Rx for Writers

Transcripts

Thursday, December 9, l999

MODERATOR is Kristi Holl, Web Editor for the Institute's web site. Kristi is author of 22 middle grade novels and has taught writing at The Institute of Children's Literature for l5 years.

Sandy is Sandy Asher, versatile writer of award-winning YA novels, plays, poetry, and anthologies. Her most recent published play is I Will Sing Life, based on interviews with children with life-threatening diseases. Her newest anthology is With All My Heart, With All My Mind.

Names color coded in blue are audience members who had questions.

Interviews are scheduled for Thursday evenings: 8 Eastern, 7 Central, 6 Mountain, and 5 Pacific.

MODERATOR: Good evening, everyone! It seems like ages since we met here. Thanks for all your e-mails lately. I'm feeling better after my surgery--finally--and so glad to be in full swing again. You're in for a treat tonight. My dear friend and a talented writer, Sandy Asher, is here tonight to discuss how to "Write from the Heart: Finding Our Own Best Stories." Sandy has published many award-winning YA novels, as well as anthologies and plays. Her most recent published play, I Will Sing Life, is based on interviews with children who attended the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for kids with life-threatening illnesses. Sandy has done plays based on interviews with local homeless shelter residents as well as famous historical figures like Sojourner Truth. Sandy believes that we must tell "the stories only we can tell." She's experienced in working with community members to create story anthologies (like her newest one, With All My Heart, With All My Mind) and plays based on real experiences. If you have a personal story you'd like to tell--in fiction, nonfiction or play form--tonight is your chance to ask an expert! Thanks for being with us, Sandy!

Sandy: I'm delighted to be here, Kristi! Thanks for inviting me!

MODERATOR: Sandy, you're a very versatile writer. Which came first, the books or the plays?

Sandy: The plays, and that was a long time ago. I can remember writing plays as far back as second grade. I used to make up little stories to go with popular songs of the day and then boss my friends around and we would act them out for the class!

MODERATOR: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Sandy: As far back as I can remember. I can still see myself standing among the books in the children's reading room of the Free Library of Philadelphia, thinking, "It must be the most wonderful thing in the world to write a book that someone would love as much as I love these!"

MODERATOR: I can really identify with that. Did teachers influence your decision to become a writer?

Sandy: Absolutely! I have them to thank for everything that's happened to me as a writer, both for teaching me how to write and for teaching me that I could be a professional author and playwright. I was raised, as were most girls at that time, to be a wife and a mother. I was sent to college, the first girl in my family to attend college in order to earn my "MRS." degree and become a better wife and mother! But all along, from that second grade teacher, Mrs. Lomozoff, through high school and college, there were teachers telling me I could do more. I thank them all!

MODERATOR: What other factors influenced you?

Sandy: I loved to read, anything, everything, from the Oz books to every folk and fairy tale I could find, to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to Peter and Wendy, and a very ordinary series belonging to my brother called Buddy and his Chums. But I have to give extra credit to Louisa May Alcott and Jo March. Until I read Little Women in which Jo sells her first story for publication I didn't realize writing was -- or could be -- a job! I thought it was a game! Jo showed me I could earn a living doing something I loved and she also taught me to wait for a professor before I got married. So I did!

lka: That's some influence! How did you know that writing was for you? Was there a single incident (like Jo March) or just self-knowledge?

Sandy: It was something I loved to do and also something that I needed to do. Still is. Life can sometimes just bowl me over unless I can write about it. I often don't know what I think about things until I've written about them!

MODERATOR: Me too! Did marriage and family interfere with your writing?

Sandy: That's a tough call. I suppose they must have, because both take a lot of time and energy and creativity. But my feeling is that they actually contributed to my writing. For one thing, I had plenty of feelings and situations that cried out for me to write about them! Part of my becoming a children's author must surely be due to my reliving so much of my own childhood while watching my children grow up.

Willie Willow Tree: What are your favourite things to write about?

Sandy: Marsha Norman gave some interesting advice once, Willie. She said, and I'm paraphrasing some here, that if you get an idea, try to forget it. Throw it out, put it away, ignore it. The ones that won't let you forget are the ones you were born to write about. So there aren't any "favorite things" really; there are things that won't let go of me until I write about them, things that make me angry, that frighten me, that make me laugh out loud, and so on. Everything from teenagers trying to find their individual identities to Norwegian folktales to the future.

GreyWolf: Do you write about your childhood experiences as fiction or nonfiction? Which is best?

Sandy: Hi, GreyWolf! My childhood experiences get recycled as fiction, and I add to the mix experiences and feelings I've had more recently, along with a great deal of imagination. I've written about my childhood for the Something About the Author Autobiography Series, but even then, there's a bit of fiction mixed in -- the childhood I remember as opposed to the childhood that really was. I prefer fiction, in most cases. Again if there's a nonfiction story that cries out for me to write it, such as Virginia Reed's experience with the Donner Party, then I write it and stay as close to the facts as I can. But even then because in that case, it was a play, it's historical fiction, not docudrama.

Willie Willow Tree: Can we tell the awful true stories?

Sandy: I'm not sure what you mean by the awful true stories, Willie. Certainly every shocking and awful story to be told is now being told in the media. Do you mean can we tell them to children?

Willie Willow Tree: Yes. There are some hard childhood stories out there. Is it a risk to tell them?

Sandy: I think there are two different possibilities--writing for children, and writing about childhood for adults. The writer has to consider the audience, and the purpose of the writing before proceeding. If you consider that some children will be reading alone, there are probably topics too difficult for them to handle without very careful approaches. Even so, YA novels are certainly dealing with difficult topics all time time. Again, it's a matter of considering the audience. Teenagers are not young children.

Norene: Editors warn you away from any form of violence, so when is it appropriate to write about it?

Sandy: I'm not sure that all editors warn us away from violence, Norene. I know that some of them do. Highlights for Children, for instance, and probably a lot of other magazines as well. They can't always be sure that the child picking up the magazine is ready for any and all topics. With a book, though, it's different. A reader -- or an adult, first -- can read the jacket copy and the first few pages and have some idea of what he or she is getting into. Book editors tend to be more open to difficult topics.

MODERATOR: How long did it take to write and publish your first book?

Sandy: Are you ready for this? Brace yourselves. Ten years! Want to hear all about it?

lka: Yes!!!

Willie Willow Tree: Wow! I will be old in ten years.

Sandy: Okay! I wanted to write a novel and didn't have a clue as to how to begin. So I figured, well, 40,000 words or so, right? Maybe if I have a whole bunch of main characters and they all run around doing stuff, I'll be able to fill all of those pages! Needless to say, the result was a chaotic mess, but I didn't know that, so I just started mailing it off to publishers. And back it came, rejected a total of l7 times, I believe, over ten years' time. But I guess there was a glimmer of talent showing in all of those pages because every once in a while, one of the rejecting editors would say a few encouraging words or offer a suggestion. At the same time I was submitting -- and selling -- stories and articles and poems to magazines, so I was learning. I was serving an apprenticeship. Anyway, slowly but surely, over those ten years, I rewrote the novel, I think about seven times completely. You wouldn't recognize the first draft in the eventually published book, Daughters of the Law. But around the eighth year of all this effort, I got the idea for another novel, Summer Begins. I wrote it, and sold it after, oh, maybe a half dozen rejections. And suddenly -- it was very much like learning to ride a bike, that moment when you can! -- I thought, "Oh, that's how you write a novel! I get it!" And I was able to rewrite Daughters of the Law one more time (with only two main characters!) And it sold the next time out. William Faulkner once said: "To become a writer, you sit down at a typewriter. Ten years later, you stand up -- and you're a writer." I guess I was right on schedule!

lka: Have you reread the original lately and if so, what would you say about it?

Sandy: Heavens, no, Ika! I have no idea where that original draft is now. I may have thrown it away long ago, before I knew libraries might want such things. Or, if I didn't, it's in the de Grummond collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. That's where I send all my drafts of books. The play stuff goes to Arizona State, which has a children's theatre collection.

Verada: Did you just learn by trial and error, or did you take any writing classes?

Sandy: I took seven creative writing classes in college, Verada, but I took them for one reason -- because I knew they would force me to write, even though I had other courses to do work for. The instruction was not very practical. We wrote. We critiqued one another's writing, but we were told very little of practical use. Still all that writing was part of the apprenticeship, and the apprenticeship, even with the courses, is very much a matter of trial and error. Every writer has to find his or her own voice, the stories he or she was born to tell, the manner in which he or she is best suited to telling them. That simply takes a lot of time and a lot of reading and writing.

Norene: Were your first writings in the first person or what voice did you use?

Sandy: I've always used both first person and third person, Norene, but I think first person comes a little easier to me because of my background in theater. I enjoy getting inside a character's head and speaking from that point of view. A lot of people tell me their writing teachers told them that first person is harder and that you should start off in third person, but, see, that was something I had to learn for myself.

kmadsen: What was the weakest thing in your writing that you had to work on?

Sandy: Hard question! There's always something wrong with all of it, and it always seems to be something different! Probably plot is my weak point because I'm most interested in character development and motivation and dialogue. There's that theater training again. Also description is hard for me. I hear the voices. I don't always see the faces or the scenery and costumes! I'm not a visual person. Those are things I have to be very careful to do as needed -- for my readers' sakes, if not my own enjoyment.

MODERATOR: This has been fascinating! Thanks, Sandy. Now, I think we'll move on to the subject of playwriting for a few moments. What are the main differences between writing books and writing plays?

Sandy: Plays depend almost entirely on dialogue and action. There are other special challenges as well -- the limits of the stage and of the very human beings who will be acting the parts. Also time limits and budgetary limits. These may seem daunting to an outsider, but to those of us who love live theater, they're creative challenges. Another big difference is that playwriting is a very social kind of endeavor. Authors can do all their work at home, alone, and deal with editors and readers without ever actually seeing them. Plays are not finished until they're performed. Playwrights have to get out there and become part of the theater community, working with directors, actors, designers, and so on. All of those people add shadings to the playwright's understanding of the play. And then there's the audience! A very important part of the developmental process. Most publishers want plays that have been done by at least three different theater groups and directed by someone other than the playwright. That's the only way to find out how what you've written on the page will play up on the stage. Authors of books rarely get to see their readers enjoying their work, but a playwright does get to stand in the back of the auditorium and relish the laughter that comes just as planned and the wonderful silence of people paying rapt attention to those words!

Kevin: Do you need to be a natural extrovert to do this community writing work?

Sandy: No, Kevin. I think a lot of playwrights aren't extroverts at all. I know I'm not! But what's more important than me and my feelings of shyness is what's best for the play. If I have to get out there and listen to it, even listen to it done very badly -- and believe me, that's happened, too -- then I have to do that because my job is to serve the play.

kmadsen: Do you know ahead of time if a story will work better as a play or a book?

Sandy: Yes, I can often tell ahead of time whether a story will work better as a play or as a book. For one thing there's the matter of scope. If it's going to have dozens of characters and settings and a huge time-span, it's probably not going to fit onstage. That's not always true, because actors can play more than one role, and sets can be suggested rather than realistic, but that is a guideline. Also, there's the question of whether the main character is an introvert or an extrovert. Characters in plays have to speak! Even when they don't want people to know what they're thinking, they tend to speak in circles or tell lies or something! But they speak! A character who is going to be all thought and feeling and of few words is probably going to be happier in a book.

SaraJ: Which do you like better, books or plays?

Sandy: I love them both and I love being able to go from one to the other. When writing narration and description really starts wearing me out, there's the freedom of dialogue! And when all those aforementioned limitations of the stage start to get to me, I can jump from scene to scene in a sentence or a phrase in a book!

Norene: How many words long is the average play and what percent is dialogue?

Sandy: Plays aren't figured in words, Norene. Generally, the timing is figured at about a minute and a half of playing time to a double-spaced page of dialogue. Stage directions are kept to an absolute minimum; most directors have to ignore them because their situation is never quite the same as the playwright had in mind when writing. So the dialogue is what counts. Stage directions are included only for things that can't be figured out from the dialogue, such as "There is a knife on a table at stage right." Also when writing for young actors, such as in Plays Magazine, a little more attention is given to stage directions, how lines are said, for instance, because they may not have the guidance of an experienced director.

MODERATOR: Is there a strong market out there for plays for young audiences?

Sandy: Quite strong, actually. Almost every community and college theater does at least one children's play every year. Church and synagogue troups are always looking for new material as well. And the biggest market for plays for young audiences is the school market -- elementary, secondary, and college. And that's not even counting the professional children's theatre troups out there, and the troups that have classes for young actors and performances throughout the year.

Steve: Does the market pay well for writing plays (in comparison to other types of writing?)

Sandy: Oh, Steve, I'm afraid not. Playwrights come in right above poets, I'd say for meager pay! Robert Anderson, who wrote "Tea and Sympathy," said: "You can make a killing in the theater, but you can't make a living."

MODERATOR: Love that quote!! Sandy, are there organizations, conferences, and publications people interested in writing for children's theatre need to know about?

Sandy: Definitely. I'd say go to the American Alliance for Theatre and Education website and begin there. You'll find information about publications and my own wonderful AATE Directory of Award-winning Plays (a labor of love, I might add. That was not a commercial plug!) Click on "publications" and you'll see the directory highlighted and you can download the whole thing for free. In that directory you'll also see a list of publishers who do a lot of children's theater. Send for their catalogues! And, if you're going to be in the DC area at the end of May/beginning of June, do come to the One Theatre World Festival and the AATE conference. You'll see a lot of amazing theater, and you'll begin the networking process necessary to getting your work performed and published.

SaraJ: Do you have to be professional (like published!) to take advantage of these great sounding opportunities?

Sandy: The conference and AATE, Sara? Absolutely not! Both are open to all. One Theater World, especially, is for audiences interested in the best in theater for young audiences.

Willie Willow Tree: How do you get involved in writing screen plays? And is it the same thing?

Sandy: Screen plays are quite different from stage plays. Again stage writing is a very verbal art form; it's all about the dialogue. Film is a very visual art form, where the director is far more important than the screenwriter, and as much of the story as possible is told through the pictures rather than the words. Also it's an entirely different network, and much of it is being out there on the west coast, or some other film center, and pitching ideas until you find someone willing to put up the money to make the film. Or at least to pay you for a draft of the script. Many people earn a fabulous income writing scripts that are never made into films at all -- or making films that are never distributed. Again, I think it's a matter of being so in love with the art form that all these problems simply don't matter. You have to do it so you do whatever it takes. And you enjoy it when it works out!

MODERATOR: That's fascinating--I never thought of all that, but it sounds so obvious when you explain it! Sandy, why do you believe that we must tell "the stories only we can tell"? What happens if we don't?

Sandy: They go untold, Kristi, and that's a very sad thing. My parents and grandparents were not storytellers. They never told me about what life was like in the old country, or what it was like to arrive in a new country or be the child of immigrants or live through two world wars and the Great Depression. By the time I was old enough to ask the right questions, there was no one left who knew the answers. And now I truly grieve for those lost stories. So I'm very much committed to encouraging people to tell their own stories -- for their own sakes, for their families, maybe for someone not yet even born. When Anne Frank was writing her diary, did she have any idea what impact it would have on the world? Absolutely not.

MODERATOR: That is so true. Please tell us about the theatre pieces you've written based on real life stories.

Sandy: It started with a request from our local Springfield Little Theatre. A group of students from Southwest Missouri State University had done interviews with folks who lived at our area homeless shelter. The little theatre wanted to weave those interviews into a program they could tour as a fund-raiser for the shelter. That was a very gratifying experience for me and for the people whose stories were retold in the piece. Some of them got to see it, and felt good that their stories were valued and were doing good for others. Next, we did a project for the l00th anniversary of our synagogue. A professional folklorist interviewed l0 of the oldest members and I wove those tales into an oral history of the community. More recently, I've done a play, as you mentioned earlier, Kristi, based on the book I Will Sing Life: Voices from the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp is a collection of creative writing by and interviews with children with life-threatening diseases. And last year I worked on Project Oregon, for which senior citizens and middle school students in Salem, OR, wrote from their own experiences and interviewed one another. I wove their words into a theater piece that 32 children performed, augmented by the seniors' voices as narrators. It was a wonderful experience, especially to see young people and seniors talking to one another so enthusiastically, really listening to one another's stories! We tend to segregate by age in our society, as well as by other criteria, and it's a shame.

Kevin: Those sound like such neat projects. How, specifically, did you find these people and get them to open up to you?

Sandy: With the homeless shelter and I Will Sing Life, the material was brought to me. Having done the first, I was able to recommend to the synagogue that a theatre piece could be made out of the interviews they were planning to do anyway. One thing leads to another. The more you get out there and get involved, the more you find to get out there and get involved with! I've just been asked, for instance, to give an "inspirational talk" to a group called Storykeepers. These will be people with terminal illnesses and volunteers working to preserve the stories that every one of those ill people has to tell. They may not be "Morrie" of "Tuesdays with Morrie." There may not be a bestseller in it, but that is not the piont! The point is every story is part of this great human drama we're all involved in, every story has meaning and real importance -- to the teller and to who knows who else?

SaraJ: That's really a great philosophy.

kmadsen: Do people whose stories you've put into plays ever get mad because you didn't stay exactly true to the facts as they happened in real life?

Sandy: So far so good! The way the stories are woven together, it's immediately obvious that these theatre pieces are not one person's true story. They're more like a tone poem -- many voices each contributing to the story of a certain group of people. Someone who wants his or her story told "just so" should, of course, tell it himself or herself -- and just so! Contributing to a group effort is a different thing entirely. So far, the reaction has been pride and joy in having something to contribute and having other people appreciate the value of it.

MODERATOR: So, if I understood you right, both your latest book and your latest play are based on other people's stories?

Sandy: That's right. I was very careful in I Will Sing Life not to change the children's words in any significant way. I had to shorten pieces, of course, but I added nothing of my own to what they had to say, and I never changed the meaning of what they had to say. In the latest book, With All My Heart, With All My Mind, there are l3 stories, 12 of them by other authors, all about growing up Jewish. I also include interviews with each other (as I did in But That's Another Story) because I believe in this high-tech world, it's a real reading incentive to young people to realize there's a genuine flesh-and-blood human being behind all those words, a neighbor, somebody's relative, a friend with stories to tell, just like the rest of us.

MODERATOR: In a similar vein, can you tell us about Missouri Writes for Kids?

Sandy: My pleasure! Fellow Springfield author David Harrison and I have been taping a series of 30-second spots for our local Ozarks Public Television station in which we talk about Missouri authors and invite kids to write to us about their favorite books by Missouri authors. If we read a snippet of a child's letter on the air in a future spot, that child wins a free autographed book by a Missouri author. If a whole class writes to us about a variety of Missouri authors, and we use that on the air, the class wins six autographed books for their library. It's been a lot of fun!

MODERATOR: On what do you base your passion for getting other people to write their own stories?

Sandy: Again, it's that emptiness I feel where the family stories ought to be, but aren't. I heard a sociologist speak here at Drury College recently, who has made a study of the importance of stories, and he said that our stories define us and our place in society. If we don't tell our own stories, others may tell them for us -- and we may not like what they have to say (or choose not to say.) Until recently, he pointed out, American history has been "his-story" -- and "he" was white and well-to-do. Women and minorities were left out. That's being remedied in textbooks, of course, but as individuals we're still defined by our stories -- and we need to be the ones telling them. I teach an afterschool program at Drury for kids from neighborhood schools, and this little guy told the most wonderful story about how he and his friend got wood donated and built clubhouses. Then a teacher from his school came to the last session and whispered to me, "He's in a B.D. class, you know." Her story about this kid was that he had some sort of behavioral disorder, but because he had told his own story, I will always think of him as a builder of clubhouses instead.

MODERATOR: Great story, and thought provoking. Any advice for someone who might like to try gathering stories into a theatre piece?

Sandy: Think in terms of a group with a story to tell, one topic that will tie the whole project together. "Growing up in Oregon," for instance. Or "Life in the Seventh Grade." The story should be important to you as coordinator, because you're going to live with it for a long time! Then, come up with one set of questions for everybody who will contribute -- maybe half-a-dozen questions or so, maybe more. But limit it in some way, or you'll have tons of material. After you've either interviewed or gotten your subjects to write for you -- (maybe in a workshop situation -- maybe you can get their teachers to assign the work -- or maybe there's another way open to you) you've got to sit down with all the transcripts and look for patterns. The patterns will come out of those unifying questions and overriding topic. Then the weaving together can begin. As with anything else, it helps to read examples. I Will Sing Life will be available from Dramatic Publishing very soon, but a lot of those play catalogues will have other group theatrical pieces to study.

MODERATOR: Great practical how-to advice!

SaraJ: Wow! You make it sound so simple! How long would something like this take to pull together?

Sandy: Let's see. I went out to Salem, OR, last February and did an all-day writing workshop with about a half-dozen seniors and l5 kids. Took that writing home with me, but waited, because they were all going out into the community to do more interviews. So it must have been March or so that I had everything together. I also did a lot of reading on Oregon history during that time. I went to Salem again in late April with the first draft of the script, which they all read out loud for me. Then I went home and rewrote. By June l, they had the script and it was performed at the end of July. February to July. That was fairly fast, I'll admit, but that gives you some idea, Sara.

Kevin: Have you had plays produced anywhere so that you could watch them yourself?

Sandy: Oh, sure, Kevin. They've been produced all over the country and I've seen them done in several places. Most recently, though, we did a production of my new adaptation of Little Women here in Springfield as part of the gala opening of our spectacular new library center. That was a very special experience. What better setting for Little Women than the library! We seem to have come full circle, haven't we, back to the fabulous Jo March again!

Steve: What is your favorite play (that you're written)? Why?

Sandy: Oh, Steve! I can't pick favorites. It's like asking me which of my children is my favorite! They were all hard work for different reasons, and I love them all for different reasons! I suppose it's okay for readers and audiences to choose favorites, but a work's mother shouldn't have to do so!

Kevin: When your plays are produced, do you get to choose who plays what parts?

Sandy: In professional productions, I do have some say in that, if I'm close enough to attend auditions -- or if the company has enough money to bring me in. I've even had directors fax me photographs and resumes so I could help with the casting! But with most amateur productions, I don't even know about them until the royalty statements arrive months after the production is over. I did get to help choose the cast for Little Women. About l00 kids showed up! It was a chore!

SaraJ: Do you need an agent for writing plays? Where do you find one?

Sandy: I don't have an agent for my playwriting. Others have found that agents aren't all that interested in plays for young audiences. There isn't a Broadway show likely -- except in the case of Disney, and that organization controls everything. When a play is published, the publisher acts as an agent, determining royalties and seeing that they're collected.

lka: What advice would you give a beginner other than "keep on keeping on"?

Sandy: Well, that's important advice, isn't it, Ika! I kept on keeping on and still do, by reading all those Writer magazine articles and letters that talked about "how I got rejected sixty billion times but then finally made it!" Gather all the information you can, Ika, and then keep writing, keep submitting. That's the only part of this business you can control. If the rest doesn't break your way, well, at least you'll know you gave it your best shot. And, you'll have had the privilege of doing something you really love doing. Most people never get to say that at all.

MODERATOR: One last question for the evening, which sums up what you've been saying tonight...

Chief: How do you go about finding your own best stories in yourself?

Sandy: In a nutshell, those are the ones who won't let go until I write them. And I find if an idea really scares me, it's one I need to be doing. I know then that I'm stretching and growing and dealing with something that really matters to me.

MODERATOR: I hate to interrupt here, but I'm afraid we're out of time now. Sandy, thank you so much for coming and sharing such a fascinating topic with us. Playwriting and anthologies are topics we don't hear much about, but what fascinating stories you've found to tell. We're so glad you could come and share with us tonight!

Sandy: Thank you all! It's been fun! I wish you all good luck and good writing!

MODERATOR: Be sure to come back next week. At that time I will finish out l999 with another "Open Forum" with me, your moderator and web editor, Kristi Holl. I've published over 50 magazine articles and stories, as well as 22 books for the juvenile market. I've taught writing for fifteen years, while raising six children. I'll welcome your questions on time management, getting started, writer's block, marketing, or anything else you'd like to discuss. Bring your QUESTIONS and OPINIONS to this moderated open forum next Thursday night.

Then after the holidays, we'll kick off the millennium with an inspirational interview with Karen O'Connor on January 6 called "Reach for the Stars--But Keep Your Feet on the Ground!" You won't want to miss it! And now, good night, everyone!

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