Episode 22: Which book of yours was the most enjoyable to write and why? with Raina Telgemeier
Welcome to episode 22: Which book of yours was the most enjoyable to write and why? with Raina Telgemeier!
TRANSCRIPT:
Grace Lin: Hello. I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books including the middle grade novel, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and the picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Today I'm here with Raina Telgemeier, the author and illustrator of many graphic novels including Smile and Guts. Hi Raina.
Raina Telgemeier: Hey Grace, how are you?
Grace Lin: Good. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Raina Telgemeier: You're welcome.
Grace Lin: Okay, are you ready for today's question?
Raina Telgemeier: Questions from kids; I'm ready.
Grace Lin: Okay. Today's question is from a person named Evan. Evan asks, "Which of your books were the most enjoyable to write and why?"
Raina Telgemeier: Interesting question. I've written at this point five graphic novels, and three of those graphic novels are about my life as a kid and the things that I went through when I was in elementary school and middle school and the beginning of high school and none of them are really about fun or pleasant topics. Smile is about the time that I knocked out my two front teeth when I was in middle school, and Sisters is about being stuck in the back seat of a really long road trip with your sister who you don't get along with, and Guts is about anxiety and the fears that I dealt with when I was a kid and the anxiety that I grew up with. And so all three of those things are not necessarily memories that I look back on with fondness, but I would say that they're all experiences that I learned something from.
Raina Telgemeier: That's probably why I chose to write about those different stories from my life. I don't know if I would describe them as enjoyable experiences to write about, but at the same time I enjoy taking my character, young Raina, and kind of going back into her head and trying to figure out what kinds of things did she struggle with. Who did she think she was? Did she have friends? Did she feel isolated or alone or different? And then I get to write and draw her puzzling through those experiences but coming out the other side.
Raina Telgemeier: So it's almost like having a conversation with my childhood self and me, the writer now as a grownup kind of being able to put my arm around her and say, "It's going to be okay a little Raina. Someday you'll write books about this experience and people will laugh at those books and they'll laugh with you about the things that you went through. And someday you will see that you're not alone and you're not the only one who's been through these kinds of thoughts, feelings, experiences that make you feel so isolated right now."
Raina Telgemeier: So in that sense, all three of my memoirs have been wonderful to write and I have enjoyed the experiences of writing the very last page of those stories and being able to say, "Yes, that is over and now I have some perspective on it and I feel better."
Grace Lin: So writing those books kind of gave you closure, would you say?
Raina Telgemeier: That's one way to describe it. Yeah, closure and also the word catharsis comes to mind, which means that it's a powerful experience to work through something and feel like you understand it better and you've grown from it and you're probably a different person on the other side of it but maybe a better one.
Grace Lin: That's really interesting because I was thinking about this question too and I was thinking about the book that I'm most proudest of writing is actually the book that I least enjoyed writing. I think the book I wrote, When the Sea Turned to Silver, it took me six years to write and illustrate that and it was so painful and I kept rewriting and writing and rewriting and trying to make it all work. And I remember thinking I wasn't going to be able to do it and could I do it. It was such a painful process to write that book, but now I look at it and I'm so proud of it. Of all the books that I've written it's the one that I'm like, "This is my best."
Raina Telgemeier: And you can then tell the story of having written that book, and it feels like a challenge that you overcame and now you're on the other side of it and you can see all the positive things and all the negative things and I'm sure you learned so, so much in that process.
Grace Lin: Exactly. It was the most enjoyable to write after it was written.
Raina Telgemeier: Yeah, your perspective changes. I know that being in the middle of a project, it sometimes feels like you're tearing your hair out and you don't know how it's going to end or where you're going to go with it or it's just a lot of work. My graphic doubles. I'll take between two and five years to create between the writing and the illustrating. So I am sympathetic when you say that that book took you six years to write. It's not like you sat there writing or typing for every minute of those six years. There's a lot of thinking and wondering and questioning and just searching for the words sometimes.
Grace Lin: Yeah. But it's interesting because you're not really writing for the whole six years, but I feel like you're thinking about it for the whole six years.
Raina Telgemeier: For me I'm doing that but I'm also sorting through 20 plus years of memories to try and find the gems and try to figure out how to polish those gems into stories.
Grace Lin: So which part do you like ... which is more enjoyable for you than the writing or the illustrating?
Raina Telgemeier: I always thought of myself as an artist when I was a kid. I like to draw and I like to look at things and draw what I see and I like to draw things that make me laugh. I like drawing funny things. So usually the drawing comes after the writing has already happened. Writing is probably the hardest part, but it's also really satisfying. And by the time I get to the art, I'm just having fun. And so try and keep that sense of fun as long as they can even though sometimes it takes me about a year to do all the drawings for a book.
Grace Lin: I feel the same way. It's interesting because I feel like writing is really hard, but it's interesting because I find writing a lot more less enjoyable or really hard to do, but I'm prouder of it, I'm very proud of it when it's done. Whereas the illustrating it's not so much easier but it's more enjoyable. When I'm painting I feel like it kind of sense of Zen and relaxation and it feels really nice and comfortable, kind of almost like meditation. Right. I would think that for me the illustration is a little bit more enjoyable yet when it's all done, I think sometimes, many times the writing I'm prouder of because it was much more of a challenge.
Raina Telgemeier: Which one did you gravitate towards more when you were younger?
Grace Lin: Well I think I probably started more with writing, but then I really wanted to be an illustrator and I actually went to art school and studied children's book illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. So I always thought I would be an illustrator first, but it's so funny because now most people know me as an author.
Grace Lin: Did you want to be an illustrator first too?
Raina Telgemeier: I did, and I didn't think I was a writer because every time I sat down to write I would just write diary entries or I would write fictional stories that were just like my diary entries except the characters had different names than me and my friends and family. I thought, "Well this isn't real writing. This is just journaling. This is just keeping a diary. This is just describing things that have happened to me." And I thought that if you wanted to be a writer you had to have a big imagination and could think of things that didn't really exist in the real world.
Raina Telgemeier: I think I was in my late teens before I realized that what I was doing for myself at the end of every single day ... I was done with my schoolwork and when I was done with chores and everything else, I was writing. I was just writing comics. They had pictures also. So writing stories about my life that had pictures in them it's kind of keeping like a comic's diary. I started doing that when I was 11 years old and I never stopped. I didn't realize it, but I was practicing for what I would eventually do for my career, but when I was a kid that wasn't something that existed that was a job.
Grace Lin: Well you made it into one so that's awesome.
Raina Telgemeier: It's a process of discovery.
Grace Lin: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much Raina for answering that question and thank you ... who asked the question? It was Evan. And thank you Evan for asking it.
Raina Telgemeier: Yeah thanks Evan. Thank you Grace.
Grace Lin: Thanks. Bye.
Today’s Book Review comes from Alison Morris! She is telling us about The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo by Drew Weing
Do you think that monsters are real? And do you think that there are any humans who can talk to them? In the book, The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo by Drew Weing, we meet a kid named Charles who had just moved to a new city where he discovers that, yep, there are totally monsters and he, as a human, could use some help communicating with them. Luckily, there is a girl his age who can do this. Her name is Margo Maloo, and she is a mediator. She helps solve problems that monsters and humans are having between one another. She knows of a whole world of monsters in the city that Charles does not know. And in this delightful graphic novel, she introduces him to a bunch of those characters and helps him get out of trouble a couple times.
Alison Morris is a nationally recognized children's book buyer with an infectious enthusiasm for reading and 20 years' experience matching books to readers. As the Senior Director of Title Selection for nonprofit First Book, she oversees the curation of children’s and young adult books on the First Book Marketplace, hand-selecting a diverse range of titles that speak to and address the needs of kids in underserved communities, with a keen eye to inclusion, authenticity, and kid-appeal. She previously served as Senior Editor at Scholastic Book Clubs, Children's Book Buyer for Wellesley Booksmith and The Dartmouth Bookstore, and was the founding blogger of the ShelfTalker children’s book blog for Publishers Weekly. She'll be joining us from her home near Washington, DC where she spends LOTS of time discussing books with her husband, illustrator and graphic novelist Gareth Hinds.
More about today’s author:
Raina Telgemeier is the author and illustrator of the graphic novels Smile, Drama, Sisters, and Ghosts, all #1 New York Times bestsellers. She also adapted and illustrated four graphic novel versions of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-sitters Club series, and has contributed short stories to many anthologies. Raina’s accolades include three Eisner Awards, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, a Stonewall Honor, and many Best-of and Notables lists. Raina lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
Special thanks to the High Five Books & Art Always Bookstore, Ms. Carleton’s 2nd grade class at Jackson Street School for their help with our kid questions and reviews.
