Avi Blog » Bright Shadow

Read something funny

Avi — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 21:45:12 +0000

Now that you’re looking through the bookshelves at Grandpa’s or Aunt Eileen’s for something funny to read, you might try S.O.R. Losers, a tale of a soccer team that does not win. On my website, I often share the “story behind the story.” Here’s what I said about S.O.R. Losers:

“As noted in the entry for Bright Shadow, I am often asked “How long does it take you to write a book?” The answer is, about a year. But it can vary. A lot. S.O.R. Losers took me one day to write. It has never happened before, or since, and I don’t think it’s likely to happen again. How did it happen in this book? When I was in high school I played on our school soccer team. I was goalie. We were terrible. How terrible? We never won a game. My own kids—who had become good soccer players—loved to hear how bad their dad—me—was. So I told them many a story about how we always managed to lose. They thought it very funny.

“One day I decided to write it all up as a novel. Since I had—in a way—practiced telling the tale of our terrible team so often, it just flowed out, game by game—in one day.”

Is losing funny? Read the book and let me know.

The writer’s fundamental contradiction

Avi — Wed, 23 May 2012 07:01:08 +0000

It usually takes me a year to write one of my novels. Sometimes more, sometimes less. The longest time period was fourteen years, for Bright Shadow. The shortest period was one day, for S.O.R. Losers. There are explanations for both extremes, but I will save them for another post. Readers, however, are welcome to read the books and see if they can see why. My current project has been two years in the making. The first effort was not very good, and required extensive rewriting. Why was it not very good? In essence, it was too close to my personal experience. Which is to say I was not able to take what was real and meaningful to me, and make it real and meaningful to readers. This flies in the advice often given to young writers: “Write what you know.” The problem of course, is the writer’s fundamental contradiction: A writer must be objective about personal experience to make it a subjective experience for the reader. Never easy.

City of Orphans in Spanish

Avi — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:01:27 +0000

In the mail today came the Spanish edition of City of Orphans, with the translated title, Ciudad de Huérfanos. [Editorial Bambú--Spain] My knowledge of languages other than English is woefully ( sadly) deficient. I cannot therefore, speak to the translation, but it is a handsome hardbound edition, truly stitched, complete with headband, a bound-in, green ribbon page marker (something I love) and an unusually fine illustration for the cover art. Many of my books have been translated (True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is in some twenty languages.). The Korean Crispin: The Cross of Lead, which is fully illustrated, is very beautiful. These translated editions fascinate me, in part by the way they depict the story. They also allow me to wonder how young people in different cultures respond to my stories. Now and again, I get letters from these kids, and they are always delightful. Once, in Denmark, a girl told me how Bright Shadow was her favorite book. There is something very special about reaching across the globe in this way. Deeply rewarding.