Kids and Science Fiction

A report from a really fun panel at the New York Public Library

Last weekend I was asked to join a panel about science fiction for young readers. Elizabeth Bird was our host at the New York Public Library, and my fellow panelists were HarperCollins editor (and author) Andrew Harwell and librarian Stephanie Whelan. Andrew acquired Jupiter Pirates for Harper and has worked kindly and patiently to make the series as good as it can be; among many other good things, Betsy and Stephanie write superb blogs and are wise, funny advocates for kids and books.

Publishers Weekly has a nice rundown of our conversation, and you can read Betsy’s account here in School Library Journal, part of her appreciation of editors who take risks.

For me, it was fun to talk Jupiter Pirates and leave feeling hopeful about diversity in kids’ fiction, a worthy goal that I hope my series is helping advance in some small way. And it was a pinch-me moment to get to do so at the New York Public Library, of all places.

But it was also a reminder of something more personal. I’m near the end of a first draft of The Jupiter Pirates: The Rise of Earth. It’s the toughest part of the writing process for what’s been a tough book from the beginning. If writing a book is like climbing a mountain (it isn’t, but let’s pretend), the last 20% is the death zone — all you can think about is finishing and getting back to where you can breathe.

All I ever wanted to be was a writer (well, OK, originally I wanted to play shortstop for the Mets), and I’ve been lucky enough to get to be one. But it’s a mostly solitary business by necessity — yes, writing’s collaborative, but it’s serial collaboration. The first, longest and toughest phase of any project is just you and a keyboard, for hours every day. That can be really lonely, and that sense of isolation is never worse than when you’re in a book’s death zone, struggling to get to the end and fearing that it’s all been for naught.

It was nice — who am I kidding, it was was heavenly — to get to escape the death zone for a couple of hours, to talk books with smart, sympathetic folks and remember why I write and for whom. And now, if you’ll forgive me, I need to cinch up the spikes on my boots and sharpen up my ice ax. I can see the summit above, waiting for me, and there’s only one way to get there.