Five Reasons to Just Keep Writing

By Tricia Rayburn

As anyone who has ever written something that managed to make it from computer screen to print without draining their own pricey ink supply can attest, getting published is pretty cool. It's encouraging to know that someone besides your mother and best friend thinks you're not totally wasting your time sitting at a desk and making up stories when you could be doing other, more useful things, like fighting injustice or saving the planet. In fact, there's only one thing that tops the natural high that comes from seeing your hard work in book form - and that's sharing it with those who are still typing feverishly and wondering if they should be doing something, anything else instead.

This is exactly what I hoped to do last weekend at the first-ever Southampton Children's Literature Conference, where I spoke to about 30 children's writers and illustrators about the trials, tribulations and glories of being a first-time young adult author. As I told the enthusiastic participants, some of whom had traveled from as far away as California and Texas to attend the program at the eastern campus of Stony Brook University, the trials are certainly trying, but they are so worth every glory, big or small, that results.

And so, here are my personal top five reasons to just keep going, no matter how much you might want to occasionally throw your laptop off the Ponquogue Bridge and never touch a keyboard again:

1. The offer. It might be several years - and books - before you get the call, the one that takes you from feeling like a hopeful hobbyist to an actual author. But when it comes, all of the time, work and mental endurance it took to get there will seem like no big deal. For me, the offer for The Melting of Maggie Bean came almost a year to the day after my agent's first submission, and followed extensive revision and four heartbreaking rejections, each of which was exponentially more painful than the one before. The day Simon & Schuster relayed the good news, I felt like it was finally okay to be excited about this challenging path I'd chosen - and all of the places I hoped it'd take me.

2. The book. This happens in stages. First you see cover concepts, then pass pages (in which your words are magically transformed from Times New Roman to the publisher-picked font and style, exactly as they will appear in final book form), then galleys (bound, but not finalized copies), and then the real deal. When the first four officially finished copies of Maggie arrived, I'd never been so happy to find a padded yellow envelope sitting on my doorstep. That was it, the end result of months and months of writing, revising, waiting and hoping, and it couldn't have been more thrilling.

3. The bookstore. Maggie was released on April 27, 2007. That day, a friend and I went to BookHampton in Southampton, where the little project that had started as my MFA thesis was displayed in the window, right under The Higher Power of Lucky, which had won the Newbery Medal that year. Inside the store, 10 more copies sat on a table in the children's section, which I signed and took a picture of. There was a time, not too long before, that I hadn't even let myself imagine that moment, because I didn't want to be disappointed if it didn't ever happen.

4. The review. Knowing other people out there are reading your story is very exciting...and very nerve-wracking. You can tell yourself it's illogical, but you also can't help but worry that maybe your agent and editor just get what you were trying to do the way no one else will. And the truth is, not everyone will get what you were trying to do. But there will be many who do. My first review of Maggie was on EntertainmentWeekly.com, where they actually grant grades to books, movies and albums. Fortunately, Maggie scored a solid, respectable "B" - right under a review of Charlotte's Web on DVD.

5. The readers. Over the past year and a half, I've received several letters from young girls who've read Maggie and connected with her story enough to hang on a little while longer, write down their thoughts and questions and send them to Simon & Schuster. Getting an offer, seeing the story in book form, signing copies in a store and reading critics' responses are all amazing experiences, but for me, knowing that somewhere out there, people who love to read just to read are taking something away from what I've created, is, by far, the greatest glory. Because if you can remove yourself from the publication pursuit just enough, you remember that this fundamental connection to books is probably why you started writing in the first place.

Tricia Rayburn is the author of The Melting of Maggie Bean (Simon & Schuster, 2007) and Maggie Bean Stays Afloat (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Thoughts? Ideas? tricia@danspapers.com

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