Manifesto

By Jennifer Choldenko

Choldenko, author of the novel Al Capone Does My Shirts, was the featured author at the San Jose Area Writing Project’s December 10 Super Saturday Workshop. Reprinted with permission.

1. Write for yourself.

Not for your teacher. Not for your mother. Not for your best friend. Not for your dog. Write to please yourself. Make youself laugh, make yourself cry, and your readers will laugh and cry along with you. Get your pleasure from the process of writing and not from outside opinions about what you have written.

2. Make a lot of mistakes.

“Early drafts and wrong choices are like the manure spread on the field so that the right choices can later flower.” –Margaret Bechard, YA Novelist.

3. “Make stuff up until it’s real.” –Richard Jackson

(Children’s Book Editor who discovered Judy Blume and has edited Nancy Farmer, Gary Paulsen and many others.)

4. Go on a power trip.

Life doesn’t always work out the way we want it, that’s why they invented paper and pencil. In Al Capone Does My Shirts, I got to be the sibling I wished I’d been to the sister with Autism I wished I’d had. It was a wonderful experience.

5. Build your writing muscles.

The muscles for writing take time to develop. I am perfectly happy sitting at my desk writing for 7 or 8 hours a day, but that’s because I’ve spent years doing this and I’m used to it. Give yourself space to write on a regular basis. Give yourself time to develop writing muscles.

6. Get the facts.

The more you know about a subject, the easier it is to write about it. If you say the word “research” lots of kids go running from the room. That’s too bad because research is an absolute blast. If you are doing a story on skateboarding, get on a skateboard and pay close attention to how it feels. Then get off and scribble down notes like crazy. That’s research. If you’re doing a story about orangutans, go to the zoo. Take a pad and pencil along. Sketch the orangutans. Tha’s research, too. The more you find out, the richer your story will be.

7. Remember the words: What if…

What if you came home from school and there was a giant box on your lawn addressed to you. What if you got to school and there weren’t any kids there, only toasters. The phrase what if…opens the door to a world of stories waiting for you to write.

8. Read your work out loud.

Read out loud to yourself and read out loud to other people. It is simply amazing how this will help you edit your work. Before I send a draft of a novel to my editor, I always read the entire book out loud to myself. picture books I read out loud dozens of time. Each time I catch something new.

9. Be kind to yourself.

If you’re having trouble writing, set the bar lower. Some of us have relentless taskmasters in our head. Tell them to take a hike.

10. Make your story just a little better than it was the day before.

My novels take a long time to write. I go through many, many drafts. There are times in the process when I have daunting amounts of work to do, but my goal in any one day is just to make my story a little better than it was the day before. As soon as I remind myself of this, I calm down and put myself and my story inside the firewall and my editors, agents, publishers, friends, critique group, husband, even the dog outside the firewall. Then the story is my story and the process is fun once again.