Dori: Why do you write?

Because you seek fame and fortune?

Not likely if you’re writing for children.

Because you “can’t not write?” I don’t know about you, but I find it very easy to not write. I can always read a book, catch up on e-mail, meet a friend for coffee, take my dog for a walk, teach my dog a new trick, go to a Zumba class (LOVE my Zumba!), play my mandolin, volunteer at the animal shelter, blog, go to a movie, play a game of Scrabble, do a load of laundry, grocery shop, clean, organize a closet or three (the closets in my house REALLY need organizing)...there are a million things I can do every day instead of write.

But most days I write.

Why?

To make sense of the world?

For a long time, I believed this was why I wrote. Writing really does help me make sense of the world. It helps me explore ideas and resolve issues (both real and fictional). Writing also helps me figure out who I am.

But do you know why I really write...what really gives me satisfaction as a writer?

I write because I want to turn non-readers into readers.

It sounds a little egotistical, doesn't it? In fact, it sounds so egotistical that I almost scrapped this blog entry (after all, this is my first post on the Crowe's Nest!) and started a new one.

But it's the truth. I DO write to turn non-readers into readers. That's what it's all about for me. I write for reluctant readers. I also write for beginning readers. There's no greater thrill for me than to receive a letter that begins, "I didn't like to read until I read your 'Do You Know the Monkey Man.'" Or to have a child come up to me during a school visit and say, "Your 'Case of the Lost Boy' was the first chapter book I read all by myself!" That's what keeps me going.

How about you? Why do you write?

Jenny: 2012, The Year of Impossible Things!

I just got off the phone with my eighty-three year old grandmother. My Grandma Joy has traveled the world and taught an army of children and welcomed an untold number of strangers to her table. She’s nothing less than pure sunshine—an unfailing radiance and warmth—to just about everyone who knows her.

Just talking to her makes you brave, makes you believe in impossible things.

And O Writer of Words, you need that, don’t you? You need the courage to believe you can keep writing through fear and loneliness, through disquiet and uncertainty, through success and trial. When your query is rejected, when your book isn’t working, when the creative well runs murky or just plain dry, it may feel as though you’re lost in the thicket, a gloomy tangle where the future looks at best inscrutable, and at worst, like darkness looming.

Friends and family can support, mentors can counsel, but in the end, you are the only one who can fight your way through the muck and snarl. You are the only one who can pull yourself out of harm’s way. Day by day, page by page, you must be the one to dare the impossible, emerging as the hero of your own story.

Let this be the year. Your year.

When your book earns rejection, again and again, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your agent quits the business, leaving you back at square one, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your contract falls through and all other doors seem to close, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your first (or fiftieth!) book fails to earn out and the critics call for your blood, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your inbox spells doom and your own words mock from the page, dare to do the impossible thing, the only gambit that can rescue tomorrow. Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing.

And make 2012 the year of impossible things.

Crowe's Nest Resolutions

Happy New Year from the Crowe's Nest! The start of a new year is of course a time to reflect on the past and to make decisions about how we want our futures to look. Here are the resolutions of the members of the Crowe's Nest.

• My 2012 resolution is to sell a new comic book series. (I already have a bunch of deadline-mandated items to tackle: two novels --a YA and a thriller I have to write next year--and a slew of short stories, novellas and comics.) --Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of Dead of Night and Dust & Decay.
• I resolve to have enough sense to recognize when to take a break from writing -- instead of stubbornly forging onward and writing dreck I have to delete later anyway. --Dianne Salerni, author of We Hear the Dead (Sourcebooks 2010) and The Caged Graves (coming from Clarion)
• In 2012, I resolve to learn and grow, to grab the words just beyond my reach, to write a book that's both impossible and true--one that's somehow, in some small way, worthy. --Jenny Martin, author and librarian (hooray!)
• My Writing Resolution is to read more poetry. For me, reading poetry slows down the world and makes me pay attention to what a poem expresses, how it's expressed, and my response to it. Reading poetry helps me become a better writer. --Mary Atkinson, author and poet
• I want to remember that it's up to me to protect my writing time. Though my husband and children and colleagues all care about me, most people in my life would prefer me to be available to them when it comes down to it. It's takes more than a little discipline and courage to protect that space. So here's to another go at it in 2012! --Vera Hiranandan, author of The Whole Story of Half a Girl, which releases next week!
• My resolution in 2012 is BALANCE. I love my job so much that I sometimes find it hard to not be working. There is a time for writing, and then there is a time for everything else (family, friends, hikes, movies, museum visits, travels, etc). I need to get better at finding the balance. I'd also like to spend less time on twitter, but I'm an addict and it's a guilty pleasure. If I resolved to cut down my tweets, I'd break the resolution in under a week -- more like two days, if we're being honest -- so I'm not even going to try. --Erin Bowman, author of Taken coming Winter 2013 from HarperTeen
  
  
• My resolution: To write short. --Brian Meehl, author of You Don't Know About Me, Suck it Up, Out of Patience, and the upcoming Suck it Up and Die
  
• For the first time since my debut novel came out in 2008, I don't have a new book coming out this year. It is quite strange and a little sad. But what that means is I should have lots of time to write. So I hope to write a lot. How's that for a resolution? Write a lot. At least two books. Maybe three. Though I also want to get in shape, read a lot, travel some, play and laugh, sleep. Okay, in actuality, the goal is to write but stay sane, which probably means write 500-1,000 words most days, which is what I've always done. Well, so much for resolutions. --Lisa Schroeder, author of numerous books for children and teens, most recently The Day Before and Sprinkles and Secrets
• Decide what I’m going to “default” to when I’m not on task, so I can read less Facebook and more actual books. --Katherine Grace Bond, author of The Summer of No Regrets (Sourcebooks, May 2012) and Legend of the Valentine
• I’m resolved that in 2012 I will be more fearless -- that I’ll write from my heart and have faith that if I love what I’m writing, I’m doing it right. --Frances Sackett, middle-grade author
  
• While drafting, I resolve to send my inner editor on vacation to a far, far away place. One that doesn't have cell service. Or WiFi. But that does have a great beach with awesome swells, so he'll be distracted by surfing until I'm good and ready for him. --Peggy Edelman, author of the upcoming Through the Bomb's Breath (Random House, 2013)
• My novel While He Was Away is due out from Sourcebooks this May, and so . . . I resolve to break (or at least balance) my habit of shyness and do my best to advocate for the book and more deeply connect with communities of YA readers and writers. Maybe this means blogging twice a week and tweeting twice a day; it definitely means reading posts like [this one]!I also want to more consistently embrace my own best rhythm of writing--which is a bit Pavlovian (ring the bell and I salivate). An hour a day, same time, same place, typically works way better for me than a binge writing weekend here and there (though writers residencies are a dream come true . . . and I'd like to resolve right now to apply for one of those too! :) ). --Karen Halvorsen Schreck, author of While He Was Away (Sourcebooks, 2012), Dream Journal (Hyperion), and Lucy's Family Tree (Tilbury House)
• I'm going to carry a little notebook with me and write a one sentence snapshot of something I see, hear, smell, taste or touch every day. --Leila Howland, author of the upcoming Nantucket Blue
  
• I used to make writing-related resolutions, but now I have to make my changes on the fly. It's like
  NASCAR: I try to make adjustments as soon as I notice something isn't working (or I'm running out of fuel). If I waited until the end of the year, I'm afraid the race might already be over. --Michael Northrup, author of Gentlemen, Trapped, and the upcoming Plunked
  

As for me, my resolution is to write a picture book. I've been noodling on an idea for a while, but I've found that just knowing I was going to publicly declare this resolution has me more focused. I've started plotting and even composing. So what about you? What are your writing-related resolutions for 2012?

Sara: Hello, 2012!

Happy New Year! 2011 was as busy and exciting as I hoped it would be at the end of 2010. 4 client debuts and 17 client books in all were published, and I sold 9 debuts, and made 11 other deals, not including foreign deals and film options. I attended the Bologna Book Fair for the first time in March and the Storymaker's Conference in Utah in May where I got to see the Wells brothers and where I found three new clients, definitely a conference record for me.

We bought an apartment and moved to a new neighborhood that we love, our daughter turned 2 and started at a playschool. It was also the year that we lost both of my father's parents, at 90 and 93. They had been married for 68 years and have 7 children, 21 grandchildren and 6 great grandchildren. We miss them and I wish that L had gotten to know them longer. In 2012, my maternal grandmother and my husband's grandmother and daughter's namesake with both turn 90 the same week in March, and we will be there to celebrate them.

This year I will have more client books coming out than any previous year, and I cannot wait to tell you about each of them. One of my resolutions is to be better about updating my website!

Here is some of the great news we got this year:

FROST by Marianna Baer is a CYBILS Best Young Adult Fiction finalist for 2011.

ROT & RUIN by Jonathan Maberry won the 2010 Cybils for Fantasy and Science Fiction.

ROT & RUIN is also on the ALA 2011 Best Fiction for Young Adults list, a nominee for the Arkansas Teen Book Award, on the 2012 Texas Lone Star Reading List and on the Missouri Gateway List.

Jonathan's adaptation WOLFMAN won the Scribe Award for Best Adaptation.

CHASING BROOKLYN was a RITA FINALIST 2011, and is a Missouri Gateway nominee.

I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU by Dan Wells is A BOOKLIST HORROR TOP TEN for 2011.

Dan Wells was a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer nominee.

MR. MONSTER by Dan Wells won the Whitney award for Best Novel.
MR. MONSTER is also an ALA QUICK PICK FOR RELUCTANT READERS.

VARIANT by Robison Wells is a PW best Book of the Year, and Robison is a PW Flying Start.

CHASING BROOKLYN by Lisa Schroeder, HOLD STILL by Nina LaCour, A SWEET DISORDER by Jacqueline Kolosov and THE MORGUE AND ME by John Ford are all on the TAYSHAS 2011 list.

TRAPPED By Michael Northrop is on the 2012 TAYSHAS List.

IT'S RAINING CUPCAKES by Lisa Schroeder and SAVING MADDIE by Varian Johnson are 2011 Bank Street College of Education Best Books.

THE DRAGON OF CRIPPLE CREEK by Troy Howell is an ABC New Voices Project selection for 2011.

YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME by Brian Meehl is on the BCCB Blue Ribbon Winner List for 2011.

TAKE ME THERE by Carolee Dean is a Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award Nominee.

SEA by Heidi Kling is a 2011 IRA Young Adult Choice and a Missouri Gateway Award Nominee.

THE MORGUE AND ME has been nominated for the 2011-2012 Georgia Peach Book Award.

OTHER by Karen Kincy is a Top Ten Popular Paperback 2011.

Two stars for Rob Wells's VARIANT (VOYA and PW) and stars for Jonathan Maberry's THE KING OF PLAGUES (Kirkus), Brian Meehl's YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME (PW), Kristen TRACY'S THE REINVENTION OF BESSICA LEFTER (BCCB), Kristen Tracy's SHARKS AND BOYS (Kirkus), and Dan Wells's I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU (Booklist).

And looking ahead to this year's books:
Three Stars so far for Nina LaCour's THE DISENCHANTMENTS (Dutton, February) from SLJ, Kirkus and PW, and two Stars for Veera Hiranandani's THE WHOLE STORY OF HALF A GIRL (Delacorte, January) from Kirkus and PW.

Congrats on all the lists and awards, Nesters! Today I am thinking about the projects I already know I am submitting to editors in 2012, and those I have not even read yet. I am feeling incredibly lucky about all the books my clients sent me this year and those they will send, and that I get to work with such amazing people every day. I can't wait for Bologna again in March, and for the DFW's conference in May where I will get to meet Jenny Martin, and to the Highlights Whole Novel Workshop in October with Varian Johnson and his laugh. 2012 looks to be even busier than 2011, if that is possible. I think I will need Erin Bowman's word of the year: balance. And also a clone. Wishing everyone happiness in 2012! Sara