by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Ideas are all around us.
The problem is, sometimes we’re so focused on other things, our eyes fixed on just about everything else, that we miss them.
When I visit schools or I do author panels or interviews, I’m frequently asked where I get my ideas. My answer is usually, “Everywhere.”
Sometimes I’m reading an article in the paper or the latest National Geographic, and an idea knocks on my brain. Sometimes I’m out for a walk, clearing my mind, and suddenly ideas flood me. Sometimes one of my kids makes an observations or says something funny or offers up the magic words, “What if…”
So many ideas come from the words “what if.”
I keep an idea journal ever at the ready, because I can never predict when the next idea will announce itself. Sometimes it’s a book idea, sometimes it’s a marketing strategy, sometimes it’s a way to get my 16-year-old out of bed in the morning. All the ideas go into this journal (which means it’s a bit of mess), no matter how outrageous or seemingly impossible.
It seems silly to say, but I think ideas like being captured and collected. They multiply when they know they have an open mind to land in.
If you have trouble coming up with writing ideas, whether it’s for books or essays or poems or whatever you may be writing, here are some suggestions that might help generate some.
1. Read!
I know this one’s pretty obvious. Most writers know that the more they read, the better writer they’ll be. But I will add something to the advice:
Read widely.
It doesn’t matter if you write kids books or romance or mysteries or nonfiction—read them all. Most of the advice we get as writers is “read in your genre.” But as an eclectic reader who picks up middle grade literary books, young adult fantasies, adult historical fiction, poetry books, biographies about Sylvia Plath and Mark Twain, memoirs, National Geographic, Psychology Today, the local newspaper (really, I read all over the place), I’ve found that the richest ideas come from the most unlikely and unexpected places. Our brains are amazing at stitching together new ideas if we give them all the threads.
2. Take a walk.
This comes with a catch: Don’t take any distractions with you.
Some of my most exciting ideas have come to me when I’ve been out on a walk or run in my neighborhood. For my walks I leave my phone at home. For the runs where I want to generate ideas or think something through, I listen to music. There’s something magical about moving the body while out in nature that stimulates the brain and gets ideas flowing.
If you’re afraid of losing the ideas that may come to you on those walks or runs, take a notepad with you.
3. Cultivate your relationships.
It seems a strange way to generate ideas, but we all have people in our lives with whom we come in contact on a regular basis. And sometimes all it takes is tuning in and listening to the people around us to come up with ideas. I was washing dishes one night during my family’s after-dinner chore time when I turned around to throw away a tea bag and nearly collided with my second son, who was supposed to be sweeping the floor. He was, instead, dancing with a broom and throwing out new I wonders for our “I Wonder Wall.” One of them was, “I wonder what it would be like to live in a home without a roof.”
I now have a middle grade book called The Home Without a Roof, based on my research about and my work with the homeless here in my city.
Of course these aren’t the only ways to generate ideas; there are many more (listening in on conversations, anyone?). But what they all have in common is the importance of keeping your eyes and ears wide open. You never know what brilliant ideas await you just around the corner. Make sure you’re paying attention.
I hope you have a wondrous month full of new and exciting ideas.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Here are five things worth sharing this month:
1. Reading: I recently finished the middle grade historical novel, Brother’s Keeper, by Julie Lee. It’s about two North Korean kids who flee their part of the country for Busan in South Korea to escape the war between the north and south. They have to walk hundreds of miles in the winter. The book is heart-breaking and beautiful and haunting. Don’t miss it!
2. Reading: I absolutely LOVED Natalie Lloyd’s latest book, Hummingbird, about a girl with brittle bone disease who convinces her parents she wants to go to public school so she can find her forever best friend. You will fall in love with the main character, Olive, who is full of positivity and joy kabooms and love for her fellow students. It was sweet and heartbreaking and funny and so lovely; my kids are getting tired of hearing me talk about it. This is the first book of Lloyd’s I’ve read, but now I also have her books, The Key to Extraordinary, A Snicker of Magic, and the Problim Children series on my to-be-read list!
3. Watching: Lately I’ve been watching through My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, with David Letterman. I find the guests (so far I’ve watched Barack Obama, George Clooney, Malala Yousafzai, Jay-Z, Tina Fey, and Howard Stern) to be SO inspirational. There’s always some nugget of truth I can take and apply to my own life. And David Letterman is the perfect host. Check it out if you want to be inspired!
4. Reading: If you’re looking for a delightful young adult read, look no further than Carolyn Mackler’s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. It’s funny, it’s fun, it deals with deep topics, and it’s pitched perfectly for young adult readers. It was published several years ago, but Mackler republished it in 2018, along with the release of the sequel, The Universe is Expanding, and So Am I, which I’m reading right now (and it’s just as good as the first one). Mackler has written a collection of other books, all of which are now on my TBR list, because I love her work so much.
5. Reading: While on vacation with my family, I sped through Ethan Kross’s The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. What an eye-opening book. We all live our lives with a voice in our heads (sometimes multiple voices, and for some of us those voices are VERY loud and not all that nice). Kross provides scientific and situational evidence about this voice and how we can use it to our advantage. I found it enlightening and encouraging.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Be your magnificent self.
That’s the tagline I chose for my newest middle grade book, The First Magnificent Summer, which releases this month.
Be your magnificent self.
It’s a great message, isn’t it? Especially for kids. I hope every kid in the universe knows they’re magnificent. Just because they’re themselves.
But I know not every kid does.
I’m one of them.
That’s not a typo. I didn’t mean to say I was one of them. I still am one of them. I know I’m not a kid. But the kid who failed to believe she was magnificent, who filtered most of her life through the lens of “I’m not good enough, I will never be good enough,” still lives in me. She’s a big part of me. I’ve only just begun the work of assuring her she was always magnificent. Assurance and deep-down belief are miles away from each other, and it is hard work crossing the chasm.
In a recent therapy session, I told my therapist that I’m tired of feeling like no matter what I do or achieve in my life, it’s still not enough. I told her it made me uncomfortable to have a reporter come into my home and ask me questions and write a story because it left me so exposed and known. And I told her when I’m exposed and known my anxiety and depression and OCD explode into action.
“Why do you think that is?” She said.
“Because I know if people get too close to me, they’ll see my darkest parts,” I said.
“And what happens then?” she said.
“They’ll leave me.”
And there it was: the crux of the problem.
When I was eleven years old, my parents divorced. My dad left entirely. From what I remember, we had only spotty contact for the first two years, a couple of summers when he took us to Ohio, and then he dropped off the face of the planet. He didn’t come to my high school graduation, where I delivered my valedictorian speech; or my college graduation, where I walked with honor cords around my neck; or my wedding or the births of my children.
Nearly my whole life was spent under the shadow of his leaving, looking through the lens of “I must have done something to drive him away. To keep him away.”
Who knows you better than your parents, when you’re a kid?
Be your magnificent self? My “magnificent self” had driven away one of the most important people in my life. My “magnificent self” was too much—too emotional, too anxious, too extra, too everything, too whiny, too sarcastic, too loud, too silent, too in love with writing. I needed to be someone different.
I wrote about this in The First Magnificent Summer. I wrote about the small hurts and the big ones. I wrote about the breaking in two. I wrote about disappointments and dreams and everything between the two.
I wrote a better ending.
And thought I was done.
“Be your magnificent self,” I wrote in the author’s note. “You deserve to be loved just because you’re you.”
And still I couldn’t fully believe it, as evidenced by the discomfort and terror of attention.
“You wrote all your hopes into the book,” my therapist said. “And now you need to absorb them as your truth, like you hope the kids who read it do.”
They’re wise words.
So the first thing I say to the 12-year-old girl in me every morning is “You are magnificent.”
Because she has to believe that first.
Recently I came across something the Indian scholar and activist Manabi Bandyopadhyay said: “Be yourself, the world will adjust.”
But the truth is, the world doesn’t always adjust. Dads don’t always come back home or say they’re sorry. Friends don’t always admit they were vicious and jealous and it had nothing to do with you (and also everything to do with you). The people in our lives don’t always accept our neurodiversities or quirks.
But if the whole world doesn’t adjust, that doesn’t mean we have to. It just means we may have to adjust our expectations—and maybe stop looking for our worth and acceptance in other people.
I believe 12-year-old Rachel was magnificent. I wish she had believed it all those years ago.
But I think we’re getting somewhere now.
I know this was a hugely personal email. But I hope you’ve found some value in it and that it helps you remember that we are all deserving of love (it deserves repeating) just because we’re us.
Have a magnificent month of being your magnificent self.
Strategies to help you believe in your magnificent self:
1. Draw a scale
Whenever I talk about how I feel like a bad mom, my therapist encourages me to create a scale from “best mom” to “worst mom ever.” On the top is the mom who never yells or gets frustrated or wishes she could have a break from her kids (I’m not her). On the bottom is the most neglectful, spiteful, unkind mother I can imagine (which I’m also not). I fall somewhere in the middle, which instead of labeling “enough” I’ve named “magnificent.” Do the same for whatever you’re struggling with—parent, friend, employee, human being. My guess is you’ll fall somewhere in the middle, too, which is magnificent.
2. The word cloud
Grab a piece of paper. Write your name in the middle and circle it. Now create a word cloud for all the things that make you you. (Mine would have things like, loves to write, finds life in reading, hates clutter, needs space, doesn’t like loud noises, enjoys sarcasm, dislikes talking about Minecraft endlessly, prefers staying home, etc.) At the bottom of the page, write the sentence, “I am magnificent, because…” and finish the sentence. Hang the paper where you can see it or put it in a safe place where you can refer to it easily.
3. Seek therapy
Sometimes it takes a licensed therapist to peel away layers of misbeliefs we’ve had since we were kids. I know we’re pressed for time and money (and honestly I think mental health care should be free for all), but this is important work. And we never regret the important work of healing.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
One of the most frequent questions I get from young writers and even seasoned writers is: How many drafts do you need to write a story?
I have a super helpful answer:
It depends.
Let me explain. Some of my books only took four or so drafts. (Even saying “only four” will probably freak some people out—you have to really love and care about a book to read it four times!) Some have taken seven or eight. A couple have taken more than ten.
Really, it depends on the story.
My book that publishes May 30 (The First Magnificent Summer) took so many drafts I never thought I’d be finished with it. The first draft I wrote in prose. The second draft I turned into poetry. Third draft back to prose, fourth draft poetry, with a little humor, fifth draft back to prose with some more humor, sixth draft diary entries with more humor. This format stuck for the next three drafts.
Yes, three. It turns out humor is really difficult to get right, if you’re as picky as I am about humor.
For the seventh draft, I layered in more humor. In the eighth draft I added some poetic asides; in the ninth draft I rearranged some things, cut the first five thousand words, and meticulously examined the humor to avoid cliches and old tired metaphors. In the tenth draft I tightened up pacing, shortened most of the journal entries (adding more in one day if they felt too long) and added more humorous asides.
Finally, on the eleventh draft, I focused on language, word choice, and typos. And this is before the manuscript even sold to an editor!
Writing is a lot.
Compare all of that, however, to the book’s sequel (The Second Magnificent Summer, which will publish in summer 2024). I brainstormed, wrote a first draft, a second draft to tighten pacing and layer in more humor, and then it was off to my editor.
Part of this is that some stories are easier to tell than others (sequels and subsequent books can be easier because you’ve already spent so much time with the characters and know them so well). Another part of it is the more we write, the better we get at it (although this doesn’t always translate to fewer drafts, especially when getting better at what we do also means getting better at recognizing the flaws in our manuscripts).
So how do we know how many drafts a story needs, if it depends?
The answer to that is we have to get really honest with ourselves about the state of our manuscript.
As writers, we generally know when something is finished and when it’s not quite there. Sometimes it’s a little tricky to determine, but there’s usually a sense of unease in our gut if there’s still work to be done on a book or composition.
But here are some more practical ways to know if your writing composition needs more drafts.
1. It’s a first draft.
I know this seems like an obvious statement, but many of the young writers I meet wonder if a first draft, in some cases, can be the draft. And I don’t like speaking in absolutes, but I have strong feelings about this. I don’t personally think anybody can write their best book (or their best anything, really) in one draft—even those seasoned writers who claim they write their books in one draft. Nothing comes out perfectly the first time. Our first drafts are places to explore our stories and characters. Our second, third, fourth (okay, it can just be a second if you’re going to fight me on this) drafts are the places where we analyze, tighten, and perfect everything.
2. There are still places where you’re shaky on details.
These details could be plot points or character personalities or even the beginnings and endings of chapters. Reaching the end of a book you’ve written should leave you with a solid grasp of your plot, your characters, your structure, your word choice, your title, your settings, etc. If there’s any question in your mind (Does her sarcasm come through? Did I end chapter three in a place where people would want to read more? Does his motivation make sense in light of his actions? Have I said what needs saying in an understandable way?) it could be worthwhile to give it another draft.
3. You have an unshakeable feeling that something’s not quite right.
This is, honestly, one of my least favorite ways to figure out a story needs another draft—because many times it’s something you, as a writer, just can’t put your finger on. You just know there’s something. That the book needs more drafts. This is where it’s helpful to engage other readers—writer friends, or if you’re fortunate enough to have one, an agent who doesn’t mind reading a draft. Sometimes the perspective of another trusted person can lead you to the exact solution the next draft needs to get your story (or whatever you’re writing) in publishable shape.
I hope some of these suggestions are helpful to you. I’d love to know some ways you know when a draft is finished.
I’ll leave you with two very important questions I ask myself anytime I write something—whether it’s a piece of marketing content, a newsletter, a short story, a poem, or a 65,000-word novel:
What do I want to say?
Have I said it?
Have a fantastic month of writing and revising!
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Here are six things worth sharing this week:
1. Reading: Have you read Rob Harrell’s book, Wink? It’s SO GOOD! Harrell is the author of the Life of Zarf series, which I have not read. But I picked up his book, Wink, because someone mentioned it to me as a great humorous read. It was so much more than that! It’s a novel based on Harrell’s experience with a rare eye cancer, and it will have you laughing and crying at all the right places. Highly recommended!
2. Reading: I recently finished We Deserve Monuments, by Jas Hammonds, a young adult novel about racial violence and the generational results of it. I loved this book so much. And so did many people, apparently, since the book was a 2023 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent Winner as well as a Kirkus Best Books, a School and Library Journal Best Book, A B&N Best Book, and a Parents Magazine Best Book of 2022. If you haven’t read it, put it on your list!
3. Watching: Husband and I are watching the third season of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, a series about an American coach who moves to England to coach soccer (or what they call football). I’ve loved every season of this show. Ted Lasso is wise and witty and optimistic. It’s so funny and heartfelt and cheesy in some places and really funny that you’ll find yourself looking forward to your Friday night dates with the smart TV. I mean…hypothetically speaking. WATCH IT!
4. Reading: I adore some good nonfiction, and I just finished a book that definitely qualifies: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss: a Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. It sounds like a heavy read, but Kimmerer is a fantastic writer. She writes her nonfiction so it reads like memoir or fiction, even. I first discovered Kimmerer when I read her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants (which I also highly recommend), and I was hooked. Gathering Moss is a science book that will have you riveted, ready to learn more, and looking for the mosses in your environment, hoping they’ll tell you a story, too.
5. Reading: On some early-morning (very dark) runs, I read the audiobook of Lora Senf’s The Clackity, a middle grade horror novel. (I don’t know why I do this to myself; I was jumping at every little sound during the reading.) It’s so good. Frightening but full of heart. This is Senf’s first book, but she has another coming October 17: The Nighthouse Keeper. It’s definitely on my list (although I don’t think I’ll be reading it during dark runs!)!
6. Reading: I’ve loved Traci Chee since I read her young adult book, We Are Not Free, which published in 2020 and was a Printz Honor book. Well, I recently finished her latest YA book, A Thousand Steps Into the Night, which is completely different from the historical We Are Not Free but is no less engaging, entertaining, and enchanting. This one’s a fantasy that reads like a fairy tale. I read it while running around Hourglass Lake at Disney World with my kids—which could have increased the magic of the words. But no. Chee is a master. Highly recommend this book—which was long-listed for the National Book Award!
