Confessions of a Soon-to-be-Published MG Author

My debut novel in verse, EVERYWHERE BLUE, arrives on June 1, 2021, from Holiday House.

I'm very proud of this book, especially because it's taken me nearly 50 years to get here, and because I had to survive two ruptured brain aneurysms to do so.

But with less than six weeks left before my book launches, I have a confession to make.

I never want to read it again!

This is the one thing I never predicted. Before I had an agent or a book deal, I never imagined not wanting to read my own words ever again. 

It went through at least twelve drafts between 2015 and 2019, when I submitted it to Barbara Krasner. Barbara made me revise it yet again before she offered representation on Sept 24, 2019.

She sent it to ten editors, and one, Sally Morgridge at Holiday House, loved it and made an offer on October 22, 2019. 

Yes, you read that correctly! It really was that fast! (Although, since I've been writing for fifty years, it wasn't fast at all...)

Then I had one major revision to do for Sally. Which wasn't actually that major. She did want me to add more poems, mainly about Strum, but also about Maddie's best friend, Emma, and Eco Club. Altogether, I added around 3000 words.

A hint of something from EVERYWHERE BLUE.
This butterfly is hiding a secret inside its closed wings.

So that brought us up to about 14 drafts.

And still we weren't finished.

There were:

          Line edits.

          Copy edits.

          Page proofs.

That was three more times I had to read through my entire novel, with less and less time for each stage. I had three months to complete the revision (completing it just before the pandemic began in March 2020!), only ten days to read through the copy-editor's remarks, and about a week to look over page proofs.

Some of the other 21ders warned me this would happen.

You reach a point where you're sick of it. And then, by the time you're reading the page proofs and it's basically set in stone, you start to second-guess your own writing. Why did I use that word? Why not this word? 

Oh, I wanted to throw out whole sections and start all over again!

But I can't do that. It's finished. 

And this is what the butterfly looks like when its wings are open!
It's a blue morpho, and it features prominently in EVERYWHERE BLUE

I'll be taking a break from blogging for a while.  Please look for my interview on Jone Rush MacCulloch's blog on April 23rd. 

You can always find me on Twitter (@JoanneRFritz). 

Or you can visit my website and sign up for my occasional newsletter (in fact, it's so occasional it hasn't even started yet!). 

You can even preorder a signed copy from Children's Book World! 

Thank you for being here!

Pandemic Diary -- I'm back! And the world is crazier than ever...

Currently reading -- and wow, is it intense and moving!

Sunday, August 2, 2020 (Day 146):

I'm back from my one-month break. You may not have even noticed I was gone. But the world (and the Covid-19 crisis, among other crises) went on. I'm not going to bore you with details from every day of the last month (I've been journaling the old-fashioned way -- in a spiral-bound notebook). Good grief, no! I'm also not going to discuss mask controversies (just wear a mask when you go out -- please!), continuing protests over racial injustice, or politics. Especially politics. You get enough of that in your news feed.

Looking back, two things stand out for me from July. 

1) I received and finished going through my copy edits for EVERYWHERE BLUE. This was a new experience for me. Being a debut author has surprises every stage of the journey. Apparently, I have no idea how to type an ellipsis. Always thought it was dot dot dot. But it's not! 

It's dot SPACE dot SPACE dot!

And I've never known the difference between en dashes and em dashes -- and when to use each. Thankfully, my copy editor knows.

The only thing we disagreed on was the spelling of rainforest. One word or two? Rainforest or rain forest? What do you think?

After emailing back the copyedited manuscript to my editor, I breathed a sigh of relief, because of the second thing that happened in July.

2) Toward the end of the month, my mother moved into Assisted Living. This is a huge step, a narrowing of her world, down from a three-room apartment to a single bed/sitting room, about the size of the average dorm room, but with private bath. And now that she's in Assisted Living, I won't be able to visit her, because of Covid. We weren't able to visit from March to early July, when she was in Independent Living. Then when our section of Pennsylvania finally entered the green phase in early July, we could visit again, with masks and distancing, of course. But last week, they moved her and of course that wing of the lifecare facility is off-limits. 

What hurts the most: her phone still isn't hooked up so I can't even call her. My sister is working on that. It's frustrating, to say the least. I sent Mom a card, but I have no way of knowing if she received it. 

I'm trying to keep busy and work on my next novel in verse while I wait for proofs and cover sketches from my publisher. And the second half of my advance, which should be here this week. I hope.

How have you been keeping busy this past month?

COVID-19 World Stats as of August 1 (From WHO):

Confirmed cases: 17,660,623

Confirmed deaths: 680,894

US Stats as of August 2 (From the CDC):

Confirmed cases: 4,601,526

Confirmed deaths: 154,002

As a comparison, here are the stats from a month ago:

COVID-19 World Stats as of July 2 (from WHO):

Confirmed cases: 10,710,005
Confirmed deaths: 517,877


US Stats as of July 3  (from the CDC):

Confirmed cases: 2,732,531
Confirmed deaths: 128,648

Yes, it just keeps going up. This won't be over anytime soon, I'm afraid. 

Reposting a post from April 2016

*NOTE: This post originally appeared on April 4, 2016. It occurred to me today that it was strangely prescient, since my fifth novel became EVERYWHERE BLUE, which is due to be published by Holiday House in Summer 2021.*

Musings on writing my fifth novel

Yes.

You read that right. I'm nearly finished writing the rough draft of my fifth novel. In the past nine years, I've written four MG novels and one YA, in addition to more than a dozen picture books. And no, in case you're wondering, I don't yet have an agent or a book contract. I've had fourteen publication credits to date, but they're all poems or flash fiction or micro fiction for adults.

Still, I keep writing for children and teens. Perseverance is my mantra.

But I have to admit, Novel #5 is, well, a little different. In what way?

Read on.

I started an idea notebook for my fifth novel back in the late spring of 2015, so nearly a year ago. After gathering ideas, and working out character sketches and a setting and a conflict, I wrote three chapters. Almost immediately, I became stuck. Something didn't feel right about it. So I put it aside and revised my fourth novel instead.

And then, in September, after reading Full Cicada Moon by Marilyn Hilton (even though it wasn't the first verse novel I read), I had an epiphany.

This new novel? The one I was stuck on? It was meant to be written in verse.

I spent two months reading and studying verse novels and then in November 2015 I started writing Novel #5 all over again.

Am I crazy? Well, this doesn't feel crazy. It feels... right. Since making that decision, the process has changed for me. Writing a verse novel is the hardest thing I've done as a writer, but at the same time, it's like I've grown wings. I look forward to writing every day, which is something I never did with a rough draft before. Rough drafts are usually agony.

I've been accepted into the Highlights Foundation workshop on Novels in Verse which will take place in May. Who knows where this will lead? Maybe nowhere. But maybe, just maybe, something good will happen.

For the rest of April, in honor of Poetry Month, I'll be looking at a few of the verse novels I've studied in my quest to learn this new (for me) form.

Over the past few years, I've read, in approximately this order:

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
42 Miles by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
May B. by Caroline Starr Rose (this made me first fall in love with verse novels)
Pieces of Georgia by Jen Bryant
The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle
Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
Because I am Furniture by Thalia Chaltas
Where I Live by Eileen Spinelli
Another Day as Emily by Eileen Spinelli
Full Cicada Moon by Marilyn Hilton
Blue Birds by Caroline Starr Rose
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Libertad by Alma Fullerton
Mountain Dog by Margarita Engle
Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff
Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

(I've also read Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, which is actually an autobiography, and The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, which some consider prose poetry.)

What verse novels do you recommend? All suggestions are welcome.

So... this happened!

In today's Children's Bookshelf from Publisher's Weekly:


 
Sally Morgridge at Holiday House has bought world rights to Everywhere Blue by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz. The debut novel in verse is about a 12-year-old girl with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder who loves music, math, and everything in its place. When her older brother disappears from his college campus, her family starts slipping away from her. Publication is set for summer 2021; Barbara Krasner of Olswanger Literary brokered the deal. 

Yes! This is really happening! My writing journey continues. I was thrilled to sign a contract with Holiday House. 

Sally Morgridge is a fantastic editor, who is helping me make this into the best novel in verse I can write.

Was planning to do more revising tonight. But I think I'll take a moment or two to celebrate. It is, after all, Mardi Gras!