Thursday, January 27, 2011

The supreme vulnerablity of writing a novel

About six months ago, I finished a middle grade novel, Dogtag Summer. The idea had been brewing in the back of my mind, morphing and growing, for a long, long time. It started by my overhearing a conversation between my husband and an electrician, Jim, after they'd been working together all day. My husband asked Jim what it had been like for him to serve in Vietnam. Lots of words and feelings tumbled out of Jim. Several parts stuck with me for years. Like how he always walked point, because he'd been raised in the country, did a lot of hunting, and he didn't ever trust anyone else to walk point.

The what-ifs started for me right away. What if he had let someone else walk point, just once? What if an Amerasian child from Vietnam was pulled out of the country in the last desperate days of 1975 before the Communists took over? And what if, just what if, she were adopted by a vet with his own powder-keg of unresolved feelings?

I did a ton of research and interviews. I went to Vietnam to smell the river and the heavy rains, to listen to the cadence of people speaking to one another in the marketplace. I wrote, and rewrote and rewrote. I turned it in, (wrote and rewrote with my amazing editor's suggestions) and then wondered: how've I done, writing fiction?


Here's what Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus have to say:

Dogtag Summer
Elizabeth Partridge, Bloomsbury, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-59990-183-1
This gripping yet tender coming-of-age story reveals multiple nuanced perspectives of the Vietnam War and its aftermath in the summer of 1980. A backfiring school bus triggers a series of flashbacks for sixth-grader Tracy. Partridge (Marching for Freedom) smoothly interlaces memories of Tracy's childhood as a "con lai" (half-blood) in wartime Vietnam, where her American heritage endangered her Vietnamese family, and her present-day life as the adopted daughter of a Vietnam veteran who is dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. When Tracy and her best friend, Stargazer--the child of hippie, war-protesting parents--discover a dogtag in her father's ammo box, the event sets off an unexpected chain of events in both families, leading to excruciating memories, painful misunderstandings, and compassionate insights. Partridge delicately portrays Tracy's struggle to reconcile her last, harrowing memory of her biological mother and her relationship with her loving, adoptive mother, who tries to understand the ghostly memories haunting her daughter and husband. Appendixes include interviews in which Partridge addresses historical questions, as well as a teacher's guide for using this book in a curriculum about Vietnam. Powerful historical fiction. Ages 8–12. (Mar.)

DOGTAG SUMMER
“A child of conflict struggles to understand her past and her present in this impressive historical novel. Partridge proves her keen understanding of young people and her ability to write engrossing fiction grounded in the history she usually illuminates in nonfiction. This is a dual narrative of Tracy’s story, alternating between her experiences as a con lai, or half-Vietnamese/half-American child, in that country in 1975 and her time as an adopted only child enmeshed in her now-ordinary life on the coast of California five years later. The trauma that she suffered in the past emerges from deeply buried memories at the beginning of summer when she and best friend Stargazer, a child of hippies, build a Viking ship of war. Tracy’s father, a Vietnam vet, has hidden an old ammo box with a set of dogtags inside, and their discovery sets into motion Tracy’s process of remembering her past and connecting it with the present. Only 11, Tracy is realistically inarticulate, yet the depth of her emotion and suffering comes through. Never reverting to stereotypes, Partridge uses Tracy and Stargazer's fast friendship to help capture the ambivalence of the culture toward the war, as well as the struggle of the vets to personally cope with their experiences. A strong yet gentle read.” – Kirkus



Monday, January 17, 2011

Vermont College winter residency

We're coming close to finishing up our ten days together at Vermont College. It's been an incredible experience. Great faculty, fantastic students, learning, learning, learning. A few things I've learned that weren't on the schedule:

Snow is very fun. Beautiful. Cold.
You must always zip up your jacket before going out the door.
Cold doesn't actually hurt until it is about ten degrees outside. Then its pretty critical to keep moving. Even with your jacket zipped up.

I don't think there is any part of craft that we left undiscussed while we were here. And part of the appeal of being on the faculty is that I've learned so much myself. My ever-supportive husband has been behind me all the way in taking on this job, but.... he did just send an email saying our dog is missing me. He's sure. The dog has called a truce with the cat, and they are sleeping curled up together on the bed. Kinda lonely.

We had a great lunch time drop-in visit by Elizabeth Bluemle, who runs the Flying Pig Bookstore, and writes the Shelftalker blog (along with Josie Leavitt). Elizabeth has a lovely post today on "The Dream, Then and Now." Meanwhile, out in the real world at Monica Edinger's blog, Educating Alice, she posted a really cool way she and her students used Marching for Freedom in an assembly. I wish I had seen this performance!

Friday, January 7, 2011

Agent love

Wonder what authors' different relationships are like with their agents? Roger Sutton at Horn Book magazine asked five of us to answer this question: "Why I love my agent." The articles came out in the latest issue, but they aren't online at the Horn Book.

Because I want to shout from the rooftops about how much and why I adore my agent, I tried to take a picture of the article with my cell phone camera, but the letters and edges came out pretty wobbly. I'll paste the article in below the image, or you can read it here.



Publication: The Horn Book Magazine
Author: Partridge, Elizabeth
Date published: January 1, 2011

Many years ago, as an aspiring writer, I overheard a successful author give her definition of a good agent. "You don't want a friend," she said. "You want someone who's like a shark, swimming next to you. But you have to be careful not to get bitten yourself."

That made sense, in a writer's overblown-hyperbole kind of way. The author/ agent relationship was a business one. You needed someone tough and scary, with lots of teeth, who kept moving on your behalf. And you didn't want to be a bothersome client, or you might get a quick nip.

When I began working with my agent, Ken Wright, I treated him like a shark with a mouthful of teeth. I was respectful, and very guarded. It took him a long time to wear down my defenses and prove that he would never bite me, or even bite anyone else on my behalf.

Turns out he doesn't subscribe to the bunny-eat-bunny model of children's publishing. He operates on the old-fashioned handshake, negotiating deals, linking people and projects. He loves to brainstorm about ideas until they suddenly come into focus as a potential manuscript. It's clear he enjoys the whole business - and he's good at it.

Ken makes me laugh and makes me think. If I'm bogged down or overwhelmed, he smells it in the wind and shoots off an e-mail. "Talk soon?" he writes. He's my touchstone and my taskmaster.

While I'm alone in my writing room with my research and my interviews and a big, rambling idea I'm trying to squeeze between the covers of a book, he's got my back.

Author affiliation:

Elizabeth Partridge's newest book is Dogtag Summer (Bloomsbury).

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

New Year, new adventure


Yesterday our older son, Will, headed home to freezing Minnesota, and our younger son, Felix, went back to work (currently making cow proof fences so salamanders won't get squashed.) All the holiday decorations are put away. One last birthday cake to make -- my husband's birthday is tomorrow -- and then life returns to ... well, not normal exactly. To my new adventure.

In a few days I leave for freezing Vermont. (Notice a theme here with the cold?) I've taken a job teaching at Vermont College in the MFA Writing for Children and Young Adults Program. I am incredibly excited. I've never taught in an organized program before, though I've done all the pieces (lectures, critiquing, encouraging, mentoring.) Being used to mild California weather, I sent ahead a box of warmness -- a down quilt, flannel sheets, snow boots and a teapot.

My year started off with a treat. Last summer we had an amazing Boston Globe-Horn Book award evening, with all the winners giving speeches. The Horn Book people have graciously put links to all of them on their site. Here's my Boston Globe-Horn Book speech for Marching for Freedom. It's partly about writing the book, and partly about why I write and what inspires me.

And with a time-consuming new adventure coinciding with a new year, I've come up with a New Year's resolution: prioritize. This is always a weakness with me in the best of times. So with more demands on my time, I'm going to see if I can be more mindful. I've written prioritize on a slip of paper and stuck it to the bottom of my computer screen.

What will you be doing more mindfully this year?