The submission window for the 2021–2022 SCBWI WWA Mentorship Program is now underway! Between now and July 30, we’ll be sharing interviews with each of our marvelous mentors to help prospective mentees get to know them better. Learn more about the mentorship program, including how to apply, here.
I like to mentor because . . .
Because teaching is the best possible way to learn! Maybe that sounds selfish, but nothing helps me understand writing and the process of creating books more than helping someone else level up. I’ve been a #DVPit mentor, a guest teacher helping 9th-graders write their own picture books, and a beta reader to a dozen friends and acquaintances, and every single time I feel like I’m getting the good end of the deal!
I also like to mentor because I received a ton of help and support early in my writing journey, and I always want to pay that forward.
What can a mentee expect from your mentorship?
Enthusiasm! I love working on story structure, voice, atmosphere, settings, character arcs, all of it. In the past I could sometimes get a bit too enthusiastic with suggestions, but I’ve learned from past collaborations and hopefully found a sweet spot when it comes to feedback.
One of my favorite techniques is to approach a story from as many angles as possible, helping to fill out those little nooks and crannies that really make a book sing. That also helps keep the many rounds of rewriting and revision fresh and exciting!
What books did you love when you were a child or teen?
Ooo, the Redwall series, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle, Sweet Valley High, The Chronicles of Narnia, Douglas Adams, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghasttrilogy (I was a weird kid), Lord of the Rings, The Egypt Game, The 21 Balloons, Half Magic, the Prydain Chronicles, anything by Beverly Clearly, P.G.Wodehouse, the Dragonlance Chronicles, James Herriot, Jane Austen, Roald Dahl, the Just William series, Patricia McKillip, the Wayside School series, The Once and Future King, Edith Nesbit, Rosemary Sutcliff, The Wind in the Willows, Susan Cooper, My Father’s Dragon…
My father is English (I’m a dual citizen) and half my family lives in England and Wales, so I was definitely raised on a steady diet of British classics. They tuned me into a certain vein of historical-fantasy-humor that I love and shamelessly mine in all my work today.
What does being a successful published professional look like to you?
It would be completely dishonest not to admit I would love the more conventional markers of literary success (starred reviews, bestseller lists, TV/radio spots, movie deals, awards, etc.), but really in the end I just want to a) be able to keep putting out books, and b) meet my own high expectations. In his acceptance speech for the Graveyard Book Newbery Medal, Neil Gaiman said something about finishing it and being aware he’d written a book that was better than he was. That’s the feeling I want to pursue. Accolades from outside are wonderful, but I want to feel myself grow and surpass my own wildest expectations for what I can achieve. If I can someday reach that feeling I’ll really feel like I’ve accomplished something.
What are you reading now?
Everything! As I write this I’m re-reading The Hobbit for the nth time, as well as reading a book on the Norman Conquest and another on the history of cheese making. Also I just this morning finished a book on the origins of the science of thermodynamics. I always read at least two books at once, usually more. They all sort of fit naturally into different parts of my day, and I find giving my brain lots of varied fodder helps my own writing.
One of the big things I love is the specialized language used in different fields. The terminologies needed to talk about medieval history, cheese making, and thermodynamics are all so weird and so glorious! Shop talk, for me, is endlessly fascinating, even when I don’t understand it, and for whatever reason my writing brain seems to thrive on it.
What are you working on?
Right now I’m on my second draft of a mid-12th-century historical MG, and also sketching out the bones of what will hopefully be my first YA so I can get that going in the second half of the year. (I’m WILDLY IN LOVE with both stories but have to keep them secret for now, alas.)
I’m also waiting on edits back on my next two MGs, both from Scholastic in 2022, and I’ve got three picture books out on sub. (I feel incredibly grateful to write that sentence!)
What do you listen to when you write?
I create a Spotify playlist for most projects. Some I can write to, like the Hildegard von Bingen one I’ve got for my medieval MG, but most of the time I use the playlists for atmospheric inspiration while I’m on a walk or doing housework (an essential step for me in creating), then channel that feeling in silence while I’m writing.
What’s the writing advice you give most often?
Read! Always be reading! But apart from that, my number-one recommendation is to make a book dummy. This might not work for everyone, but it’s become essential for me. All you do is take a book you admire off your shelf (it helps if it’s in a similar genre/category) and wrap it in a new jacket of plain printer paper. Then write your title and name on the front, draw a cover sketch, fill in the spine, and write yourself some glowing reviews on the back. (This is super embarrassing but I even put a homemade Newbery Medal on my last one.)
I keep my book dummy where I can see it anytime I’m working on the project, and there’s just something about having the book basically already exist in the world that makes it feel so much more real. It really comes into its own when I get stuck. I can pick up the book, hold it in my hands, and ask it what happens next. Or I can put a bookmark in at roughly the place I’m stuck at and stare at it and think about what a reader would want to happen, seeing how close or far the end is, knowing what the characters have been through, how near or far they are to making their goal. You can almost feel the plot and characters expand to fill in the actual pages of the book dummy. It can be pretty magical.
With so much of writing happening one flat page at a time on the screen, I cannot express how helpful it is to remember that this is a book being made, and you know books, and you love books, and everything will be okay.
Will Taylor is a reader, writer, and massive middle-grade fan. He was a #DVPit mentor in 2017, a #KidsNeedMentors classroom mentor in 2019, and a guest creative-writing teacher at Garfield High School 2017–2019. His first two MG books, Maggie and Abby’s Neverending Pillow Fort and Maggie and Abby & the Shipwreck Treehouse, were published by HarperCollins Children’s in 2018 and 2019. Scholastic will publish his next books, The Language of Seabirds and Catch That Dog, in 2022. He is represented by Brent Taylor at Triada US. Visit Will’s website at WillTaylorBooks.com, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Brought to you by Suma Subramaniam and Jenny Tynes, SCBWI WWA Mentorship Program, and Dolores Andral, Pen & Story