This is the first of a two-part thank you to Carolyn Yoder, founding editor and Editorial Director of Calkins Creek, an imprint of Astra Publishing for Young Readers. Please check in next week for Part 2, our recorded conversation and a Carolyn surprise!
I first met Carolyn the summer of 2003 in a van on our way to the Highlights Children’s Writers Workshop at Chautauqua. I was in awe from the moment I heard her talking to the staff members who’d come to the airport to pick us up. My Kansas twang loved her New Jersey accent and I continued to eavesdrop as we waited for others to arrive and later when we’d boarded the van. I remember enjoying the ride, looking out the window, marveling at how different the New York countryside was from home. I was half-listening to Carolyn talk to another writer until she turned to me and asked, “What do you write?”
It was a perfectly normal question, pleasantly posed. But my mouth went dry, and my brain fogged over. Probably because I was feeling Imposter’s Syndrome, thinking that everyone else in the van was either staff or a “real” writer and I was merely along for the ride. Had I known Carolyn was a mere mortal as I do now, I wouldn’t have felt so intimidated. But I didn’t. So, I choked out the only thing my wisp of a brain could formulate, “A cowboy fantasy novel.”
“Oh, no!” Carolyn exclaimed, a hand in the air and a twinkle in her eye. “Another fiction writer! Doesn’t anybody write nonfiction around here?” Little did I guess that in a few short years, I would be or that her nonfiction eye would be the first to see potential in my middle grade humor.
I can’t remember the first workshop I took from Carolyn, but it was most assuredly a nonfiction one. I’d taken her comment in the van as a challenge and if Carolyn wanted nonfiction, I was determined to learn how to write it. I remember coming home after that workshop with a bag of handouts on how to research, find trustworthy sources, and verify, verify, verify! I kept that stack for years, thinking of Carolyn whenever I referred to it, recalling her passion for the subject, her insistence on excellence. I knew if Carolyn said something, it was true and following her rules was important.
Gradually, I came to love the researching aspect of writing whether for nonfiction or fiction. It came in handy when I became a curriculum specialist writing courses for an educational company in southeast Kansas. Later, when I got my dream job as a curriculum writer for K-12, an international online school, and was tasked with writing as many fiction and nonfiction passages as I could for Grades 2 to 12 that first few months, I envisioned Carolyn watching over me as I dug for stories, using many of her techniques for finding credible sources. All that work honed my eye to look for nuggets. The result was 150+ passages that would excite kids and make their test-taking more interesting. The highlight came one day when a teacher in a school district near where I used to teach contacted me after noticing my byline on her students’ testing materials. She wanted to tell me how much her students had enjoyed them. I was thrilled. But it was due to Carolyn’s training.
I think it might have been the second or third of Carolyn’s alumni workshops I attended at Highlights when something I will never forget happened. Carolyn preferred us to send our work ahead of time so she could read it before the workshop week began. But I hadn’t been able to, overwhelmed by an impossible workload at the first curriculum company and exhausted by all the unpaid overtime and too many late nights.
I was still slogging away on that cowboy novel and planned to send some revised pages since it was technically based on historical events. But I’d also been playing with something new about a grieving boy, a cantankerous dachshund named Hotdog, and shenanigans on trips to Kansas tourist traps. At the last minute, I took along the first chapters of that, too.
After supper that first night, I handed my work to Carolyn when we all met in the comfy living room. I apologized for not getting it to her sooner. “There’s something new in there, too,” I said, “if you have time. Though it’s fiction and not historical.”
“No problem,” she said, “I’ll read them both tonight.”
The next morning, I’d just sat down in the living room to wait for breakfast, when Carolyn came out of the adjoining office with a smile. “This is what you should be working on this week,” she said, thrusting the Hotdog pages at me. “Forget about the cowboy. You have a gift for middle grade humor. Go for it!”
And so, I did, writing six more chapters that week in my cozy cabin by the woods. I felt like I’d been unleashed, given permission to be myself, to write with abandon. And each night, when we shared what we’d written, Carolyn and the others listened, laughing at the funny parts, tearing up at the parts that were sad. And as she did with everyone, Carolyn led the applause at the end with a resounding “Bravo!”
But on a day near the end of the next workshop where I’d been addressing the issues Carolyn had pinpointed, she said something else that has proved true. “This book is going to take a long time to get right, because it’s not easy to find the balance between the sadness and the humor. But when you do…”
That was upsetting and I dismissed it at first. But later, as the years passed with revision after revision and scads of rejections, Carolyn’s words comforted me, strangely, reminding me that even if it wasn’t quite right yet, it would be someday. Because writing something different and that might make a difference to a child is hard work. As it should be.
Later, when life got in the way, and I had to set the book aside time and again, Carolyn never let me forget it. Every time we communicated, she’d ask, “How’s Hotdog?” as if he was waiting at my feet for a tummy rub. The good times were when I got solid nibbles from an agent or an editor. The bad were when they fell through. But still, she kept asking and I kept trying until now, hopefully, we’re almost there.
When the day finally comes that I can give Carolyn a copy of that long-awaited book, you can bet there will be some applauding. And after I say thank you, we’ll probably celebrate together with the best ever “Bravo!”
Hugs,
Dale
Carolyn is a wonderful editor—discerning and kind.. You are fortunate to have her wise counsel and encouragement!
Can’t wait for hotdog!