Member Spotlight: Michelle Cusolito

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? My specialty is STEM books for young people. I doubled-down on this genre in January of 2017. The attacks on science had already started and I decided that I would focus on writing STEM books to share accurate, up-to-date, scientific information with kids. (I may try other genres in the future, but from 2017 until now I’ve focused on nonfiction). All of my books are rigorously researched and vetted by experts. STEM books for kids are especially important because they distill complex information into text that kids can understand. My editor, Karen Boss, once told me I should say this when asked about what I do: “I’m a kid-book science writer, which means…I get so few words to explain difficult concepts to young people who have never heard of them before and have no world knowledge to fill in gaps.”

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Hmmm… I don’t know that I’ve ever had writer’s block, per se, but I DO suffer from writer procrastination. Lol. I guess maybe they’re kind of the same thing? My first approach is to work analogue. I tap into my creativity more deeply when I’m writing long-hand, messing around with words “magnetic poetry” style, or creating a picture book dummy. In fact, the majority of my first drafts are written long-hand. Then I usually dictate my words into the notes app on my phone to convert that to text. I usually need to clean it up a little bit, but this approach is faster than typing the whole thing. When I find I’m really getting nowhere, I change the situation. I take a walk, take a shower, go up and down the stairs in my house a couple of times, throw in a load of laundry, that sort of thing. Then I come back to the work with fresh eyes. I find a walk or a short yoga session is usually my best choice in this scenario, but I mix things up.

What is your favorite time to write? I usually do my best writing first thing in the morning before anything else has distracted me. I completed the first draft of my book, In the World of Whales before I even got out of bed one morning. I woke up knowing how to structure the book. I grabbed my pen and notebook and started writing. That said, I have occasionally been inspired to write late at night, also while sitting up in bed. I think it has to do with being in that strange not-quite-awake state that happens before waking or sleeping. I’ve also been inspired to write at all times of the day while out walking or traveling. I wrote the shitty first draft* of Flying Deep: Climb Inside Deep-Sea Submersible Alvin while on a walk. Most recently, I wrote a stanza from a poem for Rooted in Wonder: Celebrating the World’s National Trees while whizzing past olive farms in Morocco. *Due credit to Anne Lamott for this phrase.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? I’ve benefited from MANY people who were further along in their careers offering me guidance—but I no longer remember who said what. I’ll share the advice that I most often give writers: There is no right way to be a writer. The “right” way is the way that works best for you. If banging out 2,000 words a day works best for you, great! Do that as much as possible. But that approach does not work for me. My ideas need more time to percolate. I need to play around with ideas rather than plow forward toward a particular word count. Absolutely learn the strategies and routines other writers use. Try them. See how they feel and how well they work for you. But ultimately, you need to decide what works for you and then do that as much as possible. If 2,000 words a day is not best for you, let go of that advice and stop beating yourself up about not doing it. Also: take a moment to celebrate your accomplishments. Even small ones. I track mine in the front of my Bullet Journal. That way, at the end of the year I can read my list and realize how much I actually accomplished. This simple act has transformed how I feel about myself as a writer. (If you want to know more, I wrote this post about it.)

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Every day I learn new scientific stories and information (sometimes cutting-edge, sometimes historical) and can’t wait to figure out how to write about that for kids. Sometimes the structure comes easily for me as with In the World of Whales. Other times, it takes me a long time, as with Diving Deep: Using Machines to Explore the Ocean, which took more than a year. Either way, I love figuring out how to share what I learn with young people.

Michelle Cusolito’s Rooted in Wonder: Celebrating the World’s National Trees, illustrated by Marya Wright, is out now with Moon & Bird.