Virginia Zimmerman

With some help from my editor father, I have a good draft of my bio for the Catalan edition of my book. If anyone can weigh in, I would be very grateful for feedback. Remember that the audience is Catalan-speaking and, obviously, is children.

Virginia Zimmerman is an American who loves Catalunya. She married into a Catalan family and spends as much time as possible in and around Barcelona. Her favorite place in the whole world is Sa Tuna on the Costa Brava. She currently lives in Lewisburg, a small town in Pennsylvania.

Virginia has been fascinated by literature since she began reading, and now she both writes it and teaches it at the university level. She believes that reading is the best way to become a writer — or, for that matter, a person.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about carrying my main character, Micah, around with me. I haven’t been doing as much of this as I would like partly because Micah is 11 and a lot of my life wouldn’t interest him at all: “What would Micah think of my department meeting?” is not a terribly interesting question. But I have been trying, and I do think the experiment is working. Though I have had very little time to write, Micah feels present to me, and, when time permits, I’m ready to bring him to life on the page.

In October, I had a wonderful opportunity to read from my novel to a group of colleagues. I enjoyed this very much and was struck afterwards by the fact that I will never read from this book for the first time again. I didn’t know where they would laugh, for instance, and now I do.

I especially enjoyed the Q&A that followed the reading, and one friend asked a really wonderful question about how much what the characters have read might help them. We talked in particular about A Wrinkle in Time: if Micah has read L’Engle, does he then use this text to help him navigate the confusing layers of time travel in his own life?

I’ve been thinking about this question off and on since the reading. It’s a question that challenges the line between author and character in that Micah can’t have read in a meaningful way anything I have not read. I can put books on his shelf (or his bed, where Micah actually keeps his most special books) that I have not read myself, but I can’t put those books in his world view.

Conversely, one could argue that every book I have read informed the crafting of my own book, but many of the books I have read would not interest Micah. Bright though he is, I know that he has not read Middlemarch. Once in an earnest mood he tried Oliver Twist, but he didn’t get past the first sentence. These books may have helped me shape my fictional world, but it doesn’t follow that they help Micah shape his real world.

This is all a long way of saying that I still don’t know what Micah has read. I do know that he likes to organize his books and even built his own bookshelf out of a box that formerly held one of Celia’s dolls. So, for now, I can’t really build the contents of Micah’s bookshelf into his character and his problem-solving skills, but I can write with confidence that the fact of the bookshelf and the organization it represents tells us quite a bit about who Micah is.

Sitting here now in my office, Micah likes how I have this semester’s books on a special shelf at my side, and he loves how I put each book back in its regular place when I’ve finished with it. He might notice that A Wrinkle in Time is already back with the children’s fiction, and if he were really here, I think he might pull it off the shelf, and I’m sure he would get well past the first sentence.

Yesterday, I had occasion to talk with my students about a wonderful short essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” by C.S. Lewis. I love many things about this piece. For one thing, Lewis argues against critics of fantasy, writing that if children must face troubles in their lives, let them at least be armed with tales of heroes: “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker” (216). I agree with this claim for fantasy’s use, and it makes books feel important. A fantastical adventure is not an escape; rather, it is a lesson and an inspiration.

The part of the essay that always gives me chills, though, is this:

It would be much truer to say that fairyland arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his lifelong enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. (214)

That literature has the power to make magic in the real world, even in the most mundane places, like wardrobes, is extraordinary. Lewis understood this, and I think children understand it.

I suppose it is my task in my Young Adult Fiction class and on this blog to help adults remember this magic. Or maybe many grown ups do remember but need permission to look into their wardrobes for other worlds, and softly, under their breaths, to whisper “Accio!” and to hope that it will summon something. And to recognize that the charm summons magic even when it doesn’t work, because we had enough faith to give it a try. In that longing lies the enchantment Lewis describes.

My critique group had its second meeting this past weekend, and, in addition to some great discussion of our work, we also bemoaned the great time conundrum. With jobs and families and life stuff–both ordinary and extraordinary, how on earth does a person find time to write?

I wrote my first novel in fits and starts, a few pages at a time, over five years, and it feels disjointed and jagged. My fractured time led to a fractured novel. I wrote my second novel while on sabbatical over a glorious period of about six weeks during which time nothing else demanded my attention between 9 am and 5 pm. It was luxurious and rare. This novel coheres.

I won’t have such time again anytime soon, and most people never have it. So, how does one write a cohesive novel without cohesive time?

People have different strategies to keep themselves writing. Some are length based: two sentences per day or one page per day. Some are time based: fifteen minutes per day or before the kids get up. Others are incentive systems: chocolate comes at the end of a writing session. Others are community based: I tell you how much I will accomplish, and you tell me you much you will accomplish, and we hold each other accountable. These are all good systems, but none of them address the cohesion issue.

I can find a few minutes per day to write, but in that fragmented work model, I lose my rhythm, and then my book feels out of sync with itself. I need to find a way to maintain my groove when I’m not writing.

So here is a new strategy I am launching today: I will continue to grab at time to write, but when I’m not writing, I will carry my main character around with me. I will think about the challenges he faces in my fictional world, and I will also imagine how he would respond to the real world situations I move through. For example, when I walk into my classroom, I will ask myself, “Where would Micah sit? What would he think of today’s reading?” When I go to the grocery store, I will think about what Micah would want to buy. My hope is that taking Micah with me in my real life will make it easier to get in touch with him when I sit down to write–I will never have been out of touch–and I may even discover scenarios that I want to work into my novel.

I will report back next week. For my first exercise, I ask myself what Micah thinks of this blog post. Turns out that he doesn’t get blogs at all. Doesn’t see the point. And so my character develops.

I am happy to share the wonderful news that my middle-grade novel, A Sketch in Time, will be published in Catalan in May 2012 by Cruilla, a wonderful children’s publisher in Barcelona.

I am grateful for the support of my family (whose voices and experiences helped shape the novel), my friends (many of whom read early versions of the novel and offered valuable feedback), Nuria (who requires far more thanks than I can put here in parentheses), my team of agents, and the city of Barcelona for inspiration.

I’ll write more about the process and the particulars when I feel less giddy, if I ever do!

This blog is about children’s literature–the reading of it, the teaching of it, the writing of it, and the ways in which it intersects with other aspects of my life, professional and personal. I generally don’t get personal here (I have other blogs for that), but today, I am driven to the personal by a staggering gift and my desire to express my gratitude to the dear friend behind the gift.

In January, while living an ocean away from home, I was diagnosed with a serious illness. My good friend Jordan Sonnenblick asked my husband what would help me at this difficult time, and the answer, as always in difficult times, was books, in particular kids’ books. Jordan took action. He sent out a clarion call, as he put it, to many of his writer friends, and the response was an entire library of signed books.

A big box of books is always a thoughtful gift, but a big box of signed books, shipped across an ocean is especially welcome. The books themselves will entertain, comfort, invigorate, and inspire me. The time taken by the authors to respond to Jordan’s call and to sign their books makes each book more special. And the stack of them–two stacks actually–sits by me now, a wall of words and creativity and warmth, lending strength.

But the story is not so simple, as none of the authors involved would expect it to be. A few short days after assuring Jordan that it would be safe to send this wonderful gift to us abroad, my husband and I made the heartbreaking decision that we needed to return to the US for me to get the best care. We abruptly abandoned friends, family, school, and really, really good food, and in the eight hours of a transatlantic flight found ourselves back in the US.

By this time, I had been told about the box of books, which perhaps passed east over the ocean as we traveled west. I left instructions with friends to receive the package and send it onward to me. There would be a delay, but the books would make there way to my side in good time. The packagage did not arrive. Time passed. Finally, we meet a form in triplicate and our antagonist: a nefarious, mustached bureacrat personifying Spanish Customs.

More forms. E-mails. All in Spanish. Time continues to pass. I have given up hope. I am grateful for the thought, which is what really counts. I tell myself that somewhere the children of Spanish Customs’ officers have lucked into a great library of wonderful books. Perhaps good will come of this.

Finally, we get word that the package has been returned to the sender. I laugh. I do not imagine that the books will ever return to the US, but, miracle of miracles, Jordan calls to tell me the box has returned. He sends it onward. A few days later it arrives, intact, brimming with wonderful, wonderful books. Sr. Spanish Customs was defeated, or perhaps he wasn’t so bad after all.

And now I sit with two stacks of books at my side, and I offer this post as a gesture of gratitude to Jordan and to all his writer friends for their generosity and for the resilience of their words, which have traveled the world and will guide me through my own journey of healing. Thank you.

>Like many, I have been following the mysterious Pottermore site with interest. Today, JK Rowling revealed that it will be a site that provides at least 18,000 words of backstory on assorted characters, like McGonagall and the Dursleys, as well as some games and, here’s the controversial part, access to e-books.

No one can argue that JKR has not done way more than any individual’s (nay, any nation’s!) part to boost book sales. Still, like so many in the book business, I am worried about what electronic publishing will do to books and bookstores, especially small independent stores who have to find ways to hold their own against local competition like B&N and against online competitors like Amazon.

I have a Kindle, and I love it, but I admit that I read differently on the Kindle. I’m nearing the end of the fourth George R.R. Martin book. I bought the first one, and then got the second for my Kindle. My husband bought hard copy. I had a hard time reading the book electronically. I needed the maps. I needed to know how many pages were left in the chapter and who came next. Ultimately, I felt less invested in the characters and the narrative on my Kindle, so as soon as my husband finished, I picked up the hard copy with great relief.

I have enjoyed some books on my Kindle–mostly books that don’t feel important, that are just fun or informational–and I certainly enjoy having the Kindle and having so many books on hand wherever I am.

And this is where I get back to Harry Potter. I am a die hard HP fan. I love the books. I re-read them. I have multiple copies of each book, some in foreign languages. I even read Book 1 in Spanish to practice when I was learning the language. I have read all 7 books with my older child and am up to book 4 with my younger kids. I teach the HP books to my college students, and once, sometimes twice per year, I make classes of 25-35 students buy select books in the series. In other words, I have done my share of buying these books from booksellers small and large in four countries.

Now, I can hardly wait to have all seven books on my Kindle. I will always have them with me. Always. When I’m waiting at the doctor’s office, and I’d really like to re-read the scene when Harry first gets snarky with Umbridge, I can. When I’m on a plane, and I crave the Battle of Hogwarts, it will be right there with me. It will be like a literary security blanket.

And carrying around my HP blanket will keep the books present for me, not that I think anything could make them less present. It will remind me to teach them and to read them with my kids and to buy the real books for other children I know.

I don’t think children yet read e-books. Maybe they will some day, but we’re not there yet. Adults will continue to buy the hard copy HP books for children they know. Why? Because the books are important. Because you must have the experience of their heft in your hands or the words on the page.

Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like the last phrase of the first chapter of the first book, “The Boy Who Lived.” Seeing those words on paper is an experience everyone should have for the first time, and the second, and the third. But once that magic has become a part of you, it’s OK to read the words on an e-reader. Their magic simply cannot be lessened. And having those words with me always will be magical indeed.