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Welcome to the first of a new feature, PENPals, an e-mail conversation between writers and illustrators of Children’s and Young Adult books. The opening act is an extraordinary conversation between Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief among other novels, and Susan Campbell Bartoletti, author of the non-fiction Hitler Youth and a sort of fictional sequel, The Boy Who Dared. Markus, an Australian, and Susan, an American, have much more than World War II and the Holocaust in common. Their conversation through more than a dozen messages in over a month ranged from children and dogs to research techniques to the crippling doubts that writers battle. Read Markus on “the magic act” of creating fiction that you come to believe is true and Susan on the writer’s job of finding and describing that place where “darkness and light…smack up against each other.” I found the amazing document that follows funny, wrenching and ultimately comforting and inspiring.
>> Read Part I of the conversation
>> Read Part II of the conversation
PART III
February 25
Dear Markus,
Egads. A battle between fiction and nonfiction? Oh, those Fictions. You're absolutely right. It's a collaboration.
I do enjoy the speaking, although I'm heading into a heavy travel month—four states, four weeks—and that makes me anxious about my work. It's getting harder and harder to stay on track with my writing when I'm traveling. Too hard to pack up all that research, although I will sacrifice clothing for books. But now I'm thinking about using all that airport and hotel time to explore a side project, one that's not under contract, one that I've been turning over in my head for awhile.
I can tell you where I'm presently at with this project, and a bit about the research. The Klan and the Third Reich share many similarities, especially when we consider the issues that led and continue to lead to genocide— issues such as racism, bullying, stereotyping, intellectual superiority and arrogance, suppression of opinion and individual thought, entitlement and privilege, to name a few. All these we see in the history of the Klan. These are issues that we must continue to fight and confront.
Right now I'm nearly done with a draft of the book. I'm focusing on the Reconstruction era Klan—the first wave, so to speak. I've read 20,000 pages of Congressional testimony, 2000 slave narratives, and countless other texts. I have found the darkest of the dark—and the light that you spoke of in an earlier email.
It's the light that sustains me. I'm not foolish enough to think every cloud has a silver lining—or that something good will come out of something bad. Sometimes bad is just bad, you know?
I also attended a Klan rally deep in the Ozark Mountains. One of the most frightening quotes from that rally: "We don't need Klan robes to do our work." All they need is "a mentality of positive Christian racial activism."
And yes, they lit a tall, turpentine soaked cross on the last night of the rally.
Here's a feeling I can't get rid of: ever have one of those involuntary total body shudders? That's what I had, driving back to my hotel the second night of the rally. When I showered, I felt as though I couldn't get the water hot enough to get clean enough.
So what sustains me...
Family, of course. And friends.
Music. Don't laugh, but I can't get enough of John Legend these days.
Movies. Mostly comedies.
And there's something else I did for the past eighteen months, all while writing the first draft of this book: Improv Comedy. Oh. My. God. I never thought I would ever do anything like this. Before Improv, I had zero stage experience, unless you count my lead in the fifth grade school play.
When I auditioned for class, I made the master class—and was blown away by that. I had planned to simply audit, but my Comedy DoJo Chris Barnes wouldn't let me. Little by little, I gained confidence on stage. And then I performed. Improv was life changing.
My friend Molly Peacock (a wonderful poet) calls this "side growth." She likens it to a geranium: if you prune the top, you encourage side growth.
How about you, Markus? What sustains you? Feeds you? Do you do anything for side growth?
Susan
February 26
Dear Susan,
Reading Hitler Youth is making me wish so much that I'd had a chance to read it well before I'd written The Book Thief. Where was Bob Lipsyte then, huh? THANKS A LOT, BOB! You're four years late!!! (Just kidding, of course!)
Your research for the new book blew me away. Your shudder in the car. The boiled-water shower...
I understand the need to watch comedies, to listen to music. Music is usually the test for me. About four years ago, at the Sydney Writers Festival, a teenage boy asked me the perfect question. It was so simple. He said, 'Why do you write?' I needed to think for a good few seconds, and finally, I said, 'When I write, I listen to my favourite CDs, and on those favourite CDs, I'm waiting to hear my favourite song...But then, suddenly the music has stopped and I realize that the best song came and went and I didn't even realize it.' That's usually the test for me if a book is going well.
I also have a tendency to watch the same movies over and over again, so I can half-watch and half-think about the book. Sometimes I'll just make notes. It's funny too—I'm currently writing a short story for a fund-raising project for a charity. But I'm struggling. I struggle with the novels I have written, but for some reason I can't really commit to a short story. I'm not a writer who feels compelled to write in that feverish, let-me-at-the-keyboard way. I must drag myself there because I know I have to, and I can only do it when the story itself means everything to me. Maybe I'm only built to write novel-length work. (I did write short stories before I was published, but I've never been compelled to do it again.)
Now to respond to the improvisation comedy course you did...That's courageous. I know a lot of your other books have been for younger children, and when speaking to them, I'm sure it's a great skill to be fast on your feet. Here we get to visit many schools (it's considered the hard yards of being a children's or young adult author, but I've enjoyed more and more as time has passed)—and for me, I've found a sort of opposite to instant improvisation. I've spoken in the best and the worst schools in the country, and I think it's really helped. The struggle of it is valuable, and most importantly, I learned how people react to stories—how and at what moment of the story—and by telling stories over and over again, they become edited. The stories have grown, and they have shrunk to the point where I know how the audience will react 99% of the time. It's helped me understand how stories work (thought that's still a never-ending battle when it comes to writing a new book!)...
Thinking more about writing, do you have a strong sense of where you're going from here, and what you want to achieve?
Just a quick last note as well—just to tell you how much I'm admiring 'Hitler Youth'—and how much I'm enjoying this correspondence...so, seriously this time... THANKS BOB!!!!
Best Always, Markus
February 26
Dear Markus,
I am heading out in a little bit, to Alabama to speak to schoolchildren.
No, I won't talk to them about the Klan. I don't tend to talk about the books I'm currently writing. I do find the more I talk about them, the less compelled I feel to write them. I also don't want helpful advice from others at this stage. (My editor hasn't even seen the book yet!) I'm struggling with several issues, and I prefer to struggle with them and through them as much as I can by myself.
Sometimes I do things just to make work and make me feel as though I'm writing... Yesterday I printed out the entire manuscript and outlined it.
That's so interesting about the music—losing yourself in your favorite song.
I usually put on a favorite CD around 3 o'clock. I find myself drawn to music that somehow reflects the mood and/or cadence of the book. For Hitler Youth, I listened to martial music. For the Boy Who Dared, it was the Brahms German Requiem.
I don't know about John Legend and its R&B cadence, except that it makes me feel wistful and hopeful. Maybe I'll figure that one out.
What sort of work habits do you have? I tend to begin working very early in the morning, and usually when I'm headlong into a book, I find that I divide my day into three shifts: a few hours in the morning, a few more in the afternoon, and then a few in the evening. I don't have little ones around, and so I don't need to worry about them. When my kids were young, I worked in a corner of our family room. (Once my son hugged me and it knocked out the computer cord and I lost a whole chapter. I learned to save often after that!) Then I worked from 4-7 in the morning, and then taught school. That schedule allowed me to go to all their after-school sporting events and activities.
But now I have the luxury of days wide open. Mostly. Joe comes home for lunch each day and we eat together.
There are times when I will take a few hours here and there to work on something short—like a picture book or poetry. I don't consider myself a poet, but I like the feeling that poetry gives. A poem forces me to get to the heart of something right away. I try for an arc and a discovery. Or sometimes I simply try for sound.
(By the way: my mother once told me that if I wrote more books like Nobody's Diggier than a Dog—a fanciful picture book—I'd be able to sleep better at night. Mothers!)
I understand what you mean about working on meaningful projects. When I begin a new book, I wrestle myself to the writing part. I love the research. That's where I find the voices emerge. I love the revision part.
Oh, yes, speaking to kids does teach us about pacing and audience. I'm laughing here—because we do learn to edit and revise on our feet.
As far as what I want to achieve... I don't know! Perhaps someday to write a book by the seat of my pants—something that's not research-based. Something funny and yet meaningful. Something I could just go off to a cabin and write without a suitcase full of books.
Oh, wait. I could never go anywhere without a suitcase full of books. I'll be in Alabama for three days, and I have packed five books! (And only one pair of shoes.)
How about you?
Susan
March 4
Dear Susan,
If ever there was an appropriate ending to this correspondence, I think it’s your line: “a suitcase full of books.”
Yes, I can just see you heading off to Alabama cursing yourself and those books, but I am exactly the same. Sometimes I try to curb my optimism about getting through them, but there’s always a just-in-case that makes it in, and, well, if that one goes in, I have to take that other one because they go hand in hand...The bigger problem is that while we’re away, we have access to more bookstores in foreign places as well. So it’s most likely that you’ll now come home with TEN books...And that’s great.
Now to your work habits question. You worked from 4am-7am? Are you CRAZY?! Now that is commitment and I admire it. For me, though, I’m well aware that I would turn the computer on, place my head productively on the desk and go straight back to sleep. My method is to work in slabs: from 7 till midday, then more hours in the afternoon, then plenty of hours in the evenings when I’m closer to finishing the book.
And your last question about what I want to achieve? People have given me strange looks when I say that I’d like to publish maybe ten books (I’ve published five) that I can be proud of. They look at me and say, “You’re too young to be thinking like that,” but I tell them that they don’t know what it took to write The Book Thief, and that a book that means everything to you doesn’t just happen in a month or two—and I want every book I write to mean everything to me.
At the moment I’m just desperate to make something happen for my new book. I am starting again, and that is such a huge part of the process for me.
I start again, I start again.
For the month we’ve been in touch, it’s been so nice to have an extra friend to write to. I’ve learned a lot, and benefited from your thoughts on everything from research to aesthetics, from fiction to non-fiction, and I’ve been inspired. I couldn’t ask for any more.
I hope the trip to Alabama was a good one—and please, let me know if you walk through the front door of home with more books than you started with!
All my very best,
Markus
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