Author tells EJH kids about the "write stuff"

The kids at East Junior High got a lesson in creativity, organization and making career dreams come true, courtesy of renowned author Alan Gratz. The Knoxville native and Bakersville resident visited the school Wednesday in a program sponsored by MACA.

The author of several best-selling and critically acclaimed teen fiction novels, Gratz spoke of the challenges of finding his voice as an author, learning how to write fiction, and then the even perhaps greater challenge of selling that voice to a major publisher.

"When I was at college," he began his lecture, "my teacher said to me, 'Alan, you're a talented writer, but you lack discipline.' But all I heard was, "You're a talented writer.'" That selective hearing, he explained, meant he had a lot of learning to do long after he had launched his career as a writer.

After several career stops, including working as an eighth-grade English teacher, Gratz obtained permission from his wife to write full time, provided he could also make it fit in with the work of a stay-at-home dad to their infant daughter.

He penned two novels aimed at a middle school audience. Both received some positive feedback from publishers but both were ultimately rejected. All the while, he continued, he sold greeting card ideas to greeting card companies, wrote press releases and picked up any writing job he could find.

The unlikely development of landing a job in television changed the way he wrote and taught him to organize. Writing mainstream TV means moving to Los Angeles to work with a writing staff, but he landed work writing episodes of "City Confidential," a cable television original show produced in Knoxville and aired on the A&E network.

The work meant taking thousands of pages of notes from thousands of hours of video, and arranging it into five "acts" for the hour-long true crime program, along with narration. The strict deadlines, he said, taught him to arrange notes and research into a strictly maintained system.

The writing, the actual creative part, came last of all. For Gratz, this was the turning point that enabled him to research and map out a novel before the writing began, making the best use of the research and saving the fun, creative part for the end.

That technique enabled him to write "Samurai Shortstop," an extensively researched story, set in 1880s Japan, where baseball was a craze sweeping the changing nation.

Gratz took pains to explain to the students that it was outlining and rewriting that made the difference. The manuscript was bought by Penguin Publishing and published by Penguin's imprint, Dial Books.

"I know your eyes just glaze over when I say 'outline,'" he said, but it made all the difference in turning out a good, well-researched novel on schedule. Its success opened the door. He has now published three more novels: "Something Rotten," "Something Wicked" and most recently, "The Brooklyn Nine," which returns to his passion for baseball.

The author told The McDowell News that he has never lost the love of teaching eighth-grade English, and that is why he enjoys visits like Wednesday's.

"I get to do about 25 or 30 school visits each year," he said. While Marion is close to his Bakersville home, he said he has been to Omaha, Salt Lake City and Joplin, Missouri, to name a few.

While writing full-length novels is his full-time occupation, he said he thrives on school visits and the occasional short story. An avid writer of mysteries, he said he will have a story in next month's issue of the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery magazine.

He said he still finds true what he saw when teaching; that it is very hard to get kids to rewrite. Many are very creative and naturally good writers, but are reluctant to see that they can make their writing better just through getting organized and seeing the project through. He hoped his example will inspire students to strive to see it through and get it right.