How I Got There

I recent­ly received this letter:

“I am a sec­ond-grade teacher at [xxxx], in the [xxxx] Dis­trict. With the Covid pan­dem­ic tak­ing a toll on edu­ca­tion glob­al­ly, it is with great pride that my class and I have tak­en a strong love and appre­ci­a­tion for Avi, and his series Poppy.

It all start­ed as a read-aloud to sec­ond grade. I was ner­vous as a teacher because the pan­dem­ic real­ly held stu­dents back in terms of their lev­els of expec­ta­tions and aca­d­e­m­ic pre­pared­ness. I made a teacher’s guide [for my] sec­ond graders [for a] read-aloud and chose Poppy.

The con­nec­tion that I have with my stu­dents through this sto­ry is noth­ing short of amaz­ing. I went from zero class par­tic­i­pa­tion to every sin­gle hand raised! That gives me chills! My stu­dents are so engrossed in Pop­py and want to con­tin­ue the series so bad­ly, that is there is any way at all, that Avi could have a Skype ses­sion with us, we would be most gracious.”

Pop­py was pub­lished in 1995, which means it has been around for twen­ty-five years. Over the years it has been very suc­cess­ful, more often than not (read­ers tell me) as a read-aloud. As you might guess, let­ters such as the one above—only recent­ly received—are very grat­i­fy­ing. And while I have very clear mem­o­ries of writ­ing the book, I can tell you noth­ing mean­ing­ful about how I wrote it.

“How did you come up with the story?” 
“How did you invent the characters?” 
“How did you come up with the char­ac­ter named Ereth and his way of speaking?”

These are some of the ques­tions I’m often asked about Pop­py. The truth of the mat­ter is that I can­not answer them. I wish I could. I can only say that once I wrote Pop­py, I came to be enam­ored of these crea­tures as if they were enti­ties quite sep­a­rate from me. Indeed, I’ve writ­ten so many books about them most­ly because I enjoy being with them. Lucky me. But I can­not explain how they came to be.

I think the truth of the mat­ter is that a good deal of suc­cess­ful writ­ing is often quite uncon­scious and intu­itive. Speak­ing only for myself, my process of writ­ing is essen­tial­ly rewrit­ing. By going over and over the book I am mak­ing con­stant changes, which is anoth­er way of say­ing I’m for­ev­er (so it seems) defin­ing and redefin­ing the char­ac­ters and what they do, for­ev­er learn­ing who and what they are. I’m con­stant­ly remind­ed of Robert Frost’s brave notion (often quot­ed here) “If there are no sur­pris­es for the writer there are no sur­pris­es for the reader.”

A case in point: I recent­ly fin­ished a book, but the spe­cif­ic end­ing of the story—the protagonist’s final actions—eluded me. I under­took many revi­sions. Many end­ings. And then, after a year of work­ing on the text, I sud­den­ly real­ized what that end­ing should be based upon yet anoth­er slog through the whole book. The clues—so to speak—for the final act were right there in the book along.

I know writ­ers who metic­u­lous­ly work out the entire sto­ry­line. More pow­er to them. It’s not my way. Yes­ter­day I start­ed a new book. I won­der what will hap­pen. Some­thing will. Just don’t ask me how I got there.