Finding a Balance

There's no doubt that huge leaps and bounds in technology have occurred since the publication of my first co-authored book in 1996. I now have a website, a Facebook page, am part of this One Potato...Ten Blog of children's writers and illustrators, participated in the Class of 2K9 debut authors, and the list goes on... Like many authors, I've put "google alerts" on my name and titles in order to stay up-to-date on reviews or mentions of my books and can even find out what libraries carry them and whether or not they're checked out, even as far away as Singapore and New Zealand. Without these advances, I never would have been involved in this marvelous, caring group of One Potato...Ten bloggers (some of whom I still have yet to meet in person). And even though I chose to "snail mail" invitations to my book launch party last September (instead of using Facebook or email), I did use the internet to design my invitations and even my stamps, using the digital version of my book cover--again something I couldn't have done 14 years ago for my first book.

As a writer, I embrace these technological advances, but I also feel a constant pressure to do more. One thing leads to another, and it becomes never ending. These technological advances become the very things that pull me away from my writing and my family. Finding a balance is the trick--one that is often hard to learn. This week hasn't been difficult finding the balance, however. With the birth of my newest granddaughter, Piper Drew Hemingway, and the care of her big sister, Aria, I know exactly what I need to be doing.

A Chance To Learn

In 1995 I applied for a job at the Youth Computer Center of the Science Museum of Minnesota. I told the director Natalie Rusk that I didn't know much about computers, but I was interested in learning and that I liked teaching kids. Natalie hired me, and she became the best boss and the most influential educator I've ever worked with.

Natalie has a deep appreciation of the way different children learn and of the shortcomings of many of the traditional ways children are taught. She assembled an excellent staff, and our main goal was to use the computer to have students spend time away from the computer making, building, and creating things.

Here is Natalie's website: www.natalierusk.com

I met Mike Petrich and Karen Wilkinson, who became huge influences on how I teach and how I approach technology. I remember Mike saying, "Something going wrong provides an excellent opportunity to learn how a computer works." And I remember helping Karen teach "How to Make your Own Candy Bar" where we researched candy bars, looked at cross sections of different ones, and created and named our own concoctions.

Mike and Karen now work at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and this website (PIE Play, Invent, Explore) gives an example of the excellent work they do:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/pie/ideas.html

One of the most important things I learned from Natalie, Mike, and Karen was to be open to technology. Natalie pointed out that technology is anything invented after we are born, and I realized the choice involved in how to approach it.

I'm still not an early adapter of devices or programs, but I do love the ones I use. I'm still curious about new things and went to see the iPad the day it came out and do believe it will change the way we read books. And I still keep Mike's advice in mind that something going wrong provides an opportunity to learn how a device works.

I am grateful to these three teachers and interested to see what new is coming and how it will change the way we work, play, and create.

Apple Lust

When the iPad came out this Saturday (iPadurday), I had to keep myself away from the local Mac store. Instead I sat at my desk and went through all of the tutorials and fell in love with this new bit of technology-- I am a visual artist and to have a surface to touch and maneuver everything with my fingers rather than a keyboard and mouse sounds like heaven! I have been waiting for the iPad since I first learned the computer-- "Why can't I just touch the screen and move it?" was my first question when sitting at my boss's new computer at the New York Public Library in 1986. Now I can touch the screen and push and shove and scatter things around like my desk top, at least I could if I bought an iPad. But I will abstain for now. I will wait for the kinks to get ironed out. I will wait for the speed to get faster and the price to come down. I will wait and continue to use a mouse and keyboard to put together keynote presentations and organize my images and words. And every time I visit a mac store, I will drool.

Most people who meet me think I am "earthy". Perhaps this is from living my formative years as a hippie in California and attending the University of California, Santa Cruz as an undergrad. Perhaps it is my fingernails always blackened with soil from spring until fall from the gardens I tend. I like to think it is my big hearty laugh that makes me earthy-- but whatever it is, everyone is always surprised to find that I have an iPhone and a small laptop that I carry with me most places I go. During book groups and writing groups if there is a question about an author or a book, I whip out my iPhone and look up the book on Amazon or Wikiamo (iPhone app for Wikipedia). If there is a question about the weather, I can look up ten days worth of predictions anywhere in the world. (Whenever I get homesick for India, I look up the weather in Mumbai-- not that it changes much from when I was there in October!) I no longer need to ask for directions or search for the dictionary in the house-- it is all there on my iPhone. I have even begun to paint with my iPhone. Last fall I read an article about David Hockney that inspired me to download my first "paid" app: Brushes. Now I paint while waiting in lines or while resting in the afternoon after studio and before dinner-making.

All of this technology is wonderful, even addictive, but when I begin a new book, it is with pencil and paper that I write out the first draft or sketch the first dummy book. And it is the paintbrush with whom I have had the longest lasting relationship-- and it is with this intimacy of hand-held paintbrush that my final illustrations for books are created. Perhaps that is my earthiness-- I always come back to the traditional methods of art making used by our ancestors for thousands of years- brush to paper/brush to cave wall-- it is all about that intimate touch from heart/mind and hand.

How things have changed...

When my first picture book came out in 1998, we had just gotten email at our house in rural Minnesota. I remember getting emails with the first reviews of Elizabeti's Doll. They were cut and pasted into the body of the email, and I printed them out, stuffed them in envelopes, and headed to the post office to mail them off, because almost none of my friends or relatives had email yet.

Things have changed since 1998.

Today I just got news of a fun review for my latest picture book, A Small Brown Dog with a Wet Pink Nose. Lisa at Little Brown sent me the link for the San Francisco and Sacramento Book Reviews.

http://sanfranciscobookreview.com/childrens/a-small-brown-dog-with-a-wet-pink-nose/

I then posted that link at my blog http://latteya.livejournal.com and over at Facebook. Within two minutes, I had sent the review to potentially thousands of people. Wow. How times have changed. And just for fun, a survey of fellow writers: When was the last time you bought a stamp to mail something publishing-related?

Lichens and the Computer

When it comes to embracing new technology, I can be a bit of a curmudgeon. I don't own a cell phone. I've never sent a text message. And I have yet to Twitter, Tweet, or Chirp, at least not with an electronic gadget in my hand. But even a techno-grump like me has to admit that technology can be a marvelous tool for the writer, even one who prefers to write the first five or six (or nine or ten) drafts of his stories longhand before typing them onto the computer.

I just finished up the final revisions for a new picture book, Minnesota's Hidden Alphabet. Unlike most of my books, this project required a significant amount of research. What a gift it was to have the information portals of the Internet as close as my computer screen. How much does a potato chip weigh? A minute or two of web surfing and I had my answer (two grams). What exactly is a lichen? Whoosh! I was transported to the Royal Alberta Museum in Canada where I found a succinct description (a symbiosis of both fungi and algae).

And it wasn't just impersonal websites that provided me with the data I needed. The Internet connected me with a lepidopterist (butterfly expert) in Iowa who helped me identify a moth, as well as a geologist in northern Minnesota who checked my facts regarding boulder migration. To have tracked down these experts by phone or on foot would have taken me days, if not weeks or months. But with the lightning speed quickness of the Internet, I was able to exchange emails with these specialists and have my answers in a relative blink.

Sure, I still checked out a small mountain of books from my local library. Nothing could match the inspiration I found flipping through the colorful photos of a wildflower identification book that I could hold in my hands. But without the Internet, I might still be trying to track down the coldest recorded temperature in the state (60 degrees below zero at Tower, MN in 1996).

I suppose that young people today take the Internet for granted, just the way I took for granted the dusty World Book Encyclopedia we had when I was growing up (and which I still have, by the way). But I'm old enough to be extremely grateful for the hundreds of hours that this technology saved me. And with all that extra time I've got...I think I'll turn off my computer and go outside to enjoy a gorgeous Minnesota spring afternoon.

End of publishing?

Remember the records? Some people still have them and play them in their hi-fi. Remember the tapes? I still have many of mine and I play them in my 1997 car tape player. Now we have CDs. And the records are coming back!

The first program I saw on TV was in black and white. We put a plastic sheet on the screen that had green at the bottom to show the green grass, pink in the middle to show faces, and blue at the top to show the sky. After that, technology has advanced faster than I have grown older. How, I wonder, did we live without computers and cell phones? They are so convenient!

We won't be able to stop this trend, and we should embrace it. How great it is that books have been on tape and CDs! Why not online? That is, as long as it is legal. (I, along everyone else, am a victim of Goggle.) I don't like reading a story online. If online, I prefer to print it, then read it. But young people have been raised with computers. Some of my students compose better stories in the computer than by hand (as you know my first drafts are always done by hand.) Some readers may prefer stories online. As long as we have readers, let's give them all formats.

I doubt books will disappear. Besides, I have so much faith in the youth. Here is a poem that says it better than I can. Please watch it until it ends. It will surprise you and it will warm your heart.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg

We'll miss you, Sid

Last week I learned the sad news that children's author, screenwriter, and magician, Sid Fleischman passed away at his home in California. He was 90 years old.

My first encounter with Sid's work was in the late 1960's when I stumbled across MR. MYSTERIOUS AND COMPANY when I was in elementary school. It's the tale of family traveling by covered wagon to California in 1884, performing magic shows at the small towns they visit along the way. It was funny, filled with adventure, and gave glimpses into the workings of magicians. I loved it! Scenes from that book have remained vivid in my memory for forty years.

In 1987, Sid Fleischman won the Newbery medal for THE WHIPPING BOY. By now I was an elementary school teacher myself, and found this book to be a fast-paced, fun read-aloud to share with my class.

Jump ahead almost twenty more years. Now it's 2005. I'm sitting at the front table at the Los Angeles SCBWI conference. I'm about to receive the SCBWI Humor Award for my first novel. And the namesake of the award, as well as the presenter, is none other than Sid Fleischman himself. Receiving this award from Sid's hands was one of the highlights of my career.

Sid was a prolific writer with a list of more than 50 books, including a biography of Charlie Chaplin which will be published this summer. But he was more than a great writer. He was warm and friendly and gracious, and encouraging to newly and not-yet-published writers. He was an entertaining speaker who had excellent writing advice. He was a true gentleman, and I feel very fortunate for my encounters with him, both in person, and through his books.

If you haven't read one of his books recently, treat yourself and check one out. Thanks for the rollicking tales you have left us, Sid, and thanks for inspiring so many writers.