Hi! I’m Emma Otheguy, author of several books for kids. Today I’m re-sharing a post I wrote when my picture book Martina Has Too Many Tías was first published. I still stand by all the advice here, and now new subscribers and those visiting my Substack archives will be able to read it!
After publishing ten books, I’ve learned as many things. Here are my top tips for aspiring writers:
Take your time. Publishing must be one of few industries where time is on your side, but most of us are in such a rush to see our books printed and bound that we ignore what a gift it is to work with people who are diligent and meticulous, who value accuracy, who want every word to sing. You will be shocked by how long it takes agents to reply and publishers to get a book on shelves once it’s signed. There is an eternity between the first pass of galleys and finally parting with a manuscript. You can be frustrated, or you can use the time. You can research. You can revise again. You can make everything so much better. And as my agent always tells me, no one remembers what season a book came out. They remember if it was a good book or not.
Learn to manage your inbox. Authors get a lot of email, so having a good system in place will be well worth your time. I’ve tinkered with a few different approaches. My favorite is from David Allen’s book Getting Things Done–I use a Google Doc for a list of Next Actions/Waiting For, and the app Todoist to schedule tasks for the future.
Keep coming back. I have read piles of writing advice about discipline and writing every day and not breaking the streak and waking up at 5am when the house is quiet, and while I admire those writers immensely, I don’t see that working if you have toddlers and live in an apartment and run around the country giving talks and school visits. You know what happens when I wake up at 5am to write? A neighbor comes home from a night shift and turns on their stereo. My kids hear my footsteps and cry out for me. As one of my college besties used to say, sleep when you can, not when you have to. Your life is surely different, but probably no less chaotic. So here is my go-to real-world writing advice: just keep coming back to the manuscript. It doesn’t have to be every day or even every week, but if you keep coming back, you will eventually, someday, have a book on your hands. I promise. It’s the only way I have ever written a book: with a thousand interruptions, stopping and starting, little by little.
Just say no to requests to work for free. This can feel like a real bummer. Often these are invitations I would love to agree to–I love meeting readers, I love spending time with my fellow authors, and I love making my publishers happy. But, like most people, I simply have to earn money when I’m working. I always feel a twinge of remorse when I say no, but I don’t see another way forward. No one is going to stop asking authors to work for free until there are no authors willing to do it. There will always be deep inequities in who can access the publishing industry and how much they can advance their careers if we make uncompensated events a cornerstone of book promotion. There’s very little I can do about these problems, but I get to choose when to walk off the field. It feels good to make that choice. There are a few exceptions to this rule, especially right when I have a new book coming out or a particularly fabulous opportunity arises, but for the most part, gracefully declining free work is the right decision.
Plan one event at a time. Just like you can’t “write a book” (you write one word, then a sentence, then a paragraph, then a chapter, and somewhere along the way it becomes a book) you can’t “plan a book tour.” You can plan one event at a time, over and over again, city by city.
If you are a freelancer, figure out how to recreate some of the structure and security you are giving up. Even if you earn enough to live on, it is no small sacrifice to forgo benefits like employer-sponsored health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and parental leave. I felt this very acutely when I was working through the early postpartum period with my second–I actually liked having something to put my mind to other than the baby and my sluggish recovery, but I resented not having much of a choice in the matter. For me, building structure and security looks like good bookkeeping practices (I use YNAB, but a spreadsheet would probably work just fine), and I invest a portion of my earnings in a SEP-IRA every single time I get paid. Yes, sometimes this is a comically small amount! But it gives me confidence and peace of mind to know that I’m getting every deduction I can and making a plan for retirement.
Don’t be busy. The first few years of publishing, there were two things that annoyed me: old acquaintances emailing me for publishing information they could probably look up on the internet, and family and friends assuming that I had all the time in the world because I’m a full-time writer and everyone knows that’s a fake job. Why didn’t anyone realize how hard and time-consuming it is to “make it” as a writer? Then I had two kids in 15 months and when daycare wasn’t closed for COVID my youngest seemed to get sick all on his own, and I realized that I had never in my previous life been busy at all, not even once. And whenever I get cocky and think “Wow, now I’m really busy” (we added a third baby to our family this spring and I’m still working on multiple book projects), I meet someone who has triplets. So, I just don’t think about how busy I am, or bother telling other people. Here’s what I’ve found since I gave up on being busy: that it’s an honor to serve a network of people who care about words and books and self-expression. It is grounding to have family and friends who know me not as an author but as someone who likes long conversations and knits through leisurely weekday lunches. As much as we’d all love to be seen as busy and important, I don’t think it’s actually good for any of us. My knee-jerk reaction when someone else tells me they are busy is defensiveness (“They think they’re busy? Are you kidding me? Let me tell them everything I have going on!”), but I try to remember how busy and overwhelmed I felt at times when I was in fact less busy, and respond with grace. We all have big, important lives, and we need to decide what to do with our time. This doesn’t mean that I say yes to everything (in fact, the opposite is true–I decline many of the invitations I receive). But when people ask me for things, when I can, I try to lean a little on the side of generosity and ease.
Know who kids are. The child population today is majority POC (just–roughly half). One quarter of kids are children of immigrants. 1 in 7 kids are poor. In a country or residential segregation and in a political moment of banning books by queer and POC authors, it’s easy to forget these facts. Our bookshelves don’t look like our children, and many of our children don’t have access to bookshelves anyway. If this doesn’t bother you, then you’re not writing for kids today.
Ask for help. I used to feel like I needed to know it all, especially when it came to the historical content in my books. I have a doctorate in History, so shouldn’t I be an expert on everything? But this comes back to recreating as a freelancer what you might have in a traditional job. Asking for help is how you recreate the experience of having colleagues. Some of my most fruitful writing experiences have been critique swaps with other children’s authors, writing dates with neighbors, and phone calls with historians when I didn’t understand something or needed a fact check. The big risk of asking for help is that some percentage of people will always cite their busyness, and that will certainly make you feel small. But then you roll your eyes and think of triplets (see number 7).
As the saying goes, write what you know. For example, my cousin gave birth to a gorgeous baby a few weeks ago. All of my other cousins who live in her area showed up at the hospital, and that turned out to be a lot of people. They got in big trouble with the security guards. It was a whole thing. So you see, I know a lot about too many tías, and if you read Martina Has Too Many Tías, you will too!
Other News…
I am now scheduling author visits to schools. Visit my booking page or contact Lisa Nadel at lonnilanemarketing@gmail.com for more information.
I will be speaking at Bookfest at Bank Street in New York City on November 2nd. Registration is now open for virtual and in-person attendance.
New Yorkers: save the date for an in-person book party to celebrate the launch of COUSINS IN THE TIME OF MAGIC on Tuesday, Februrary 25th, 6pm at the Corner Bookstore, a classic New York venue with twinkly lighting and an old-fashioned cash register. I hope you’ll come celebrate with me!
Refer a friend
Substack has added a new feature where readers get rewards for sharing newsletters with their friends. I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about this feature, but since the whole purpose of this newsletter is to shine a light on my books, I decided that I actually like the idea of being able to thank you for sharing this newsletter with other readers. Here’s how it works: If you share this newsletter with a friend using the button below (“Refer a friend”) and they subscribe, you get:
1 person: my PDF workbook for aspiring children’s authors
5 people: a pre-recorded video for your classroom or favorite kid with a fun fact about my books
25 people: a Zoom consultation (for writers) or a Zoom Q&A for your classroom (for educators and parents)
THANK YOU! I depend on teachers, librarians, parents, and other caring grown-ups that help children find my books. I am so grateful to you for sharing my work!