The books we love as children tend to stay with us for a lifetime. This month at Write the World, we’re celebrating these treasured tales with the launch of our Writing for Children Competition. We’re very excited to have the award winning author, Minh Lê, join us as our competition guest judge. In this month’s Q&A, Minh offers some handy tips on how to approach writing and illustrating your story and tells us how his desire to write for children came to fruition.
What advice do you have for a writer who’s never written for a younger audience?
When asked for writing advice (particularly picture book writing), I always point to a quote from Wind, Sand, and Stars, by Antoine St. Exupery, the author of The Little Prince. In the book he talks about building airplanes during the early days of flight and has this beautiful line:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
I try to keep that quote in mind whenever I’m writing. Not that you have to go full Hemingway and write only in terse prose… but you should make sure that every word on the page serves a purpose. Weigh yourself down with too many unnecessary words and there’s a good chance your story will never take flight.
You work with illustrators who create images to accompany your words. What does this process entail? Do you approach the illustrators early on in the process? Do you have an idea of what the illustrations might look like before you begin writing?
People often ask me what it’s like to have someone else illustrate my book. And I tell them that they’re looking at it wrong: It’s not that the illustrator is illustrating MY book, but more that my text is creating space for an illustrator to work their magic and bring OUR story to life.
As someone who loves picture books and values the interplay between text and image, I think that having that shared ownership is essential to a successful picture book collaboration. However, I am a visual thinker and given that so much of the action in my stories is conveyed through the illustrations, some light notes are necessary for a manuscript to make sense to the editor and illustrator. I really try to keep these notes very sparse because you really want the illustrator to have room to play and make the story their own.
FYI: I feel particularly lucky with Let Me Finish because the illustrator (the amazing Isabel Roxas) took my words to a level that I couldn’t have possibly imagined… but at the same time it is exactly the book that I had in mind. Which is as good as it gets.
When and how did you decide to write your first children’s book, Let Me Finish? Did you always know you wanted to write for children or was this an unexpected turn in your writing career?
I’ve wanted to write picture books since my college days… and probably well before. It’s the literary format that best fits my particular kind of creativity. However, over the years I kept putting that dream on the back burner while pursuing other things (hence my day job in early childhood policy).
But I never let go of the idea of writing a picture book and was always writing ideas down in journals or random scraps of paper. One day (with a helpful nudge from my wife), I realized that I wasn’t going to be satisfied with my growing collection of half-baked ideas, so I picked the one that felt most complete, polished it up and sent it out into the world.
What were some of your favorite children’s books growing up?
So many favorites, but three that stand out for me are: Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams, and The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren. These are favorites that I now share with my own children, giving these already beloved stories an added layer of meaning.
That’s one of the truly special things about children’s literature: if you find the right book early enough, that’s a work of art that grows with you over the course of a lifetime.
What are you looking for in a strong story for children?
The less you worry about what I’m looking for, the better. Focus on finding a voice that feels right to you and a story that you want or need to tell. Starting with a story you are compelled to write will help you end up with a story others are compelled to read.
Illustrations by Isabel Roxas from Let Me Finish
About Minh
Minh Lê is the author of Let Me Finish!, illustrated by Isabel Roxas and the upcoming Drawn Together with Caldecott medalist Dan Santat (both published by Disney-Hyperion). He is a federal early childhood policy analyst by day and also reviews children’s books for a number of national publications, including The New York Times, the Horn Book, and the Huffington Post. He received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a master’s in education from Harvard University. Outside of spending time with his beautiful wife and sons, his favorite place to be is in the middle of a good book. Visit Minh online at minhlebooks.com or on Twitter @bottomshelfbks.
