Frankfurt Diaries: The Power of Courage in Children's Literature - Guest Blog Series by Lawrence Schimel

The fourth panel I moderated during the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair was a session co-organized by the Goethe-Institut Ukraine and the Ukrainian Book Institute, on Saturday, October 19. My paternal grandfather's birthday was the following day, he was born in Lviv on October 20, 1898, so I opened the session with that personal connection. (My paternal grandmother was also born in Lviv, on May 15, 1901.)

The panel was organized around the recent publication in German of a middle grade book by Ukrainian author Halyna Vdovychenko, 36 і 6 котів (36 & 6 Cats), which has sold over 130,000 copies. 

Photos of the Ukrainian publishing panel on 36 & 6 Cats and panelists by Akim Parpach

The session featured the author, together with her translator into German, Kati Brunner, as well as Yuliia Kozlovets, the coordinator of the International Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv and a former independent bookseller. Unlike the previous days, the Book Fair is open to the general public, not just trade visitors, over the weekend, and was held in Ukrainian and English, with translation in both directions done by my dear friend Kateryna Mikhalitsyna, herself an award-winning children's author (we are working together right now to co-translate into Spanish 3 of her own books).

While the conversation was a free flowing dialogue among all the participants, for this summary, I will condense the conversations and comments from each of the three panelists.

Halyna writes for both children and adults, and was on tour with her most recent adult novel when we were trying to arrange a time to meet before the Book Fair to discuss the session. So we began by discussing the differences between writing for adults and for younger readers, and also how her writing has changed in the wake of the ongoing invasion by Russia. The book which has just been published in German translation was first published in 2015, but has extra resonance today in that it features not a single hero or heroine, but a collective: the 42 cats of the title, who used to live in the basement of an abandoned building until they find themselves homeless when the new landlord puts a lock on the door and they have to use their wiles to find a new place to live and how to help one another and stay together. 

One thing Halyna spoke about was how a large part of her audience are refugees right now, Ukrainian children who have fled the ongoing Russian invasion. And the importance of a book like hers that shows characters that are not perfect, but never lose faith in their strength and manage to find their way out of difficult situations. 

This was something Kati spoke about as well, as the translator of the book: conveying Ukrainian culture, not just translating the words. She spoke about needing to sometimes explain for German-speaking readers cultural details about Ukrainian society that might be unknown for them. She also talked about how as a translator she is also an ambassador of Ukrainian culture to German publishers, as very often editors are not able to read the original and need to rely on a reader's report from them. And the importance of making sure that Ukrainian culture is promoted and published around the world, so that Ukraine is known as more than just a victim of Russia's ongoing invasion. 

We also talked about some translation issues, like how to handle the names of the 42 cats: not just using the literal translations of the Ukrainian names in many cases, but recreating the names in German. And likewise, how to convey the book's humor.

Yuliia talked about how Halyna's events at the Arsenal Book Festival and other events have always been major draws, but how these days those parents who are still in the Ukraine very often are afraid to let their kids go to crowded public places due to a very real fear of said events become targets for Russian attacks. She also talked about the importance of books and culture, and how Russia understands this and is actively trying to undermine Ukrainian culture, citing the destruction of the Faktor-Druk printing house in Kharkiv, which printed a majority of the country's books.

The importance of Ukrainian culture is why the Festival continues to operate even under duress and threat, and also why the country's publishing industry continues to operate, despite blackouts and missiles: to provide books for readers of all ages, and so that they have a life and a culture to return to after the invasion is over.

Halyna's popular book has inspired many sequels, including 36 & 6 Detective Cats and 36 & 6 Companion Cats, and now even a new spinoff series: 36 & 6 Dogs.  

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Lawrence Schimel

Lawrence Schimel is a multilingual author and literary translator, working primarily in and between Spanish and English. He has published over 130 books as an author, and has translated over 190 books. He has won a Crystal Kite twice, for his picture books Lucky Me, illustrated by Juan Camilo Mayorga (Orca) and Read a Book With Me, illustrated by Thiago Lopes (US: Beaming Books, Singapore: Epigram). His most recent children's book is HaiCuba/HaiKuba: Haikus about Cuba in Spanish and English, co-authored with Carlos Pintado, illustrated by Juan José Colsa (NorthSouth Books) which won a Eureka Honor from the California Reading Association and was chosen by the NYPL as a Best Books for Kids 2024.

Creative Gifts You Can Give Yourself In 2025: Time to Play

Continuing this series of looking ahead at creative gifts you can give yourself in 2025, today's post is giving yourself the gift of time to play.

This can look like so many things, but the core is to allow yourself time to create just for the fun and joy of creating. Creating not with the intent that it will be consumable by others, or ultimately for others, but creating something just for you. For the process more than the result.

For the last two years, at the suggestion of my adult daughter, our family has done a parallel-play (where we do it at the same time but everyone works on their own) new year vision collage. This has involved going through old magazines, cutting out images and words and just letting things flow, assembling something that resonates both visually and with words that can be like a poem or even a rallying cry of encouragement for the year ahead. I keep mine up by my desk all year, as a reminder of the joy of creativity.

You don't have to collage, but I encourage you to start playing in some way. With art. (Try out a new medium - get messy!) With words. (Try a new structure of poetry!) Build a sand castle. Or a snow fort. Maybe even put on some music and dance, as if—as the saying goes—no one is watching. 

Interestingly, I don't have a lot of photos of me playing... mainly because when I do it's not something I document to share with others. But this is a photo from a vacation, where I did play with some balloons and created a hat. Balloons are not generally my medium. No one is going to write a symphony about the creativity behind this balloon hat, but that wasn't the point. It was play pure and simple, and joyful just for the creative process. 

The act of creating, just for us, has so much joy and value built in it, and it's a great thing to remind ourselves that we can give ourselves this gift whenever we need it. We can even give it to ourselves regularly, if we find it contributes to our joy. If it helps to make it happen, put some time aside in your calendar now. 

I hope, in the year ahead, you'll consider giving yourself the gift of time to play, whatever that looks like for you. I fully believe the rest of your creativity—and you—will benefit.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

P.S. If you haven't seen it yet, I invite you to check out the first creative gift post, the Gift of Community.

Creative Gifts You Can Give Yourself In 2025: Community

It's December! Here's the first in a series of posts on creative gifts you might start thinking about giving yourself throughout the new year ahead.

Today's post is on community.

Writing, illustrating, and translating books for kids and teens is a very specific calling. As I've joked with some of my KidLit friends, it's hard for folks outside our industry to understand that sitting on the couch staring off into space is actually working. (It's an important part of the gig, dreaming and exploring the what ifs.)

So here's the thing: 

Where and when are you going to not just find, but be IN community this coming year? 

Meeting up with some of my KidLit author friends at the 2024 American Library Association conference, from left: Ann Suk Wang, Karol Silverstein, Paula Yoo, and me (Lee Wind) 

Social media can play a role. Bluesky is becoming very popular with KidLit creators, and community events like #kidlitchat have moved there. And at the same time, I would encourage you to recognize that true connection is often hard to achieve on social media platforms, and feeling connected -- that you have peeps, support, and understanding -- is the goal.

So here's how to take it further:

Are you able to go to an online or in-person retreat or conference? There's SCBWI and also Highlights Foundation and the Writing Barn and residencies you can apply for, along with free online writing meditations, and many more options to explore.

Is there a SCBWI local chapter/region nearby that you can get involved with? Are they hosting a mingle you can attend? An event you can volunteer to help out at? (Volunteering is a great way to find community.)

Do you have a critique group or accountability partner or just other folks you can reach out to who understand?

Do you have a group of KidLit friends? Set aside some time with them.

If you don't have a group of KidLit friends yet, how can you build some friendships? Even one person you can reach out to to share a phone call or a virtual cup of tea can make a huge difference in your feeling connected and plugged into a community that cares about you. A community where you belong.

Being in community is a great gift to give to your creativity (and yourself) in the year ahead!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

AI re-gurgitation can be a call for YOUR unique creativity

So there's a lot of talk about "generative" AI. I think that's a misnomer. It's re-generative. It's not generating anything new. It might be even more appropriate to call it "regurgitative" AI, as it's digesting stuff and then bringing it back up in an altered form...

The Summer-Fall 2022 issue of The Authors Guild Bulletin included an article by Mary Rasenberger (the CEO of the Authors Guild) called "Artificial Intelligence: How Will Authorship Be Defined In An AI Future?"

These words, from the final paragraph, have been resonating with me since I first read it, and it seems worthwhile considering them as we head into 2024:

"Do we want humans or AI creating our literature and other arts? ... AI cannot feel, think, or empathize. It lacks the essential human faculties that move the arts forward. While it is remarkable that engineers could create a "new" Rembrandt that so closely resembles an authentic one, we do not need new Rembrandts; we need new art and literature to reflect where we humans are now, and where we might be going."

—Mary Rasenberger

I find in those words enormous inspiration, a call to creativity. Let's tap into the very things that make us remarkably human as we create works for kids and teens. Let's not regurgitate "new" classics, let's create new books that become classics—because of how human they are, how much they speak to kids and teens now, and how profoundly they give voice to each of us creators.

The advice has often been put in another way:

Tell the story in the way only YOU can tell it.

That's our voice - as writers, as illustrators*, we need to find our voice, and then tell stories in the way only WE can tell them.

And with that inspiration for your creative work ahead,

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On!
Lee

*Not to leave translators out. There's enormous creativity in translating, and two translators will create two different translations from the same text. But it seems that part of the art of translation is the effort to bring the original creator's voice to a new language while keeping not just the story but also the feel, the tone, and maybe we can use the word here, too: the voice of the original. Translation is fascinating, and if there's a translator reading this who wants to be a guest blogger about the art and craft of translating books for kids and teens, just reach out: leewind (at) roadrunner (dot) com

Goals and Your Creative Time in 2024

Happy New Year, SCBWI Community!

As we head into 2024, and you plan your creative works ahead, consider applying the (often used in business) SMART goals tool.

If you want to nerd out on the history of SMART goals, there's a fun article on it here. But more to the point, as you look at setting goals for your writing, illustrating, and/or translating year ahead, can you make your goals:

SPECIFIC

What exactly are you hoping to achieve? A new picture book dummy? A revision of a novel? An MFA?

MEASURABLE

What are the steps to achieving your goal? Are you going to measure time invested? Words accrued? Editors researched?

ACHIEVABLE

Sometimes the "A" in the SMART acronym is shown as attainable or even assignable (a management thing), but for us, is the goal something within our power to make happen? Here's an example: Getting your book featured in the New York Times would be awesome, but it's not directly achievable by you. Pitching an agent you've researched is achievable.

RELEVANT

Maybe you want to take a class to improve a skill, or learn new software that can aid your process. Maybe you want to read 1,000 picture books to really understand how a picture book works, and what makes one sing... Keep in mind your overall vision of creating books and content for kids and/or teens as you're setting your goals. But I'd suggest not being too stringent on this. If you really want to learn how to make bread, maybe that's the thing you need to fill your creative well... and who knows, maybe you'll create a story about a character who is obsessed with tracing back the origins of their sourdough starter!

TIME BOUND

It's always fun at the start of a new year to set goals for the year ahead. But a year is a huge amount of time. It might be more effective for you to set weekly goals. Or monthly. Or, daily... Consider that without a time-constraint on your goal, it could never get to the front-burner of your attention. 

So now, take five minutes to write down one or two creative goals for 2024. And check if they're SMART.

Good luck on the adventure ahead, as we all illustrate, translate, and write on,
Lee

Back to School and Time to... Play?

It's September, and most kiddos are back to school after the summer break.

Maybe because we ourselves were kiddos at one time, and our formative years were shaped by this pattern, September still has that 'time to get back to work' feel.

Only, now I'm an adult, and kind of work all the time. 

I can almost hear you say that. Then again, maybe that's just ME saying that.

Either way, I'd like to share a challenge that's partly inspired by the wonderful Debbie Ohi, who's been sharing on social media (like here on Instagram) how much fun she's having with a new artistic technique - collage.

As Debbie wrote in that post, 

"I have no idea if I'll ever use this for illustrating children's books, but I'm having so much fun just PLAYING right now." —Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Maybe ask yourself, what does play look like in your creative process? Can you play with poems? With composing in a different language? With music? With art yourself?

How can we add play to the mix of our lives as we all juggle our must-dos and want-to-dos?

Some play might be just what we (and our creative work) need.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

F(o)UN(d) in Translation – a Guest Post by Lawrence Schimel

While it's a cliché to talk about what is "lost in translation" I prefer to think of all the things that are found thanks to translation. And for me one of the best things about being a translator is to help people find stories they couldn't otherwise access because they didn't speak the language.

I define myself first and foremost as a reader, and while some of the books I translate are projects that publishers come to me with, quite a lot are books I read and fall in love with and want to share with more readers in one of my other languages.

The Fun of Translation

There are plenty of articles that talk about the CHALLENGES of translation, and while there are certainly obstacles and hardships, having to do with both the nature of the work itself and also the business-side of the profession (badly paid, lack of credit, etc.), I think there isn't enough emphasis placed on how FUN translation can be. Even (or especially) the literary challenges.

So I asked some fellow translators to share some of what is fun about what it is we do.

Gili Bar-Hillel Semo

Gili Bar-Hillel Semo is a translator from English into Hebrew, and also the editor of YA publisher Utz Books. She loves Diana Wynne Jones and all things Oz, and is perhaps best-known for having translated the Harry Potter series into Hebrew; she just finished a new Hebrew translation of The Catcher in the Rye.

She said:

I guess what I love about translating is that it can sometimes be like solving a crossword puzzle or a riddle. You just know there has to be a clever way of solving something, and when the idea finally springs on you it's immensely gratifying. This is particularly true for wordplay and rhyme, of which there are plenty in children's books.

And then I go around for awhile very pleased with myself because I found a way to translate this impossible thing that seemed untranslatable. Which can probably only be appreciated by other people capable of translating those languages...

Laura Watkinson

When I first approached Laura Watkinson, award-winning translator from Dutch, German, and Italian into English, with this question, she quipped: "It's all fun. Except for the admin!"

But like Gili, she also enjoys the challenges of wordplay. Laura said:

It's also fun – and often a challenge – coming up with translations that involve puns and jokes that require a little more freedom in translation. And funny poems for children too. You have to work with the rhymes and keep it fun but the meaning may change a little so that you can keep the same kind of pace and rhythm. That's always interesting. I sometimes go and sit in cafes to do that kind of work, as it helps me to escape the page a little.

Oh, and picture books with funny pictures can be a real laugh too. Sometimes the pictures will suggest a translation that wouldn't have occurred to me if I'd only seen the words.

Laura also had a unique experience in that one of the books she translated was made into a series and she got to visit the set:

It was great fun going to the Czech Republic to see some of the filming for the Netflix series of The Letter for the King. Fascinating to see some of the words that you've written coming out of actors' mouths. I also came up with a few "translations" of the characters' names, just small shifts generally, to capture the same sounds and sense in English as in the original, and it was good to see those names attached to actual people.

Sometimes translation can be not just fun, but also glamorous, even if it is often borrowed glamour (our work is in some ways a reflection of the author's original).

Like Gili and Laura, some of the "tricky" challenges of translating are the parts I enjoy most--like working on rhyming picture books. The words that rhyme in one language won't necessarily rhyme in the other, and the translator doesn't even have complete freedom to invent new rhymes because they can't contradict anything in the existing artwork.

But for a word nerd like myself, these are not simply obstacles in my path to be surmounted, but are the kind of puzzles I'd do in my free time: basically, I'm getting paid to play wordgames! And the best fun can be making up new puns!

Very often you can't translate puns literally but in order to recreate the reading experience you need to come up with a new pun in the target language that serves the same function.

For instance, when I was translating into English the middle grade bibliofantasy novel The Wild Book by Mexican author Juan Villoro, I got a chance to make up lots of new puns and twists off classic titles. 

At one point, the protagonist's uncle goes through a culinary obsession, and there are lots of jokes with food twists. When the original used Sobras completas as a book title, it was so perfect because that pun plays off Obras completas (or the Collected/Complete Works of an author) and "sobras" which are leftovers. I love brainstorming this kind of thing, and in the end I wound up using A Room with a Stew to evoke both a literary classic and to fit the scene (where everything is being tidied in the kitchen and more or less thrown into the pot). 

It's definitely more fun for me to translate works like these, with a playfulness and a sense of humor, than a dry academic text, say. (Actually, all that latinate jargon translates fairly straightforwardly, so even if you don't know what it means, you can often accurately translate it without even needing to look things up.)

The research can be its own kind of fun. Not so much tracking down quotations that are quoted in your text in translation but were originally written in English (or another language but where an English translation is already published and widely-known). But for instance, when I translated the middle grade novel The Treasure of Barracuda by Llanos Campos, about a pirate crew that learns to read after discovering that the famous treasure is his memoirs, I got to basically spend months of Talk Like a Pirate Day!

And one of the things I value about even some of the purportedly "boring" kind of translations is that I get to learn about all sorts of things. I no longer have a physical encyclopedia set like I used to consult at the library–or at home (although we never bought the whole alphabet's worth of the encyclopedia subscription, so I could only read the early volumes)–when I was a kid, but translation gives me a chance to (temporarily) get lost down a rabbit hole investigating things like locomotives or crystal formations or bonsai–and it's all legitimate and necessary research for work, so it's not even like I'm slacking off in letting my inner geek get to play for a while. 

But I agree with Laura, all the admin is a chore!

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Lawrence Schimel is a bilingual (Spanish/English) author & anthologist who has published over 120 books in many different genres. He won a Crystal Kite Award for his picture book Will You Read a Book With Me?, illustrated by Thiago Lopes, and his books have also been chosen for the White Ravens and by IBBY for Outstanding Books for Children with Disabilities (three times). His children's books featuring rainbow families, Early One Morning and Bedtime, Not Playtime!, both illustrated by Elina Braslina, have been published in 46 editions in 37 languages, including Romansch, Welsh, Icelandic, Changana, isiZulu, and Luxembourgish. He is also a prolific literary translator, both into Spanish and into English, of more than 130 books. He lives in Madrid, Spain, where he founded the SCBWI Spain chapter and served as RA for the first 5 years. 

A Word's-Eye View - A Guest Post by Lawrence Schimel

Learning another language will literally change how you think--something I think can be healthy and helpful to all writers and creators.

For instance, one of my favorite words in the Spanish language is "escampar" which is a verb to describe when the sky clears up after it rains (usually, although it can just be changing from cloudy to blue skies). While I had seen that happen many times before, it was only once I had the vocabulary for this action that I began to recognize this moment as having an existence of its own. It was only by naming it that it came to life for me, and changed how I view the world even if I lack equivalent vocabulary to talk about it in my mother tongue, English.

I am constantly being surprised, while translating, when I run into a conundrum that reveals how the underlying worldview from one language/culture to another is so different, as inherent in what words exist or don't exist, or what they describe. 

Some years ago, I took part in a poetry translation workshop in Slovenia with a group of poets from different countries in which we all translated one another into our languages, using English as the bridge.

And I was surprised and delighted to learn that Slovene has a dual case in its grammatical structure, "you and I," in addition to just the first person singular ("I) and plural ("we of three or more"). Neither English nor Spanish uses this, but ever since I discovered this fact, it's changed how I think and also how I write. Now, I am always aware if a we is an intimate we (a you and I we) or a more general group we (three or more). Obviously, I knew that both kinds of "we" existed before learning that Slovene distinguishes between them, but it was only by my exposure to Slovene that I became aware of this distinction, that solidified it for me.

And because my worldview was changed as a result, my writing was forever changed afterwards–even though neither of my primary languages, English and Spanish, use this as part of their grammars. 

I had already noticed that I write differently in both Spanish and English. And one major aspect of that, for me, is how Spanish uses four different words for what in English is just one: you. I have much more specificity and control, as a result, in Spanish, especially when addressing poetic subjects in poetry, say: tu (informal singular you), usted (formal singular you), vosotros (informal plural you), and ustedes (formal plural you). (And there are regional variants in other Spanish-speaking countries, too, like Argentina, which uses "vos" instead of "tu".)

So whenever I am writing in or translating into English, I find myself at a loss for words when trying to use "you" and having only one vague, general term instead of the specificity and nuance my brain wants to be able to avail itself of, that Spanish offers me. 

And at the same time, I am constantly being forced to consider questions of gender, and inclusive language, because of the differences in how English and Spanish work. Spanish is an inflected language, which mean all nouns are assigned a gender, either male or female. There is no existing neutral form which means that individuals are having to invent new language or grammar to try and be more inclusive, and to reject an artificial and historic cisheteropatriarchal binary even on a linguistic level, which likewise colors thinking when using that same language with its limitations.  

We often have blindspots that we're not even aware of because we lack the vocabulary to discuss them--or the language we use colors our view--and as a result, we don't often stop to recognize or think about these things.

One of these biggest of these is how privilege affects both our thinking and our vocabulary. Ableism, for instance, is so ingrained in English (and also Spanish) that we have the word "disability" without ever having its un-negatived state: it is so taken for granted there isn't even a word/concept for being able-bodied. (Or how we use "blind spot" ableist-ly in non-anatomical situations.)

I recently translated into English a middle grade memoir about a boy from Andorra, a landlocked principality in the Pyrenees, who was born without part of his forearm, and who when he was 9 years old built himself a prosthetic arm out of a LEGO set.

The book is titled Piece by Piece: How I Built My Life (No Instructions Required) and is written by David Aguilar with his father, Ferran Aguilar, and forthcoming in October from AmazonCrossingKids. One of the first issues that came up when I read the book, before starting the translation, that I had to consult with my editor on, was how we would handle the Spanish word "manco." Because Spanish has a term that means having only one-arm or one-hand (or to be missing one arm or one hand). Curiously, Spanish also has the term "tuerto" for being only one-eyed, but doesn't have a term for having only one leg/foot.

But English lacks vocabulary for all of those three states, so I was left not just with a linguistic question but also a philosophical one, confronting inherent ableisms that were so ingrained in one of the languages I think with.  

Figuring out how to deal with the word manco in the translation was important because not only does it feature often as a simple, everyday word/concept in Spanish, and one which is very integral to this memoir, but David also has a delightful sense of humor and makes a lot of jokes and plays on words throughout the book, some of which riff off the word manco. Like "mancopedia" to refer to someone as an "encyclopedia of being one-handed."

David also rejects the term "disabilty" and instead uses "diff-ability" for "differently-abled" (which fortunately was constructed exactly the same).

Which takes us back to the ableism inherent in both Spanish and English, in which the word "disability" exists, but the status of being able-bodied is so taken for granted that there isn't even vocabulary for it.

Translating this memoir was eye-opening in that I didn't just need to re-create all of David's wordplay and dad-jokes in the translation, but it made me stop and think about how each of my two primary languages conceives bodies and what we can do with them.

This is why, beyond opening the possibility for communicating with more people, and reading stories written in other languages, I stated at the beginning that learning language is something that I think can be helpful for all writers and creatives because of how access to new vocabulary will create new ways of thinking about the world or offer different insights about how you already think and speak about the world. Which can only add nuance and understanding to our stories, not just how we conceptualize them but how we shape them, word by word.

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Lawrence Schimel is a bilingual (Spanish/English) author & anthologist who has published over 120 books in many different genres. He won a Crystal Kite Award for his picture book Will You Read a Book With Me?, illustrated by Thiago Lopes, and his books have also been chosen for the White Ravens and by IBBY for Outstanding Books for Children with Disabilities (three times). His children's books featuring rainbow families, Early One Morning and Bedtime, Not Playtime!, both illustrated by Elina Braslina, have been published in 46 editions in 37 languages, including Romansch, Welsh, Icelandic, Changana, isiZulu, and Luxembourgish. He is also a prolific literary translator, both into Spanish and into English, of more than 130 books. He lives in Madrid, Spain, where he founded the SCBWI Spain chapter and served as RA for the first 5 years. 

Creating in a Storm - Strategies

The news on book banning in the U.S.A., including this recent article in Publishers Weekly about a Tennessee bill that would create a politically appointed commission to essential veto any book in any public school in the state feels like a storm.

Not a rainstorm that washes anything clean, but more of a sand storm, or a dust storm like in this photo of a 1935 dust storm in Spearman, Texas. A storm that makes it hard to see. That disorients. 

How do we create in the midst of so much sand/dust/noise? A few strategies come to mind:

1) Shut it out. Lock your doors, seal your windows, and hunker down and do your creative work.

2) Let the knowledge that everyone understands what you're creating has power fuel your creative work. Recognize that the storm has been created because the power of books for kids and teens is undeniable. Books can be life-affirming for marginalized youth. Books can level the playing field, or keep it unjust. Books can define both perceptions and reality -- control over that power is what the storm is all about in the first place. 

3) Put on some protective gear and go out into the storm to help those who need help. That's a metaphor, and each of us will have to figure out what's our protective gear. (Mine seems to be staying off Twitter.)

4) Focus on who you're creating work for in the first place. That's the kids and the teens, the ones who need your book. The ones for whom it will change everything.

Do you have additional strategies? Please share them in comments.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee