Episode 5: What is your #1 advice for young readers? with Susan Tan

*Please note that these episodes were all all recorded pre-pandemic!

Welcome to episode 5! What is your #1 advice for young readers? Join us with author Susan Tan.

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 Susan Tan, the author of the Cilla Lee-Jenkins series. Hi Susan.

Susan Tan: Hi, thank you for having me.

Grace Lin: Oh, we're so glad to have you.

Susan Tan: I'm so excited to be here.

Grace Lin: Are you ready for today's question?

Susan Tan: Yes, I am.

Grace Lin: Okay. Today's question is from a girl named Martha and her question is, what is your number one advice for budding young authors?

Susan Tan: Ooh, I love that question. Thank you, Martha. I'm going to cheat and give two pieces of advice. So I have two kind of number one pieces of advice and my first piece of advice is to read and to read what you love. Because if you want to be a writer, it means right that you're writing the stories that you love. And so the best thing you can do is to fill your brain with exciting stories. And to read the kinds of books you're interested in and to say, "Wow, the thing that author did with that character was so cool. I want a plot twist to like that." Or, "Oh I love, right, how this author introduced dragons halfway through the book." Sort of by reading, you kind of fill your creative brain and that will always give you inspiration and material for writing. And the second piece of advice I would give is simply this, to write.

Susan Tan: And I think a lot of times that when you write, there can be a lot of pressure to feel like you have to make something perfect. So maybe I have an idea for a story, but I don't know where it'll go, it's just a really cool scene. And I think sometimes it can be easy to get into your head and say, "Well I won't write this down because I don't know what's going to happen." And my number one advice is just write it down. Write it down, enjoy it, see where it takes you. Because the reality is you learn something from every piece of writing you create. No matter what it is, no matter if you finish it, no matter if it's an entire story or just a character study.

Susan Tan: So I would say what I do is I keep a notebook and it's just the place for my ideas. And I tell myself spelling doesn't count and grammar doesn't count and whether or not I just write at the very end, something exciting happens, the end, right? That doesn't count, I can do that. And so that is the way that I sort of get my ideas out and that I practice. And it's from this notebook that my book ideas sort of always emerge and usually slowly. So maybe there's a cool scene I wrote a year ago and I think I want to go back to that and develop that into a story. So those are my big two pieces of advice for writing.

Grace Lin: Those are great pieces of advice, Susan. I love them. And I would even take your first piece of advice even further because you were saying read what you love. I would say even read things that you might not love because my books, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and When the Sea Turned to Silver, those are based on folk tales that I read when I was a kid. And I actually didn't really like those folktale books that much. I thought they were kind of boring but they still stayed with me and they became the foundation of my most popular books now. So I would say read everything. Even books that you don't like might actually affect you in the future. If you don't like them. It'll teach you what you don't want to write in the future.

Susan Tan: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Grace Lin: So I would say read as much as possible and give things that you think you're not going to like a shot and it might surprise you. And I love the idea of the notebook, too. The idea so that way you never lose any good writing.

Susan Tan: Yes, yes, exactly.

Grace Lin: I think that was great. I think we'd give one more piece of advice. And my last piece of advice would be always remember that your next writing is going to be even better. So I think a lot of times I'll be like, "Oh, this is my best work ever." And, but then I'll look back at the work I've done in the past and I'd be like, "Oh, this is terrible." And so always remember that you're always going to improve and you're never doing your best writing.

Grace Lin: Your best writing is going to be the one after and the one after that and after that. But you have to do that. You have to keep writing to get there. So keep writing is probably the best advice, too.

Susan Tan: I have to write that down. such good advice, they love that.

Grace Lin: So thanks so much, Martha.

Susan Tan: Yeah, thank you Martha.

Grace Lin: And thank you, Susan.

Susan Tan: And thank you for having me.

Grace Lin: Bye.

Today’s book review comes from Ames! He is going to talk to us about Beginner’s Welcome, by Cindy Baldwin. Thank you Ames!

Hi, I'm Ames, and I am reviewing Beginners Welcome by Cindy Baldwin. Your father has just died of an unknown cause. What will you do? Annie Lee Fitzgerald is grieving the death of her father. What she really wants is to have her father back and to go back to her house in the suburbs. She can't go back to her old house, because her mother cannot afford to live there anymore. But then the ghost of her father starts to turn the TV on and bake cookies. Could her life get any weirder?

The book is in the mystery/action category. It is set in the present day. The mood was sad and humorous. My favorite part of the book was how she made a friend at a school she was new to. It was written in a beautiful way that really captures the reader's heart.

About today’s author:

Susan Tan has lived many places in her life, but calls Concord, Massachusetts, home. She grew up in a mixed-race family, and, like Cilla Lee-Jenkins, had very little hair until the age of five. After studying at Williams College, she earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge, where she studied children's literature. She currently lives in Somerville, enjoys frequent trips to Chinatown to eat tzuck sang, and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Cilla Lee-Jenkins: The Epic Story is the third in the Cilla Lee-Jenkins series.

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. Also, special thanks Porter Square Books for helping to facilitate today's interview.