by Sydney Nicole
The Visiting Writers Forum (www.visitingwritersforum.com) at Ringling College of Art and Design has been a way for young writers like myself to hear from seasoned writing professionals such as Pulitzer-winner Robert Olen Butler and Cuban-American poet Virgil Suarez, among others. Children’s book superstar Jane Yolen kicked off the spring 2018 series, but before she took the main event, she joined me for a quick chat.
Sydney Nicole: 300+ published books is an impressive number. What’s your motivation to keep writing?
Jane Yolen: Well, possibly because at almost eighty, I don’t know anything else. I love to write. I love to find out what I’m thinking and the way I can find out what I’m thinking is to write. I also come from a family of writers. My father was a writer. My brother’s a writer, my mother was a failed writer – she sold only one short story in her entire life. But she made crossword puzzles and my great-grandfather in a small shtetl – which is a Jewish community in the old country – had an inn and he use to tell stories around the fire to people. So we are a long line of liars.
SN: Your picture book Stranded Whale deals with death. How important is it to incorporate serious topics into children’s books?
JY: I do some lightweight stuff and I do some funny stuff like Commander Toad in Space and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? But I also do serious things in picture book form. I’ve also written three Holocaust novels – my latest comes out this year – so I write everything. It’s the story that I want to tell that dictates in which sub-genre it’s going to be and how dark it’s going to be; how light it’s going be. If I start writing something in bouncing rhyme, I’m sure not going to make it into a Holocaust novel. So there are limits to the number of changes you can make in something. But when I’m writing, in the beginning, I’m not always sure what it’s going be. Sometimes I am, but most of the time I try to get my ideas down and see where they take me.
SN: A few of your books have made it onto banned books lists. What advice do you have for writers who want to write for a younger audience, but fear they may be banned?
JY: If it’s banned, you’ll sell more copies. You’ll get a lot of press and people will want to see what they’re missing. But I think if there’s a serious issue that you want to write about, you write about it. If you want to write about it because you think it’s going to make money? That’s a bad reason. You want to write with your heart. Not with your pocketbook.
SN: How has today’s current climate affected your writing?
JY: I’ve been thinking about writing a Women’s March picture book, though I have a friend who’s doing it, so I probably won’t. But I’ve been certainly writing poems about that. I think that if you look at my body of work, you’ll find a lot of feminist stuff. In fact, a book of mine that just came out last week is about the women and girls in the Hebrew Bible, a feminist take on their stories. It liberates them out of the men’s stories and lets them live on their own. So I’m always thinking of women topics.
SN: So we can expect to see more of that in your work?
JY: Yes, absolutely.
SN: I’m writing a musical about the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s going to be about a black girl who is adopted, both her parents are white and her dad is a cop and how she perceives race in today’s history.
JY: Interesting, good take. I wrote a musical – two musicals for kids. One was performed in Boston and performed again in Massachusetts. And the other one was performed in North Hampton, Massachusetts and it is that kind of cooperative venture that picture books are too.
SN: How are picture books cooperative?
JY: Your first cooperation is not only between an author and his or her words. Instead of how is that story? You say to the story, “Come on, cooperate with me.” But then you’re cooperating with an editor, then you’re cooperating with the illustrator. Then you’re cooperating with a copy editor. You’re cooperating with all the promotion people 10 who want to sell your book to teachers and librarians who want to know what you really meant in your book. Most arts are cooperative – even though we think of ourselves as this lone wolf sitting there day in and day out putting down these magnificent words on the page. But in the end—like the musical—it’s very cooperative.
SN: I’m also working with a documentary group as the writer. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the documentary film 13th, about mass incarceration in the U.S. A local elementary school showed it to a bunch of fifth graders and the students wrote spoken word poetry based off what they saw. Our goal is to capture both how they felt about the subject matter and their experience with writing poetry.
JY: So where do you want to go? Do you want to do all these things or do you want to narrow it and go after one?
SN: I kind of like everything, but right now I’m more focused on screenwriting. I’m taking a lot of screenwriting class because I like film and television, but I also want to write a musical and I like books. I’m a little all over the place.
JY: Don’t think of it as being all over the place. Think of it as being easily bored, so you want to follow your passion and never narrow yourself because you don’t know right now what you are capable of. I still don’t know now what I can’t do. I want to be able to write anything I want. Maybe excluding porn. Who knew forty years ago that I could write graphic novels – which I have. Who knew fifty years ago that I could write fiction? I thought I was a nonfiction writer and a picture book writer and suddenly I became a fiction writer as well. Who knew I could write musicals? Who knew I could write movie scripts? All of those things I did because I didn’t tell myself I couldn’t. If somebody says, “Can you do this?” my answer is always, “Yes, I can.” Maybe I can’t, but I have to find that out for myself. Don’t narrow yourself before you know what you can’t do. Let every moment be a can-do instead of a can’t-do.
About the Author:
Jane Yolen is an author of children’s books, fantasy, and science fiction, including Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? She is also a poet, a teacher of writing
and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature.
About the Interviewer:
Sydney Nichole was born in Columbus, Ohio where she originally went to school for engineering. Instead of doing her engineering homework she found herself writing stories. Switching paths, she found herself at Ringling College of Art + Design for Creative Writing focusing on screenwriting. In her free time, she likes to do puzzles and pretend that she’s a late-night TV Show host.