find. In an odd way, what I need to do is make more room for my day-job. I need to clear out a couple of the trays in the stacking organizers on my desk for work folders. I need to create a place where I can easily tuck away my work laptop and just as easily pull it out again. I need to take time at the end of each day, not just Fridays, to actually use those spaces and put the day job away. And I need to make sure I do that with my creative work as well.

I’ll be getting these things set up this weekend and, hopefully, seeing a positive impact soon. After that, I don’t know. I might need to start listening to different music during day-job “hours” than I do during my creative time. I might need to do a few minutes of meditating or a set of jumping jacks to help transition from one head space to the other. I might need to walk out the doors of my office, do a short loop around the house, and come back in again so that I have a “commute.”  Who know what will  help and what won’t. All I know is that, as I said, it’s time for some experiments.

Posted in COVID-19, Kidlit, Kitlit, Uncategorized

Creatives in the Time of Social Distancing

Posted on by beckylevine

Crazy times, right? Hard, frightening times for some more than others–if you’re sick or know someone who’s sick, if you’ve lost your job or have to take time off without pay, if you’re trying to juggle anything with caring for children–homeschooling or not. I’m counting myself on the incredibly lucky side–I have work, I can do it at home, I’m being paid, and my family and friends are very much able to social distance and are taking it seriously enough to reduce my worry.

And in the midst of everything you/we might be going through, there’s trying to maintain some sense of normalcy, to stay committed and attentive to the things we have always tried to spend time with, keep focused on. For me, that’s writing; for you that may be writing or something else creative–painting, crafting, playing an instrument, cooking. It’s not easy, right? But it’s possible and–at least in the kidlit world–there are lots of creatives out coming up with ways to support us.  Because creatives create.

If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen a lot/most of these opportunities. But I’m going to list a few here that I’ve noticed that may give you a few moments or even a few seconds of beauty, peace, inspiration. I’ll try to keep the list updated as I see more. Also, please add any of your own discoveries in a comment.

  • Erin Dionne has a couple of things going. If you follow her on Facebook (and you should), you may have seen her Captain’s Log posts the past few winters–posts that led to her recent picture book Captain’s Log: Snowbound, She’s started up the posts again, bringing humor and empathy to the current state of things. She’s also started sharing a Friday video on her Facebook post–unfortunately, I don’t seem to be technically savvy enough to post a link here. They’re definitely worth scrolling through her page, though.
  • Susan Taylor Brown has, for a while, been posting daily on Facebook about things that are making her happy. Recently, she’s been adding photos to share “a pause to breathe.”  Her work is lovely–follow her and start seeing them on a regular basis.
  • SCBWI is, as usual, making sure we’re taken care of during this time with a series of free digital workshops. They’ve also launched SCBWI Connects.
  • Not specifically COVID-19 related, just a tip from me to other picture books writers: If you write picture books, this may be a good time to go back and read through Storystorm posts at Tara Lazar’s blog.

We can also do a lot to support other writers and illustrators who may be hitting their own bumps right now. Book Riot has a list of ways we can do that. And you can always support authors, illustrators, and bookstores by shopping at your indie’s online site.

 

Posted in brainstorming, Dreamscapes, Getting Organized, Picture Books, Writing Goals

Getting My Dream Ducks in Order

Posted on by beckylevine

As good as I am at multi-tasking, my natural, happy mind-state is to think and act in a linear path. One thing at a time, put it down, pick up the next, work on that, repeat. And for many years that has worked for my writing. Until recently, I was never popping with story ideas–I could pretty much put all my focus onto wherever I was in whatever novel I was struggling with at the time.

Then picture books came along to say, “Hi!” Storystorm is a huge part of my idea generation, but also–these days–some muse (maybe the Muse of Overwhelmedness) sends ideas to me on a regular basis. And you know what?

I CAN’T WRITE THEM ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

Add to this that I am moving toward querying agents. And while I would like to just dive in head-first, some very wise people recently reminded me of the important steps involved in a smart agent search. And..guess what?

I CAN’T DO ALL THE STEPS AT THE SAME TIME!

And once more piece–now my looking-forward is a mix of dreams, goals, and actions. That’s about as non-linear as you can get. Some people could work it into a flow chart and feel comfortable dropping onto any arrow. But not me.

I CAN’T FOCUS ON MULTIPLE BIG-PICTURE VISIONS AND TINY DETAILED TASKS AT THE SAME TIME!

It was a busy week at the day-job, and I had to push the ALL down to the bottom of my brain for a few days. (No, of course it didn’t stay there, which is why I ended the week feeling like I had gone ten rounds with…Yes. The Muse of Overwhelmedness.)

So…I went to bed early last night, and I slept in this morning. I let my mind gently roam its way to a couple of Storystorm ideas, and I had breakfast and caffeine. And then I played with dream-scaping.

Dreamscape 2

Typically, these brainstorming-circle tools don’t work for me. The fact that this one has, at least in having filled up a page with bright colors and actual text, is–I guess–reassuring. In an oh-good-I-am-finally-deep-enough-into-this-writing-thing-to-have-my-head-explode way.

How I turn this dreamscape into process(es), I’m not sure. In my past, free-to-be-linear life, my lists were a straight line of numbered tasks, and I got to happily cross off each one as I finished it. This new world is filled with tasks that connect to each other backward and forward, get to be repeated time after time, and play a role in various and sundry scenarios. It’s as if a nice, simple If…Then statement met up with Wile E. Coyote.

But I think this is my new normal, and it’s a normal I have been aiming toward for years. So I’m celebrating by being grateful and breathing deeply. And I’m keeping the nice paper and pretty pens near at hand.

Posted in Book Riot, Read Harder Challenge, Uncategorized

Book Riot’s 2020 Read Harder Challenge

Posted on by beckylevine

Yes, I’m posting a lot lately. No, it probably won’t continue, since I head back to the day-job tomorrow, will be doing Storystorm all month, and will be digging into two or three new picture books. Not to mention getting my yarn stash down to a non-intimidating size.

But…maybe I’ll be posting about challenge books. I’ve wanted to do Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge for a few years now, but never got around to it. For the 2020 Challenge, though, I am intrigued by the list of categories. Plus, they’ve got a spreadsheet! (It’s called a reading log, but one of the tabs is specifically for the challenge.)

In my post-New Year’s Eve, Avoiding-the -Real-World-That-Starts-Up-Again-Tomorrow mood, I’ve set up a Read-Harder-Challenge list in Goodreads and am puttering through Book Riot’s blog posts of suggestions for each challenge. I can tell you right now which category will be my biggest challenge:

  • Read a horror book published by an indie press.

I don’t do horror. Maybe I can find a picture book that qualifies…Ooh! Kelly DiPucchio and Scott Campbell have a sequel out to Zombies in Love!

Okay, probably not. I really don’t want to leave the horror for last (it’s all about ripping off the band-aid, folks), so if you know of any milder-than-mild horror books that are indie-published, this is me begging you to drop the title in a comment.

All the other categories look cool, fun, and things that I would want to explore even without a challenge. I do think I’ll post about some of the books–most likely the ones I fall in love with or that I can feel stretching my brain and/or heart. The others will show up in my Goodreads sidebar list. And if you take a look at the list, feel free to drop suggestions for any of the categories into a comment.

2020 Reading, here we come.

Posted in 2020, Word for 2020

Looking Back & Moving Forward: My Word for 2020

Posted on by beckylevine

I’ve been reading and enjoying people’s posts about their last decade. I kept thinking, though, I don’t even remember what I was doing two years ago, let alone ten. But then I put some actual numbers to the years and said–oh, okay! So I’m adding my list to the mix.

  • Published The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide with Writer’s Digest and published two nonfiction children’s books with Capstone Press. (These feel SO much longer ago than ten years, but I guess not!)
  • Completed & submitted a MG mystery & got some very nice rejections, but no takers.
  • Struggled to write & rewrite & rewrite a YA historical and a MG fantasy. The manuscripts are still a mess, but the ideas at least are still in a mental drawer. The research I did for the first book has stayed with me, inspiring me with leaders like Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells and all the women who worked with them and who gathered to march & fight for our vote.
  • Went back to day-job work full-time, beginning a new “career” path in grant writing for nonprofits. I did several years raising funds for STEM Education, always close to my heart, and then landed a job writing grants for our local Planned Parenthood affiliate. My actual career–where I place all my biggest dreams–has always been my creative writing, but after decades of trying out other jobs, I have finally found the place I am truly happy to show up for 40 hours/week.
  • Focused my writing on picture books and fell in love. I have thoughts about why writing for this age feels better to me than novels ever did, but the bottom line is that I am happier with this work. I enjoy the time I spend with my stories much more, I’m better at this genre, and I have made more craft progress in the past two years than I did for all the other years in this decade.
  • Spent time with family and friends, some of it easy and wonderful, some of it hard but important. I learned some (more) things about how I interact with people, and I see more clearly the gratitude I have for those I love.

It has been a good decade and, I think, an incredibly lucky one. In the past few years, of course, I’ve come to understand just how lucky I am and always have been, and I have started to do better in using that luck as a foundation for supporting others. I read Rebecca Traister’s book Good and Mad and found validation in it for the anger I have often felt; I also found a push to use that anger more effectively.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with someone I run into every few years, and she asked me–other than the writing she knew about—what else had I been up to? And my mind went blank. What had I been doing? For a solid minute or two, all I could see was the internal and external battle I’d been having with the state of the country/world–the surfing of news on social media, the going to marches and feeling guilty for not going to marches, the frantic donations of money that never seemed like enough, the calls and letters to government officials that only made a tiny, temporary dent in my feelings of helplessness.

And then I remembered the chores and date-nights and traveling I did with my husband; the times I’ve spent with  my son–playing board games, sharing passages from books, laughing at his jokes, and just talking. I remembered the barre classes I’ve been taking, the plays I’ve seen, the music I’ve listened to. I remembered all the times I have been happy and in love with what I was doing and looking forward to what was coming next. But first…first, I remembered the yuck.

I don’t usually make New Years resolutions. But this year, I’m all in. I am not going to let the yuck win. I’m limiting my time on social media–no going on Facebook or Twitter before breakfast or after dinner. I’m going to have some easy opportunities to help with voter registration, and I’ll be doing that. I’ll talk to people about voting and about bringing unity at least to getting a Democrat into the White House. I’ll continue making financial donations, but I will set up most for automatic monthly giving. I’m committing to those three things.

And the rest of the time, I’m committing to happiness. I am going to find a way to continue working for change without losing the year to the emotional sludge. When January of 2021 comes around, I want to be able to look back and see the adventure, the laughter, the joy.

My word for 2020 is Happy.

 

Posted in Picture Books, Storystorm, Uncategorized

Storystorm 2020: I’m in!

Posted on by beckylevine

I just signed up for Storystorm 2020.

If you aren’t familiar with Storystorm, it’s the creation of Tara Lazar–author of so many fantastic picture books. To name just a few you should definitely check out: The Monstore, Normal Norman, and The Upper Case: Trouble in Capital City.

Every January picture book writers sign up to participate in Storystorm and commit to trying really, really hard to get 30 new picture book ideas by the end of the month. Every idea counts–no matter how wonderful or horrible. Personal tip: Do not second guess yourself; just write that idea down! And Tara gives so much support–daily posts from authors and other publishing professionals to inspire, encourage, and kick your brain into gear. Plus prizes!

This year, along with coming up with 30 new ideas, Tara is suggesting we also pay attention to our creative process. 2020 is, for me, all about new ideas. I’ve been working for quite some time on revision, getting ready to query in the next month or so. Now I need to grow my pile of actual stories. So I’ll be watching how I do come up with those ideas, what I observe, what I remember, what direction my brain drifts, and when I hear that *ping* that tells me I at least have something to write down in my notebook for the day. Maybe I’ll post about it!

If you haven’t done Storystorm before and are wondering if it’s for you, I say go for it. The worst that could possibly happen is that you have no more ideas at the end of January than you do right now, as you read this post. And I can just about, 99.99999%, promise that won’t happen. So what have you got to lose?

Don’t forget to sign up for the Storystorm Facebook group, too. See you there!

Posted in Books, Uncategorized

Some Favorite Books from 2019

Posted on by beckylevine

Without description and with only a hint of organizing, here’s a list of (some of the) books I read and loved in 2020.

Picture Books

 

Novels (any age)

 

Nonfiction

Posted in Big Sur Children's Writing Workshop, Critique Groups, Storystorm, Uncategorized

Writing without a Critique Group: Looking Back

Posted on by beckylevine

When I published The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide in 2010, I wrote a lot about the process of finding a critique group and a little bit about waiting until you found the right one.

Maybe I should have written more about the waiting.

For various reasons, I was recently without my own critique group for a couple of years. One of those reasons was that I was making the shift to writing picture books, and I was looking for a group focused on that–one that had serious professional goals about finding an agent and getting their books published. One that was committed to digging deep into each other’s work and then digging even deeper into revising our own. I was lucky enough to find that this year, and I can’t even begin to describe how my work has grown in the past six months.

I wrote a book about critique groups–I know the power they have to help you transform your writing. And yet, somewhere between writing that book and starting to look for a new group, I apparently forgot it. I didn’t stop writing, and I didn’t stop revising. I worked closely with a freelance editor who had previously worked in children’s book publishing. I received wonderful comments and suggestions from her, and my stories got better. I got serious about reading picture books–frequently browsing through the new sections at bookstores and making regular stops at the library to pick up a pile. I did Tara Lazar’s Storystorm (and will do it again this coming January).  And it all helped.

Then last year, I went to the Big Sur Children’s Writing Workshop and sat in critique sessions with two groups of picture book writers. And I got a gut-slam reminder of what I had been missing. There is nothing like hearing five other writers read something you’ve written, tell you what they like, and then–of course–tell you what they don’t like (yet). Nothing like scribbling furiously into your notebook and their critiques turn into conversation–a back and forth brainstorming about each other’s suggestions for improving your story. Realizing that you’ve been hiding from some big truths about your manuscripts, facing those truths, and having immediate flashes of ideas for revision.

Nothing.

When I got back from the workshop, I started revising, but I also got serious about looking for a new group. It wasn’t easy. Okay, it was hard. It meant putting myself out there again–physically and emotionally. It meant facing rejection, and it meant restarting my search. Where I had felt cozy and comfortable in my revision space before, now I felt lonely. I had re-woken up to knowing that the revising I was doing on my own wasn’t going to be good enough, and I had to push myself away from the feeling that I was wasting my time to even try. And I had really big goals/high standards for critique partners; while that was right and important for me, it didn’t make it any easier to find a group I wanted to join.

As I said, I was lucky that I found a group. I also, though, worked at it. And kept working at it. And, I think, if I had a key to the Tardis, I’d probably go back to writing the critique group book and talk a little more about that. About the time it may take you to find a group, about the awkwardness and fear you’re going to experience, about how you have to juggle the search with continuing to write. And, most important: that once you find the right group–you won’t have a single regret about taking on those challenges.

Posted in mentor texts, Picture Books, Research, Uncategorized

Where to Find those 10,000 Books

Posted on by beckylevine

So at some point in Outliers, I guess Malcolm Gladwell said a few things about putting 10,000 hours into something you want to do well. And possibly there is debate about not only what he said, but about whether he was right.

Whatever Gladwell actually said, how many times have you heard other writers, publishers, agents, your mother say that–to write–you need to read? A lot. Do you really need to read 10,000 books? Sure. Even more. I don’t actually think there’s a cut-off, a number beyond which you’ve gathered everything you need to know. I do agree that reading is critical to growing my writing skills and that a whole bunch of that reading needs to be in my genre.

I’ve talked here before about mentor texts, the picture books I go to when I’m stuck. I look for something the authors have done that I’m not doing yet, look for places they’ve cleared the particular hurdle I’m facing. I dissect, I analyze, I scribble notes. (No, not in the book!) And I am always looking for new mentor texts–books that tell a story as well as I’m hoping mine will some day. Where do I find these books?

I check out the picture-book section every time I walk into a bookstore. I browse library shelves, and I check out the books I find. I look at the websites of agents I’m researching, and I put their books on hold. I google things like “best picture books of the year,” and I put those books on hold. I read blogs by picture book writers, and…yep, I put more books on hold. Every couple of weeks, I take a pile  of picture books back to the library, and I pick up my next stack.

I’m looking for some new sites I can explore. So I thought I’d ask here for your suggestions–where to you go to look for what’s new and good? Thank you in advance!

I’ll start:

There you go! Got anything to add?