Episode 25: Do you handwrite the words or type them on the computer?- with Corinne Demas & Artemis Roehrig

Welcome our 25th episode! Authors Grace Lin, Corinne Demas, and Artemis Roehrig answer the kid question: Do you handwrite the words or type them on a computer?

TRANSCRIPT:

Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel "When the Sea Turned to Silver" and the picture book "A Big Moon Cake for Little Star". Today I'm here with Corinne Demas and Artemis Roehrig, the coauthors of "Do Jellyfish Like Peanut Butter?: Amazing Sea Creature Facts" illustrated by Ellen Shi, as well as "The Grumpy Pirate" illustrated by Ashlyn Anstee. Hello, Corinne, hello Artemis.

Corinne: Hi.

Artemis: Hi.

Grace Lin: Okay, so are you guys ready for today's question?

Artemis: Yep.

Corinne: We are.

Grace Lin: Okay. Today's question is from a person named Sue Ling. She asks ...

Sue Ling: Do you hand write the words or type them on the computer?

Grace Lin: Do you hand write the words or type them on the computer?

Corinne: I always love to compose on the computer because then my words immediately look like print and it's not my handwriting, which I love. So it makes it much, much easier for me to edit. But I also carry around a little notebook with me and when I get ideas then I scribble them in my notebook. When I wake up in the morning, I have a pad right by my bed so if I have any great ideas or interesting dreams that might become books, I can jot them down.

Artemis: I do a lot of handwriting first because I like using lots of different colors of pens and I think that sometimes spurs the creative process a little to see it all in different colors. In fact, our book that we wrote together, "A Pirates Polite?", I wrote a lot of my part on post it notes so I could move it all around and it was really fun getting to see it in different places, but I do write some books on the computer too.

Grace Lin: So when you guys write it together, do you guys give each other your post it notes and your notebooks or do you write it together on the computer together?

Artemis: We do a combination of both. Sometimes we come together with stuff that we've each written and then compose it together on the computer. Sometimes we even say it out loud over the phone or something and one person will type up what the other person is saying, which works great for picture books. Then sometimes we use Google Docs, or something like that, so we can both be writing on the same document on the computer at the same time.

Corinne: In our book, "Are Pirates Polite", we actually printed it all out and then, in the old fashioned way, I took scissors and cut up the different sections, and we are rearranged it on the floor, and we used colored pens to mark the sections, and to really think about the book as a whole, and to think about the order of the things we wanted to say. We couldn't really do that on the computer. There's nothing like paper.

Grace Lin: Well that's interesting because I write using the computer too. I really like using the computer too. It's the idea of it looks just like print, like how it would look like in a book. Also, it's easy to kind of like cut and paste and save things, and move things around. So I do like using the computer, but just like you Corinne, I have notebooks and I write ideas, and I write all the things that I'm working on in that. So I still use paper too. I do find that when I do revisions it's easier to print everything out, read it over and make marks on the page then to try to like fix it on the computer.

Corinne: I actually do that too Grace Lin. I actually use different colored pens. Sometimes you want to maybe cut something, but you're not quite sure. If you delete it on the computer it's gone, but if you just put a purple line underneath it, you can read your whole text without the things that are underlined in purple and then you don't really lose what you had there.

Grace Lin: Exactly.

Artemis: I actually never edit on paper. I always do all my editing on the computer.

Grace Lin: Oh, how interesting.

Artemis: I write my rough draft by hand and then I do all my editing right on the computer.

Grace Lin: That's so interesting. Well, and when I do work with other people, I use Google Docs too. So like we'll have a Google Doc that is a, what do you call it, computer program? Not exactly a program, but it's a way that you could write and two people can share this writing document, and you can both work on it at the same time.

Artemis: It's like writing over the internet.

Corinne: Right. It can be very unnerving because Artemis and I will be in two different places. We can't see each other and we're both working on the same sentence, and she'll come up with a word and I'll come up with a word, and there it is. It's almost like magic, like there's a genie in the computer who's adding words or taking them out.

Grace Lin: Or sometimes it's just discomforting if you're writing and the person you're working with is writing at the same time and you see your sentences disappearing. Well, thank you so much Sue Ling for your great question. I hope you liked your answer.

Artemis: Thank you.

Corinne: Thank you.

Today’s BOOK REVIEW comes from Agatha! She’s going to be telling us all about the board book, Ten Nine Eight by Molly Bang

The book I’d like to talk about is, Ten, Nine, Eight, by Molly Bang. And the book is about a girl getting ready for bed. Her dad helped her. And I liked her pet kitten. And then that countdown that's so special.

Thank you Agatha!

More about Today’s Authors:

Corinne Demas is the award-winning author of numerous books for children and adults, including Are Pirates Polite?, illustrated by David Catrow, Pirates Go to School, illustrated by John Manders, and Always in Trouble, illustrated by Noah Z. Jones. Corinne is a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, and her website is corinnedemas.com. She divides her time between Western Massachusetts and Cape Cod.

Artemis Roehrig grew up in Western Massachusetts, and spent summers on Cape Cod (inspiration for Are Pirates Polite?), where she worked at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, the setting for Does A Fiddler Crab Fiddle? After graduating from Skidmore College, she received her master’s degree from the Organismic & Evolutionary Biology program at the University of Massachusetts. She continues to research invasive insects in the Elkinton Lab. Her work there inspired Do Doodlebugs Doodle? Amazing Insect facts. She is a current member of SCBWI, and is working on her first YA novel.

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.