Melanie Conklin: Counting Thyme and an author's process

CCIRA Literacy Conversations

00:00:00 Molly Rauh
Hello and welcome back to this CCIA Literacy Conversations podcast. I'm your host Molly Rauh with my co-host...

00:00:08 Jessica Rickert
...Jessica Rickert. Today's podcast features, Melanie Conklin, Melanie's work centers around writing middle grade novels. Melanie shares about her writing process, inspiration for her stories, and how Nicholas Sparks helped her get started in the publishing world. We are here with Melanie Conklin. Thank you, Melanie, for joining us on our our podcast. Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your background?

00:00:36 Melanie Conklin
Sure thing. Hi, I'm Melanie. I'm very excited to come and visit Denver in the beginning of 2022. Let's all take a moment to acknowledge how ridiculous it is that it's almost 2022. But my background was in not writing at all. I actually went to design school and studied to be a product designer. Most people don't know what that is. But basically, if you've ever been in Target or Walmart, all that stuff on the shelves that's what a product designer works on. We decide what something looks like and how it works; these kind of consumer products that you have in your home. So if you've ever seen like a giant cupcake birthday cake, it's like a giant cake, and it comes out of a pan. I designed that pan. So you probably have stuff in your house that I designed and worked on. That's a fun talking point. But so I was I was a designer for about 10 years. I quit to stay home with my kids while they were little, and I still liked them. And and I got bored during that time, started writing. And, and five years later, I was an author. So that's how I got here.

00:01:41 Molly Rauh
So I feel like they're have to be more steps from going from writer to authors. Or are there some stories or some pieces there of how you went from? Like I'm writing with my time to I have something published?

00:01:55 Melanie Conklin
Sure. You know, it's interesting because I've been in publishing for a few years now, and I've met a lot of writers, and a lot of them have very circuitous unexpected paths to becoming authors. For me, I just think I have always had a love of the creative process. So when I had this like energy, one day, I woke up and thought, Oh, I have this idea for the story. Well, if I was writing that, I'd started this way. And so at nap time, I was like, well, why don't I just write that down? Like I have Microsoft Word like I can do that for free and product design. You have to bet I have about a million dollars to like, make a product. But for a book, all you have to have is somewhere to write, you know, even on paper. So I started writing, and I told my husband, you know, I think I'm writing a book, and he was like, of course, you are. So just let me know when it's done. And then I then I tried to read the whole internet, you know, to learn how to be a writer. I finished that first draft, and it was really bad. It did all the things that you're not supposed to do. So the protagonist was like 14 which is the dead space in between middle grade and YA. And she woke up from a dream on the first page and looked in the mirror immediately, which all three of those things are bad. Like none of that is good. And so once I started learning what I needed to do, I explored more, discovered that my voice for middle grade was something that really resonated with me. And "Counting Thyme" was my first book that was published was the third book that I wrote. And when I wrote that one in my critique, partners are reading it. They were like, you know, this is something like this. This reads like a real book. What's funny is it really didn't. There was still a lot of work that needed to be done. But at that point, I entered into the arena of trying to find an agent. And, you know, most people are always like. So how did you get your book published? Like, did you just send it to the publisher, or whatever? What happens is, an author works with an agent who's like your representative, who then takes your book to a publisher and convinces an editor at that publisher to buy it. And then you get paid, and the agent gets a chunk of what you get paid. So it's the first big decision you have to make when you're entering publishing is what agent are you going to work with? And so I had a few different agents that were interested in me, which was great, very fortunate. And my agent that I ended up working with at that time, he was didn't have a ton of experience yet with his own clients. But he said, you know, one of our I want to have one of our agency clients call. You can answer questions. And I was like, okay, that sounds good. So he told me what time I was going to get a call, but he didn't tell me who was calling. So my phone rings and I pick it up. And on the other end of the line, the guy says, "Hi. This is Nicholas Sparks, isn't that wild?" And I went, "What?" and he goes, "This is Nicholas Sparks, you know, the author, you know, I you, you're looking to work with one of my agents." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." So I was totally my brain emptied of all thoughts. Like, what am I supposed to say to Nicholas Sparks? Right? Well, he turned out to be super helpful. You know, has a ton of experience could answer any question I had. And of course, had some real verbal gems that I was just like, wow, I can't believe I just heard him say that to me on the phone. So I did end up signing with that agent. We don't work together anymore now, for totally other reasons. But we had a great time working together for a few years. And I will never forget having Nicholas Sparks call me from from the road to talk to me about publishing.

00:05:40 Jessica Rickert
That is an amazing story. I would have probably freaked out too, and not been able to talk about anything, coherently. So with your first book, it centers around cancer, right?

00:05:54 Melanie Conklin
Yeah.

00:05:55 Jessica Rickert
So, tell us about how did that play? Like, was there a personal experience that you felt the need to write this book around that?

00:06:07 Melanie Conklin
Sure. So my my debut novel was for middle grade readers, and it's called "Counting Thyme." But time is spelled with an "H"- "Y" like the herb. And it's about a girl named Thyme who moves across the country for her little brother's cancer treatment. And it's sort of about that conflict that you have if you're a sibling where you often want things for yourself. But you have to compromise a lot, because there are other children who need things in your family as well. Which I have a little sister. So there's a lot of fodder for me about that topic. I was gravitated towards writing about pediatric cancer and specifically, neuroblastoma, because a few years prior to writing this, when I lived in Brooklyn, one of our neighbors' children was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. And this was when blogs had just started. And so everybody was like, wow, you can read it. You can read about each other's like daily lives like, and they can just post updates. And everyone in our neighborhood followed their blog and organized meal train and raised funds when they needed it for different things. And I became pretty intimately familiar with how difficult the treatment is for a lot of pediatric cancers, specifically this one. And I felt like it was just a really, really tough position for parents to be in that you're pursuing a treatment that you know is painful and difficult for your child. But it's the best chance they have. It's the best chance science can give them to outlive the disease. That's what I wanted to write about in that book. And I think it was the first middle grade that was had neuroblastoma knit, pretty sure, but I was personally familiar with it. Then I started working with a group called Cookies for Kids Cancer that raises funds to support research in that arena and part of what I, my proceeds from "Counting Thyme," went to supporting their research.

00:08:02 Jessica Rickert
And you have some crazy statistics about childhood cancer on your website, which, like, shocked me. I didn't know that it would - isn't it the greatest killer of kids? Like that's how kids die the most deaths are attributed to cancer.

00:08:23 Melanie Conklin
Yeah, you would. You would think it might be something else. But actually, pediatric cancer is the leading cause of death in childre. A lot of times, because it's not discovered until it's quite late. A lot of times you don't have the signs that you have with adult bodies. And so, and things are progressing quickly, because they have rapidly dividing cells, you know, because they are growing. So that's what neuroblastoma in particular is cancer of the nervous system. So it can appear anywhere that you have nerves, which means it can be all over your whole body, not only in your brain and your spine. So that can make it really hard to treat. And and that's what was kind of astonishing to me when I got to know the statistics through cookies for kids cancer was that there was so little money being spent on on cures for for children or even treatment, and that it's very difficult to even develop treatments ethically, because you don't want to do a study where you're giving placebo to children, you know, in order -so most of these treatments, including the one that's depicted in "Counting Thyme," which is an antibody treatment. They remain in clinical trial status permanently, because in order to get approval, they have to do a blind study, and they would have to knowingly let children suffer without getting the treatment. And that's just a real conflict of ethics. So it's very complicated trying to develop new treatments for pediatric cancer. And that's why supporting it is really important because they don't have the same kind of funding draw that say breast cancer awareness has. However, they have some of the best results. When I first started and learned about neuroblastoma, they're from that time to when "Counting Thyme" was published Cookies for Kids Cancer funded seven dozen clinical trials, and they actually increased the rate of survival among children in that like five year span. And so when you think about one organization doing that work, that's what they got done. What can we do if, if more people contribute to that? So it's definitely a topic that I'm passionate about having lived through witnessing my neighbor, go through it.

00:10:42 Molly Rauh
Changing gears a little bit. So obviously you tried to read the internet. And you have also, you know, had this experience with your neighbor where you got inspired, and you explored that. So, you know, there's there's this great story of where your idea came from. But what is your writing process look like, you know, from idea to words on page? Because, you know, you said you were writing a book, and your husband was like, of course, you are. Like, so obviously you kind of sit around and write anyways. So what does writing look like for you as an individual?

00:11:18 Melanie Conklin
Well, for me, writing is - it's fun because I've been figuring out that process. I'm glad you're asking me now and not five years ago, because five years ago, I'd be like, well, I'm trying this. It's not going well, I'm trying that, maybe I'll try this next. It definitely takes a while to discover your own process. Even even being someone who came from a creative background, I had to figure out what worked for me with writing. And now the process is really what I love about it. It's very chaotic early on when I first have an idea for a novel I've learned to just kind of let the different parts of the idea come to me and whatever order they're going to come and not be judgmental about it. I just let myself write notes. I write them in a notebook, and then I write them on my phone. I use notepad on my phone. And so a lot of times, right before I go to bed at night, I'm tapping out some stuff on my phone so that then my brain will go to sleep. But I just kind of let all these little pieces is of the story kind of build up. And I get to a certain point where I've kind of like built this momentum, and this little mountain of a foundation. And then I'm ready to start actually trying to write the book. So when I write a first draft, I don't worry about how bad it is, because I'm never going to show it to anybody. I don't even show my first draft to my agent or editor. Nobody gets to see it. So I call it a zero draft, as I feel like that's less pressure like it's not even number one. I just I'm just just just trying it out. So I write a draft, and then I take a break from it, and then I go back and look at what do I actually have here. And I outline it. And that is when I actually look at it and go, how do I need to make this into a good story? Like where do I need to make a good midpoint? And what do I need to be the climax? I don't worry about any of that very much before I start writing that for me is revision. So when I'm in that phase, I have, you know, those tri-fold boards for like science fairs. So I have one of those in my office, and that's how I work. So I use note cards and Post-it notes, and I just pin them all over that board. And the one panel is the First Act. The middle panel is a second act. And the last panel is the third act, and I just put it all up in order and then rewrite it again. So typically for me, I'm rewriting a lot, and I have a lot of visual mess around me, sketches, Post-it notes, just this accumulation of like, thought that then I basically kind of organized. Then it turns into a book. So that's what I've discovered. Works for me. And I love seeing other writers processes. It's so cool.

00:13:53 Jessica Rickert
Do you talk to other writers about their process and tweak your process based on that, or have you come to? This is really what works for you. And so continue with that, you know, writers where we generally like, kind of like craft and are sort of nerds about the writing process, because you're spending a lot of time doing it. So it would be hard to keep doing it if you didn't have a real passion for it. So yes, totally every time I share, a picture of something in my office of, oh, this is how I'm organizing. Like right now, I'm doing NanoWriMo, which some people may have heard of. It's the national novel writing month happens in November. And it's like a group challenge where everybody tries to write 50000 words for the month, and you're kind of cheering each other on, and you're getting one of those zero drafts done. I'm not drafting right now, though. I actually had a bunch of other stuff I needed to do. So I decided to make a list where I just made a box for each and everything I needed to do, like I need to revise 200 pages. And I broke that up into 20 boxes of 10 pages each. And I just made this whole grid of boxes. And I said, guys, this is what I'm doing for NanoWriMo. I'm checking off two boxes a day, and some of my other friends then sent theirs on Twitter saying, yeah, I'm going to do this to I'm going to organize it like that. So, writers generally really love seeing those visual parts of the process. And I've absolutely picked up some things from other people. One of my good writing friends, Tracey Baptiste, who has a new book just came out "African Icons." She does Post-it notes on the wall too, and we're always comparing and sending things back, and I'll be like, wait a second. Is that color coding? What are you coding there? And how are you color coding it? Like, I need to know your secrets.

00:15:42 Molly Rauh
Well and that reminds me, you know, this is more of a NanoWriMo plug, but some of them, I don't know if you've ever used some of their like prewriting stuff before the actual, you know, month begins. But some of those resources are phenomenal writing resources like there's some character development stuff that I plugged through one time. And you know, yeah, it's like there's so many good resources. And I'm sure those came from awesome authors like yourselves who were sharing process and helping develop writers. And you know, it's a cool place to look. So as teachers like, they should go check that out because man, their total stuff in there for kids to work on ideas.

00:16:24 Melanie Conklin
And and honestly, a lot of - this is the kind of goes back and forth. And I have seen a lot of things that I have learned from from from educators, because you guys take this kind of personal chaotic process and chunk it up and organize it so that you can teach it; ladder someone through that process, right? Can you tell my sister is a teacher? Now, an assistant principal like I got the lingo. But anyway. And so I have often seen something like, I remember one time there was one of my educator friends had the different ways of the different stages of revision in scale. So one is a carrot. And one is adding a spider leg. And one is adding a flap. And one is a blank piece of paper. And the visualization of that I was like, oh, my gosh, that is exactly what I do like trying to communicate that to student. I learned things from what I see educators sharing. And so there's definitely this kind of sharing that goes back and forth. I like prewriting. I love to linger there. I think that you often see people in movies sitting down and clackety-clack. They're just going at it at a blank page. And I know some people might do that, and that might be wonderful for them. But the vast majority of people I know they do some kind of collection phase before they do prewriting, they do worksheets. They have a notebook, or they just write like Erin Entrada Kelly whose friend of she writes by hand. She's got amazing handwriting. And also you have to check out. But like she writes all this stuff by hand and kind of lets it build up also. And I think that's really important. And we often don't give ourselves credit for it. But that collecting, if you're making mood boards, if you're making notes, if you're drawing your characters, like all of that is writing. So you got to give yourself credit for that too. And so, yes, I love those kind of prewriting resources. They're great as well.

00:18:19 Molly Rauh
And thinking of some of that idea collection like, what is your process for gathering and collecting ideas ahead of time, like we talked to one author who she observes, and she journals a lot. And then she uses those journals to develop her writing. So what is kind of your idea gathering method?

00:18:38 Melanie Conklin
You know, you know, you know that feeling that you have when your browser crashes and you lose like 357 tabs that you had open. That's my process of collecting is those 357 tab. Basically, I've kind of learned that, you know, what I'm interested in in my subconscious is not always going to come to me in a neat and organized package. It's not going to be a linear idea. And so I've kind of learned to embrace my curiosities and whatever I am curious about. And I want to learn about this to let myself learn about it, because there is a reason that I am interested in it. And often it's like there's these two neurons in my brain that are just trying to get together to make spark. And it's like if you fight where your natural interests are, and try to force yourself to do it in other ways, that connection doesn't happen. But I have found that if I just kind of embrace it and follow those things that I'm interested in and let myself kind of geek out about odd subjects, sometimes that that's where those connections come from. Sometimes it takes years before I know what I am actually writing about in a story I'm actually going to be I'm starting to draft my fourth middle grade novel in December. And so I'm in that notebook phase with that project, and I've been collecting things for that project for about four years now. And that's literally just been a process of when I have a tab up. And I take a screen grab. Recognizing this thought has something to do with that project, and I just dump it in a folder. And then I do the same thing in my notebook. I noticed something I've carried out. I tape it into the notebook I I am very like scrapbook-y. And so I collect all those little pieces. And then slowly, it's like the idea matures in my brain and actually becomes a story. And that's it's exciting. Also, terrifying when you sit down, to try to translate all those interests and a lot of ways. It's almost like you're doing self-therapy. You're like, what am I? What is my problem? What is the problem I'm writing about here, and once you figure that out, then you kind of know where that heart is for your character, because they have that problem. You know, our characters are all kind of a reflection of ourselves. So I try to tell people not to be too rigid or too structured when you're trying to discover things that it's fun. Just let yourself play and enjoy, like learning about different things. You never know where that's going to go. It could be a picture book. It could be a novel. It could be, you know, some amazing resource that you make that you share with other Educators. But definitely keep the tabs up. It's okay. It's okay to have your tabs. You can bookmark them to.

00:21:27 Molly Rauh
So in that vein of letting things go where they go, is there is there a time sometimes when you travel somewhere with your writing and with your book where you're just like, yeah, that tab does need closed. And so does that one like, do you often find yourself sort of scrapping things and moving on to something new? Or do you frequently find, because you've done a lot of pre-planning that you know where it's going? And so it, while you might find surprises along the way, you don't see a lot of like scrapping of entire chunks of your writing, or, you know, completely changing an idea.

00:22:02 Melanie Conklin
Well, here's the thing, like, when I'm doing the prewriting, I'm asking myself, I'm tapping into the characters emotional arc. I'm wanting to know what's messed up in their life. And what is the problem they're facing at the beginning, and how do they grow in so that by the end, they have somehow addressed that problem. That's all internal action. That's all internal growth. That's the characters heart. When I know that is when I start writing. However, when I start writing, I often don't know what the external plot should be. Sometimes there's like a spark, a connection, a metaphor, and I can tell, oh, I should be writing about this kind of external plot, but often I get it absolutely completely wrong. So Counting Thyme, the first draft of that Thyme moved with her family to New York City. And it's, you know, she's acclimating to a new school living in a city. She's never lived in an apartment building. She's only lived in Suburbia before. She's never lived in a diverse neighborhood. You know, there's all kinds of things that she's experiencing the first time, and she doesn't always like it. She's not sure if she likes living there and I, when I was working on that, you know, I was trying to figure out, how should I show this that she doesn't like living there? So my first idea was, well, she's going to pretend she's in the witness protection program. And so my whole first draft was about her pretending that she was in the witness protection program. If you have read this book, you know that there's no witness protection program in it at all. So it's like the actual external action the plot was just wrong. But I see those as like Legos. It's like you build something out of Legos, and you realize that at all, the pink ones are wrong, and they should be yellow ones. It's a pain in the butt to take it apart and change it to yellow ones. But you can do it, you know, with patience and effort. So with Counting Thyme, I got to do that like eight times I wrote nine drafts of that book with every missing piece. I only did five drafts. So definitely the process is improving. But I'm not a plotter who has a defined outline and knows exactly what the external action is. I kind of have to discover it, and once I do discover it, I know what's right, but I'm often throwing away a lot of words. That's why I always tell people writing is rewriting. It's not about finishing your draft one time, it's about finishing it like 5 or 10 times. You know.

00:24:33 Molly Rauh
That's awesome. It's been so fun hearing about your process, because it's a little different than other people that I've talked to. So I'm enjoying the differences. I really like it. So as an author, are there some individuals who are kind of your heroes, or who have inspired you in what you're doing?

00:24:53 Melanie Conklin
I definitely have heroes that I have looked to. And I thought about this. I thought about this question, 'cause there are a lot of authors I admire and that I am friends with now, and that I've learned a lot from, but honestly, the person who inspired me to want to tell stories is my mother. My mother was a labor and delivery nurse for 30 years. And she worked the night shift, and she used to come home and tell us how many babies she had that night. And she would tell us birth stories. And as I got older, and when I had my own children, it was going through all that she would share birth stories. She shared them with her labor and delivery classes when she was teaching people. And so I grew up with this. This this idea of learning from each other, through sharing these very personal stories. And so there is like a was a culture of storytelling in my house. And so I think about her a lot. She's the one my first book was dedicated to, was my mother I said, "For my mother, the truth teller," because she was all about being honest and honoring those stories and sharing them with each other, because that's how you learn how to be a person, right? So I'm trying to do the same thing in writing books. Hopefully, people learn a couple of things from my characters.

00:26:12 Jessica Rickert
Oh, I love that story. That's great. Thank you so much for joining us tonight, Melanie. And for all of you out there, if you haven't signed up for the conference yet, definitely sign up for Melanie's session, and she will be signing books at the conference too. So thanks for joining us, and we're so excited to meet you in person.

00:26:33 Melanie Conklin
Thank you.

00:26:34 Molly Rauh
Thanks for listening to CCIRA Literacy Conversations podcast. To find out more about CCIRA, go to CCIRA.org. On CCIRA.org, you can join as a member, or find great resources like our professional development blog, which posts every Tuesday and has a variety of guest writers on an awesome selection of topics, CCIRA is a professional organization of Educators and community members dedicated to the promotion and advancement of literacy. We also have a Twitter account @ColoradoReading. You can find us on Instagram at CCIRA_ColoradoReading. Or you can find us on Facebook, where we also have a members only group that we're trying to build. And our Facebook account is CCIRA Colorado Reading. We'd love to hear more from you. And again, if you're looking for new content, please send any questions or things you'd be interested in seeing from CCIRA to [e-mail]. Thanks for listening and have a great week.