[ Music ] >> Monica Valentine:
Hello and welcome to the National Book Festival. My name is Monica Valentine
from the Library of Congress and I'm here with Pam Muñoz
Ryan, whose featured book at the festival is Mañanaland. If you'd like to see Pam's
presentation at the festival, log in to
NationalBookFestival.com. You'll find it on
the children's stage. Welcome, Pam. It's great to have you here. If you're ready, we can
begin our conversation. >> Pam Muñoz Ryan: Great. Happy to be here. Hello, everybody. >> Monica: So, Pam, your most
recent book is Mañanaland. What inspired you to write it? >> Pam: Well, as I explained in
the interview, I had an image of a boy walking near a stone
arch bridge with his father and asking his father sort
of impossible questions. You know, how can I reach the
horizon, can I hold tomorrow in the palm of my hand? Those types of things. And I'm not sure how that image
came to me, but the premise, the idea, originally was for a
picture book, but as I wrote it, it got bigger and bigger and
bigger and the ideas sort of coalesced into
you know, a novel, which became a longer novel. >> Monica: Awesome. So, we have a question
from Emily here. Well, she has a question
and a comment. First, she asks, how
many times would you say that you re-write a sentence or even a paragraph before
you're 100% satisfied with it enough to move on? And then to comment, she
says, I read Esperanza Rising when I was a teenager and
I have to say it is one of my favorite coming of
age heroic stories and I was so excited when I discovered
that you would be featured in LOC's National Book
Festival this year. Thank you. >> Pam: Well, thank
you for that. That means a lot to me. As far as re-writing goes, you
know, today with computers, I don't obviously
print every draft, or every time I finish a page
or a chapter, I don't print it as much as I used to before
you know, before computers, so it's very hard for me
to say how many times. I would guess, first of all, I
don't consider myself a writer. I consider myself a re-writer. I have that opening
scene in mind and I'll use this an example and
I sit down to write and I read, you know, I write and I
re-read what I've written and I change things and then
I, you know, and I keep going and then the next day I
go back to the beginning and I rad what I wrote and I
re-write and I write some more and then the next day I
go back to the beginning. So, for me writing
is very recursive. I'm always returning to
the beginning or as I move, then to novel, farther into
the novel, I'm moving three or four chapters back and then
I start reading and re-writing and reading and re-writing
and moving along. So, to say how many times a
particular sentence might be re-written and then by the
time it goes to my editor and copyeditor and we do
those types of re-writes, maybe 50 times, more, it's hard
for me to put a number on it because it's really a
constant flow of re-writing. >> Monica: Wow. Thanks for sharing that bit
of your process with us. Margaret has a question. She asks, what advice
would you give to kids who want to be writers? >> Pam: If you want to
be a writer, I would say, first of all I would say that
you're much farther ahead than I was at your age. When I was your age, we didn't
do things in school like you do. Curriculum was very different. We didn't write across
the curriculum; we didn't have journals. We didn't have journals like
my children have journals from when they were
in kindergarten. We didn't have family literature
night, we didn't have writing and we didn't make
books at school, all of those types of things. I think I would've loved that. So, when I see the type of
writing that you already do, I'm a little bit jealous
because what I can say to you is that you're much farther ahead
of me than I was at your age. I would say take anything
and as you get into middle and high school and
college, I'd take things that are writing related. Yearbook, and any of the
dramatic arts, orchestra, band, plays, all of those
things, you know, a piece of music is a
story arc in itself. So, any of those things
that nurture that sort of understanding the arc of
a story or the arc of a piece of music or, especially
plays and so, any of the dramatic arts,
I would encourage you to become involved with them, even if they're just
your elective. But I'd also encourage
you to keep the writing that you have today and save it. I wish I would've saved, you
know, some of my early writings, just because it would be,
number one, be meaningful and sentimental to me, but also because I think it would be
really interesting for you to know, to see the sparks
of creativity that you had at this particular age. >> Monica: Okay. This leads nicely into the
next couple of questions. Hannah asks, what course in your
college education was the most impactful on your
development as a writer? >> Pam: I would have to say,
I took a course once called, my undergraduate work was in
Child and Human Development and I went, I took a course
called Children's Literature in Childhood and I still
remember my teacher and I remember how enthralled
I was with the course and how fascinated I was. I always wanted to have a career that had something
to do with books. I came from a very
blue-collar family, so you know, and it had never really
occurred to me to write books until I was a grown up. And so, I would have to say that that course really opened
my eyes and also when I was in college, I went back to
school to get my Master's degree and when I went back to school
to get my Master's degree, one of my professors, who
happened to be the same one that I took the undergraduate
course from, asked me one time if I'd ever consider doing
any professional writing. And until that moment
in my life, I hadn't, and it was like she planted a
seed that wouldn't stop growing. I couldn't stop thinking
about the possibility of writing my own stories. >> Monica: Wow. Kristy [assumed spelling]
asks if you could tell us about something you failed at
that made you a better writer. >> Pam: Well, first of
all, thank you Kristy. That's my favorite question. I was asked in an
interview once, what do you wish
students would ask you about that they don't usually? And my answer is failure
because what you see in a book is the tip
of a very big iceberg. You see that the successes that
I've had as far as the books that are published or the
final book sits at the very tip of an iceberg of many,
many starting overs, many frustrations, many
abandoning a project, many proposing a project
that never was accepted, so any of my success
as a writer is the tip of an iceberg that's based on
a lot of failure and challenges and starting overs and do-overs. And so I want you to know that
that's part of my job, I mean, when you're dealing
with anything creative and you've heard many
times I think of something as a great idea and I'm excited
about it and I might sit down and try to develop it and then
it just doesn't go anywhere. And then I have to just set
it aside or put it in the file and I have to move on. And, so but I can't look
at it as a failure, I mean, I have to say to myself,
okay, that was a challenge and maybe it was just
an exercise but, I mean, it certainly wasn't a success. So, I just want you to know that
that's just part of this job, is you know, is failing
sometimes. >> Monica: That's a
great insight to share. Okay, now we have one
of those questions from students, I believe. Yes, Doreen's [assumed spelling]
third grade class would like to know what your
favorite chapter book was when you were a kid. >> Pam: Well, I, when I was
that age, the chapter book age, my family had just
moved across town and I started riding my
bike to a little tiny, tiny branch library that
didn't have a lot of choices, but I did spend a lot of time
reading The Little House books, The Boxcar Children
books, those were the types of things that my library had. I also read a lot
of Marguerite Henry, Justin Morgan had a Horse, those very early chapter
books of Marguerite Henry. And so, those are what, the
things that I remember the most. >> Monica: Okay. Wendy says, she has a
comment and a question. On your author video, I
love your message of hope, of rising beyond obstacles. Your titles, Esperanza Rising and in Mañanaland,
reflect that idea. As an author, do you see
yourself as a guardian, one who helps others reach a
different world, a new life? >> Pam: Oh, that's a,
I'm trying to think if I see myself as a guardian. I think that that's one
of the wonderful things about being a writer, is
that you can take on roles that you may or may not
take on in regular life. A writer's life, or at least
for me, is pretty solitary. So, most of what I do is
by myself, in my office, because I don't go into
an office every day, like maybe a teacher would or if
you go to work at a big library, you don't have that sort
of collegial camaraderie that you might have with
your co-workers all the time, so a lot of what I
do is very solitary. But, on the page, I can
make life fair or more fair for my characters than
maybe I'm actually able to do in real life. But that's my way of doing it,
it's my way of having activism in my life, is to be able
to portray the social issues and to have my characters
struggle and cope with them. So, as writer I sort of
become an unlikely activist, if that makes sense. >> Monica: It does, it does. Emily has a question about
how long it takes you to finish writing. She says, how long does it take
you to finish writing a novel if you are constantly
re-writing? >> Pam: [laughter] Well, the other question there is how
do you know when to stop, right? So, well, what happens
is how long it takes, it just depends on the book. I mean, Echo took, you know,
it's almost a 600-page book and it's actually three
or four stories in one. You know that book took
about five to six years. Mañanaland took about
from the time I started it until it published,
took about five years, but it was done a year
or so before it came out. So, I would say three to four
years, usually, for a novel, just in a broad stroke
saying that. And then, kind of, you know, if
you're constantly re-writing, like I'm working with an editor, so my editor is keeping
me focused. My editor's looking up
the different drafts, giving me a lot of information,
asking me a lot of questions, she's giving me information
about how to stay on task, how to keep my story moving
along in a very deliberate way. So, I really pay attention
to her wonderful comments and her wonderful direction. So, you're working
with an editor and you also know what
lists the book will be on and how much you need to
get done by a certain time, so that's also helpful to know when in the future,
the end will be. And of course, in the beginning
of a story, the re-writes that I'm doing for my editor
are very big and overarching and it's moving of seas and
thinking about, you know, the plot and the themes
that are in the book. But as it progresses the
editing gets tighter and tighter and tighter until it goes to
copy edit and you're talking about commas and page layout
and things of that sort. So, you pretty much know by
then that it's very close to the end you don't really
have the time to say much more. [ Silence ] Did I lose you? Hello? [ Silence ] I'm not sure if you
guys can hear me. Can you hear me? [silence] Everything
looks like it's on. >> Jared: [inaudible]
the second. [ Silence ] >> Okay, let's see. Somebody's texting me. Oh, you can hear me. Well, I will try to answer some
of the questions that I see. I can't hear Monica anymore. She was the one feeding
me the questions. Somebody asked, yeah,
she, let's see, oh but the moderator is not. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so, if another question
pops up, I will answer it. So, it says, thank you
for your compliments about Esperanza Rising. What inspires you
to write your books? Well, what inspire, I get my
ideas a lot of different ways. For instance, I mean,
Esperanza Rising is based on a family story. Sometimes I get ideas, I'm doing
research for one book and I come across information
that I think, oh wow, that would make a great book. I'm going to talk to
my editor about that for maybe the next book. So, very often, one book
leads to another book because of the research
involved. And so, that's another
way that I get ideas. But ideas are sort of like
a confluence of rivers. A lot of times it's more than
one thing coming together that will eventually
become a book. So, somebody asked,
do you think you, do you feel like
you won the lottery with your gorgeous book covers? Yes, I do, and I
wish I could tell you that I technically
got to choose them. I get to weigh in,
but my editor, Tracey Mack [assumed
spelling] and art directors, Maria Costa [assumed spelling] and David Saylor [assumed
spelling] you know, help, they search for somebody who
has the particular style for one of my stories and they propose
people and then we all agree and I've just been very, very
lucky and yes, I'm very proud of the beautiful illustrators that I've been able
to work with. So, now I can't see
any questions at all. [chuckles] Oh, is
she based on you? I didn't see the first
part of that question. Sorry, now I see no questions
and I can't hear anyone. >> Jared: Of Congress,
how are you today? I'm going to jump in here
and see if I can help. >> Pam: Let me think. Which do the published
and answer tabs. Um. Oh, how do you
find a publisher? Did it take a long
time to find one? I have a literary agent who
had some early manuscripts, this is back 25 years
ago, and she was the one that initially took
my manuscripts to an editor at Scholastic. Yeah. So, I'm going
to scroll down to some of the questions that. Thank you for your
complaints about the books. It says, someone asks, as
you wrote your new novel, did you plan a grid of
character setting possible plots and do you plan your ending
and then work backwards? Sort of yes and no. I usually know in that opening
scene, I know the characters and like, for instance, in
Mañanaland, I knew that Max and his father were at, you
know, were in this scene that Max had all these
unanswered questions that I didn't know why, I still
needed to figure all that out. But I also knew that Max and
his father would have some sort of conflict and that in the
end there would be some sort of reunion. I didn't know what that was,
so I had to ask myself a lot of questions like what
was it in his life that could be causing
him conflict? I knew he was 12 years old,
I knew he loved football, I had a few things
about my character, so I began asking myself a lot
of questions about his life, where he lived, and what issues in his life could be affecting
his progress through a story. So, in a sense yes, I do use
a huge whiteboard and I often, I have a big whiteboard
behind me that you know, sits seven feet long, four
feet high and I do put, I always print out the
calendar of the story that I'm working on, it's
just blank months and I. [ Silence ] >> Jared: Hello, if you
can hear me in the room, it seems that we're having
some technical difficulties. We will go ahead and
see if we can resolve and get Pam Muñoz Ryan back. [ Silence ] [ Silence ] Thank you everyone. Please bear with us while
we try to get Pam back. Thank you. [ Silence ] Welcome back, Pam. My apologies. >> Pam: No problem. >> Jared: We were having some. >> Pam: I wanted to make, I was
hoping, it wasn't on my end. >> Jared: No, it seems
like, these things happen but we're glad to have you back and we still have a full
room of individuals. My name is Jared and I'm
with the Library as well. So, I am happy to
kind of jump in and help you with
some questions: >> Pam: Okay. >> Jared: So, I can go ahead
and read from the chat and have, I guess right now, we have from
Kristen [assumed spelling]. Our class wants to know what
your childhood was like. >> Pam: Well, I'm, I think
it's one thing that contributed to my creativity, in that
I grew up during a time that was very different
from today. I grew during a time
where I had big blocks of unchoreographed time so I
didn't have a lot of what you, what maybe children have
today, like you know, Mondays you have violin
lessons or Tuesday and Thursdays you have
soccer and you know, activities every
day after school. It was just a different time
when I went to elementary school and so, I would say that I had a
very unchoreographed childhood, where I was able to
spend a lot of time with my own wandering
thoughts [chuckles] and also I was the oldest
of the three sisters, the oldest of the 23
grandchildren, the oldest girl in the neighborhood, so I
just remember spending a lot of time doing dramatic play with
all of my cousins and neighbors and you know, doing
a lot of pretending and so that's how I would
explain my childhood. Yeah. >> Jared. Wonderful. Thank you. Cynthia Lewis [assumed
spelling] wants to know what is that you like to read? >> Pam: You know, I like to
read a lot of different things. Like, sometimes I like
to read non-fiction, sometimes I like to
read historical fiction, sometimes I pick up,
I like to read a lot of different types of magazines. I read heavily in the
genre in which I write, meaning like between that 5th
to 9th, 5th grade to 9th grade, I read a lot of books,
especially the new books that I'm fortunate,
I'm fortunate because my publisher will send
me the new things on the list, and so I often read those. So, I'm not just like, I
don't just read dystopia or just read non-fiction. I'm really, I like to sample
a lot of different things. >> Jared: Wonderful. Thank you. How do you approach
researching your books? This is from Emily
Korman [assumed spelling] >> Pam: Well, I have
to say that libraries and research librarians,
especially, are so generous, you know I spend a lot
of time in libraries. I spend a lot of time going
through, over the years through archives or going
through old microfiche or just see you know,
old articles on, librarians are probably
my biggest resource. I also spend a lot of time
at historical societies if I'm writing historical
fiction, and museums and I just find that the
archivists are so helpful. They're waiting, they've
compiled and curated all of this information
about a particular place and they're very excited
when you come, and you want to research because that's
what their job is for. So, I would just say that
archivists and librarians and even just picking up the
phone and calling a museum and saying, I'll say, I'm doing
research on a particular thing and I just find people
to be incredibly helpful and just for the asking. >> Jared: Great. Thank you. Julia would like to know how
do you choose your book titles? >> Pam: Book titles. Hardest thing and the reason
for that is the book title, the title of a book in the
publishing house is something in which many people
get to weigh in. So, it's just not what my editor
and I decide on, that we like, and that other people
need to weigh in, too, like the entire editorial
department and publicity and marketing and
the sales departments and so many people
look at the book and consider what their
area of expertise is and then they have comments to
say about a particular title. Book clubs and book
fairs can weigh in because they're also
going to sell the title and the booksellers, I mean,
the sales reps who sell to the booksellers, they're
going to have an opinion. So, the title of a
book is something in which many people
get to weigh in and it's just a long process
of coming up with a lot of different titles until
we can all agree on one. Yeah. >> Jared: Thank you very much. Kerry [assumes spelling] and
her 6th grade class would like to know what your
biggest inspiration for being, what is your biggest
inspiration for being a writer? >> Pam: Well, I'm very,
I don't, I'll say this. Momentum is far more important
than inspiration when it comes to writing and what I mean
by that is if I waited to be inspired, I'm not sure
that I would ever get much done and I really, first of all, I feel like I have the right
temperament to be a writer. I don't have any problems
spending days, weeks, months, sometimes on end re-visiting
the manuscript every day, writing a draft, you know, and
this is a very long process, but I think I have the
right temperament for that. But I love books and I love
reading and I love readers and you know, librarians
and you know, publishers, the whole field is something
that I embrace and I want to deliver for all
of those people. For all of those
people, including myself. So, I think, so my inspiration
comes from wanting to continue to participate and be a part
of this culture of literacy. But as far as my daily
inspiration to sit down and write, I really
approach it as a job. It's something that I love
doing, it doesn't always, it's not always easy, it's a
lot of work, but I 'm very, I know that the motivation
comes from re-visiting and re-visiting the manuscript. So, the momentum of writing
is far more important than the inspiration of writing. >> Jared: Great. Thank you very much. We have time for just about
maybe two more questions, so I'm going to see if
we can get them in here. What gave you the idea to
write Esperanza Rising? >> Pam: Well, many, many
years ago, like 25 years ago, I had the idea to
write a picture book about my grandmother and
my grandmother crocheting and telling me a story about her
childhood, and I submitted it as a picture book manuscript
and it was purchased by a different publisher as
a picture book manuscript. And as so often happens
in publishing, you know, my editor left, another
editor took over the book and that editor after
a few months left and then another editor
acquired the manuscript but it wasn't really that
person's cup of tea and just to make a long story
short, it you know, I eventually took
the manuscript back. I started working at Scholastic
with my editor Tracey Mack and we had already done Riding
Freedom and I believe Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride. We'd already done those two
books together and this sort of stepchild of a manuscript
came up and we began talking about it and she, when
she read it she said, I think you have a lot more to
say here and she said, you know, would you consider again, you
know, writing it as a novel? And that sort of, that's a
very simplified answer to kind of a big, complicated
journey for that manuscript. But that's basically
what happened. >> Jared: Great. Talking about your momentum and
the combination of inspiration and momentum, Emily would like
to know how long does it take for you to finish a novel if
you are constantly re-writing? >> Pam: Well, I think we already
had that question before, but novels usually take about
three to four years to write. Echo took longer, you
know, about five years. >> Jared: Wonderful. All right, well, I am going to
ask our final question here. >> Pam: Okay. >> Jared: And our 5th grade, from Christine [assumed
spelling] wants to know when you finished
your first book. >> Pam: Oh, they
want to know, sorry. They want to know when I
finished my first book. >> Jared: Yeah, wants to know when you finished
your first book. >> Pam: Well, my first book in children's publishing
was published in 1994. So, picture books to be illustrated,
so probably in 1993? [inaudible] Yeah, been a while. >> Jared: All right. Well, thank you so much. Is there anything else that
you would like to share with the room before I
pass it back to Monica? >> Monica: Well, that's
all the questions. >> Pam: Monica, go ahead. >> Monica: Well, that's all
the questions we have time for today. Thank you so much
for your patience through the technical
difficulties. And thank you for
sharing your time with us so generously today, Pam. We've been speaking with Pam
Muñoz Ryan whose latest book is Mañanaland. You can find her presentation
on the children's stage of the National Book Festival
at NationalBookFestival.com. Thanks, too, to our audience
out there and I hope that all of you will take the time
to explore our many programs and enjoy the remainder of
the National Book Festival. [ Music ]
