Kate
Messner is
the award-winning author of more than twenty current and forthcoming books for
young readers. Kate’s titles include picture books like Over and Under the Snow, the Marty McGuire chapter book series, and middle grade novels like Wake
Up Missing, Capture The Flag, and Hide And Seek. Kate’s books have
been honored with the E.B. White Read Aloud Medal, and SCBWI’s Golden Kite
Award for Picture Book Text; included on the New York Times Notable,
ALSC Notable, CBC Outstanding Trade Books for Science, and Bank Street
College’s Best Books for Children lists; and nominated for fourteen state book
awards. Kate spoke at the 2012 TED Conference and is a frequent presenter
at schools, libraries, and conferences for writers and educators. Find
her on Twitter @KateMessner and at www.katemessner.com.
You were a
middle school teacher, and, at least for a time, both writer and teacher. Can
you share with us how teaching has influenced your writing, and how you
balanced the two?
I spent
fifteen years teaching middle school English and put, quite literally,
thousands of books in kids’ hands during those years. Handing a student
that “just-right” book was one of my favorite parts of my job, and it led to me
think a lot about what makes kids love a novel. That’s one of the things
that got me writing more seriously while I was teaching. In those days, my
writing time was from about nine o’clock at night until midnight, and that’s
how my first half dozen books were written.
Visiting
schools to give presentations and do writing workshops with kids is still one
of my favorite parts of my job. People ask me sometimes how I get the kids in
my books to sound like real kids, and for me, it comes down to knowing how kids
talk and think and what it feels like to be twelve. I still have all of those
students’ voices in my head and their dreams and hopes and worries in my heart.
You have
written many books for kids, ranging from picture books to novels. Is your
process for each format the same, or does it change depending on the project?
It’s
different for every project, and while I wish I could tell you that I have a
“picture book process” or “novel-writing process” down pat, even that isn’t
true. While I do have a very general process (think and research – draft
fast – revise fearlessly again and again) I’ve found that every book is
different in what it demands of me. If they’re at all unique, books can’t
follow a cookie-cutter process, so I find myself inventing new planning and
revision tools for every new book, and they’re not always useful later on.
Case in point:
my science thriller WAKE UP MISSING has a main character with a concussion,
which makes her narration shaky and unreliable at times. She’s receiving
treatment through part of the book but not other parts, and when I was
revising, I was worried that her actions and thoughts weren’t consistent with
her post-concussion symptoms. The solution? I designed a
chapter-day-symptom-treatment-thinking-emotion chart so that I could track,
chapter by chapter, whether or not Cat’s symptoms were making sense with the
other elements of the story. It was incredibly useful and helped me solve a lot
of problems with that book, but is it going to come in handy again? Probably
not!
In 2012
your picture book OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for
picture book text. Can you share a little about that experience and the role
SCBWI has played in your writing life?
I still
remember getting that phone call from Lin Oliver. I was actually in California
at the time, getting ready for the TED Talk I gave in 2012. Hearing all the
other speakers at TED that week was a gift of an experience and I was quite
literally walking back to my hotel room after one of the speaker sessions,
thinking “Days don’t get much better than this,” when my cell phone rang
and...well...the day got even better. Learning that OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW won
the Golden Kite Award for picture book text was one of the most exciting things
that’s happened in my writing life because it comes from my fellow writers in
an organization that really forms the heart of our community. The New England
SCBWI Conference is where I attended my first writing workshops and learned
about agents and editors. It’s where I was inspired by speakers like Bruce
Coville and Laurie Halse Anderson and Cynthia Lord. It’s where I met my
first writer pals – who are now not just critique buddies but some of my best
friends in the world. So yes...that Golden Kite phone call made me a little
weepy in the best possible way.
At the
upcoming conference, you’ll be giving keynote, but you’ll also be presenting at
the sold-out Plot Intensive. Do you tend to start your projects with plot?
I’m
learning, answering your questions, that there aren’t a lot of “usuallys” in my
writing world because my ideas come to me in all different shapes. SUGAR AND
ICE, for example, started with character and setting – a figure skater and a
maple farm. CAPTURE THE FLAG started with genre and setting – I remember
thinking, “I want to write a mystery set in a snowed-in airport!” and taking it
from there. And Marty McGuire, of course, is all about character – Marty
herself. 
But plot is
such an essential piece of the puzzle for any book we want kids to keep
reading, so whether or not it’s the starting point, it’s something I always
spend lots of time on. Usually, my plot outlines start out incredibly rough – a
few scribbled lines in a notebook. From there, I do a rough outline in
Scrivener, the writing software I use, and then I start writing. Most
days, after I write a scene or two, I go back and revise my outline, so it’s
not a strict guideline but more of a fluid document that changes as I grow to
understand my characters more fully. Plot that doesn’t grow out of character
often feels forced to me, so it’s not often helpful for me to think about the two
as if they’re separate elements of writing. I absolutely love to talk about
planning and plotting, though, so I’m incredibly excited for the plot
intensive. Any time I participate in a group workshop like this, I always learn
so much preparing for my talk, and then on the day of the event, I inevitably
learn at least as much as I teach. It should be a terrific day!You can still register for the upcoming SCBWI Winter Conference HERE. It's right around the corner!
