"After Two Newbery Medals, What Then?" with Katherine Paterson

Mel is Mel Boring, moderator of this chat with Katherine Paterson and web editor of the ICL site.

Katherine is Katherine Paterson, twice winner of the Newbery Award for the best book of the year. Katherine won the Newbery Medal first in 1978, for Bridge to Terabithia, based on the death by lightning of her son’s best childhood friend—the first children’s novel to deal with that subject. In 1981, Katherine Paterson again won the Newbery Award for Jacob Have I Loved. And in 1979, Katherine’s novel about a spunky and loveable foster child, The Great Gilly Hopkins, won an Honor Book Newbery Medal. Katherine Paterson grew up the daughter of parents who were missionaries in China. After Katherine had prepared to be a missionary to China herself, China was closed to missionaries, so she went as a missionary to Japan instead. Katherine’s overseas experiences have deeply influenced her books for children. We in the ICL Chat Room are honored to have Katherine Paterson as our guest this evening.

Green shows the user names of the people and their questions asked of Katherine Paterson.

Mel: Good evening to you all! When I first invited Katherine Paterson to be our guest in the ICL Chat Room, I was told that she had choir practice on Thursday evenings, and never missed it. But then she e-mailed to say that there was no choir practice in August, so this August evening, August 12 opened up. It is obvious talking to Katherine Paterson that the fame of winning two Newbery Medals has not taken her above the ranks of us ordinary children's writers. She speaks from the heart and with ordinary words that are unusually encouraging for aspiring children’s writers. I am pleased and also feel honored to have Katherine Paterson here this evening. We all give you our warmest welcome to the ICL Chat Room, Katherine, and thank you so much for being here!

Katherine: I'm delighted to be here, Mel.

Mel: Katherine, do you remember anything you wrote as a child that might have hinted you would someday become a writer?

Katherine: I suppose in the nature of full disclosure, I should tell you about my first published work. It went like this: "Pat, pat, pat, There is the rat. Where is the cat? Pat, pat, pat." This was published in the Shanghai American School newspaper. Right beside it was a note from my teacher which said: "The second graders' work is not up to our usual standards this week. We were too busy working on the circus." So my first published work appeared alongside my first critical review. That may answer for you the question about my early promise. There was none.

Mel: How did it come to be that you were in Shanghai in second grade?"

Katherine: My parents were missionaries in China. The war began in 1937 and we were never able to get back to our home in Huai'an. That is, only my father was allowed to cross the lines of battle. The rest of us had to stay in Shanghai.

Mel: Was it an English-speaking school that you attended in Shanghai?

Katherine: Yes. The student body came from all over the world, but everything was taught in English.

Mel: Katherine, I'm figuring that you must be TRIlingual, at least, English, Chinese and Japanese--are there any other languages you know?

Katherine: Oh, dear. I've forgotten so many languages--Chinese, Latin, French, Greek, and my Japanese is very rusty after more than 40 years of disuse. It's very sad.

Mel: When did you have your first inkling that you would be a professional writer?

Katherine: A professor I had in seminary stopped me in the hall one day and asked me if I had ever thought of becoming a writer. Now I was an English Lit major in college. I knew what good writing was, so I was appalled by the idea. "No," I said, "I wouldn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world." "Maybe," she said, "that's what God is calling you to be." Of course, what she meant was that if I didn't dare to be mediocre, there was no chance I'd ever be a writer at all. I shied away from her suggestion, but she was the one who, after I had come back from four years in Japan, suggested that I write a book for 5th and 6th graders for the Presbyterian Church. That is what launched me as a writer. Though after the launch, I wrote for seven years, publishing practically nothing. One short story was published in a tiny magazine that immediately folded, and I sold one poem, but the magazine that bought it folded before my poem was published.

Katherine: I wasn't afraid of failing. There was something very noble to me about trying and failing gloriously. But to just be so-so—to be a mediocre writer--seemed terrible to me. I would rather not write at all and just read wonderful writing by those who could write well.

Mel: So you wrote stories when you first started, Katherine. Is there a magazine story or article of yours that you feel proudest of?

Katherine: I'm sorry, Mel. I don't do short stories. All my answers are too long! J

Mel: They are lovely long stories--and answers!

Katherine: Well, the second grade debacle aside, I began writing seriously when I was 31 years old. Ten years and four children later, my first novel was published.

Katherine: I was asked to write the book for the church which made me realize that I really enjoyed writing. Besides, I was clever enough to realize, that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want to and people think you are working. Right?

Katherine: My father, as I said, had gone back to Huai'an which was a dangerous trip to a dangerous place. I missed him very much. I was telling him that and also that I had been swimming. He didn't know I could swim, so I was very proud to be able to tell him.

Mel: In one of your pictures on the web site, you appear to have a large family, Katherine. How many children do you have, and have they either, or both, helped or hindered your writing for children?

Katherine: We planned our family very well. We have two girls and two boys. The part that didn't work out quite so neatly is that they came in just over four years—when the eldest was five. So I was writing in five minute cracks of time between feeding and diapering and reading aloud and doing the laundry—you know the drill. But I've always maintained that the people who took away my time were the same ones who gave me something to say. If I had to chose between those four and my books. There'd be no contest. The children would win hands down.

Katherine: I'm honored, Stephenie. I hope that she will have as good a life as I have had.

Katherine: That's a good question, and like all good questions, hard to answer. I love writing that is honest, clear, passionate. I love a book that takes me to a place of mind and heart that I did not know before I read it. An example: I've just recently read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Read that, and you'll see what I think is excellent writing.

Katherine: I like to write about people whom the world neglects or forgets. I've known so many brave people that most of the world would count as nothing. I love to give them their due.

Mel: Like Gilly Hopkins!

Katherine: Exactly.

Katherine: Thank you. I can't say which is my favorite book, but Maime Trotter in that book is my favorite character.

Katherine: My husband and I were asked to serve as foster parents in an emergency situation. I realized that, although I was a sort of C+ mother of my own four, both adopted and homemade, I was flunking as a foster mother. When I asked myself why, I realized that I was saying to myself things like, "I can't really deal with that problem, they'll only be here a few weeks." Or "Thank heavens, they'll only be here a few weeks." And l was treating two human beings as though they were disposable. I had to imagine how I'd feel if the world regarded me as disposable.

Mel: MARVELOUS answers, Katherine!

Katherine: Good questions, folks.

Katherine: Hmm. Another good question that takes thought to answer, Diane. I think you have to know yourself as a child—your feelings, particularly. You need to remember, not events, so much, as how things felt to you. Then you have to be honest about it. It gets harder every time to write a book. Sorry to give a discouraging answer. One would hope after fourteen novels and other assorted stuff, it might get easier. But it doesn't. The stakes get higher, for one thing.

Katherine: God helps me with everything. I particularly love the idea of being a co-creator with God.

Katherine: I don't write for a particular age. I try hard to listen to the story and hear how it wants to be written. Then I try as faithfully as I can, to write that story. Deciding what age it's for, is a job I leave to others.

Katherine: First of all, you need to write because you love the process of writing. Most professional writers make about $5000 a year. Most of us could hardly live on that, so the career bit may have to wait until you've been at it for a while and had some success. But that shouldn't keep you from writing. Fifteen minutes a day—two or three pages and by the end of a year, you've got a novel.

Katherine: From writing, I think. Most of my writer friends do the engagements to make a living so they can write.

Katherine: No. I've translated a couple of picture books from Japanese, but I'm not good enough to write one in Japanese.

Katherine: I'll be going in October to the National Book Festival, but I've decided not to attend the event at the White House this time. It is a personal decision, based on my opposition to the Iraq war. Other writers will just as conscientiously make a different decision.

Katherine: Your writing is always who you are. You can't separate your inner self from what comes on the page. Some people looking at my work criticize it for being too religious and others for it being too secular. But it's just me--for better or worse.

Katherine: Yes. Thank goodness. Through those seven years when nobody wanted to publish what I was writing, my husband believed in me. He's my first editor, and my children are my best cheerleaders. I am very fortunate.

Mel: Katherine, I have to insert here that it is SO refreshing for us to hear that YOU once wrote what no one wanted to publish--THANK YOU!

Katherine: I sort of believe that every novel deserves at least a first draft. How can you tell if it's any good or not until you see the whole shape of it on the page? Having said that, my first drafts are ALWAYS TERRIBLE. No kidding. I just have to keep reminding myself that it's only the first draft and meant to be garbage.

scigirl: Initially, are you a keyboard writer or a pen and paper sort?

Katherine: I like to start with a handwritten first draft. A computer makes everything so neat and lovely that you might forget that it was garbage. A handwritten or even typewritten first draft which has been scribbled all over and scratched on conveys no illusions.

Katherine: Maime Trotter.

Katherine: No, I had written three novels set in feudal Japan. They are all still in print, but don't get read the way my American novels do. Pity.

Mel: Here are two similar questions, Katherine:

Katherine: I wrote Bridge because our son David's best friend, a girl named Lisa, was struck and killed by lightning. I had to try to make sense of something that made no sense to any of us.

Katherine: You are kind. And I don't know the answer, but I am grateful to be able to write something that touches other people.

Katherine: No. Not really. It's about a young autistic teen-ager who decides to solve the death of a neighbor's dog. Wonderful.

Katherine: Oh, dear. The old getting-the-character-on-and-off-the-stage problem. My playwright son says it's why he writes plays and not novels. I guess you do it a little differently each time, trying to make it seamless, so it won't distract from the story. A poor answer, but the best I can do. Sorry.

Mel: Here is a question e-mailed to us:

Katherine: I've never belonged to a writers' group as I'm such a painfully introverted person (not kidding) that I don't even tell my husband what I'm doing until I complete the first draft. Do you belong to SCBWI? You might get some help from the area chapter.

Mel: THANK YOU, realityczech!

Katherine: Surprisingly, it took me a long time to get started on the book—I had the name Galadriel Hopkins for ages before I knew what her story was—but once I knew she was a foster child, the book just took off. I guess the whole process took about a year.

Katherine: You have to feel them first. No faking.

Katherine: I usually know before I start where I'm going to end. Not in detail, but the general destination. Sometimes I do a very sketchy outline—say, what is going to happen in this chapter that will propel the story toward the ending?

Katherine: The only way I know to become a writer is to sit down and write. Don't wait until you have time, you'll never have enough. I think the thing that holds most of us back is not a lack of ideas or lack of time but lack of nerve. But who is going to beat you up if you make a mess on the page in the privacy of your own home? You just need to give yourself a chance, friend.

Mel: AMEN, Katherine!

Katherine: I wrote Jacob as sort of an argument with God. (Please note that in the Bible all God's friends argue with God.) I have always felt sorry for Esau. How come God chose his sneaky, unworthy brother instead of him? I think most books are a writer asking a question and then exploring the answer in the form of a story. I have the feeling that my truthful answer is not satisfactory.

Mel: I think it IS, Katherine! It is enlighteningly simple to view a book as the author asking a question, then answering it. What a FRESH answer to an often-asked question—THANK YOU!

Katherine: That's always hard for someone who reads as much as I do to answer. I love Sigrid Undset and Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austin. I always hesitate to name children's writers because I have so many friends who are writers, and if I failed to name a dear friend, well, you understand, don't you?

Mel: Yes!

Katherine: It's interesting, isn't it? Some writers send you racing back to your own work, and others make you hardly dare enter your study. I'm not quite sure why that's so. Robert Louis Stevenson, for some reason, makes me want to write where Tolstoy makes me wonder why I ever try.

Katherine: Honesty. A command of the English language that will move others. The same thing that makes any of us write for others, don't you think?

Katherine: I suppose, in some sense, I'm always writing from my own life, either consciously or unconsciously. After all, it's my best raw material.

Katherine: Well, I'm older, for one thing. Then I have a track record that I find a bit scary. I think the chief thing most of us writers have to fear is, as they say, fear itself.

Katherine: I'm not a good judge of a first draft. Maybe I'm not a good judge period until the book has been out for a while. Then I'll reread it and feel pretty good about it, usually. I have a terrific editor, so she's not going to let me get by with sloppy work. As for criticism, this work ain't for sissies. Although you need a very thin skin to be a writer, you need hippo hide to endure publication.

Katherine: I love them very much.

Katherine: I'm not sure if you mean too mature for children or too mature for you, the writer. I think we writers have to write what we can, and not try to be someone or write like someone we are not. Write first, find out who you are. You are unique and if you don't write what only you can write, it won't be written, and the world will be poorer for it. The audience for what you have written will come to you, if you've written honestly.

Katherine: Many, many, many times. If you don't believe me, go to the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota and read my garbage. It's enshrined there.

Mel: HA--delicious garbage, I'd say! (-:}

Katherine: I keep writing until either I think it's the best I can do or my husband says it's getting worse instead of better. He has good instincts.

Katherine: I am not one of these people like my friends Jane Yolen or Rosemary Wells, who have so many ideas they won't live long enough to execute them. I struggle from one book-worthy idea to the next, always sure when I finish a book that I'll never write another one. One of the problems, of course, is that one idea doth not a novel make. It's waiting for the various threads that come together to make the fabric of the story that is so hard for me.

Katherine: One good sign is if my husband cries when he reads it.

Katherine: I'm not a person who just gets in a car and heads out to wherever the road leads. I like to have a map and a destination in mind. I don't often write the ending first, but sometimes if I'm stuck I'll write the ending, so I'll know where I'm headed. In only one case did I start a book and have no idea how it was going to end. As it turned out, I had a great time writing that book (Come Sing, Jimmy Jo). So you'd think I'd want to write more books that way, but it's just not my natural way of working.

Mel: Two related questions, Katherine:

Katherine: Yes. The first two are 12th century and the third 18th century. And yes, all three of them are for young people.

Katherine: I think you need to listen to the novel and hear how it wants to be written. I don't like to write in first person, but in the case of Jacob Have I Loved, I found that I had to. A jealous person only has a first person singular point of view. In the case of Preacher’s Boy, also first person, the kid is very self-centered. Publishers come up with all kinds of ideas, any of which will be shattered by a well-written book.

Katherine: Maybe crying together is the most important thing we can do as human beings.

Katherine: When my editor (Virginia Buckley) tells me I am. Otherwise, I'd be fiddling with it forever. I always have the illusion that just one more pass through and I can make it perfect.

Mel: Katherine Paterson, chatting with you this evening has made two hours seem more like two minutes. You've helped us to easily make the connection between the children's writers we now are and what it takes to win a Newbery Award. Thank you for making us feel so at ease in chatting with you. I know your time is well filled, but we would like very much to have you come back and chat with us again someday. Would it be OK to invite you back again sometime later?

Katherine: Yes. But it will probably have to be summer again. Choir practice night hasn't changed! Thanks, Mel, it was fun being with you all.

Mel: Our next Guest Chat will be with Sharelle Byars Moranville on Thursday evening, August 26. That evening, we will enjoy a return visit to our chat room by Sharelle, with whom we last chatted way back on November 9, 2000. Sharelle is the author of Over the River, a middle-grade novel that maintains a 5-star rating on Amazon.com. It is a novel with an alluring time and place setting, filled with rich description, characters so real they seem to breathe, and a story that will keep you reading to the end of the book. I suggest you read Over the River before the next chat. And please come back to this chat room two weeks from tonight, August 26, to chat with Sharelle Byars Moranville whose topic will be "Middle Grade Novels that Reach Out and Touch Young Readers." I hope to "see you" Thursday evening, August 26!

Mel: Arigato, Katherine Paterson, THANK YOU again so MUCH for fitting time into your busy schedule to chat with us tonight. I think we have NEVER had a children's writer so accomplished as you are, appear so human, so real, so much one of us as you are. You, as well as your books, will now be an inspiration to all of us children's writers. And we wish you well, Katherine, in all you write in the future. May there be yet another Newbery Medal in your future!

Katherine: Well I AM one of you.

Mel: Goodnight EveryChildren'sWriter!