Alumni Voices with Sherryl Clark: A Different Kind of Challenge

Sherryl Clark

More than a few years ago, I went along to a seminar called “Renovate your life”, which was mostly about health and fitness. I didn’t magically want to go live at the gym! But I came away with a great strategy that I have found works. It was the 28 day challenge (thanks, Craig Harper).

Craig said choose one thing and commit to doing it for 28 days. Have an accountability partner, and every day when you have done your “thing”, email or text your partner and say “Done”. When your 28 days are up, if it worked for you, commit to another 28, and then another 28. That’s 84 days of doing your one thing, and you will have created a habit.

I chose walking. Every day I walked for a minimum of 20 minutes. After 84 days, it was most definitely a habit. In fact, I still walk every day (usually now for at least 30 minutes) and if I don’t, I get twitchy. Occasionally I’m out there walking at 8pm – in the rain.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, it didn’t take too long before I realized this could just as easily apply to writing. I’m great at procrastination. I have medals for it. But I have a long-time writer friend who lives half the world away from me and we set up our 28-day challenge via email. Each day, we committed to write for 30 minutes, and then check in. 

Five years later, we still do this, although the challenge “thing” has changed over time.

Fast forward to a Hamline winter residency, sitting around one night with a bunch of fellow students, and I happened to mention this 30 minutes challenge idea. In no time, I had six people who wanted to try it. We set up an email group and, since I was 15-17 hours ahead of everyone else, time-zone-wise, I usually emailed “Done” first. Not everyone lasted the 84 days, because life happens even when you’re doing a challenge, but we all did lots of writing. That’s the benefit.

Right now, I’m in the middle of a 30-minutes-a-day challenge with some of my writing group. You might not think 30 minutes of writing a day is nearly enough, but it is, trust me! It keeps the novel in your head, it keeps ideas bubbling, and when you have 30 minutes you can just sit down and write. This is Day 66 and so far I have added 25,000 words to the first draft of my current novel. Some days I do more than 30 minutes, but if I stick to the minimum, I know it will work over the long term.

I’m about to teach the first class in a course called “Write a Novel in a Year”. Guess what my students are going to be doing?

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Sherryl Clark is a July 2013 graduate of the MFAC program. She lives in Melbourne, Australia. To find out more about Sherryl and her writing, visit her website. 

Inkpot Interviews:Sherryl Clark

Sherryl Clark is the author of many books and is a July 2013 graduate of the Hamline MFAC program. Her most recent release, Dying to Tell Me, was published by Kane Miller in the US in 2011, and was recently released in Australia.

Please describe the book.
It’s a mystery novel for 10-14 year olds, with paranormal elements. I wanted to write a real mystery for kids, one with a murder, and a situation where my young character could reasonably solve it. The blurb is: When Sasha’s policeman dad takes up a remote country posting, she falls and hits her head on the very first day. So when their new pet, retired police dog King, starts communicating with her, she puts it down to her concussion.

But more strange things start to happen. Who is the greasy-haired man she keeps seeing? Why is the local art dealer so nasty? And who killed Mrs Alsopp and set her house on fire?

When Sasha ‘sees’ the burning house in a dream, it’s not enough to save the elderly woman. But the beaten man she sees in the old police cell is already dead – isn’t he? Together, Sasha and King must solve the mysteries of Manna Creek, and save the one person she thought she could rely on.

As the story progressed from inception to copy-edited version, what were the major changes? How did those changes come about? When did you first begin work on it? When did you finish?
Probably the biggest surprise for me in the writing was when the dog, King, started talking to Sasha. That wasn’t planned! But I really liked it, I liked his voice, and I liked the idea of them as a detecting team. Initially it was about her ‘visions’ and her compulsion to save people and how that messed up her life, so it was good to have another character who understood her so well when, for the rest of the world, she was putting on a brave front. I have a wonderful writing friend who critiqued the manuscript for me, and I spent a lot of time deepening the characters and making Sasha’s emotions more real. The novel probably took me about a year, from start to finish, so it was ready to submit early in 2010. I do tend to work on more than one project at a time, and let drafts “sit” for weeks before I come back to them.

What research was involved before and while writing the book?
It started with a police dog – he and his handler lived next door to my brother in New Zealand, and I interviewed him, then I visited the police dog training centre here in Melbourne, all for a nonfiction piece for a magazine. Then I decided I’d like to have an ex-police dog in a story. I also interviewed two policemen in sole-officer stations out of Melbourne, and a homicide detective. With the historical part (the ghost) I researched about gold mining in the 1800s in Victoria, and pulled in a bunch of things I knew about the era from visits to museums and books I’d read.

You’ve had many books brought out by publishers in the UK and Australia and you’ve also self-published. Now you’ve got Dying to Tell Me--a hybrid. Please share that publication journey.
In 2010 I went to our SCBWI conference in Sydney and the guest publisher was Kira Lynn from KaneMiller. I booked a consultation with her, thinking it would be great to get her comments on the first chapter of what was then called Fire and Ice. I arrived at the room, and she said, ‘Love this, send me the whole manuscript.’ She accepted it within a month and the only changes they made were to change some words and the spelling to US. My agent negotiated to keep the Australian/NZ rights but no publisher here showed any interest. Finally, one revealed that it was because the international rights weren’t available! (I have to say this is a continual bugbear for Australian writers because publishers here demand world rights but often don’t sell them.) I thought about importing a few hundred copies from KM, and then I decided to do it myself – as a print book, not an e-book. I did a lot of community books and taught self-publishing classes back in the 80s and 90s, and my writing group published a national poetry magazine for 20 years, so I had a lot of experience in independent publishing of all kinds. But I also had my traditional publishing backlist behind me, so I was able to get a top distributor and also a big order from a book supplier to schools. I created a marketing plan, had two launches, and have been doing school talks focused on the book. I was also able to use my good US reviews in my marketing materials. Someone just starting out with no other books published would struggle, I think, especially to get the pre-orders I did. I’ve been really lucky that so many people have helped me with this. I haven’t broken even yet – fingers crossed! But I felt really committed to this book, and I thought kids would like it. The next step is an e-book version.

The Too-Tight Tutu, your first children’s book, was published in 1997. What have you learned about the business of writing since then?
Everything! Back then I didn’t even know the difference between a trade and an educational publisher. I had some wonderful people early on who helped me, I went to a lot of seminars and read a heap of information on the internet (the bonus was I could pass on all of this to my students). I also joined SCBWI. In those days in Australia it was pretty small, but I went to two of the big LA conferences, and also to Chautauqua and a summer school at CSU Fresno (you can tell I love to travel). It’s all made me very aware of the differences in publishing between the USA, UK and Australia. Here we are still lagging a bit with e-books and technology. I get a bunch of good newsletters and blog postings on all kinds of things – publishing, marketing, agents, goal setting – and I’ve become good at skimming to find what’s useful. Mostly what I’ve learned to this point is that none of that counts if you don’t have a great idea and a polished manuscript, but I think the road to publication after that is getting harder for everyone. Self-publishing electronically is fast and relatively easy, but the big word is “discoverability” – how to get your book noticed in among the hundreds of thousands of others, otherwise you’ll only sell a few copies (despite the success of Hugh Howey!). I don’t think children’s books are nearly as popular as adult books in terms of e-publishing – I see plenty of life left in print books.

Where do you do most of your writing?
I used to do it at the kitchen table. In the last couple of years, I’ve felt like a writing nomad, because my husband retired, so I’ve had to continually try to find headspace. All those years of being alone at home … I wish I could have bottled them. What works best now when I am frustrated at home is to go to a café and write.

Do you remember the first book you loved?
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. My sister gave it to me and it was like being given a box of magic. Like a lot of kids, I wanted my wardrobe to take me to another world and was very upset when it refused to!

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Alumni Voices: Sherryl Clark

Loneliness vs. Solitude &
The Long Distance Writer

When I think about being a long-distance writer, literal distance is not what comes to mind first. My fellow Hamline students and faculty know that I travelled over 100,000 miles to get to Hamline during the two years of my MFAC, because I live in Australia. But it wouldn’t matter where I lived – for every writer, it’s the writing itself that is the marathon, the huge journey, and it can involve experiences of both solitude and loneliness.

(Not to scale)

We need solitude to write. Oh, how we need it! One of the things I ask my students is – where do you write? Do you have a place that is all your own, where you can shut the door? I wrote at home, on the kitchen table, for more than 20 years. From that table, I could see outside and yet be inside, and inside my head, because I was the only one there.

Then my husband retired, and suddenly I realized that, no matter how quiet he was, it was almost impossible to write with him in the house. I tried the library, the café, the room outside with the dust and the spiders (even after I cleaned it up, there was still dust). It’s a little better now, but I still yearn for that wonderful daily solitude I used to have.

Residency at Hamline is the opposite! It’s all about writing for 11 straight days and every time, I couldn’t wait to get there and dive in. But away from Hamline, it’s easy to feel lonely, to miss that buzz and excitement, that total focus on what matters most – your writing. In between residencies, I kept the loneliness at bay through emails and letters to my advisors, and through my class Facebook group. I reminded myself that, hey, they weren’t all going out for coffee and having a great time together without me! They, too, lived long distances from each other. We were all in the loneliness together, and still connecting.

Writing can be the loneliest profession in the world, if you know no other writers. Writing groups, writing friends, mentors, friends who “get it” – make all the difference. They support you when your spouse grumbles about your daydreaming, when your mother asks you when you’re going to get a real job, when your kids throw tantrums because you’re not at their beck and call 24 hours a day. We have to fight every day to make time for our writing, to keep some of our headspace for our current novel, and to grab that solitude with both hands and hold on tight.

I’m about to go on a different kind of residency, sponsored by the May Gibbs Trust here in Australia. It will be four weeks (two now, two later) of time alone in another city to write. Blessed solitude.

Who knows what writing will come out of it? Big advances in current projects, or something wild and new? But I know anytime I’m feeling a little lonely, I can go online and be cheered up by a writer friend somewhere in the world!

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Sheryll Clark is a July 2013 graduate of the MFAC program. She lives in Melbourne, Australia. To find out more about Sheryll and her writing, visit her website. 

Inkpot Interview: Sherryl Clark

Sherryl Clark comes to the Hamline MFAC program from Melbourne, Australia. She's the author of several books for young and teen readers. Her newest, Runaways, was published by Penguin Books Australia in March 2013. 

Please describe the book in under 50 words.

It’s a MG verse novel in two voices. Jack and Cassie are siblings – when neither of Jack’s parents seem to care about him, he decides to run away, and persuades Cassie to join him. But does running away really solve anything? And what choices will Cassie have to make?

Would you tell us a bit about the story’s development?

For a long time, I didn’t think this story was going to work. I knew how it started, and that they would run away to meet each other, but where and why? I found part of Jack’s story in Perth (the furthest city in Australia from Melbourne). Finally I went on a “road trip”, looking for a place by the water, and found Hindmarsh Island in South Australia. From there, a lot of other things finally fell into place – the fishing grandfather, the grass fire, the symbolism of the river meeting the sea. The hardest part to write and rewrite was the last scene with their mother, because I wanted hope but not at the price of “prettying up” real life. All up, the book took nearly three years.

How did it come to the attention of its editor?

Penguin has published my other verse novels, but when this one wasn’t working very well, my editors gave me some helpful feedback, especially on the two voices. At first I couldn’t work out how to rewrite Jack’s voice, but I’d written a Hamline essay on dual narrators, which helped, and finally I could see how to get inside Jack through language, line breaks and the typeface symbols. I don’t spell out that he has ADD, but I hope you sense it through his verse structure.

Perth Station

What research was involved?

Standing in the railway station in Perth and writing down all the train stations in the right order! A trip to South Australia, driving around on a location hunt. Taking lots of photos. Country fire fighters. Maps.

Did you ever workshop this story at Hamline?

No.

What was your critical thesis on?

Verse novels! And to be honest, I wish I’d done all the reading and written the thesis before I wrote Runaways, but I think my next verse novel will be very different. Still, I was conscious of all the critical work I’d done on verse novels that I didn’t like much (and the ones I did), and I tried to put some of that extra, deeper insight into the final revisions.

What was your creative thesis?

A science fiction thriller. I’ve really wanted to make the absolute most of my time at Hamline, so I’ve done different kinds of writing that I might otherwise be too chicken to try on my own. I’ve learned so much and I hope my writing has improved!

Did you discover and fall in love with any books while in the MFAC program?

Definitely Helen Frost’s verse novels. They are not published in Australia so I had never heard of her before. From the reading list, some of my favorites were Island of the Blue Dolphins and Officer Buckle and Gloria. I also fell in love with Frog and Toad, and The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson. I enjoyed a lot of the nonfiction, too.

Without naming names, tell us who your first readers are.When do you share a piece of writing?

I am in two writing groups, but one is for novels, which is my Big Fish group. It makes a huge difference to have other writers reading consecutive chapters and giving intensive feedback. They’ve suffered through my crime novel! My other group workshops shorter things like poetry – they are very supportive (lots of cake!). I don’t share something until I’m pretty sure I know what I want to say with it. Comments too early can shift the ground under you so you lose your faith in the story idea, I find.

Can you briefly describe your writing life? How has it changed since you graduated?

I’m graduating this July, but already I know my writing life has changed a lot. Just the fact that I have taken a year’s leave from my paid job this year to work on my creative thesis! I never would have had the courage to do that before. I’ve been able to put writing first – not always in terms of actual hours, because I need to still pay the bills – but first in my mind and my heart. That’s what will stay with me after graduation. That, and all the craft I’ve learned (and re-learned, which is just as valuable).

What are you working on now?

I want to finish the science fiction thriller (working title: Elimination) and then I will go back to the historical novel I’m writing for Penguin set in World War I.

What would you like to say to current or prospective students?

Give it everything you’ve got! The two years goes so quickly, and the opportunity to work with your advisors so closely on your writing is invaluable. You may never find this many great writers to learn from in one place again. Be adventurous. Take risks. Give up whatever you have to to make it the best possible experience. Be part of the community – connect and support and share. Everyone is generous and kind, and they want you to succeed and be the best writer you can. It’s been priceless to me.

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 Visit Sherryl's website, blog, and her author pages on Amazon and Facebook to learn more about her books, her writing life, and for wonderful conversation and advice on writing.

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Next Inkpot Interview: Molly Griffin, MFAC '09