Lucy Gellman Photo
What should a manuscript look like? Should you be planning the interplay of text and image long in advance? Who, exactly, is responsible for layout? Who helps you edit your work? Do publishers resist your own author-illustrator pairings? Are you happy with your books? Are you happy with the life you’ve chosen?
These are the questions New Haven-based author and illustrator Deborah Freedman (pictured above), now a veteran in the world of children’s book illustration and publishing, is used to hearing. Too often accompanied by phrases like “well, those were the old days,” they have become de rigeur in her life, peppering conversations in and outside of workshops, networking, and publishing sessions.
Courtesy Deborah Freedman
Luckily she doesn’t keep the answers to herself, perhaps a side-effect of writing for a pint-sized audience whose members still trust humanity. Last Wednesday evening, she shared some serious writing advice with nearly 20 aspiring author-illustrators who had gathered at the Arts Council’s Audubon Street offices for March’s session of The Writers’ Circle, held on the third Wednesday of the month.
Her visit comes at a time when the series, plagued with false and ultimately anemic starts when it began as a string of lunchtime meetings in March 2014, opted for an overhaul and is retaking its pulse. After a kickoff party in October and heroic efforts by writer Daisy Abreu, Arts Paper editor David Brensilver, and AC Communications Manager Matt Reiniger to revamp it, the Circle hasn’t just gotten off the ground. It has gotten its mojo back.
“It was great that there were people there that were interested in all kinds of writing. The mission of the writers’ circle is to cross-pollinate an audience of writers, exposing them to new work and giving them a chance to ask questions. I see the program continuing in that way … to know that it has inspired their own continued work. I wanted to attract writers of all different kinds, and to strengthen peoples’ writing through being exposed to new types of writing. I think people feel like they got something out of it,” Reiniger (pictured, in blazer below) said.
He’s right. Freedman, whose first book, Scribble, was inspired by her children’s illustrations, and whose subsequent publications have grappled with fractured and repaired childhood friendships, was realistic, revelatory, and not afraid to talk about mistakes and second stabs at work. Take the way she grapples with process, which she has found to be a messy and unruly beast at times.
“I was really inspired when my girls started to draw, and that was some of the stuff in my first portfolio,” she said. “But I tried to get a story out of that, and I realized that it was kind of hard to just collect … so I finally did this story about two sisters. That’s what it’s about … There are different sparks for each books. I learn something from each book, but each one is different, and each one presents different problems.”
Or a certain factor of change in her own books, which now include gender- and race-neutral characters, always animals.
“I just became more aware of a lot of things,” she said. “Three of my four published books are about things, people not getting along. And friendship. You dig deep … when I went out there with my first book, I took my book with the two little blonde girls and I felt self-conscious, reading my book in New Haven. That’s why I do animals now, and why my last two books are also gender-neutral … my hope is kids will connect emotionally with my characters. I do like to see books with diverse characters in them. That was a choice I made.”
Her other best advice? Don’t be afraid to try something new. Keep your eye away from trends, they pass too quickly. Create something you would want to read over and over again. And please, use big words.
And can you be happy as a writer?
For that, we will have to wait next month to find out.
To find out more about The Writers’ Circle, click here or check the AC’s Facebook page.
