>> Andrea Lewis:
Hello, I'm Andrea Lewis, Director of the Maryland
Center for the Book at Maryland Humanities. On behalf of my colleagues,
Nancy Medema of the Iowa Center for the Book, and Gwen Harvashan
[phonetic] of the Idaho Center for the Book, I'd
like to welcome you to our state's Great Reads from
Great Places Author Discussion. As affiliates under the Library
of Congress, the State Centers for the Book help
carry out the mission of the National Center
for the Book. Together we promote
books, reading, libraries, and literacy nationwide. We also promote our
state's literary heritage by placing a focus
on books and authors with a connection to our state. Every year, as part of our
participation in the Library of Congress National Book
Festival, we each choose a book with a local connection. This is part of the Great Reads
from Great Places Initiative, which primarily focuses
on young readers. You can learn more
and find the list of this year's books
at Read.gov. The authors representing
Maryland, Idaho, and Iowa this year on the Great
Reads book list, are together for this panel, because their
books are connected by the theme of activism and social justice. We are thrilled that the
conversation will be moderated by Deborah Taylor. Deb is a recipient of
the Coretta Scott King - Virginia Hamilton Practitioner
Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Library
Association, and is now retired from her role as Head of
Children and Youth Services at Enoch Pratt Free
Library in Baltimore. But Deb is still very
much involved in the world of literature and the
nurturing of future librarians. I'm going to turn things over
to Deb now for introductions to our authors, and
for what promises to be a wonderful discussion. Deb. >> Deborah Taylor:
Thank you, Andrea. I am delighted to moderate this
panel of distinguished authors who have written such
important and lifechanging and genre-bending books
for young readers. I am pleased to introduce
first off, Lesa Cline-Ransome who is an author of picture
books and middle grade novels. Best known for her NAACP Image
Award nominated picture book, biography of Harriet Tubman,
"Before She Was Harriet," and her middle grade novel which started a great
series, "Finding Langston." Joining her is Annette Bay
Pimentel, who grew up in Utah. And as an adult, she's
lived all over the U.S., as well as Europe and Africa. And she has written
nonfiction books about people from the margins of history
who have shaped our world. So, we're really excited
that she is with us. Her book, "Mountain Chef: How
One Man Lost His Groceries, Changed His Plans,
and Helped Cook Up the National Park Service," won the 2017 Carter
G. Woodson Award from the National
Council of Social Studies. And Andrew Smith, welcome
Andrew, is an American author and short story writer, primarily in young
adult fiction. He's written many novels, including the critically
acclaimed, "Winger and Grasshopper Jungle." So, we are so excited to
be able to talk to you. These books are all very
different, but they're -- I'll bet you that
we'll find lots of ways that we can connect the dots
for all of our young readers. I'd like to start with you,
Andrew, and we have a theme for this year --
this year's festival: "Open a Book, Open the World." What do you think that means, or
does that mean anything to you? "To open a book,
and open the world." >> Andrew Smith:
Well, I think when -- when a reader makes a
connection with something that they're reading, that
they very often are going to experience things that
they never really knew that they could be right in the
middle of, and experiencing. And furthermore, I think
that, especially when we talk about reading for young people,
is that young people, you know, they're awareness of
the others that are around them is very often pretty
constrained to their family and their school and
their local community. And by presenting a wide,
diverse arrangement of topics and titles and subjects for --
for young readers to explore, I think it gives
people an opportunity to get inside the
lives of others, and make a more empathetic
connection to all of the people that we have in America,
and in the world. >> Deborah Taylor:
What do you think we -- what do you think happens when
a young person finds a book that challenges what
they've already thought? You know, the way they've
been taught from their family, or the way they've been
taught from their friends? What do you think happens
to them when they -- they find that they're
challenged by something in a book? >> Andrew Smith: Well,
speaking anecdotally because I'm a classroom
teacher, this is my 30th year, and the times that
I've seen that happen, young readers will usually
come up to me and with kind of a lowered voice say, "Mr.
Smith, I found out this," and then it opens up this whole
discussion about something that -- that they had assumed
to be some alternate, you know, foreign kind of experience that they didn't realize was
something that was really that universal and was
close enough to them that they just maybe
weren't aware of. It's definitely a
conversation starter, though. I think the key is, to know
the kid, know the young reader, know the person that we're
talking to, and know what kinds of things they're looking for,
and what is really going to kind of inspire and trigger
that spark within them. >> Deborah Taylor: So important. Annette, you know, the book that
we're focused on this evening, you know, it's about someone who really made a
difference in the world. What do you think happens
when a young reader reads about a real person's life, who
has had that kind of change, or who has made that
kind of change, when they were very young? >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Yes,
so I hope that what happens is that they can see
themselves in the book. And it's then really fun to
share this book with students. And the book is, "All the
Way to the Top," and it's about Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins,
who was an activist who participated in the
passage of Americans with Disabilities Act. And she and I have,
mostly virtually except for the first week it came
out, visited with students. And it's been really
interesting to watch -- to watch children interact
with her and with the book, because I think it does give
them a vision of the kind of power that children can have. And I think in particular,
one class that Jennifer talked to that then they went
out into their community and surveyed the businesses
and sent letters to businesses that they felt like didn't have
adequate wheelchair access. So, I think that sometimes when
kids can see another child -- fictional worlds are
really important too, but I think that there's a
role for nonfiction world, to suggest the possibility
in their own world and in their own life
to change something. >> Deborah Taylor: So,
you're really talking about a book being a catalyst
for personal action as well? >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Yes,
and I think it's a catalyst for changing self-definition,
for seeing themselves as not merely being a
recipient of culture, but also being a participant in
creating what the culture is. Whether that's writing
letters to businesses, or a lot of kids have talked about their attitude
toward other students in their school, and
things like that. And I think that books, both
fiction and nonfiction books, can give kids a vision of a different way
to be in their world. >> Deborah Taylor: Yes,
that's so important for them as they're developing what their
personality is going to be, what their -- what they've
decided they're going to -- how they're going to
operate in the world. Lesa, you -- you took on
a unique challenge with, "Before She Was Harriet,"
because you know, I think most people think
they know Harriet Tubman. >> Lesa Cline-Ransome: Yes. >> Deborah Taylor: So, when a
young person opens your book, what do you hope that
they see differently than what they already
thought -- already think they know
about that -- that person? >> Lesa Cline-Ransome:
Well, you know, growing up, when I used to read
stories about -- stories about enslaved people, a
lot of the classroom discussions or history books that I was
exposed to, never really talked about the types of resistance
that I later found out existed in terms of enslaved
Blacks, that they used to fight back against
enslavement. For example, Iike learning to
read or gathering information. So, I never really heard
much about those stories. And so then one day, you
know, I heard the story of Harriet Tubman, and I was
just really struck by of course, you know, her heroism. And here is this Black woman
who escaped and came back -- so not just escaped, but came
back again and again and again, and helped others
to escape as well. And so, though the
challenge for me, you know, she just became this larger than
life figure, and it helped me, a really, shy, introverted
child, also wanting to be as fearless and heroic and
brave as Harriet Tubman. But the challenge for me
in writing about her life, which is why I waited so
long to write her story, is in finding a new way to
tell her story, but one, I discovered that, you know,
we know her as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, but she had so many
other lives that she led. And so, when I was
challenged with you know, trying to find a way to write
her story, I began thinking about my own mother who
happens to be 96 year's old, and often talks to me
about her own recollections of her childhood. And the many lives
that she has lived. And so, I started thinking
about Harriet in that way, about all the many lives
that Harriet had lived. And so, when you know, you're
writing for a new group of readers, you know, a lot of these readers have read you
know, the story of Harriet, the conductor on the
Underground Railroad. So, I thought, you know, one of
the lives that Harriet lived, and I started doing research
and discovered that she had, you know, worked -- she was a
suffragist, but she was a nurse that -- she was a spy. And I thought, you know, "Why
not have Harriet tell her story from the perspective of an
elderly woman, much like my mom, looking back on the many
highlights of her life?" So, that's kind of how
that story came together. >> Deborah Taylor: You know, one
of the things that I was struck by when I was -- when I was
reading it was the whole idea that if felt so fresh,
that it felt that even though I have lived -- I've lived in Maryland my
whole life, so you know, I know lots of Harriet
Tubman stories, there was a still a freshness
to the way you told that story. And was that a particular
challenge? >> Lesa Cline-Ransome: Definitely it was a particular
challenge, and also I think by using verse to
tell the story, in a way that made the story
kind of spare and almost told as like a whisper or in
secret, because you know, a lot of the work that
she did was in secret. So, I was trying to also capture
a new voice while telling it in a new style. I think using those two
techniques, what is it called, the reverse chronological
technique, I discovered that as I was -- after
I wrote the story. Using that technique, I
think helped to give it more of a freshness for young
readers, and I think you know, readers are always looking
for new versions of stories. I don't think that there are
-- you know, first of all, I don't think there
are ever going to be too many Harriet Tubman
stories, because I think that she is just a hero
that we need to continue to celebrate and
learn more about. And so, you know, I
think finding new ways to tell her story and
finding the different layers of her story, are always
going to be needed. >> Deborah Taylor: I'd like to
shift gears for just a second because one of the things
that I know that folks who are interested in books
and reading love to find out about writers is what
was your reading life like, when you were a young person? Annette, let's start with you. What was your reading life like
when you were a young person? The age of the young
people who read your books? >> Annette Bay Pimentel:
So, our family moved a lot, and we had a lot of books, but then we did a major
cross-country move, and my parents decided
it would be too expensive to take all of the books. And so, we tragically
had to give up all of these books that
we had loved. And we moved cross-country
to Illinois, and we lived in a very tiny town, and
we got there and discovered that there was no library. And it was a very deep tragedy
for our family, so that this -- or like, I can't
remember if it -- maybe it was the junior high
school, anyway, in the summer, one of the schools would
open up their school library, and we would go every
week when it opened up because we had to get books. And so, I read the books that
were there on the shelves. I don't remember reading
a lot of picture books. I think that we -- we
privileged the longer books because we didn't have -- we wanted something
that would last. And so, I was a very big fan of
the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, anything that was
very, very thick. I also really later, really loved Zilpha Keatley
Snyder's books, the -- her fantasy books, especially
the -- she has a trilogy. And I loved the world that -- I
loved any book that I could sink into that world and just like
become part of that world. >> Deborah Taylor: You
know, I think read some -- on one of the -- the bios, that you read Childhood
of Famous Americans? >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Yes. >> Deborah Taylor:
[Inaudible] from that. And you know, I felt
an immediate kinship. Of course, as you said,
I think I, as I read, that would be considered
historical fiction today because all that
made up dialogue, all of those kinds
of things, but-- >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Yes. >> Deborah Taylor: -they
made me a biography reader. >> Annette Bay Pimentel:
Yes, and that is one thing that they did really well, is that they did create an
imaginative world that I felt like I really got to
know Benjamin Franklin, or Helen Keller. I loved books about
Helen Keller. I loved books about
Benjamin Franklin. And I'm really grateful
for that -- that introduction to nonfiction. I hope young readers today get
an introduction to nonfiction that is actually nonfiction,
but there are wonderful books and really imaginative
structures like Lesa's book that I think do the same
thing really beautifully, like allow children to enter
in new and imaginative ways into someone else's life. >> Deborah Taylor: Yes. I think that's true. Andrew, how about you? What was your -- what was your
childhood reading life like? >> Andrew Smith:
Well, like Annette, my family moved an
awful lot as well. In fact, I was the first kid
in my family born in America. And my mother couldn't speak
English, so she started to learn how to speak English
when I was in elementary school. And so, I would read
to her sometimes, or I would help her
with her reading. But we didn't have very much
money at all, and the time -- when I'd have money,
pocket money, I would get on my little Schwinn
bike and ride down to the mall and you know, I -- my
childhood was horrible, because I was put
ahead in school. And so, I was two years
younger than my classmates. So, I didn't have
very many friends, and the friends I did have,
we often read the same books. But when I would go
ride down to the mall, I would go to bookstores. We used to have a lot of
bookstores in America, like B. Dalton, and
Walton's Books, Walden Books. And I'd go to these
bookstores, and I would go to the fiction section, and
I would buy, like Annette, I would buy -- I would buy the
thickest books I could find. Because you could buy these old,
you know, the Signet Classics and stuff like that, you know,
for like a couple dollars. And I was -- so I'd pick
books like Dostoevsky. I'd pick The Idiot. Or I'd pick Joseph
Conrad, Thomas Hardy. I read, gosh, The Return of the
Native, and Jude the Obscure because I liked him
for some reason, when I was like 14 year's old. But I thought, you know, I was
just trying to get the most bang for my buck, and
I was just looking for whatever had the
most pages in it, because that book would last me until I had enough
money for another one. >> Deborah Taylor: I think
everybody can relate to trying to get as much out of
the book as possible, especially if you have
to make that purchase. Lesa, what was your --
what was your reading life like as a young kid? >> Lesa Cline-Ransome: I guess
I'm the odd woman out here because I never moved. I lived in the same
house my entire life. In fact, my mom still
lives in the same house. And we still have the
same phone number. So, I grew up outside of
Boston, Massachusetts, and I lived in this, you
know, a medium sized town, Malden, Massachusetts. And we had this great library. So, my mom and I used to go
to the library all the time. And we had a lot of
books in the home. And I honest don't
remember reading that many picture books either. My mom would read a book, and
she would talk to me a lot about it, and then I would
try to read it as well. But I would always
go to the library with my mother, without
my mother. I would stock up
on as many books as I possibly could
and bring them home. I was really drawn to books
about girls and women. The first book that I really
remember just devouring was The Diary of Anne Frank. I was really struck by -- I was one of the only
African American -- we were one of the only African
American families in our town, and certainly I was the
only African American in my classroom. And I was really kind of
struck by the story of this -- this Jewish girl
could also be -- feel like an outcast,
kind of like I did. And so I was really
struck by her story. And then I remember also reading
my mother's copy The Color Purple, when I started
high school. And I think those two books
kind of shaped me into a writer. Like I love stories
about women -- about the kinds of
bravery of women who -- who are existing
in difficult times, and kind of like
this raw honesty. So, like I would say like
most of the books that I liked when I was young, and even
like in through high school and college, are usually
centered around women's stories, and women who had to overcome
difficult circumstances. My children have
always said to me, "So, you don't like happy stories." There are things called
Beach Reads that I think that people -- people
actually read, and enjoy. I just -- I do like stories
with some teeth to them, and some substance, but I've
just always loved a library, and I loved the way, when I walk into a library, I
felt so powerful. Like I remember feeling like
when you go into a library, I thought, "If I read every --
I could read every book here, and I could know just about
everything there is to know." It's just -- I just
remember feeling -- I still feel that way when
I walk into a library. So, yes. I love libraries. I lived in libraries, and
that's still kind of my life. >> Deborah Taylor:
Tell me, how did -- tell us, how did
you become familiar with Jennifer Keelan's story,
and decide that you wanted to -- to tell that story
and get it out there for young people
to know about her? >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Yes. So, it actually started with reading another
nonfiction picture book. I read, "When the Beat Was
Born," by Laban Carrick Hill. >> Deborah Taylor: Yes. >> Annette Bay Pimentel:
And I was totally astounded that it was -- it's
a great book, but I was especially astounded
that it was about something that happened in the 1980s. And I thought, "I was
an adult in the 1980s. I should be able to look
back at the 1980s and think of what important
things happened, and be able to write
-- have all the benefit of my own lived experience." And so, I asked myself, "What important thing
happened around that?" And I was actually surprised
that I immediately came up with and answer, and it was the
Americans with Disabilities Act. And so, I did a little
literature survey and didn't really find
books for kids about that. And that astounded
me because the -- it has changed our physical
world a huge amount, and I realized that the
children I was writing for, probably have no idea
about why there are ramps, and while there are
Braille panels in elevators, why they go to school with
kids with disabilities, which I surely never did. And so, I started researching
the legislative history of it. And as I researched the
legislative history, I found the story of Jennifer. And at that moment, I
realized that it needed to -- that I could write a book that
was not only about the Americans with Disabilities Act, but
also, about a child's role in changing our world. But it's obviously not my story. I am not currently living with
disabilities, and I realized that it was not a story that I
could just write from research. And so, I did a little
sleuthing. I used my husband's mad internet
skills to find an email address and contacted Jennifer. And it happened that it was
a pretty good time for her. She was finishing up her
college degree at the time. And she told me that
nobody had ever asked her to tell the story before, and that she was indeed
really excited about the idea of telling kids about her story. And so she worked really closely with me throughout the
process of writing. Answered many, many,
many questions, which came at her very often. And then she's been
really involved in promotion of the book. She wrote the forward
for the book. And we consider it
our book, together. But yes, it was a
wonderful moment to realize that it could be a book
about what kids can do, as well as about a
really important moment in American history. >> Deborah Taylor: It
sounds like it started off with you interested in telling
a story or telling something about a timeframe, but it
turned into something else. It turned into something
even bigger. So-- >> Annette Bay Pimentel:
Absolutely. >> Deborah Taylor: -how did
that -- how did that happen? >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Yes. It was the moment when I
found photographs of Jennifer and accounts of the Capitol
Crawl, and I saw her crawling up the steps of the Capitol. And I like so many people
who watched her at the time, was just amazed at the thought
that a child ended up having such a significant impact on
getting newspapers to report on her, getting the TV to
report on her, which in turn led to a lot of pressure
on Congress. And so, it was that moment -- sometimes when I'm looking
for a topic, there are moments when I just get really
excited because I recognize that there's something
that's bigger than the original story
I was looking for. And it was that kind of
moment, that I recognized that if she were willing
to tell her story for kids, that this was a bigger story than the one I had
thought I wanted to tell. >> Deborah Taylor: Yes. Andrew, you know, when
your book came out, when "Grasshopper Jungle"
came out, everybody talked about how unusual it was. And it was seen as, you know,
"This is really a strange book." I don't think it reads
very strange anymore, do you and what we've lived
through the last three years? It doesn't feel so
strange anymore. >> Andrew Smith: We kind of that
have collective experience now, don't we all? But sure, at the time,
you know, I had -- I had no intention of ever
allowing anybody to look at it. I was only writing
it for myself. And then, just a couple of
strange things happened. My son, went through the
same thing that I did. He left -- he went to
college at the age of 16. And so, there was this -- you know, I was -- I
felt sorry for him. I was very proud of him, too. And he, from his dorm room, 600
miles away, he sent me an email and he said, "Dad, is there -- have you been writing anything
lately, because I'm really -- I'd really like to read
something that you've written?" Because he's read
all of my books. And so, I told him, I
said, "You know, well, I'll send you the manuscript
that I'm doing right now, but it's really -- I
want you to let me know if you think I need
therapy after you read it." And so, he read it and
he just loved it so much. And he kind of talked me into
having my agent take a look at it, and then the
rest is history. I hope I -- I hope I
didn't break the future of the United States by writing
something so strange, but yes, I think we have all kind of
gone through something similar. >> Deborah Taylor: So, you
know, one of the things that we had talked about
discussing was, you know, "How could a book help kids get
through the global pandemic?" And I think it would
be really fascinating to have kids understand
that this came out of your imaginations, and
you know, look what happened. >> Andrew Smith: Yes. >> Deborah Taylor: Lesa, I'd
like to ask you a little bit about your writing
process, when you were -- when you were working on
-- when you working on, "Before She Was Harriet." What -- how did you
get started with -- once you decided that that
was the story you were going to tell, and that that was -- and you were going to tell
it a little differently, what was the process after that? >> Lesa Cline-Ransome: You know,
I start -- I start the way -- I started the way I usually
start, which is to just get as many books as I
could possibly get. So, I just -- I start
at the library. I start taking out
books, ordering books, and I pile up my desk. I'm hoping that you
don't hear my dog whining in the background, because now
of course, he wants to go out. I just pile my desk with
tons and tons of books. And -- I'm just going to pull
him over here as I scratch him. I pile my desk with tons and
tons of books, and I read -- I read until I realize I'm
reading the same material over and over and over again. And then I think, "I've
already ready this three or four times already." And I just take -- I take
lots and lots of notes. I have notebooks that I fill. I usually -- I don't you
know, take notes on -- I don't use any particular
writing system on my desktop. I use actual, old
school notebooks. I like the idea of
writing my notes. I feel like it imprints in my
brain a little differently. And so, I write my
notes in my notebook. I kind of highlight areas
that I think would work best for young readers or things
that stand out to me as things that I really want to include. And once I go through piles
and piles of research, I read, you know, articles
and things like that. I sort through all
this research. And only then, usually
two, three months in, then I start thinking about
writing and how I want to structure the story. >> Deborah Taylor: And Annette,
between your interviewing and your own research, how did
you strike that balance in order to tell a story, because
you know, nonfiction, we want to get the facts out,
but we really need to have that narrative to pull us
on -- to pull us through. And so, how did you
strike that balance? >> Annette Bay Pimentel:
Yes, it ended up -- I was very excited that I was
writing about a living person who could answer
all my questions. But that ended up being
a double-edged sword, because Jennifer
had so many stories, it was actually surprisingly
hard for me to find a narrative thread
that would be a picture book. The story, I wrote many drafts. There were drafts about
very different events in her life and things
like that. So, it ended up being more of a structural problem
than I had expected. For a little while, I
had a draft about she and her sister had led a protest
in the lunchroom, because kids with disabilities weren't
allowed to eat in the lunchroom. So, I have one draft
that was all about their lunchroom
protest and things like that. And so, the -- for this book,
as opposed to other books where I'm basing it
largely on written sources, the biggest problem was, for
me as a writer, was figuring out how to carry
children through to the -- to the end point, as
I had to decide, like, "What should the end point be?" And that ended up being a bit
of a challenge in the book because the ADA, while
really important, hasn't solved all the problems
for people with disabilities. And so, I wanted to
acknowledge that, but also talk about like what it had done. And so, once I had the ending,
then it was easier to figure out how I could get
to the ending. But yes, it ended up being
a different set of problems than I had had with other books
where I used written sources. So, I don't know if that
answered your question actually? >> Deborah Taylor:
Oh, absolutely. And Andrew, you talked about, you were writing this
book for yourself. And you hadn't really
envisioned it as something that you would you know, send
to your agent and that would go through the process until
-- before your son read it. Is -- how do you go about
crafting a story on -- usually, that wasn't something that you were writing
for yourself? When you sit down
to write a YA novel, do you use a different process
than the one you use just to write this one because
you wanted to write it? >> Andrew Smith: Yes, of the
14 novels that I've published, I've only actually done a couple
of them the -- the roadmap way, where I, you know,
my editor says, "Hey, I want a book from you. Here's a contract, and I
expect it by this time." I've -- 12 out of 14, I've only
just sat down and written only for myself, and then I
decide when I'm finished, what if anything,
I'll do with them. So, that's -- that's always
been the most rewarding way of writing for me, because
I'm not writing to a deadline and I'm not writing
for a paycheck. I'm writing to do
something that I love to do. And when I'm finished with
it, then I have to struggle within myself about whether or not I actually want some
other stranger to read it, because by far, most of
my work is going to -- is going to leave
this planet with me, and I'm finishing
a novel right now that nobody knows
anything about. That's just how I write. >> Deborah Taylor: Do
you start with character? Do you start with a
story that you imagined? Do you start with a place? How do you get -- what
triggers the process for you, or the storytelling
process for you? >> Andrew Smith: I start -- I
usually start with something that the people in the story and the story itself is
going to revolve around. So, once I have that
thing, then I start to populate the little
cars on the Ferris wheel with people, with characters. And I just kind of
let it go from there. I'm a straight through writer. I write from the beginning to
the end, without an outline. But I find myself very
often writing and rewriting, sometimes the same
paragraph for weeks at a time. But that's just my -- I don't -- I wouldn't recommend my
way of doing it to anybody. >> Deborah Taylor: And we
only have a few more minutes, and I'd like to ask each
of you this question. You know, with so many young
people who have had to spend so much screentime in
the last 18 months or so, and I think that if they
would, whether it was poetry or whether it was a song or
just telling -- just journaling, that'd be a way to connect
back with themselves, what would you recommend
for them if they started off as new writers, as
young writers -- kind of counterbalance the
screentime they've been forced to spend? I'll start with you, Andrew. [Inaudible] yes. >> Andrew Smith:
Well, you know, in -- I've been back at school
now for a month, and here -- I teach in California and
it was amazing for me to see on the first day,
when schools opened, I've never seen so few absences. The kids were just coming back
like crazy, just thousands. I teach in a school
with over 2000 students. And I was telling them on
the first day, "You know, you have been writing so much
in the last year and a half. You haven't seen your friends, but you've been talking
to them by texting. And they text you. And you're on Snapchat
and Insta-together. You've been doing
so much writing." And they're -- and
they realize it. The thing that they've missed
is they've missed the real, being in a space with
other human beings. But they have definitely been
putting a lot of their hearts and souls and their
struggles down in words. They just haven't been doing it
in the way that a lot of people from our generation expect
them to, which is sit down and write a page, or 150
words on what you've gone through in the last week. But they've -- they're
communicators by nature. And they're ready to go. They're ready to rock
and roll right now. >> Deborah Taylor:
Oh, that's awesome. Lesa, do you have
any recommendations for budding writers who might
want to tell stories that are on their hearts,
or on their minds? >> Lesa Cline-Ransome:
Well, I think you know, I think finding a way to journal
and to find your own truth without an editor,
meaning not an editor -- the traditional editor,
but a teacher, a parent, having that feeling
of someone looking over your shoulder I think
is always really helpful. It's helpful for me to have a
space to write without feeling like someone is correcting
or revising. I think it gives you a freedom
to express yourself in a way that you don't get
when you're being -- when your work is
being looked at. So, I think that
having a way to, like a daily writing practice
in a journal, on your phone, where you're just writing
without fear of being -- someone looking over your
shoulder I think is always really helpful. And I think that always
reading widely and broadly. I think that sometimes you're
just kind of gathering thoughts. I think that you have to
allow for gathering times where you're -- where
you're gathering great words and sentences from other
writers, and giving a space -- giving yourself the space
to breathe as a writer. And not having to worry
about putting words on a page is also helpful. And Annette, what would you -- what would you recommend
to young writers? >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Well, both of those are
wonderful suggestions. I think -- I want to preface it by saying I'm not
an artist at all. I will never illustrate
any of my books, but I think combining
writing with picture making, with drawing -- for
me, it allows me to enter a different
kind of headspace. So, maybe illustrating your
own words, or adding pictures to your journaling I
think brings a new energy and makes it a different
kind of enterprise that -- that fosters creativity, even if it's not anything you
would ever show anyone else. >> Deborah Taylor: Well, I want
to thank you all for sharing, and giving us this wonderful
insight into the books that you have written and into
your process, and I'm sure that all of our viewers will
you know, get a lot of insight about what you've done
and how you do it, and maybe get a little
encouragement to try it themselves. So, thank you again. We look forward to
reading all of your books. Most of them for me, again. Now that I've heard
about the process. Look forward to looking
at those books again. Once again, I want to thank Lesa
Cline-Ransome, Andrew Smith, and Annette Pimentel for
being with us this evening. >> Lesa Cline-Ransome:
Thank you, Deb. >> Annette Bay Pimentel: Thanks. >> Deborah Taylor: Thank you.
