Wintertime is all about curling up with a book. Wait, all seasons are meant for books! But let’s put a marker between the pages for a moment to save our spot, and let’s think about impatiens and petunias, tomatoes and zucchinis. In some parts of the country it may be hard to believe, but today is the first day of spring! Here in Colorado, we’ve already experienced some record breaking heat, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get a foot of snow in the next few days. Still, no matter what’s going on outside at this moment, it’s time to start thinking about your garden and planting some seeds. Actually, I have a better idea. We can focus our attention on both: reading and gardening!

Gardens are the subject of so many great children’s books. The first that comes to mind, of course, is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. As a kid, I was, in fact, not a good reader. I loved stories, but my attention span was short and I rarely read past the first few chapters of a book. So, to be honest, it was the cover of the book, the illustration by the fabulous Tasha Tudor that kept me reading. I was dying to see Mary find the garden hidden beyond the wall and when she does, I was in awe of how she transforms death into life.

Gardens are places where magic happens. It’s not just the colors, the fragrance, the buzzing of bees and chirping of birds that make it amazing, but it’s the delightful mystery of “how did this incredible beauty happen?” Even if you spend time learning the science of seed growth, photosynthesis and all that, you still can’t help but wonder if there’s some kind of magical force too. Like fairies. I remember believing in fairies as a child and looking for them among the flowers. My own children used to build houses, complete with furniture, for the fairies that they believed lived in our garden. They loved the flower fairy books by Cicely Mary Barker and I think it was because of her books that we often thought we actually saw fairies among the sunflowers. But the biggest favorite of ours was the lovely little book called The Night Fairy by Newbery Medal winner, Laura Amy Schlitz. Tiny Flory, who loses her wings when a bat tries to eat her, has to learn how to survive without the ability to fly. She  is so real and perfectly imperfect which was what made us love her so.

Of course, fairies aren’t the only creatures who lurk in gardens. Every year I wonder why our family bothers to plant corn in the backyard when the raccoons are the ones who sneak in at night and munch until there’s nothing left for us. Then they run away without so much as a thank you. It seems pretty rude, but then I remember the garden in the classic Rabbit Hill, written by Robert Lawson. The “Folks” who live in the “Big House” in this story actually grow extra vegetables in their garden just so there will be enough for the critters. Wow, now don’t I feel greedy for trying (unsuccessfully) to chase away the raccoons from our yard. But, hey, our space is about the size of a dinner table. We don’t have a kernel to spare.

But, you know, for city dwellers like us, there are options. We could find a community garden and share vegetables with new friends. And speaking of community gardens, have you ever read the book Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman? For me, this gem was like discovering a bean sprout growing under a pumpkin leaf. I recently went to our Denver Public Library in search of books just for this blog post. I plucked it from the shelf and fell in love with the seedfolks’ short, but powerful, upper middle-grade story. The book jacket describes it best:

“A vacant lot, rat-infested and filled with garbage, looked like no place for a garden. Especially to a neighborhood of strangers where no one seems to care. Until one day, a young girl clears a small space and digs into the hard-packed soil to plant her precious bean seeds. Suddenly, the soil holds promise: To Curtis, who believes he can win back Lateesha’s heart with a harvest of tomatoes; to Virgil’s dad, who seems a fortune to be made from growing lettuce; and even to Mariclea, sixteen and pregnant, wishing she were dead. Thirteen very different voices–old, young, Haitian, Hispanic, tough, haunted, and hopeful tell one amazing story about a garden that transforms a neighborhood.”

And, last, I have to tell you about one of my favorites, Me and the Pumpkin Queen by Marlane Kennedy. I try to put Mildred’s story in the hands of every middle-grade girl I know because this is exactly the kind of story I would have devoured as a kid. In honor of her mother who passed away when she was six, eleven-year-old Mildred wants to grow the biggest pumpkin at the pumpkin show. I won’t tell you if she does or not, you’ll have to read it and find out. But I will share some of Mildred’s secrets to growing a giant pumpkin. And when I say giant, I mean bigger than a beanbag chair!

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
– Gene Fowler

Whether you’re writing a cover letter for your job application, an essay for school, or a blog post about middle-grade books, you know the feeling of staring at a blank screen or an empty white page, waiting for the words to come. Sure, there are moments when writing flows easily and the author loses herself in the rush, but that is not usually the case for those first words. In fact, for me, the first words are always the hardest.

I have a good friend named Meghan. She is brilliant and always full of funny anecdotes and worldwide trivia. Whenever I have a conversation with Meghan I make sure I have pencil and paper handy because inevitably she will share some valuable tidbit with me which will then inspire a story. In fact, it was Meghan who first introduced me to historical figure, Alferd Packer, Colorado’s infamous cannibal from the 1870’s. Packer became the star of my forthcoming novel, The Secret of Ferrell Savage.

So, in answering my own question, “How do you start a book?” I start by having a stimulating conversation with someone like Meghan who can get my brain rolling. Then I sit down and start throwing words on the computer screen. I try not to worry too much at first about making the writing beautiful because that’s what revision is for. And revision, well, there’s a good topic for another post.

I’m always fascinated by other writers’ styles and methods and I am curious to hear the personal story behind the written story. So for today’s post, I asked my fellow Mixed-Up Files authors how they start their novels. These are the answers they gave me.

Katherine Schlick Noe

I don’t feel that I start my books — it’s more like they start themselves.  My first novel, Something to Hold, is inspired by my life living on Indian reservations in Washington and Oregon. It grew out of a question I’ve been asked repeatedly by other non-Indians:  What was it like living on reservations when you’re not Native? After thinking about that question for my entire adult life, I finally started writing about 15 years ago.  I began with memories of living at Warm Springs, Oregon during those formative years between seven and twelve — things that had happened to me in a reservation school where I was one of 17 non-Indian students.  I wrote in episodes which gradually morphed into the thread of the novel as it exists today. I’m now working on a second book, entirely different, that began with a hazy image of a teen leaning on the railing that rings the loading platform of the Monorail, that icon of the 1962 World’s Fair at Seattle Center.  I couldn’t see her face, but I knew right away that something was terribly wrong.  When she suddenly started to tell me her story, I had to start writing.

Laurie Schneider

How I Start a Book…

Light incense to invoke the muse and then stare at the screen until the blood drips from my forehead—or until I hear voices.

Okay. I lied about the muse and the blood. My stories have come from various places:

The story I’m working on now came from a childhood memory triggered by an essay on  Bruce Black’s wonderful Wordswimmer blog. Another was inspired by a funny situation spun off from something that happened to my son. My first was inspired by a place my great grandparents once lived. Other stories have seemed to come from nowhere — a line pops out of my head and into a notebook and it’s my task to discover who said it and why.

The next step is to immerse myself in research, bookmarking sites, taking page after page of notes, and generally procrastinating as long as possible until I’m so disgusted with myself that I have to sit down and write. Also, starting a book requires lots of coffee.

Jennifer Nielsen

In my writing, I tend to start with a basic plot concept – a one or two sentence idea of what the story could be about. But the way I decide if the concept really has enough legs for a full-length book is to look for the main character, because they are the ones who will really shape the story and give it life. Once I have my hero, I have my story.

Karen B. Schwartz

Character first. Love my characters. I usually come up with a strong, quirky female heroine and then come up with a situation to throw her in that will have her flailing about until she ultimately learns/grows enough to come out on top again.

Rosanne Parry

The book that made me a writer was the one my student’s needed to read and couldn’t find. In my first year of teaching my Quinault students asked why, even when the book had a Native American protagonist, the story was never about them. We had a long and very interesting (at least to me) conversation about why it was important for them to have a book about their tribe specifically. I never forgot and when about 10 years later I saw the Makah resume their traditional whale hunting rights–rights they’d voluntarily given up 70 years before–I knew I had the premise for a great cultural survival story. So I worked and researched and reworked and consulted with the Quinault and Makah and thirteen years later, I was able to place Written in Stone with my editor at Random House.  It will be out in June and here is the gorgeous cover they gave me!

Michele Weber Hurwitz

I start with a character, a feeling for his or her voice, and an opening line. I have found that a character comes to me when I’m least expecting it. Before I sit down to write, I definitely need to let the character roam around in my head for a while. I walk, think, scribble notes, have imaginary conversations…almost like I’m getting to know a new friend and finding out his or her story. My first middle grade novel, Calli Be Gold (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House 2011), is about a quiet girl in a loud, intense, overachieving family. I had been thinking about Calli’s emotions for a while, so when I sat down to write, the story just poured out of my heart!

Tracy Abell

How do I start a book? Every story start is different, as is every drafting and revision process. I keep thinking I’ve found the magic formula for writing and polishing a novel, but then the next manuscript unfolds in a whole different way. One book came to be because of a character who had an unusual gift, and another story came about after years of volunteer work in a certain setting. I had one idea come to me in the night and then revisit me months later after I hadn’t taken action (I’m still struggling to write that one). I wrote a book based on a photograph, and brainstormed another narrator specifically for series potential. See? No method to my madness.

Yolanda Ridge

Plot ideas come easily to me (from listening to the news, watching my kids interact with their friends, standing in line at the grocery store…) but I always start with character.  If I can’t visualize the main character or imagine having a conversation with them, the story never gets written – no matter how much I am enticed by the potential plot!  The first thing I do is a character profile.  I can write without an outline but I can’t write without a character profile.  For me, knowing and understanding the character is essential to creating the right voice and giving them control over how the story will unfold.  From there, it’s just blood, sweat, and word count.

 

T. P. Jagger

I am definitely a get-an-idea-for-a-first-line-and-start-writing-and-see-where-the-story-leads kind of guy. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever started a manuscript for which I had a clear idea of where it was headed. I usually just hope I’ll find a clue within the first chapter or two. If I make it to Chapter Ten and remain ignorant of where I’m headed, that’s when I start to worry.

An example of my patent-pending, I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-but-I-don’t-care approach is the excerpt below, which just spewed itself into my computer earlier this evening:

I’d probably have an easier time solving all my problems if I weren’t so stupid. But I am stupid. Which is a problem all by itself. I know about the me being stupid part because that’s what people have been telling me since I got smart enough to know what stupid means.

No, I don’t know where those lines are headed. I don’t even know how old the storyteller is or what he looks like or where he lives or what his family’s like or whether he really is “stupid” by the world’s standards. But I sure am looking forward to finding out.

Jennifer Gennari

Starting a book is always about finding the emotional core. What did I observe/experience/imagine? How can I build a story about that true and human feeling we all experience at one time or another? Once an emotion is found I begin to build the character in my head. And then I write a poem in the voice of the main character, to encapsulate the emotional nugget that is her or his problem. From there, I think, what happens to make this character feel that way? I don’t have much free time, so the story is a puzzle I will turn over and over as I commute to work or right before I drift off. I write story arcs (Yes! this one is it!) and then later reject it for one reason or another. And from there, you know it’s all about hands on the keyboard! Just start writing. Lately, I’ve been giving myself permission to audition the characters–writing scenes that are just trial runs.

Tricia Springstubb

A strong sense of place is always important to me. All of us have at least one place deeply, powerfully, evocatively imprinted on us. We carry it with us all our lives. Setting for me is not just background, but a character itself. Like most kids, my characters don’t get to choose where they live, but their communities have a big impact on them. So once I know my setting, off I go! Right now I’m at work on a middle grade novel set on a tiny island in Lake Erie. My desk is heaped with bits of Lake Erie limestone and fossils!

Bev Patt

I think stories come to us in different ways. For me, most of my stories start out with an issue or topic that interests me. With my first novel, HAVEN, the issue was the unfairness of the foster care system in the 1980s. In BEST FRIENDS FOREVER it was the unfairness of the internment of Japanese Americans. (Gee, as I’m writing this, I see I tend to write about unfairness!) In my latest Work In Progress, it started with my interest in a famous person in the 1890s (not saying who! Bad juju and all that;) and how she may have been misjudged (ha! more unfairness!). I usually read up on the subject, take notes and then do a lot of free writing in a notebook – interviewing my characters, plot ideas, scene lists, etc. When I get so excited that I just can’t stand it, I start the ‘official’ writing on my laptop. But it is never a smooth road, no matter how much pre-writing I do – lots of false starts, re-imagining, re-visioning. Lots of going back and doing more free writing!

If you want to know more about the writers at From the Mixed-Up Files, take a look at our Author Bios.

Now it’s your turn! Tell us in the comments how YOU start writing your projects. We’d love to hear.

Jennifer Duddy Gill is the author of The Secret of Ferrell Savage, Atheneum (Simon & Schuster), February, 2014.

I randomly chose from the names of all who commented on The Marble Queen interview with Stephanie J. Blake and the winner is:

Jill!!!!

Congratulations, Jill! We will be in touch with you to get your information to pass along to Stephanie who’ll send you the ARC of The Marble Queen.