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“Nothing beats a workshop experience for being part
of a creative think tank.” — Melanie Cecka |
III. ON A PERSONAL NOTE
What are some of your favorite classic and contemporary books, and what makes each unforgettable for you?
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett: For making me aware that children lived in places other than suburban Minnesota (where I lived at the time I read it) and that I could grow to love a character that I positively hated when I started the book.
Tuesdays at the Castle, by Jessica Day George: I love Princess Celie—the precocious, spirited heroine—who defies the pink, Disney-fied categorization and manages to one-up all the adults around her, save the day, and have a wonderful relationship with her siblings. It’s funny and quirky and represents everything I love about middle grade.
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Laurie took an issue that’s hard to talk about because it conjures up pain and shame and horror, and she gave it a voice that you simply can’t get out of your mind. The inner landscape of Melinda’s story is gritty and real and yet breathtakingly beautiful. And you’re so, so sorry she had to live through the experience, but eternally grateful to her for being brave enough to tell you about it in her own way
What would you like writers to know about you, the individual who scrutinizes (and may reject) their labor of love?
Editors are just like writers: we love words, we love storytelling, we love finding the right book to give to the right kid. We just happen to sit on the other side of the writing desk, so our approach to writing is shaded by slightly different things—our personal likes and dislikes in fiction, the kind of books we’re looking to acquire, sometimes what we had for breakfast.
There are dozens of invisible factors going through an editor’s brain when he or she reads a manuscript, and a writer can’t possibly anticipate what they are. So be true to your writing first and foremost, give everything to it. Great stories always have a way of finding a champion and a home—
it may not happen overnight, but it does happen. |
How does meeting writers at workshops affect you. What aspects of our event appeal to you?
One-on-one time with a writer is invaluable. You pick up little things about a person that are invisible in a pitch letter or sometimes even in their writing. Their body language, their habits, how comfortable and well-
informed (or not) they are about their work and about their target readers. And nothing beats a workshop experience for being part of a creative think tank. The process of childhood doesn’t change a whole lot from one generation to the next. Toddlers learn about their world in much the same way they did 50 years ago, as do middle schoolers and teens. But how writers speak to those experiences through fiction is always changing.
We’re able to explore the same narrative territory for young readers over and over again only because new writers are constantly reforming the way we think about those milestones, and bringing fresh perspectives to the page. Being part of a community of writers is the best way to live in that process, to talk about writing, and on a practical level, to talk about writing as a business. The intimacy of this PCCWW seminar is especially appealing because it means the conversations can go deeper.
"Being part of a community of writers is the best way… to talk about writing…
The intimacy of this PCCWW seminar is especially appealing because
it means the conversations can go deeper.” — Melanie Cecka |
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20 years of Master Class to Masterpiece