. . . for as long as I did, dropping that fat book in and out of my Amazon shopping cart for weeks, before I succumbed to the inevitable and proceeded to checkout. Three Days Before the Shooting . . . the unfinished second novel, the mountain of pages finally printed, the bewildering fragment of forty-two years’ work, seen at last. Ralph Ellison lived plenty long after he published Invisible Man, but apparently not long enough. Some sixteen years after he died, we can finally take a look at the unkempt vastness, thanks to John Callahan and Adam Bradley’s joint editorship of the extant manuscripts.

As a prelude to diving into the 1100-plus page book, I am reading Bradley’s Ralph Ellison in Progress, his riveting analysis of its composition, while working through Juneteenth, the Callahan-edited fragment published in 1999, side by side with it. What strikes me so far, and I think this is important, is that Ellison never relinquished his faith in this particular story. Not once in his letters and interviews is there a hint of giving it up. How many writers, when months and years go by without seeing that second book come together, would continue with it? Let alone almost half a century? What sort of willpower did he have to not set the thing aside? Or on fire? Or give up writing altogether? But no. Ellison never quit, nor came up with another novel idea. This story was it. He had to tell it, no matter how long it took; there was no question but that he would see it through. Finally, forty-two years wasn’t enough time.

Part of the problem, as Bradley details, is the method of composition. After years of handwritten manuscripts and typescripts, Ellison adopted, in the early 1980s, the computer. The ease of endless revision — so seductive as an alternative to forward motion — proved to be insurmountable. But that wasn’t his only brick wall. Being one of the few — very few — black authors to achieve the level of recognition he did, when he did, meant that winning the National Book Award was a life-changer. Hereafter, Ellison was the man and simply had to be part of every event, every conference, every public conversation involving race. There were few others on his level of publication: Langston Hughes, certainly, though he was considered a lightweight in certain quarters. Richard Wright had abandoned the United States. James Baldwin was coming along, but was apt, it seems from this distance, to rub folks the wrong way. Ellison was Olympian; not a small part of this was that by his own admission his novel was written with the white literary hierarchy in view. He disdained any criticism that limited his achievement — as some reviewers did — as something pretty good for a Negro writer. The outcome of his focused attempt to publish with white readers in mind — and his more-than-brilliant result — was that he was more eagerly accepted by the white literary world and all its ganglia. This meant that Ralph became one very busy man.

The point I keep coming back to and that I find utterly compelling is that Ellison did not draw away from this single plot, nor sketch out any other story that did not find its place in this massive work. And even those thousands of pages of manuscript are deceiving, for somewhere Bradley states that the base narrative of Three Days . . . is not much longer than Invisible Man. How many hundreds of thousands of words were later computer reworkings of the same 600 pages of story?

All this puts me in mind of the sequence of books, one to the next. You have written one book. Fine. It has a certain . . . character, let’s say. How does your next book angle off from it? There are some writers, and you know who they are, who will write the same kind of story with each book. Publishers certainly like this. Librarians do, too. “Oh, for that kind of story, you go here.” All that is practical and fine. But there are other writers and other kinds of stories, and the psychology of a progress, no matter how hidden or bent — why this book after that book? — is intimate and compelling.

There is a breakfast place some fifteen to twenty minutes away by back roads that is just about the perfect setting for work. Not the serious work you need to do in quiet isolation, but for the kind of journalistic observation that keeps the mind swept and tidy.

The restaurant, which seems a far too grand word for it, is set on a spit of land between two roads and surrounded by a ball field, a cemetery, and a service station. The roads, the field, and the station provide some background noise, the cemetery usually not (there is reportedly a “white lady” who wanders around on certain October nights, though she is fairly quiet, and the place closes at three in the afternoon anyway).

The appeal is, finally, less about the food, which is excellent, than it is about the conversation that happens in it. And not necessarily your own conversation. Because often you come alone: just the food, the table, the books stacked next to your coffee mug, and the room. The conversations that float from the other tables are what you enjoy, and particularly because they are all that float. There is no piped in soundtrack, no speaker over your head, no artificial sound of any kind.

Or nearly none. You can hear music, rarely, and the soft whine of a radio, but only coming from the kitchen, only at certain hours, only if there is a momentary silence, and only if you are seated at one of the tables in the inside room. Which you don’t normally do because the light is plainly insufficient to read and write by. This little bit of music serves less to distract than to conjure up the unseen kitchen staff, two or three amiable folks bent over the grill and the waffle iron, spooning oatmeal into bowls, slicing fruit.

So you choose a table near the window to become your desk. The moment of opening up a book, or a notebook, as your coffee is delivered, is a tiny ceremony in a life of rush and spin. So you begin to read and think and eat and write and think and read. That’s all, and it’s enough.

And we apologize for missing a Friday or two, but, you know.

Today The Friday Book Report visits the studio of Greg Leitich Smith, author of Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo and Tofu and T. rex (Little, Brown, 2003 and 2005, respectively) and Santa Knows, written with his wife Cynthia and illustrated by Steve Bjorkman (Dutton, 2006). Greg, a Texan from Texas, owns cats, and we are reminded from previous posts that the species is only partially compatible with literary pursuits. Nevertheless, Greg graciously invites us into his home, a holistic literary den if there ever was one. Read on!

My writing workspace has tended to wander a bit, depending both on where I am in the manuscript and which sites are available.

My wife, Cynthia, and I live in a 1920s arts-and-crafts style house in central Austin.

Until fairly recently, I had been writing first drafts on my laptop computer in the “library,” an extra bedroom with barrister bookcases on every wall and a 1940s-style metal desk in the center, underneath a black ceiling fan. Unfortunately, however, the influx of books (personal, research, and review copies for Cynthia’s Children’s Literature Resources web site) has overwhelmed the shelving – volumes are now stacked several feet high on nearly all horizontal surfaces, including the floor (yes, we could move some of them to the attic, but then we’d never find anything).

Consequently, I’ve been driven into the guest bedroom.

That room has a queen-sized bed and a restored arts-and-crafts schoolhouse desk that’s only large enough to hold the laptop and a small legal pad, which can be awkward when you have four cats who don’t respect the sanctity of the keyboard.

I’ve also recently (at least on weekend mornings) started taking the computer down to the café at BookPeople – it’s a bit loud, but I’ve always been able to tune everything out and concentrate on what I’m doing. And the change in scenery makes me feel like I’m getting away with something.

For second drafts and revisions, I tend not to write on the computer. I print out the manuscript using two-pages per sheet (a novel somehow seems more manageable that way) and work off that. If new scenes are required, then I write them out longhand using an ultra-fine point pen and a yellow legal pad (Yes, the pen has to be an ultra-fine point; no, the pad need not be yellow or legal). And with that, I can work anywhere, typically and preferably stretched out on the bed (once I’ve moved the cats out of the way).

Ah, awards! The delightfully modest, prodigiously talented, and many-starred Leslie Connor has just received the Schneider Family Book Award for Waiting for Normal (Katherine Tegen Books, a division of HarperCollins, 2008). As the Schneider website states, the award “honors an author or illustrator for the artistic expression of the disability experience for children and teens,” for which Waiting for Normal won in the Middle Grade category. Leslie’s other work includes the picture book Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel, illustrated by Mary Azarian (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), and a forthcoming novel (about which she is fairly secretive). So where exactly, we want to know, does her writing take place? What are her surroundings, her tools, her “things?” She shares, thus:

My work space

I wish I had an idyllic little writing studio to tell you about. But I don’t. I have a small house with an open floor plan shared by five people and two big dogs. It’s bright and airy and busy and public and not conducive to the work of writing at all.

So I escape to the screen porch—the room outdoors. I’m pretty hard core about it. I’ll do rain. I’ll do temperatures in the nineties with a fan blowing. I’ll do fifty-five degrees with my legs tucked into a sleeping bag. But eventually, winter comes. Every year.

The chair in front of the wood stove is inviting, but the dogs would rather I fold myself onto the wide couch where they can flank me and disable my elbows with their loving chins. I like that. And the house is my own during the day…well it was, until a month ago when my Better Half switched to a job on second shift. Now he’s here during my hours. He stamps snow off his boots at the door. He carries in armloads of firewood, which he deposits on the floor next to the stove with paragraph-busting thuds. I have to leave. So, I’ve discovered an armchair in the local library, where I look down—but only every once in a while—on a frosted garden where several cats come running to greet a little blue car every time it pulls in.

In short, I find places to work.

If there’s anything remarkable to tell here, it has to do with flexibility. But that isn’t so much about this writer as it is about the thing that makes it possible. I’m talking about my laptop. I know what you’re thinking. Ick. She’s about to wax poetic about a plastic box full of wires and whatsits. But the way I see it, this handsome little case replaces the room I cannot have at home. It snaps shut to protect itself from dog toenails when I get up to refresh my cup of tea. My laptop packs up and travels without whining.

Still need an aesthetic? Okay. Every time I lift the lid on this impossibly capable little machine, I am reminded of two favorite childhood possessions. One is a jewelry box with a brass hasp on the outside and a dancing ballerina on the inside. The other is a paint set with shiny enamel trays filled with rows of colored tablets. When I open my laptop, I am aware of the hinge—that satisfying resistance—and the sense that I’m about to be occupied. Possibly for hours. Something will turn and spin and sing here. Colors will spill. A picture will emerge. A drama will unfold. Then I am absurdly grateful to be able to shut the lid and carry it all with me to the next quiet writing place.

Wendy Mass is the multi-starred and well-reviewed author of a number of funny and clever middle grade and YA novels, including A Mango-Shaped Space (2005), Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life and Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall (2007), 2008’s Every Soul A Star (all Little, Brown), and the brand new 11 Birthdays (Scholastic).

The Friday Book Report recently asked Wendy to take us on a word tour of the writing space in her New Jersey home. Suivez le guide!

When my house is overrun by toddlers, I escape to the corner of my public library or to a picnic table at the nearby lake. Otherwise, my haven away from the madness is a room in my house that I sometimes call “my office” and sometimes call “a storage room” because my family has a lovely habit of tossing in everything they can’t find a place for someplace else. I’ll only have it for a few more years until one of the aforementioned toddlers turns it into a bedroom and then I’ll be knocking on Tony Abbott’s door offering homemade brownies in exchange for writing space. Oh who am I kidding, I can’t bake homemade anything. I’ll just have to get by on my charming personality.

So, my office. A desk that overlooks the driveway, and beyond the driveway, the lake. On the wall to my right is a very heavy ceramic tile that says Don’t Piss Off the Fairies. I’m sure one day it will cause considerable brain damage as it slips from its moorings. To my left is a framed poster of the Newbery Medal-winning books from the beginning in 1922 (The Story of Mankind) until 1997 (The View from Saturday). It was my first Ebay purchase (but certainly not my last). Just recently, seemingly out of the blue, the glass in the frame shattered. I don’t think that is a good omen for the trajectory of my career.

On the wall behind me is an illustrated poster of The Gashleycrumb Tinies by master of the macabre Edward Gorey. I’ve had this poster since high school (well, not this same one, I’ve replaced it many times). It’s an alphabetical rhyme of little British children reaching unfortunate ends. A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears, C is for Clara who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh. You get the idea. I started my first novel, A Mango-Shaped Space, with the first line from the poster. Now that I think of it, having a poster like that is sort of at odds with the whole striving to inspire and empower young readers thing. Which I guess brings me to my next item—the postcard stuck on the side of my filing cabinet which reads: Masquerading as a Normal Person Day after Day is Exhausting.

Under the poster is a shelf with copies of my books on it so when I start freaking out about a deadline (which is often/always), I can remind myself that somehow I did it before. The rest of the shelves are full of reference books for whatever book I’m currently working on, and novels that I won’t get enough time to read for another ten or twenty years. Other than that, there’s a cabinet that looks like an old card catalog from the library, but actually houses CDs. Then there’s the usual piles of random paper and candy wrappers, a clock with the characters from Alice in Wonderland at 12, 3, 6, and 9, and a bumper sticker that cautions Don’t Postpone Joy.

And if I forget to close the door when I leave, a little gray cat will sneak in, curl up on my keyboard, and erase everything I’ve just written.

Today, on the road from sunny Scottsdale with a headcold, The Friday Book Report is pleased to offer another peak into the den of a writer for children. Alan Katz is the author of many bestselling picture books, having created the Silly Dilly line of song parodies (beginning, if I’m not mistaken, with Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs in 2001), taking well-known tunes and re-lyricking them hilariously. His latest contributions to the Wacky American Songbook include Where Did They Hide My Presents?: Silly Dilly Christmas Songs; On Top of the Potty: And Other Get-Up-and-Go Songs; and Oops! (with illustrations by the renowned Edward Koren), all appearing in 2008. Here is what Alan has to say about his spacial writing technique.

My writer’s studio? Could be you’re sitting in it right now. ‘Cause although I have a real desk and a real chair in a real office-like room, the fact is that workspace is smack in the middle of my family’s den-like area, and just outside my 13-year-old son’s bedroom and down the hall from where my three other kids sleep. There’s a TV within earshot, plus three game systems, a DVD player, and soon (what was I thinking?) a Dance Dance Revolution set-up. So…

I generally work away from that home-office. I’ve written entire books while sitting in the Westport Library, happily tapping into their decaf and free Wi-Fi. Likewise at Panera Bread, Starbucks, and McDonald’s (where the coffee’s not bad and the Wi-Fi’s expensive ). I’ve typed out page after Silly Dilly page while at Barnes and Noble, Borders, and in local malls. And when my laptop and online access haven’t been available, I’ve been pleased to yank out a notebook and a pen and compose wherever I happen to be.

Of course the conditions in these public places are often less than ideal. But I’ve developed the ability to write wherever, whenever, no matter the circumstances. And though I can’t recommend it to everyone, it’s what I’ve always done. Wherever there are writing tools, I write. Sometimes I even get charged up by the people and noise around me.

It’s like some people need perfect stillness to fall asleep, while others could doze off in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I’m in the latter group; in fact, I’ve napped twice while writing this piece.

And speaking of this piece, I’ve been writing it in a very public place, at…

Nope, I won’t tell you. Because as I said before, you really could be sitting in my writer’s studio right now. So enjoy your meal, and remember to throw out your wrappers when you’re done. See ya.

Today The Friday Book Report offers a tour of James Preller’s shop. Jimmy is author of the successful and long-running Jigsaw Jones series of mysteries (Scholastic) and more recently the very well reviewed middle grade novels, Six Innings (Feiwel and Friends, 2008) and Along Came Spider (Scholastic, 2008). He has more novels and picture books forthcoming this year. We contacted Jimmy last month to write up a piece about his space. Here’s what he has to say.

Hey, Tony. Funny to receive your “workspace” request today. I was at the YMCA this afternoon, pedaling and puffing on the elliptical machine, watching Yo Yo Ma and James Taylor on “The Charlie Rose Show.” (By the way, Charlie Rose might have the coolest job on the planet.) Anyway, Yo Yo – if I may call him that, or does he prefer a simple Yo? — complimented Taylor on his fabulous barn, where JT makes music. Yo talked about the importance of a warm, inspiring workspace. I heaved a sigh.

Since mine is between my ears.

If I give it any thought at all (and I try not to), I basically hate where I work, in a windowless room in my basement. It’s drab and too dark, ugly really, and I’m not neat or particularly organized. One day I dream of a clean, well-lighted place. Here there are no doilies and artistic touches. I’m just not good at that stuff. Sometimes I’ll flee to the library, pad and pen in hand, seeking some expanse of space, a little light, and humanity. But mostly, I toil here in this grim room. But it’s undeniably my space, a place where I can be alone to sit and think. And that’s what “my workspace” means to me.

I guess that’s a function of my own limitations. Or, hey, maybe it’s part of my Irish charm – my native unfussiness! Another person might spruce it up, haul in fresh gear from IKEA or his German ancestors or wherever, make it look pleasing and comfortable and, oh, just so. But my reality is sitting in this black swivel chair at a falling-apart desk I bought at Office Max. I turn on my computer, pick out some tunes, and try to write. When things go well, it could be anywhere on this earth and it wouldn’t matter, doilies be damned.

The other feature worth mentioning, now that I come to think of it, is music. These days I’m listening from my computer, almost constantly. I have nearly 28,000 songs downloaded on my iMac, of all varieties (but I’m a huge Dylan guy), and there’s always something playing in my head. To me, it’s an indispensable companion to my workspace. Good sounds. When I think of books I like, and parts I skip, well, I never did care for those authors who spent a lot of time describing furniture, the floor plan of rooms, and complicated outfits. Go figure.

Nora Raleigh Baskin has written seven novels, including: What Every Girl (except me) Knows a PW Flying Start in 2001, a Booklist Top Ten first Youth Novel, and a Booksense Choice, along with many more recognitions; Almost Home; Basketball (or something like it); In the Company of Crazies (2006); The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah; her latest, a YA novel published this year, All We Know of Love (see Appreciation below); and Anything But Typical, forthcoming in Spring from Simon & Schuster. Nora’s a quiet writer, widely read, deeply thought, an artist of story and character and language. Here is her essay conjuring the place where she writes….

I love my office…it is the one room in the house where I get to display all my books, and all my tchotchkes, and toys I’ve been collecting all my life. So when I am in my office I am surrounded, literally surrounded by my history. Nothing is in any order or any category or arranged with any thought at all. So when I have to look for something, a book, or the bottle of my grandmother’s perfume from thirty years ago, I have to look through everything. Everything. Every time. Every book. It takes forever and that’s exactly why I like it that way.

I have a basket of Star Trek action figures on top of my file cabinet and a model of the Enterprise is hanging from the ceiling. My father’s art work is on every wall. I have a whole bookshelf of reference books I never look at. And hanging on the door are canvas bags, one for every class I teach, waiting.

There are even more tchotchkes on my desk, even on top of my computer (a miniature replica of a 1969 Volkswagon Beetle). I have two cork bulletin boards behind my desk, crowded with memorabilia from my life, articles from the newspaper, old photographs, pictures my kids drew, cards, unusually good fortunes from fortune cookies.

And best of all there is a bed in my office, the wrought iron bed my father bought me at a tag sale when I went to live with him in 1973. I try never to lie down on it during the day when I am supposed to be writing, because I would fall asleep immediately and never get anything done.

But I like that it is there. My doggie can sleep there while I am thinking about writing.

In today’s installment in our ongoing series about writers’ workspaces, we happily slide past the door of her Connecticut home and visit Elise Broach, author of this year’s acclaimed Masterpiece (Henry Holt); the ALA Notable Book, Shakespeare’s Secret (Holt, 2006); Desert Crossing, a 2006 YA from Holt; and, among other picture books, When Dinosaurs Came with Everything, a Junior Library Guild Selection and winner of the E. B. White Read Aloud Award.

Here are her words . . .

I don’t have an office, I have an alcove. Do you hear that, people? An
alcove! I know, it’s so sad. But let this be a lesson to you: if you want
to write, don’t let a lack of space stand in your way.

We live in an old cape with lots of nooks and crannies. My desk is an
antique library table shoved in one of the nooks in the master bedroom, with
a shelf full of my favorite children’s books at my knees. It has one drawer
that holds my idea notebook, the congratulations card I got from a close
friend when my first book was accepted for publication, and assorted
clippings. My favorite is an advertising photo of a beach with words
written in the sand, in the path of the encroaching tide: I AM YOUR IDEA.
ONE DAY YOU’LL LOOK FOR ME AND I’LL BE GONE.

On top of the desk are: a bobble-headed Shakespeare doll that my editor
gave me after we worked on Shakespeare’s Secret; a stuffed wire-haired fox
terrier, in memory of my beloved childhood dog; some colorful rocks I
collected on a hike in New Mexico; a pottery lizard from Acoma Pueblo,
symbolizing perseverance and good luck; and a gruesome ceramic car with a
hand on it that my daughter made (apparently to represent the car in Desert
Crossing…).

There’s a window over the desk, with a pretty view of the woods. I know
some writers prefer a blank wall in front of them, with no distractions, but
I need a window. It helps me to see the real world — in all its loveliness
and mystery — while I’m busy making up worlds of my own.

The Friday Book Report is . . . what’s the opposite of taking a holiday? For the first time ever, there is a surfeit of material to post, and we’ve decided to give, give, give as the spirit moves us. Not merely on Fridays. But other days. At least in December. The celebratory impulse of holiday season may have something to do with it; indulging the spirit of giving and all that.

As part of our series on children’s writer’s work spaces, today we feature David Levithan. By day, David is a book editor in New York; by night, on weekends, on vacation, and possibly at lunch, he is a writer with quite a number of successful YA volumes to his name, including Boy Meets Boy (2004), Wide Awake (new in paper this fall), How They Met and Other Stories (January 2008), and with fellow author Rachel Cohn, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2006) and Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List (2007).

What we love in writer’s words about their places is the tone of casual reverence. Some combination of the homey and the sacred. Here is David’s portrait.

___

To be honest, my office is my bedroom.

I know, I know — we’re all supposed to want a room of our own, to line with books and talismans, a place to capture all the creative energy. But when I write, the back of my desk chair often touches the foot of my bed. And I’m okay with that.

The wall I face is covered with postcards people have sent me from travels around the world. Everything from the Australian outback to a lovely postcard from an airport in Kansas. And there’s a poster of Snoopy sitting at his typewriter. The first caption is “The…” and then two panels pass with him trying to write, until the fourth panel says “…heck with it.” This is not, mercifully, an accurate portrayal of my process. Because I don’t actually sit down in my desk chair unless I’m in the mood to write. So the minute I commit to that seat, I commit to some writing. (A note about that chair: It’s actually a remnant from a dining room set my parents bought in the 70s. Recently, they redid their basement and reassembled the set again, with my chair missing. They want it back. They’re not getting it quite yet.)

I write on a MacBook I got this year, and it’s kept company by my old iBook and even older iMac. So my desk has three computers on it, and usually a steadily growing pile of music magazines, CDs, and (every now and then) scribbles about whatever it is I am working on. The way the desk is set up, there is a window to my left, looking out over a Hoboken street. I always write with music playing (no surprise there), but there’s the undertone of buses and traffic, conversations and bursts (at night) from the bar below me. The liquor store across the street from me closes on weeknights at precisely 11:00, and on weekends at precisely midnight. I can tell time by the sound of his gate coming down.

When people see where I work, I am often asked: Don’t you always want to just lean over and take a nap in your bed instead of writing? The answer is: When I’m in the writing zone, it doesn’t occur to me. Other times, I nap. (On the plus side, the kitchen is all the way across the apartment.)

I’ve lived in my apartment long enough that every book I’ve written has been at least in part written at my desk. (The same desk, I should add, I had in high school — the “computer desk,” meant to hold my Apple IIe.) So I guess it suits me. I like that I live in my office, because in my head, the place where I deal with life and the place where I deal with stories are not divided into separate rooms.