My Process, My Nightmare!

I taught writing for two decades, for middle school through PhD students. You might assume I have my writing process down. RIGHT?

<Maniacal laughter – face plants in crumpled paper.>

Teaching taught me so much, like how unique everyone's process is. I also learned that sometimes it's easier to be kind to other writers than to oneself. I honestly would prefer to write a quippy post about process hacks (I love me some rainbow sticky notes!). But what has saved me this year is revising how I think and feel about my creative process.

When I worked with struggling readers, I used to start the school year by having a volunteer come to the front of the class. I asked them to repeat negative statements about our situation such as, I don't want to do this. This is pointless, and so on. I had them raise their arm from their side. I'd try to press it down -- and down went their arm. Easy. Then I had the students repeat affirming phrases about the task and themselves. I can do this! I'm strong! Suddenly their strength manifested. Even when I pushed hard, they held ther arms firm. I wanted students to discover the power of their own self-talk and belief. A power that still surprises me.

(Fellow Language Arts teacher Karen Ernst and me in 2000, on the last day of school. By this day, many of our students had discovered that they could do more than they thought!)

It's funny. I used to encourage my students to think about how their brains naturally work in order to figure out their writing process. Were they list people? Did they need to freewrite to find out what they think. Were they more visual, auditory, kinesthetic, concrete or abstract, and so on. There was no right or wrong answer. How could they work with their brains, not against them? For which parts of their writing would they need support -- because we all need help. 

Author Mary Logue talks about considering how we do other tasks, maybe at home or work, and how that might give us insights into our creative process. Do we need external deadlines? Do we need silence or visual reminders? As Lee Wind recently pointed out, the secret is not learning how others work but how we work. Yes! Good! Smart!

But in my weaker moments, I'm embarrassed by my early drafts. I berate myself. I feel ashamed at how ridiculous, how messy, how longwinded my work is. Who puts in that many details? What even IS my process? I have a thousand process hacks, and they definitely help, but at a certain point, everything falls apart. Who writes like this?!

Me, apparently.

<Outstretched arm drops.>

This spring my process -- and my self-talk -- were put to the test. Yes, there were tears. But there was also an unexpected discovery. It brought me back to the truths I once offered my young student writers all those years ago. As always, they are still teaching me.

This March, we were at the dinner table when i couldn't hold back the sobs. I had been struggling for weeks to craft an op-ed in response to the U.S. Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor, which names my picture book Love, Violet, along with eight other LGBTQ+ picture books. The clock was ticking down to the oral arguments. Would I miss my chance to speak? The strain of dredging up old experiences of growing up queer and religious was draining my reserves. I’m chronically ill, so most days I’m also managing shifting symptoms and brain fog. I couldn't wait for a better health season. This op-ed to be done now! How could I condense a complex experience into 750 words? Every revision sprawled longer. I started over, over and over. This essay was getting WORSE. My process was a nightmare.

<Cue sobbing>

After listening, my spouse gently pointed out that despair was part of my process.

What?! Unhelpful! Try again, dear wife!

Except… she was right.

At some point, my projects always fall apart. As do I. Maybe I can’t find the structure or focus. I'm asked to cut something meticulously crafted or to abandon my approach. At some point, everything feels impossible.

Yet realizing this is my "normal" process reminded me of something else I knew in my bones but didn't want to admit:

My best epiphanies follow despair. After “giving up,” I wake up the next day with a fresh fierceness to solve problems. After the collapse of hope, I'm suddenly open to extreme revision. Maybe it’s a survival instinct: Am I really going to let this project die? Maybe for me, testing the stakes of actually quitting forces me to do what it takes to make a project work.

Apparently, this is my process.

Realizing that despair isn’t the end but a means has truly helped me. Isn’t that what stories teach us, too? That as bad as things get... there is hope?

That op-ed that had me in tears somehow ended up published in U.S. News and World Report (video intro) the night before the Supreme Court oral arguments – just in time. I have no idea how I got from mess to focus to the right voice. And maybe that isn't helpful... except to know that it happened. It was possible when it felt like it wasn't. That's something.

Here's the most important part of the story -- the part that I hope would make my students proud. After that impossible op-ed, there was one more topic I dearly wanted to write about before the Supreme Court announced their decision in June or July. <Clock resumes ticking.> This idea was complex. I had tried to write an op-ed bout it a years ago. It was about justice. It felt urgent. But as is my way, that first attempt became so tangled with sprawling sentences and too many ideas... I gave up in despair.

Could I do it now?

This time, I began differently, with the same determination -- but also with grace, with acceptance of my terrible unique process. I WOULD NOT PANIC. No matter how tangled my drafts became, I would persist, step by step, breath by breath, because recently, my nightmarish process had worked.

I began with raw scribbles. I scratched out points on scraps of paper. I laid them out. My teaching friend Karen (pictured above) and I used to call this stage notecard solitaire. I looked for groupings, a possible order. Slowly and painfully, I let myself write everything I wanted to say in a 7,000-word draft. Ridiculous! Who writes this long?! The familiar thoughts rose like shrieking vampires from my nightmares.

[Sidebar: You might enjoy this song about killing the vampires of doubt (with swearing): https://scbwi.blogspot.com/2025/06/pointless-joy-returning-to-heart-in-our.html ]

This time, instead of berating myself, instead of abandoning hope, I chanted: This is my process, This is my process. This is…

This time, I didn’t cry. There were a thousand deep sighs. There were wretched drafts that kind people reviewed to help me find my way. This is my process. This is possible. This is...

How that essay transitioned from an unreadable franken-draft to the 3,600-word essay that is now on submission… I have no idea. Except that I understood that the nightmare was wasn't the ending. It was the means.

I wish I could reveal your perfect process, offer you the exact right tips. Your proces might change with each project or with time. There are so many resources on process here at SCBWI and at Kidlit 411 (Here are some that have worked for me). But what has helped me most is accepting that my nightmarish process is mine -- and it can work. Somehow that takes the fear out of it, at least a little.

What makes our work shine is the particular weirdness of our brains. Only we can create what we create. Criticizing our own brains and processes is a waste of energy. Not every project will work... but many projects can work if we embrace our unique way of being in the world.

Even our nightmares have their uses.

And isn’t that kind of like life? Just when everything feels unbearable, impossible… the morning comes?

I'm wish you faith for the nightmares, and joy for the journey.

XO Charlotte

 

In case you missed it, here’s my last post: “Pointless Joy! Returning to the Heart in our Art”

7 Books in 21 Years: Lee's Tips on Creating and Revising

This week's tips are on Creating and Revising – things I wish I'd known back when I was starting out, and that I'm happy to pass along to you now.

1) What you bring is YOU. You are the special sauce.

It isn't having the best idea (ideas are important) but it's how you execute the idea that makes it work or not work.

Ultimately, the thing you're bringing to every project is the thing no one else has... YOU. 

So make your work as YOU as you possibly can. This is the secret to "voice." Tell your story in a way that is uniquely yours. That was the turning point with my own writing, and I wish I'd learned it sooner.

Cheers to Esther Hershenhorn, who asked me when giving me an incredibly kind critique of one of my first picture book manuscripts, which was about manners (with a burping frog and princess) if that was really what I was passionate to write. It wasn't. And I'm proud to now have three picture books (and counting) published about things I truly am passionate about.

Red and Green and Blue and White is about community.

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach is about love.

And 

Like THAT Eleanor is about allyship.

Those are all things I am really passionate about. 

And they're all uniquely "Lee" -- while each picture book is very different from the others, they all are stories told with my unique voice and take. Which is probably a big part of why they found publishing homes.

2) Collect the tips that work for you, and don't sweat the rest.

Everyone has a different take on how they approach doing their creative work. I've listened to so many different approaches, and over time I've figured out what works for me. 

Perhaps the best advice that's worked for me is from Linda Sue Park, who shared that when her own writing time got more limited, she started doing 12 min writing sprints. She sets her timer for 12 minutes on her phone, and then tells herself she just has to focus for 12 minutes. If it's going well, and she has the time, she'll do another 12 minutes. The most she'd done in a row was 5, meaning 60 minutes. 

This changed my creative life. I have a pretty demanding (and awesome) day job, and often I was holding off on writing until I had big blocks of 3 hours or more to really dig in. This meant, though, that I was only writing once every week or two. 

Doing the writing sprints, repeating it nearly every day, has made me SO much more productive. What I've found is that by doing a little bit, every day, it really adds up. Also, the project seems to always be in the back of my mind, with my subconscious working on it, and getting back into it is much faster.

The secret of this is that I don't have any internal resistance to 12 minutes. I can nearly always say, okay, I have twelve minutes to write. And I can sit and do it, even at the end of a long and challenging day. (Though I do much better work if I'm doing my 12 minutes before everything else.)

Also, I don't do this 365 days a year. My creativity needs time off, sort of like seasons. Sprout, grow, harvest, plant the seed and wait to sprout again...

It's what works for me. Figure out what works for you, and don't worry about the rest.

3) Know your category. Read books in the area you're working to publish in.

Credit another tip (or maybe it was a challenge) to Linda Sue Park. She said if you're going to write a picture book, you should read 1,000 picture books. That's a LOT, but when you are really well-read in your category, you start to understand it all much better.

You can see the structure behind the words, you can figure out which stories resonate, and why, you can see patterns.

And it helps you see how your own work might fit in, push the boundaries, be pitched and sold.

It's also really helpful when someone (agent or editor) asks for comps.

4) You can always learn more and get better.

I will never forget the moment at an SCBWI conference intensive when there were a whole bunch of famous authors teaching and giving us exercises, and after teaching her section, Jane Yolen comes and sits next to me to do the just-assigned-by-someone-else exercise, just like I was.

I looked at Jane and, knowing she had hundreds (no exaggeration) of books published, asked, "Why are you doing the exercise?"

And she said something along the lines of 'The minute I stop learning I'll be dead.' 

I can't recall the exercise we were doing, but I do hold onto this gem -- we can always learn more and get better at our craft.

5) The publishing business is cyclical.

"Picture books are dead!" ... "It's the golden age of picture books." ... "Picture books are impossible to sell right now."

"Middle grade is hot!" ... "You can't sell middle grade right now." ...

Just wait. It comes around. Work on what you're most passionate to work on. Let your agent sweat the merry-go-round of what's hot. 

Maybe a manuscript can't find a home now, but will find one in a few years.

Know that you're more than one story,.

And the business is cyclical.

6) Think of revision as Re-vision. 

This word play may come off a little corny, but don't get stuck in the words of your story. Allow yourself, in the process of revision, to pull back and see more than the sentences. Look at the story behind the words, the character arcs and motivations, the journey of the reader's emotions.

Kate Messner shared a very cool spreadsheet she uses to track elements chapter to chapter, and for longer work I've found that really helpful.

For picture books, sometimes it takes coming at the story from a whole new angle.

Play with it. 

Revision is your time to make your story even more you, even more the story you want to tell.

7) Enjoy the adventure. Celebrate every moment you can.

There are going to be hard moments on this publishing journey, and in the face of our very human negative bias (where we focus on the bad rather than the good) it is so important to celebrate the wins.

The kind/personalized rejection.

The revise-and-re-offer request.

The expression of interest.

The manuscript going to acquisitions.

The offer.

The signed contract.

The editorial letter.

The revised manuscript sent in.

... all the steps towards the book being a reality: the editing, the interior and cover design, the marketing, the kind reviews, the accolades your book does get, and then your book reaching adult readers, and librarians, and booksellers, and teachers, and parents, and kiddos themselves...

and every so often, hearing from a reader, with their thanks and appreciation.

Take a moment to hold onto and celebrate those positive moments.

A reader I don't know called Like THAT Eleanor:

"A Perfect Pride Picture Book" and "a fantastic age appropriate story about how a kid can be an ally."

That's a win right there, and worth celebrating!

I hope you'll take the time to celebrate your wins, too. Every one of them. They'll sustain you.

I keep a file of nice things folks have said to me about my writing, with a few printed out and posted on my wall. Just to remind me: I've had wins. I can do this.

And you can, too.

**

That's this week's tips. Next week, my seven tips on getting published.

Until then,

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Pointless Joy! Returning to the Heart in our Art

 

For my birthday, my friend gave me a notecard covered with images in fine-tip marker. "Gorgeous!" I cried. This made my brain happy! She waved it away. "It just doodles. I do it for stress relief." But these "doodles" brought me joy! Even if they were "just for fun." 

Then, she gave me markers. Soon, I added colored pencils. Usually, every spare minute goes to working on picture books. But now, sometimes, I doodle. Not for that race to finish, to keep striving, to try to please those who would decide whether my work was good enough, but for joy. 

Winter is a particulary hard season for my chronic illness symptoms, physically and emotionally. I'm often too foggy to do thinking work for a stretch. This winter, the tragedies in the world felt overhwelming. I'd left my agent and nothing had progressed professionally for so, so long. But as I colored, out spilled strange, organic images. The colors felt like my soul breathing. Sometimes, I started to dislike my choices. No, I told myself gently, this is for joy.

Something about creating without any tie to the marketplace felt like a relief, like it was healing something deep. It reminded me of the lowest point in my illness in 2020-2022, when day after day, I lay in bed unable to work, to create anything meaningful, to even message loved ones. The loss of normal life, of connection were so deep. My first book, The Amazing Idea of You (illus. by Mary Lundquist) had launched just days after my health collapsed. Shortly after, we had moved to Italy. It should have been a dream. Was this my life? I remember despairing. "What am I for?" My whole life I had taught, written, helped, done "things" to contribute. Now I was just here. I couldn't help. My wife did all the work. But over and over she told me that I was everything to her even if I couldn't "do" anything. 

What buoyed me in those long days was the art on the walls. It became sacred places to visit, to dream, to feel. Music that transported me out of my window (The Flower Duet). I floated with the arias of the Italian birds. I kept breathing. Being.

I had to root out the capitalist idea that my worth depends on what I produce, on whether my work is validated by publication and sales. On whether I meet some imagined standard and timeline. On how I compare to others. Capitalsim is an inhuman way to be and think. Capitalism devalues the most important things we have lived, felt, and expressed in our art. I needed to learn that what we are "for" is life. Connection. We are "for" joy.

(A framed doodle I created after a hard season of writing articles related to Mahmoud v. Taylor, also a bowl of handmade tissue paper flowers -- both for joy.)

This is Pride month, a time of celebrating being here when not everyone wants that. This moment is so fraught for the 2LGBTQIA+ community. I'll be writing later this month about what it has been like to have my picture book Love, Violet caught up in a U.S. Supreme Court case (Mahmoud v. Taylor) along with other 2LGBTQIA+ picture books. The more I've processed this experience and the hate messages, the more I recognize that just being is radical. Joy, even in choas and grief, is affirmation of life! The moments I've belly laughed with the authors and illustrators named in this court case have healed and liberated me. They've taken away the power of hate speech. Joy reminds me of what is true, that what matters is us. Living.

We are here. We are now. The fact that we are struggling, trying, loving, hurting, pausing to notice the beads of dew on the new irses, still breathing, is a miracle. We don't have to earn our right to exist. When we allow ourselves to be, without judgment or guilt, when we create just for joy, we honor life and our place in it. We were made to be.

Yes, we make books for the marketplace, to connect with children. 

Sometimes art needs to be free. 

As I wrote for Cynsations, in its purest form, art is "A place we gather/ to share the journey/ our pounding hearts," whether that art is published or praised or fast enough or not. "Art is the most vulnerable thing we do. Except for love." 

So, my friends, I wish you "pointless" joy today. Maybe an exhale of thanks before sleep. A scribbled note about something joyful. A doodle. A dance in the kitchen. A song for your dog. A joke after a hard conversation. Really, joy isn't pointless.

Joy is the point.

(The Joy Jar we started filling in January with "joys" we've noticed. We are completely inconsistent about when we do this. But the colored paper adding up, month by month, makes me happy!) 

 

Charlotte Sullivan Wild is the author of several picture books. Love, Violet (illus. Charlene Chua) is a Stonewall Book Award winner, Charlotte Huck Honor Book, and Lambda Literary Award Finalist. The Amazing Idea of You (illus. Mary Lundquist) is a lyrical celebration of the potential in living things, especially in every child. She has taught language arts, literature and writing, worked as a bookseller, and volunteered as the SCBWI RA for Southwest Texas. She is represented by Analía Cabello at Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Learn more: www.CharlotteSWild.com 

7 Books in 21 Years: Lee's Tips on Your KidLit Career and Book Promotion

Hello Kid Lit community!

After 14.5 years of blogging for SCBWI, it's my final month as your official blogger. I'm so excited to be passing the baton on July 1, 2025 to Justin Campbell... and that's going to be to focus of my final post, on June 24.

Today (Jun 3, 2025) is also the publication day for my seventh book, the picture book: Like THAT Eleanor: The Amazing Power of Being an Ally, illustrated by Kelly Mangan and published by Cardinal Rule Press.

I started my 'wanting-to-be-published-in-kidlit-and-joining-SCBWI' journey 21 years ago!

All this has put me in a contemplative place. I've had a lot of hard work, downs, and ups on the journey, and thought it might be helpful to share 21 things I've learned so far.

Starting today and for the next two weeks, I'll be sharing 7 tips each week. This week's tips are on your Kid Lit Career and Book Promotion – things I wish I'd known back when I was starting out, and that I'm happy to pass along to you now.

With no further ado, 

1) Get/keep a day job.

This one's really hard to admit. For YEARS I imagined getting an agent would lead instantly to an enormously lucrative book deal which would lead instantly to having a huge best-seller and I wouldn't need a day job... Even typing that sentence made sigh out loud.

It's a hard reality, because the people who get up on the stages at the big KidLit events have sort of won the lottery already with their books. They've had the big movies made, they've won the huge awards, and maybe they don't need day jobs.

But the truth of most KidLit creators is that they have a second stream of income beyond their books. Maybe they teach. Maybe they do school visits. Maybe they married someone who's willing and able to support them. Or maybe, like me, they work at a day job. That's okay. There's no shame in it.

As Elizabeth Gilbert says in "Big Magic," demanding your creativity pay the bills is not a very kind thing to do to your creativity.

So what I say to my husband now, every time I have a new book published, is: "Hey, honey! We have another lottery ticket."

2) Be able to elevator pitch your book.

It's going to happen again and again. Someone (usually well-meaning) is going to ask, what's your work-in-progress about? What's your book that's going to be published about? You have a book out -- what's it about?

There's lots of good advice on pitching, much of it published here and on the SCBWI conference blog, but as Eddie Gamarra advises, it should include the when, where, your main character, their goal, and the obstacle to their goal... tone and genre help, too.

As I mentioned above, my new picture book releases today. What's "Like THAT Eleanor" about?

Named by her two dads after Eleanor Roosevelt, Eleanor sees unfair things happen at her school but doesn't know how to help. The real stories her dads share about Eleanor Roosevelt being an ally inspire child Eleanor to stand up for a nonbinary classmate, making their class—and the world—a bit more fair.

3) Bookstores are hard places to sell books.

This one's kind of counter-intuitive, but as much as I love independent bookstores, it's a hard thing for your book to do well in a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Consider that bookstores want to know that a) someone's going to walk in off the street and ask for your book by name; b) someone on their staff is going to be so excited about your book that they're going to hand-sell it to the next person who walks into the store; c) something about your cover, title, subject is so compelling they're going to shelve the book face-out and it's going to sell itself. 

The more of those three things you have, the better chance the store's going to risk bringing in your book to their store. Every inch of shelf space has to help them pay rent. And if they bring in your book and it doesn't sell, that's bad for everyone – the store, who then returns the copy to the distributor, the publisher, who loses the sale and has to pay the shipping charges, and you the creator, who doesn't get that royalty after all. 

Bookstores are super-important, because they're taste-makers, but most indie publishers do not sell more than 10% of their books in physical bookstores. That's helpful to know.

The best way to pursue bookstore sales is to build a relationship with your local independent bookstore. Buy your books there, and they'll hopefully be excited to carry your books. Maybe you can arrange with them to offer signed copies of your books, as a special promotion to drive customers to them.

It's what I've done with Pages: A Bookstore in Manhattan Beach, California. (You can order a signed copy of Like THAT Eleanor from them here. Just add your request for personalization and a signed copy in the order notes.)

4) Events are for you. They're not about book sales.

Try not to obsess about how many people were there (if you can avoid this, please teach me how). Try not to obsess over how many books you've sold, or you haven't sold (Ditto.)

Even if you have a wildly successful in-person event and you sold 100 copies, that would be amazing, but 100 copies isn't moving the needle unless you can replicate it time after time after time. Maybe once you have a best-seller and are a household name, you can do this, but after your debut book release? Well, I've found it hard to motivate folks to cross town for book 5 or 6 or 7... 

Having said that, if an event is for YOU, and done in a way that makes you feel special and excited, by all means, go for it! 

The publisher and I are working with the Eleanor Roosevelt Center to do an event on July 27 at Val-Kill, and I'm going to fly to New York to do that. I'm flying and doing the event for ME, because doing an event with that audience, and getting a tour of where Eleanor Roosevelt lived, sounds incredibly fun.

Will it sell 100 books? I have no idea, but it will create a lot of good will with the folks at the Center (and maybe they'll hand-sell the book in the future), I'll talk about the event online (on my blog, social media, and newsletter), and it will be a celebration, for sure!

5) Keep your eyes on your own mat.

This one's from yoga. There are always going to be accolades your book doesn't get. Lists your book doesn't land on. Awards that someone else's book wins instead of yours.

That's okay.

Someone else's sales, marketing plan, deal... it doesn't really impact you and your creative journey.

All you need are some bragging rights for your book. Happily, Like THAT Eleanor already has three strong trade book reviews:

“This warm picture book provides a primer on allyship.” —Foreword Reviews

"Accessible…heartfelt…empowering.” —Publishers Weekly

”With a critically important social justice message, ‘Like That Eleanor’… is timely, entertaining, and thoroughly 'kid friendly'. Especially and unreservedly recommended…” —Midwest Book Review

Would it be great to get more? Sure. Win a big award? Yeah. But it's okay if other books get other spotlights. I have what I need for this book, in that it's be vetted beyond me and the publisher.

And something I keep in mind is that my book isn't in direct competition with other books. When someone finishes a great book, they want to know: what's the next great thing I'm going to read? Maybe it can be my book.

6) Social media can be a powerful tool, but an email list is gold.

The challenge with social media platforms is that you can spend a lot of time and energy building a following and then overnight the platform can change their rules and suddenly you can't reach the people who follow you unless you pay.

This happened to me with Facebook. After years of building a following of over 2,000 people they changed the rules, and suddenly only 12 people were seeing my posts... unless I paid Facebook to show it to more people who already had said they were interested in what I was posting!

That's when I started seriously building my email list. I send out a newsletter about once a month, and it's a list I control. I've built it, and the 2,300+ people on it all want to hear my updates. 

Social media can be a way to find new people, and deepen connections with existing folks in my universe, but getting someone on my email list is a way for me to know I can reach them. (Sure, folks can and do unsubscribe, and that's fine. The list is there when they're interested in it. Oh, and you can sign up for the Lee Wind author newsletter, too - just click here.)

7) Community is key.

KidLit Publishing is a challenging craft, business, and career. It's made so much easier by having a cohort of folks who are on the journey with you.

I've been fortunate to have found multiple overlapping communities in KidLit -- friends from the Westside Los Angeles mingle (formerly schmooze); friends from SCBWI Los Angeles; friends from SCBWI conferences; friends from a Highlights Writing the Rainbow course who became my picture book critique group; friends from my day-job with the Independent Book Publishers Association; friends from the Queer KidLit Creators group I host once a month, and friends from being the SCBWI official blogger and leader of SCBWI team Blog...

Find your peeps. Support them. Cheer them on. And hopefully, you'll be fortunate enough for them to support and cheer you on, too.

**

Those are our first seven tips!

Tune in next week for our next seven, all about Creating and Revising.

Until then,

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee