What Can I Write About? What to Do When the Well Runs Dry by Pat Miller

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Recently, one of those registered for my upcoming NF 4 NF Children's Nonfiction Writing Conference asked a surprising question. "It's my writing day today and one of my task list items is to ask you for homework. Sounds strange, I know, but I feel like I'm having writer's block on what to do next."

I find that taking action creates motivation, rather than the other way around. Asking for help is one way to take action when the well runs dry. Perhaps you need a little "homework?" This was the assignment I gave for her nonfiction needs. 

1. Revive a languishing manuscript

If you're like me, you have manuscripts “under the bed” that just didn't catch fire. Distance from your once-loved manuscripts creates a detachment that makes it easier to delete paragraphs, remove incidents, and see where sensory details are needed. Hopefully it’s been long enough that you’ve forgotten the information you subconsciously brought to the page, revealing assumptions and gaps for the reader you were blind to before.

Choose one of your non-starters that still seems to have some juice in it. Use Nancy I. Sanders' checklist to attack your story methodically. Have fun giving this work a thorough makeover. Play with the language. Add details that put us there. Sketch each scene with stick figures to see if you have provided enough detail for the reader’s imagination and the illustrator. Nonfiction needs the same detail so the reader can picture the time, the people, or the science you are writing about. 

2. Do a quick investigation

When you find yourself thinking, “I wonder why…?” or “How does …?” you have a bridge to a writing project. And if those thoughts don't occur to you regularly, here are some books I use to pique curiosity. Sometimes the unpressured action of investigating a mental nudge bypasses the perfectionism that may be keeping you from writing. (I've included a similar website in parenthesis.)

Chase’s Calendar of Events. This book contains 12,500 entries. Many of those could start one writing. The day of the request, for example, was the birthday of Elizabeth Fry. She devoted her life at the turn of the 19th century to improving the conditions of women in prison. Sounds hopeless—why did she care? How did she try? Did she have any success? It was also the beginning of the Mudbug Madness Festival in Shreveport, LA. What is the appeal of mudbugs (crawfish)? What’s their life like? Why is it such a mainstay of the Cajun cookbook? (Important Dates in History)

An Uncommon History of Common Things is a National Geographic book by Bethane Patrick and John Thompson. Chapters include Food & Drink, Toys & Games, Symbols & Customs, and six more. Any of these may make you wonder—and investigate further. This technique works--my upcoming book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is about the guy who invented the hole in the doughnut. (Origins of Everyday Things)

Robertson’s Book of Firsts: Who Did What for the First Time by Patrick Robertson. Learn about the first microwave oven, the first railroad accident, even the first elevator music. Perhaps you can challenge yourself to write about the event in 100 words or less—giving yourself practice in getting the best bits into the best words. (Firsts in America)

3. Prime the pump with mentor texts

There are so many engaging and inspiring children’s books that you can use as a mentor or template. For this assignment, you'll need at least three books in your genre—maybe three biographies, or three books about animals.

First, read each one thoughtfully with the goal of choosing your favorite. Second, make a page by page list of the structure of the story. You’re looking at the bones, not the meat.

For example, here is the page by page structure I would write for Those Rebels, John & Tom by Barbara Kerley:

1. Set the stage, and the hook, with a single summary sentence 
2. Single sentence that is true about both
3. John as a kid
4. Tom as a kid
5. Two lists of differences between two men
6. John at home and work
7. Tom at home and work
8. They were different, but one big thing they  had in common…

Last, using that structure, build a similar book on the same structure. For this example, choose two people who are similar in a major way, but different in many others, and plug your research into this structure. Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt and Calamity Jane? Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison? Elizabeth Blackwell and Amelia Bloomer?

Or you might choose a book about wolves, and use its structure to write about raccoons. Or a book about the early settlers in Virginia as a model for your book about the early settlers of your home state.

If these suggestions don't get your fingers on the keyboard, here are 11 pages of nonfiction writing prompts from Los Gatos High School, Los Gatos, CA, to keep you busy and inspired. Good luck!

Six Reasons Why Nonfiction Writing is Easier Than Writing Fiction by Pat Miller

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Well, maybe not easier. But I've written both, and I discovered a number of things that make nonfiction more writer-friendly. Here are six of them:

1. Curiosity comes first. When you observe a baby, you see someone motivated by curiosity. Once his basic needs are met, it’s what drives him. Where’s that sound? What’s that red thing? Who is looking at me? Curiosity leads them to put everything in their mouths, to roll and crawl and observe. Imagination kicks in years later when they are capable of thinking things like, “I wonder if there are unicorns on the moon.”

As a writer, I find that my curiosity is easily aroused. Were the Dodge brothers really as competitive as the car commercial implies? Do some people have more taste buds than others? Who discovered aspirin? What say you, Imagination? *crickets*

2. The ideas are already "out there". Whereas fiction writers have to nourish the tender sprout of inspiration, nonfiction writers need pruning shears to shape the lush growth of information that is readily available.

It's part of human nature to preserve things for posterity. From hoarders to curators, mankind saves things, and saves words. You can find books, letters  and journals from prior centuries. There are billions of  historical photographs, census records, deeds, and obituaries to access from your home computer. There's the realia from bygone days--spoons to carriages, bonnets to armor, skeletons, sculpture, homes. You can see and touch what it is you write about.

3. Experts are eager to help do the work. You don’t have to know what you are talking about. Part of research is to find someone who does. Whether you are interested in the life cycle of the pika or the invention of indoor plumbing, there is likely an expert delighted to share her information with you. Medieval dress, nineteenth century medicine, Inuit burial customs--someone is passionate about it.

When I was researching the mariner who invented the hole in the doughnut, I got help from librarians, maritime history professors, docents at a maritime museum, and newspaper archivists. Don’t forget interest groups, re-enactors, documentaries, and restored homes, shops, and battlefields. You aren't alone with the blank page. Visiting these places and experts leads to a bonus for nonfiction writers--tax write offs!

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4. Experiences and experiments count! Did you try parasailing on your honeymoon? Have you spent three consecutive days in the Smithsonian aviation museum? Do you have a passion for throwing pots, windsurfing, or making doll furniture? You can write about your interests. Keep a journal on your Nile trip, follow up on something you heard about DNA and tracing ancestors, or interview kindergartners about their opinions. It’s all fertile ground in which to grow a true book.

5. Mentor texts often have “cheat sheets”. If I don’t know where to begin my research on a topic, I find a book on the subject in my children’s library. Not only is there useful content, but the author leans in and whispers to me, “Look in the back—I left you a road map.”

Here she may have included a list of books and sites she used to write the book. Write those down! She may thank her experts in her acknowledgement page. Could I start with one of them? Her list of photo credits may lead me to resources for my own work. No need to ask who can help. Your competition is often willing to help!

6. Editors are begging for nonfiction. Even if you are able to create a wonderful fiction story, you face formidable odds. Many worthy fiction titles go unpublished simply because of the numbers of competing manuscripts. But thanks to the insatiable curiosity of children, Common Core demands, and curriculum topics, publishers are clamoring for quality nonfiction of every stripe. According to Peggy Thomas, co-author of Anatomy of Nonfiction, you are eight times more likely to be published in nonfiction than fiction. Besides the trade market, there is the huge educational market.

Even if you consider yourself a fiction or poetry writer, try your hand at an engaging biography (no need to invent the characters!) or some poetic science. Exercise your curiosity as well as your creativity when you sit down to write. It’s easy!

Pat Miller is author of two dozen books for school librarians, hundreds of professional articles, six books for kids, and is organizer of NF 4 NF: Nonfiction Conference for Children's Writers coming in September, 2015. Find out more about the conference . 

Fiction vs. Nonfiction: Must a Writer Choose? by Pat Miller

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Unlike being engaged or voting in a primary, writers don’t have to choose just one. In fact, writing fiction can well equip one to write nonfiction. On the flip side, writing fiction can give nonfiction writers freer rein with their creativity.

Here’s how it works. Fiction writers can craft true books that use a story arc, character development, and dialogue to explain historical, scientific, or biographical topics. The difference is that everything is true. Creating characters solely from imagination exercises the part of a nonfiction writer’s brain that is the source of the lyrical language that can make nonfiction compelling.

Since there are so many of us fiction writers, let’s examine other benefits of writing true books. Nonfiction success can counteract the many rejections of one’s fiction. In Anatomy of Nonfiction: Writing True Stories for Children, Peggy Thomas states you are eight times more likely to be published in nonfiction than fiction. That means 1/8^th the rejection letters, 1/8^th the pity parties, and 8 times the confidence in one’s abilities! That confidence can help sustain the fiction writer who persists in the bruising submission process.

Bonus--you get a head start with nonfiction. According to biographer Jean Fritz, “[Writing nonfiction] is not a matter of coaxing up a story, but of perceiving the story line that’s already there.” If you're one who delves into your imaginary characters so deeply that you know their secrets, their songs, and all their uncles, then you are a natural for researching real facts about real people. Instead of plumbing your imagination, you will search through resources that are both interesting and addictive.  And unlike fiction, you will have experts, librarians, and enthusiasts who will eagerly help you on your quest.

From Peggy Thomas: “Nonfiction is a simple beast, really. In its most basic form it consists of a skeleton of accurate information, the flesh and blood of story, the heart of the writer, and the muscle of marketing.” If you write fiction, you already have three of these four tools in your toolbox.

Peggy continues, “Your job as a nonfiction writer is to raise your antenna and tune in to the true 

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 stories that exist around you.” Unlike rubbing the genie lamp of imagination, hoping a story will wispily appear, the writer of true stories has merely to practice alertness to find things to write about—even topics already on the shelf. “A subject may have been written about, but not by you—not with your ideas, and not from your perspective.”

When you write fiction, you do your research between your own two ears. Since nonfiction happens here on our planet, lots of evidence and details are readily available. There are primary sources like journals, legal records, manuals, and letters. There are museums and restored habitations, aquariums, zoos, galleries, newspaper morgues, recordings, and online resources. These provide settings, characters, dialogue, and problems that you don’t have to imagine. And there are passionate experts only too willing to help you flesh out or vet your stories.

So you don’t have to choose. You can do both. If you write nonfiction, or are considering it, I have two suggestions:

1. Read Peggy Thomas’s Anatomy of Nonfiction. I read every page while working on my first biography. I credit her inspiration and practical techniques for its acceptance by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for publication in 2016.

2. Participate in the NF 4 NF Nonfiction for Children’s Writers Conference on October 9 – 12. Peggy Thomas will present three of the 16 sessions and offers critiques. Peggy’s sessions include “The Heart and Voice of Your Story”, “Research Techniques That Get to the Facts”, and “Biographies: Making Friends with Strangers”. Be sure to bring your copy of Anatomy of Nonfiction to be autographed.

Learn more about the stellar faculty, the schedule, location, and social events at the site. Register today—Early Bird rate ends September 1.