I’ve never considered myself much of a groupie, but when I saw Jerry Spinelli sitting at a table across the banquet room, my face and body language must have betrayed my adoration. Kent Brown, the executive director of the Highlights Foundation, put a hand on my shoulder. “Where would you like to sit?” I pointed at the author of Wringer, and Maniac Magee. Kent led me to the table, where he introduced me to Jerry and his wife, Eileen, an award-winning author and poet. I sat between them, comfortable and content. I am, after all, an only child, used to being sandwiched between Mom and Dad. And this was only day one. It could have been the highlight of the week, but it was one of many.
The Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, a week long conference for children’s writers and illustrators, is held each summer at the Chautauqua institute, in southwestern New York. The institute itself was founded in 1874, originally as a camp for Sunday school teachers. The institute is organized around four pillars: arts, education, religion, and recreation. There are a multitude of conferences, lectures, concerts and workshops that simultaneously take place. The setting is extraordinary, 750 acres of grounds situated on Chautauqua Lake. The architecture is late nineteenth century. Vehicle use is discouraged. Each morning I walked or took a run along the grounds, past the dorms of opera students warming up their voices, or the practice studios where a piano quartet was rehearsing.
The best thing about the writers workshop is the easy rapport between faculty and attendees, and the thoroughness of the one on one-critique sessions. There is no ‘us and them.’ Attendees are treated with respect. At dinner, in the ornate Athenaeum hotel, Kent Brown acts as a sort of traffic cop. Those who teach are intentionally dispersed two or three at a table, leaving room for six attendees. I had the feeling faculty members were briefed on accessibility and receptiveness. My mentor, Christine French Clark, the editor-in-chief of Highlights Magazine, thoroughly evaluated my submitted manuscript. We covered all her comments at my first session, and she asked to see a second piece of writing. I don’t know when she had a chance to read the second manuscript, but my second critique session was given as much care and thought as my first. At lunch, at dinner, and when I would swim in the lake in the evening, I ran into faculty who would ask about my work with great sincerity. My two roommates had the same experience of simply being well treated.
Here are some pearls of wisdom I picked up at Chautauqua. Andy Gutelle, who is an Emmy award winning writer for Reading Rainbow, and who has written numerous non-fiction pieces for children, asked us to make three lists: Then, Now and Now and Then. “Kids,” he says, “are always looking for the future. They have an expectation of being entertained, but there are categories like dogs, dinosaurs, and families that are eternal.” Anna McQuinn, an author from West London, says about writing for two to five year olds, “Come in at the stage they’re in. Their world is tiny. They are working out how the world works.” Eileen Spinelli, speaking about poetry, says you can make a poem out of a fact or out of three beautiful sounding words.
And then there was Jerry Spinelli talking about humor, spitting out his words and frowning. “I don’t write for kids, I write for myself. I don’t follow them around like cats with a tasty treat, saying, ‘Come on, have some milk.’ I pour my milk into my best bowl, set it on a nice spot on the porch, and hope that a bunch of them will come and lap it up.
Delight yourself. Turn your back on your audience. Ideas are like mosquitoes, they bite you. People ask me, what’s the key? You find the key yourself, somewhere along the road. It’s a solo road, there’s no bus, no bicycle. You take it step-by-step, word-by-word. The key is custom made.”
There are a multitude of pleasures to distract you at Chautauqua. The outdoor evening concerts in the majestic amphitheatre range from orchestral works to country western bands. But the truth is I attended few institute events. In the evening, from the apartment, which I shared with two roommates, I reviewed my lecture notes, and I wrote. I wrote on the unscreened porch with the light on, hoping to attract mosquitoes.
