"Writing Middle-Grade Novels that Reach Out and Touch Young Readers" with Sharelle Byars Moranville

Mel is Mel Boring, moderator of this chat with Sharelle Byars Moranville and web editor of the ICL site.

Green shows the user names of the people and their questions asked of Sharelle Byars Moranville.

Mel: A good evening to you from Sharelle Byars Moranville and me! Sharelle was last our guest here in November 2000, long enough for much to have happened in her children's writing career-and it has. She is the author of Purple Ribbon and Over the River, both published by Henry Holt Publishers. Sharelle is a children's writer who not only understands how to write for middle-grade readers, but who understands middle-graders themselves. And when she puts a main child character back in time in an historical novel, she writes with the immediacy of present-day happenings. I was not moderator of the chats when Sharelle was last here, so it's also been a rich opportunity for me to work with her. WELCOME to you, Sharelle!

Sharelle: Hi, Mel! Thanks for having me.

Mel: Sharelle, why do you write fiction for kids instead of adults, or instead of nonfiction?

Sharelle: I think kids are the most important audience. They are passionate about life and that passion translates to reading. They may not remember the plot or the character or the setting of a particular book when they're thirty years old. But they will remember the feeling of wonder of words, and that's why I write for children. To touch their passions. I write fiction because I like having the freedom to make life turn out like I want it to!

Mel: AMEN! Did you write as a child, or have dreams of becoming a writer?

Sharelle: I did not write as a child. I didn't grow up in a home where literacy, either reading or writing, was especially valued. It was a loving environment, for sure just not a highly literate one.

Mel: How do you try to connect with the reader? (hint: She uses sensory details! J )

Sharelle: I do use sensory details to connect with the reader. But I also connect with the reader (I hope) by setting up as few barriers as possible between the narrator, the author, and the reader. I try to make the author disappear and the boundaries between the narrator and the reader disappear.

Mel: Did you write magazine pieces before you tackled writing novels, Sharelle?

Sharelle: Oh yeah! I'd hate to try to learn the craft on a novel. Novels take so very long to write, and one inevitably learns so much from the act of writing. But you can learn those same things a lot faster from the short story.

Sharelle: Children, I guess. I became an adoptive mother in 1988 at about the same time I became a very active godmother, and I wanted to speak to kids then.

Mel: Those are great children’s stories in themselves, Sharelle!

Sharelle: I don't write poetry. I much admire it, but don't aspire to write it.

Mel: How does a story idea come into being for you?

Sharelle: It comes out of some real passion, something that has been nagging at my heart, often for years, kind of life and death; sturm and drang stuff I really want to deal with by translating it into fiction and messing with it.

Mel: Tell us, what is "sturm and drang," because I know others here will want to know, too.

Sharelle: It's a German expression which I means something like "storm and drama."

Mel: Sturm und drang, great expression, thanks! What writing "process" do you use?

Sharelle: I use technology to let me develop my story as I physically write it. So I sit down with my laptop with a general question of the big theme I want to deal with. I create a main character and I actually get to know him or her (usually her) by beginning to write about her. Suffice it to say, I spend a lot of time rewriting. :) I don't know how Beatrix Potter and Jane Austen and Louisa Mae Alcott did it in ink on paper.

Mel: HA! I don't either!

Sharelle: No, none of them actually. They were inspired from my own experiences as a child and adolescent and adult. But my child and godchildren inspired me to try to tell them .

Mel: How old are your children now, Sharelle?

Sharelle: My daughter is twenty-five. And she has given us three delicious grandbabies who are five, four, and two, with whom I spend a ton of time. My godsons are 14 and 18.

Mel: CONGRATULATIONS on those grandbabies!

Sharelle: They are truly the joy of my life.

Mel: Family is pretty crucial to writing, and I assume the support of your husband and all those great kids has been a part of your support system.

Sharelle: My husband is very literary, more a reader than a writer, but he cares fully as much about my writing as I do. And he is a wonderful editor!!!

Sharelle: Hmmmmmm. I do some school visits, of course, though schools seem to be in short supply of extra money these days. I get the occasional fan latter, which ranks right up there with grandbabies in terms of thrill. :) And I read other writers incessantly, which may seem a very indirect way of keeping in touch with my audience. But if I keep my fingers on the general pulse of children's literature, it's a way of keeping in touch with my audience.

Mel: You have anticipated this next question nicely!

Sharelle: Yes, occasionally, they do. And there's nothing like the feeling of discovering that a total stranger, someone other than my mother, my husband, my child, has actually responded to one of my stories or books enough to write and tell me about it. I just feel like kissing them. And at moments like that, I feel so grateful to be a writer. Every now and then I'll "Google" myself and come across reviews written by actual kids and it's a really nice feeling.

Mel: "Google yourself," I LOVE that! Do you have favorites of your own among children's authors?

Sharelle: Yes!!! I adore Karen Hesse! I like Kimberly Willis Holt, Patricia Reilly Giff. I shouldn't name my favorites, because I go a bit blank and leave some out. But I'm very appreciative of the models other writers give me. I've recently discovered Donna Jo Napoli!

Mel: Those make up a "Children’s Writers Hall of Fame," I believe!

Sharelle: Of course. What incredible talent. See, that's why I shouldn't have named my favorites, because I left her off!

Mel: I KNOW people here would be interested in just what you do in your school visits, and I sure would!

Sharelle: I like to tailor to what the school needs. Sometimes they like me to do actual writing workshops with kids who are especially interested in writing—I love doing those! Sometimes they want me to talk generally to kids about the writing lifestyle, which is fun too. I did a neat school visit last year where I stressed revision and I think it was an eye-opener to both students and teachers, how much time writers spend on revision.

Mel: Sorry, lightning storms here, and I got knocked out!

Sharelle: Welcome back!

Mel: THANK YOU! NICE to be back! How does your life as a reader relate to your life as a writer?

Sharelle: You've heard the old expression, "I am what I eat"? Well, in many ways, I AM what I READ. Everything I know about writing comes from having internalized years and years of reading fiction.

Sharelle: I'm not sure I understand the question. Could it be clarified a bit?

Mel: Not sure I understand it either, but I think they mean, "Can there be a less-strong female character?"

Sharelle: Okay, lets talk about character for a bit and just assume that the main character of a story is female, as mine tend to be. What makes a "strong" character, in my opinion, is not a character without weaknesses but a character who deals with life as she is faced with it, does the best she can, which may result in success, failure, or something in between. But by the end of the story, she has been somehow transformed by her struggles, no matter what the actual degree of "success" is. I have always understood, however, that one of the precepts of juvenile fiction is that it must offer some degree of HOPE at the end. Has anybody in the audience perchance read Han Nolan's When We Were Saints?

Sharelle: That's a wonderful example of a story where the main character certainly doesn't win in the end. But there is still hope!

Mel: THANKS for the recommendation, Sharelle!

Sharelle: Never! I've tried outlining with simply dreadful results. I think it's because my stories tend to be character driven and, as I mentioned, I get to know my characters as I write about them. So my stories tend to grow very organically. And I do a lot of rewriting!

Sharelle: I write first thing in the morning before breakfast, perhaps from seven until eight-thirty, and that's when I do all my "original" writing. I can do decent revision later in the day, but my truly creative juices dry up with my morning toast.

Sharelle: I didn't really read as a child. Our home had an old and beautiful book of Beatrix Potter stories, which I truly pored over. But I didn't have access to either a school library—because our school didn't have a library—nor to a town library because we lived in deep country. But when I was in seventh grade, a benefactor gave our school a BOOKSHELF with BOOKS on it and I fell in love. That was my adolescence. Falling in love with books. I remember reading Victor Hugo, the Brontes. People who made me drunk on words, kind of hard stuff, maybe, but so darned good that love was inevitable after the first acquaintance. I began writing in college . . .

Mel: May I ask where that deep country you grew up in was, Sharelle?

Sharelle: Yes, I grew up in the deep country of southern Illinois, in Marion county, Romine Township, the Donoho Prairie, it was called. Time stepped over it lightly. Still does. In college I was a math major and English minor and signed up for a creative writing course, planning to write some little skit or story, only to discover that the prof expected us to write an adult NOVEL. And it was another love experience—only this time I fell in love with writing fiction.

Mel: And you wrote books from the start?

Sharelle: While I was an undergraduate, I wrote two adult novels and sent them off to Random House and got them rejected rather promptly. Nonetheless, with the mentoring of my prof, I did get a New York agent to agree to represent me, but—and I'm embarrassed to tell this—he asked me to do some revisions before he started showing my manuscript around and I was so offended that somebody wanted me to revise my wonderful words that I asked for my manuscript back. And I didn't write again for thirty years, more or less. Is that dumb or what???

Mel: No dumber than MOST of us writers have been, friend. Where did you go to college, Sharelle? And did you choose it for its literary program?

Sharelle: I went to Southern Illinois University from 1961-65. I'm pretty old. And I chose it for its math program, actually. I just picked English because I needed a minor.

Sharelle: You're welcome!

Sharelle: I don't think so. I think I was into math because I was gifted with a great math teacher and really didn't have strong language/ writing teachers. My brain is fairly well balanced (the left/right thing), they tell me, so I just followed the easiest path.

Sharelle: Not much. I've been assigned to do some nonfiction articles on the art and craft of writing, which I've enjoyed. And a few years ago, I proposed some gardening books for children. I love to garden and I loved gardening with our daughter. And the gardening proposals got some nice nibbles, but no sales. And, truly, my passion is fiction as a reader. I don't read much nonfiction, which is a big clue that writing it isn't likely to be my forte.

Mel: You are anticipating questions--the sign of a GOOD interviewee!

Sharelle: As both a reader and writer, I prefer fiction. My dad always told me that reading fiction was a waste of time, but even as an adolescent, I knew that good fiction told the REAL truth about life, and I still feel that way.

Sharelle: I've always heard that too. I don't have personal experience because I've not tried to market much nonfiction, but my sense is that both arenas are very competitive, and that it's important, always, to play to our strong suits. So if you're passionate about reading and writing nonfiction, I'd definitely go that way. But if you're passionate about fiction I'd stick with that.

Sharelle: My parents and I were in Oklahoma after World War II while my daddy tried to establish himself as an electrician. I was only three at the time so don't remember much. But my mother, who was a wonderful letter writer, and far from her family in Illinois, wrote them almost daily. And they wrote back to her almost daily, and those letters—fondly referred to by our family as the Oklahoma letters—

Mel: Here's an observation that fit me when a child; does it fit your growing-up, Sharelle?

Sharelle: My parents thought that reading comics was worse than a waste of time. They thought maybe it was immoral? Just not allowed, period.

Mel: Here's a longer question:

Sharelle: What an interesting question! I start with a universal theme. For instance, a theme I started with in Over the River was the theme of divided loyalties that a child feels. But as I deal with the theme that I think I'm writing about I discover that OTHER universal themes emerge, some that I had no idea I had anything to say about. So I'm often a little surprised at how things grow. Organically, yes.

Sharelle: No. Maybe someday. :)

Mel: COMPLIMENTS to you, Sharelle!

Sharelle: What a nice thing to say.

Mel: WELL deserved!

Sharelle: Another wonderful question. Character is conflict, and conflict is character, in my opinion. That is, any "real" (that is to say, "round") character is doomed to be imperfect. And out of imperfection comes conflict. But out of dealing with the conflict, comes the more mature and stronger character. But to answer you more specifically, I don't think I can. Sorry, but to me, character and conflict are so intertwined that I just can't separate them.

Sharelle: I can only share my experiences with the assumption that they're fairly typical. I began writing and submitting and receiving rejection letters. I received seventy-three rejections before I sold my first magazine story. And over a hundred rejections before I sold my first book. A writing friend of mine once said, "Sharelle, that's a LOT of rejections," suggesting that maybe other beginning writers didn't get QUITE so many. And I do know I made lots of mistakes in my early days, which no doubt boosted my rejection file. For instance, I did not take the time to develop any market savvy. I was sending my stuff to the wrong places. Likewise, I didn't take any courses that might have helped me regain my creative writing skills that were thirty years old and largely forgotten. I would say that learning the basic skills, practicing and practicing until those skills shine, writing what you're passionate about and knowing the markets, are the things that will give publication success. All that and, biggest of all, LUCK!

Mel: YUP! Your experiences are certainly typical of my own, Sharelle, thank you!

Sharelle: Then what kept me motivated/inspired was just the total commitment to writing. My poor husband used to haul the returned manuscripts in from the mailbox, drop them on the kitchen counter, and say, "How do you keep going?" But, you know, if you truly love it, what else do you do?

Sharelle: To write.

Sharelle: The ending should be inevitable. It arises so naturally and inevitably out of the character/conflict dynamic that there can be no question. But also, the ending is a time of unifying everything that has come before, every detail, motif, minor character. So I always read back over the whole story and make sure that no thread is dangling and try to knit everything up smoothly in the end.

Mel: What kinds of children’s fiction do you like to write best?

Sharelle: I write what they call mid-list books, stand-alone titles. Over the River and the next book coming out from Holt are technically characterized as historical fiction and I suppose they are, though I don't particularly think of them that way.

Mel: I think you're modest, Sharelle; I think Over the River is HIGHER than just midlist!

Sharelle: I know there are famous examples of books that have been sent out twenty, thirty times before anybody buys them. But my experience with my own manuscripts is that if nobody gives me positive feedback the first three or four times out, the story probably is not very strong. When I decide that, I stop sending it out and move on. Again, my personal experience is that if an editor thinks a manuscript has anything to offer, no matter how far from complete it is, she will want to work on the project to turn it into a book.

Sharelle: Good question. I'm thinking. . . Okay, Don’t give the editor a reason to reject your manuscript. Let me expand on that. Editors have manuscripts piled all around them and they lead frantically busy lives. Sometimes I think they just want to shrink the piles, find ways to cope with the awful reality of so much to read and so little time. And that's when you don't want to give the editor a reason to quickly move your submission into the "NO THANKS" pile. So don't use a tiny font, for example, or purple ink. Or—God forbid—call the editor by the wrong name or with the wrong spelling. Just always come across as the professional you aspire to be.

Mel: Terrific insights, Sharelle!

Sharelle: I have heard that. It's wonderful advice, I think.

Sharelle: They all are. :)

Sharelle: My ideas come from literally what's on my mind. Deep on my mind. What are deep issues that I want to work out? Over the River, for example, was a working out of my relationship with my daddy. I was writing it as his life was ending. And it was an important part of the process of moving on.

Sharelle: A bit of it is conscious. For instance, I certainly knew that the "river" was going to be a major motif in Over the River. But those things take on a life of their own and the river ended up serving functions in the story that I had never consciously planned. So I seem to start the process, then it develops according to its own logic.

Sharelle: I was, and you know, I'm still working on it. I've started a new manuscript, and I'm still working on it.

Sharelle: I think that not having books made me more imaginative. As someone who lives to read now, this seems like an odd thing to say, but I suspect it was a gift that my imagination had time to develop more or less in a vacuum. I remember lying in a patch of sunlight on a wool carpet simply imagining a world which was very exciting. And then when I discovered good books, I WAS READY.

Mel: How do you feel about revision and editorial direction?

Sharelle: I love my editor. She has taken my manuscripts, which weren't really very strong and showed me how to radically revise them—

Mel: One of our chatsters has a question for you, and I have one, too, and they're very similar.

Mel: How long does it take to get from story conception to book-on-shelf?

Sharelle: Over the River took four years from when I began to write it until it was in the bookstores. THE PURPLE RIBBON actually took longer, but much of that time was because of the illustrations. I want to tell a story about Purple Ribbon.

Mel: GOOD!

Sharelle: It might help some of the chatsters. Purple Ribbon was one of the first stories I wrote when I first began writing for children. We were in the arduous process of adopting an eleven year old daughter then and I was so mindful of families of origin being split up because of forces beyond their control, or at least beyond the children's control. So I wrote a story about a mouse family which is split up because of forces beyond their control. The problem was, it was too long to be a picture book and way to short to be a novel. So I just wrote it, felt better because I'd dealt with one of my "issues," and put it in my file cabinet drawer.

Mel: I'm so GLAD you told us that story, because Purple Ribbon is really a different book from Over the River, about animals instead of real people, and for a younger age group. What age group did you have in mind as you WROTE PURPLE RIBBON?

Sharelle: The little ones. Our daughter was one of a sibling group. Four kids. Four mice in Purple Ribbon. And I wanted to speak to very young children about life and hope.

Sharelle: Well, Purple Ribbon is an example of one way to do it. The mice are sweet and animal, not human, which means that a young child can see the family get separated and relate to the problem and think about the problem without identifying too closely. And the kinds of love and loyalty issues that Willa Mae deals with in Over the River are issues that kids deal with everyday when their parents get divorced, for example. I think children are inherently responsive to the same issues as adults--they "outward reality" of them is just different.

Sharelle: I was uneasy. A couple of years prior, a different editor had asked me to deeply revise a manuscript. After I revised it, I felt that she basically "blew off" my efforts and said, "Nah, it's still not right. Sorry." And I was afraid that was going to happen again. My first revision of Purple Ribbon was stiff and timid. But fortunately, my editor called me up and said. "Look. Relax. This isn't what I wanted. But I'm not going to abandon you on this project. Just relax and have fun." Well, I believed her. So I relaxed and had fun and got it "right" the next time. After that, I've trusted her implicitly.

Mel: Maybe the difference between being comfortable with an editor's decision to revise and being uncomfortable is that with some editors, you feel they are truly trying to bring out the best in you; with others, they may be wanting to "write (rewrite) the book themselves."

Sharelle: Yea, Mel. Well put.

Sharelle: The advantages are that you can tackle hard subjects. The disadvantages are several. One is that not all publishers publish "talking animal" stories. But then no publisher publishes EVERYTHING. Another disadvantage is that a writer has to balance the animals so they retain some of their animal nature but are also believable anthropomorphically. Are the animals believable as stand-ins for humans? Talking animal stories are actually pretty tricky. I'm still grateful for that Beatrix Potter book!

Sharelle: Maybe—bless you for your kind words. :)

Sharelle: I don't have an outline. I have a major theme and a main character, and I'm off and running.

Sharelle: No. I've stayed with mainstream publishers.

Sharelle: Yes, being a good judge of one's own writing and knowing where it belongs is part of being a good writer, part of being a professional. Know the genres and where you fit within them. Know the markets and where you're likely to sell. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "boundaries," but let me make an assumption that you mean boundaries about subject matter. At least for the Young Adult audience, I think subject matter is more or less without boundaries these days. BUT there has to be hope at the end.

Sharelle: Hmmmmmm. I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask, but I guess I'd say that one of my strengths is that I'm very self-driven. As my husband says, If I decide to do it, it's as good as done…eventually. A weakness, a character weakness? Or a writing weakness? Let's do a writing weakness. :) My plots stink.

Mel: I can answer the strengths part myself with this one observation: Sharelle has an ability greater than MOST other authors to make the reader feel s/he IS the main character!

Sharelle: Mel, I cherish that statement. Thank you.

Sharelle: Well, thirty years later, I'd learned that the most important readers in the world are children and I wanted to speak to them. And when I was in college, I was naturally concerned with issues that seemed very mature and grown-up at the time. But by the time I was fifty, those issues were really kind of boring to me. I wanted to tackle bigger issues, the stuff that kids worry about.

Sharelle: Yes, thanks for asking. It will (hopefully) be out in '05 from Holt with the title Slide Rule. It's a YA novel set in 1958 and deals with a high school girl's struggles to have MORE than nicely ironed linen napkins, oval shaped nails and the expectation of spending her life being only a wife and mother. I've had a huge amount of fun writing it, and learned a lot. Actually, I'm still learning a lot, because it's still in one of its many revisions.

Mel: You are SO versatile age-wise, Sharelle, writing for all ages from at least 6 to 19! And Sharelle Byars Moranville, you have lighted up the craft and art of writing middle-grade novels for young readers. I think I can safely say that middle-grade novels are the genre most of us children's writers are most interested to write and publish. Thank you for your ease and completeness with all of our questions! I won't wait as long since your previous visit in 2000 to invite you again. Will you please come back and chat with us more in the future?

Sharelle: I'd love to Mel. It has been so much fun!

Mel: For our next Guest Chat on Thursday, September 9, Award-winning author Jane Kurtz will be our special guest. You may remember Jane as the person whom Toni Buzzeo named as the cherished mentor who got Toni started. In her own right, Jane started out as a picture book writer, but after her first novel was published, editors started asking for more. Now she's published five books, with two more under contract. Her chapter books are I'm Sorry Almira Ann and Bicycle Madness (Holt), with The Oregon Trail: Chasing the Dream on the way from Simon & Schuster. You are cordially invited to come back to chat with Jane Kurtz in two weeks, on Thursday, September 9.

Mel: And thank YOU again, Sharelle Byars Moranville, for being here tonight to share yourself and your writing! Though writing middle-grade novels has been our favorite write to do, we've all also had problems doing it. What you have shared with us this evening in the chat room will make the task less formidable from writing to publishing. We are all grateful to you, friend.

Sharelle: My pleasure everybody.

Sharelle: You're welcome.

Mel: Goodnight AllYouWriters!