Spotlight Profile
March 2008
Becky Levine is a children's writer, freelance manuscript editor, and speaker. She has just finished her first children's mystery, and is currently co-writing (with SinC member Lee Lofland) a nonfiction book for children about being a police officer. Becky also reviews children's and young-adult books for The Horn Book Guide. Becky lives in Northern California's Santa Cruz mountains, with her husband, her son, and her cat. You can read more about her at her website, www.beckylevine.com, and her blog, beckylevine.livejournal.com.
IC: Do you have any favorite quotes (about writing or about life in general)?
BL: Just everybody's favorite: Anne Lamott's instructions to let ourselves write sh**. :) We all worry too much about the quality of our first drafts, when the most important thing to do is get it down on paper. The second most important thing is to be ready to change every word of it!
IC: Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with Sisters in Crime? How did you learn about the organization?
BL:I've known about Sisters in Crime for years. Until recently, mostly I watched their website, but I joined the Internet chapter last year and am getting a lot from the mailing list. It's a great group of people! And the group is a great source of information about writing and the whole publishing process.
IC: Any interesting experiences with SinC?
BL: I've gone twice to the annual conference put on by the Los Angeles branch. Last year, I was a presenter-talking about revision and getting your manuscript to the point where it's ready to submit. This year, they asked me to moderate a panel of children's mystery writers at one of their monthly meetings--I'm really excited about that.
IC: How did you develop an interest in writing?
BL: I've been writing since I was a little girl. I actually sent stories, very juvenile (both in subject and in writing), off to magazines like Redbook and Cosmopolitan and collected my rejection slips from them. Years later, I can smile, thinking about the faces of those editors when they opened my submissions. And I learned how important it is to know your market!
IC: You write middle grade mysteries. What are some of the special challenges and rewards of writing for a younger audience?
BL: Well, it gives me an excuse to read children's books! Not that I ever needed an excuse, but people look at you a little less strangely when they think your reading tastes are research, not just an addiction. :) For me, the biggest writing freedom was getting rid of the dead bodies. Not that I don't like reading (and writing) those scenes, but I was always struggling with balancing out the fast, forward movement of the mystery-solving plot with the need to let my heroine deal with the emotional issues of having found a friend's body. Of course, there are wonderful books being written for kids that do deal with some pretty heavy problems, and there are, obviously, plenty of humorous grown- up mysteries out there. When I started my kids' book, I made the choice for escapism, for keeping things light and fun-- getting rid of the corpses was probably just a symbol for stepping into a different style of writing. The challenge, of course, is writing from the point of view of a character years, even decades, younger than myself. And I had to pick, not just a twelve-year-old for my hero, but a twelve-year-old boy. I think that my hero, Joel, is so far away from who I am, that I'm forced to step out of my own, natural voice and into his. It also helps that my son is almost twelve, so I am surrounded, on a pretty regular basis, by the language, behavior, and-probably most important-attitude!
IC: How do you put yourself into the mindset of your characters?
BL: I guess I just talked about that some, but here's a little more. I was a very shy, sheltered child when I was growing up. My tendency is still to sit back and watch a situation, rather than jump in at top speed. Obviously, that doesn't work for a mystery detective. So, basically, my main characters are sort of me, except with guts, or chutzpah. They have some quality that doesn't let them sit on the sidelines-curiosity or an overly strong sense of what's fair/not fair.
IC: You've been sending your most recent manuscript to agents. Can you tell us where you are in that process? Any good news to share?
BL: I'm still in the process. No seriously good news yet, but it hasn't been all bad, either! It's an amazing feeling of ups and downs, of perhaps the hardest thing to do--wait and hope. You get your book done, as far as you and your critique group can tell, and then you sort of have to become your own assistant, the objective, unemotional person who can send out queries, check off agents, send more queries. So much of it is beyond our control, but I do know one thing. If I don't get my book published, it's not going to be because I didn't try!
IC: You wear several other professional hats. In addition to writing, you're also an editor and a conference/workshop speaker. Let's talk about editing first. What are some of the most common mistakes you see writers make?
BL: The same ones I struggle with in my own writing, a lot of times! There are the little issues, of course, like basic grammar problems or not proofreading a final draft before sending it out. Some of the bigger problems are things like dumping too much background information in one spot, writing character relationships that don't change over the course of the story, and forgetting to give the hero strong, active goals in every scene. Like I said, I have to watch for all of these as I write, and we go over and over them in my critique group. Writing is hard; the role for an editor is to be a strong, second pair of eyes, not think of themselves as the font of all knowledge and experience!
IC: When would you recommend a professional editor as opposed to self-editing?
BL: There are a couple of times I think this is a good idea. First, if you've really worked and re-worked your book, really done several passes of strong revision, and you're ready to submit, think about the basic grammar and proofreading. Some people are good at this, some people aren't-I think it's a very different skill from creative writing. If you are at all worried about submitting a clean, grammatically-correct manuscript, you may want to hire an editor to do a final pass for you. The other time to talk with an editor is when you're stuck. Obviously, critique groups are a wonderful resource for helping us over these points; I couldn't have written my book without my group. Some writers, though, don't feel comfortable in a writing group, can't find one, or...maybe the whole group is stuck! A good manuscript editor can act like a strong, one-person critique group, help you see where the bigger problems are popping up and help you brainstorm ideas for what you can do with your characters and plot to solve those problems. The editor's job is not to rewrite your book, or to push you to write it in any way you're not comfortable with. The editor's job is to help you write the book you want.
IC: How did you launch your career as a speaker at conferences and workshops? Do you think it has advanced your career as a writer?
BL: You know, it's a matter of putting yourself out there. I volunteered to help Beth Proudfoot, who chaired the East of Eden conferences, and that got me hooked up with people in the California Writers Club. I met and worked with, Lee Lofland, who wrote Police Procedure and Investigation, and that connected me with people at some other writing conferences--the Sisters in Crime one in LA and this year's Mad Anthony conference in Ohio. I think doing the speaking has made me more known in the writing world. It's been something to include in my query letters, too. At this point, I'm usually speaking about editing and revision, but I plan to go back to a lot of these places in the future as a children's writer!
IC: Let's not forget your blog. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
BL: I love my blog. I started it for fun, but it's connected me up with some wonderful people who are also going through this process, sharing their writing struggles and successes. Writers spend so much time alone at our computers, that getting connections through the Internet just makes things a lot less isolated.
IC: How does blogging help you as a writer?
BL: This was the big surprise for me--I didn't expect it to help my writing. But it has--at least I think so! It's such a different form of writing than a novel; you have less space and time, and you have to make a point. It's a lot like writing a column, except with a bit more freedom. And I try to use the blog space to play with my comic writing and timing. (I hate saying this, because I'm always afraid someone's going to write and say, "Oh, you're trying to be funny?!"). Joel, the hero in my mystery is pretty funny, and the blog helps me play with that kind of prose. We're not making the same jokes, Joel and me, but I think we do have the sense of humor, if you take into account the difference in our ages!
IC: Everybody has a different method for writing a novel. What's yours? (Are you an outliner or a "seat-of-the-pants"-er? How do you go about researching and writing a novel? What kind of schedule works best for you? How do you go from a germ of an idea to a completed novel?)
BL: Outline, outline, outline. Then write partway through the first draft, and outline some more. Finish the first draft, and wish I'd done more outline. Revise & outline at the same time. It never stops. On my first book, I used Martha Alderson's Blockbuster Plots, Pure and Simple . This time around, I'm still using her ideas, but I'm also using Karen Wiesner's system in First Draft in 30 Days, and I'm reading an incredible book called The Anatomy of Story, by John Truby. I spent years, before I started on my kids' books, in writing without a plan, without a structure, and it was too many years of making too little progress. The best story needs a strong structure to fall into, I think.
Research--I should do more of this while I plot, but I tend to leave it for further along in the process. Luckily, I live about 20 minutes from Santa Cruz, California, where my mystery is set, and I know the town relatively well, so usually I write placeholder scenes in the early drafts. Then, when I know it's really time to get the details right, I go spend a lot of hours in town with a notebook and camera.
How do I get an idea? I struggled for years with this, wanting to write, but NOT having good ideas. Then I fell in love with the two main characters in my kids' mystery, and now the ideas are pouring in, and I have no idea where they come from. I wish I had the answer! My husband says it's because this is what I should have been writing all along. :)
I have no idea where my ideas come from, except maybe from the characters? And I started to make the book a mystery before I'd even thought about it. What I love about mysteries, though, and always have, is that the what- happened-and-whodunit structure gives you room to play with character and relationships. And I think that's what I'm writing about for the kids. You know--relationships with parents who, great as they are, get in the way just by being parents. Relationships with other kids, all of whom have varying degrees of self- esteem and self-confidence-those are collisions just waiting to happen. Plot is action, driven by choice, driven by character, and when your characters are just beginning to figure out who they are...well, it's just really fun to write!
IC: How would you describe your writing and yourself as a writer?
BL: Okay, this falls under what I think and hope my writing is like. I like to write fairly tight, without a lot of extra description or narrative. I love playing with dialog beats, to get as much emotional or comedic impact into just a few words. I like to describe a scene with spareness, but still get all the action and tension across. I had to write a skateboarding scene into the book, and that I REALLY had to do research for. It was so fun to describe the movement and the setting and my hero in the middle of it, without going on and on, and I was SO happy when my readers told me I'd done great.
IC: What's the best part about being a mystery writer?
BL: Call it laziness, but, with a mystery, I always know what the first plotline will be. I know there has to be a crime, and I know my hero's goal is to solve it. Of course, he has to have his personal goal, as well, and so does his sidekick, but they work all this out in between eavesdropping on other people and hunting for clues. That blank page that's staring back at us whenever we start writing? With a mystery book, the page isn't quite so blank.
IC: Any downsides?
BL: The same as above, except, this time its the restrictions of the mystery plot. I have to think up a crime, and this is trickier with kids' writing, because so often it isn't murder. Also, I know who the bad guy is. How do you judge, while you're writing, whether you're giving everything away to the reader, or going the other way--giving them too little information to be fair? Again, this is what critique groups are for.
IC: What do you most like to read? Do you have different reading preferences when you are in the thick of a project than when you aren't?
BL: Obviously, kids books. And mysteries. I struggle with nonfiction, which makes research hard for me. The one genre I read in that I don't (yet) write in is YA-Young Adult. I am fascinated with these books--the voice in a good YA is just amazing. I don't believe there was anything like these books when I was growing up. We went straight from kids' stories to grown-up mysteries, or to fantasy and science fiction. I guess Judy Blume was probably the first real YA writer, but I was just a little too old when she came along. I don't really change what I read while I'm writing, probably because I'm doing both most hours of the day! The only time I can remember having to STOP reading something for a bit was when I was immersed in Meg Cabot's Princess- Diary books (read them!), and Joel started sounding an awful lot like Mia. I had to get my first draft done, then I rushed back to the series.
IC: Do you have any advice for aspiring mystery writers out there?
BL: Plot, plot, plot. And read, read, read. It would be hard for me to say which is more important.
IC: How about for our members who love mysteries but have no aspirations to write them?
BL: Advice? I think anyone who loves reading already has things figured out. :) How about just telling them, "Thank you!"
IC: You're in the Spotlight. Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't discussed?
BL: Just that I'd love to hear from any other SinC members who are also writing for kids!
This interview was conducted for SinC-IC
by Elizabeth Terrell.
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