Member Spotlight: Carrie Finison

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? I write picture books, and my first goal is always simply to entertain. I want to write a book that kids will want to read over and over again. I’m also always thinking about the conversation that the child and adult reader will have after they close the book. How will the theme of the story help bring readers (both child and adult) to some new understanding or insight? I think that is how we effect change in the world.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? One thing that helps me is to open up a picture book (one I didn’t write) and start typing out the text of the story. This was an exercise that Ann Whitford Paul recommends in her book Writing Picture Books as a method for seeing how a picture book manuscript looks on a page, but I find that it’s also a terrific way to jumpstart my own writing when I’m feeling stuck or unmotivated. Just getting my fingers moving, typing SOMETHING, even if it’s not my own, getting my brain in the space for writing, is helpful.

What is your favorite time to write? My favorite time to write is generally morning to early afternoon, before I lose my energy for the day. Of course, having another deadline or something important to do usually means that I will get a spark of inspiration and sit down to write at the most inopportune times!

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? When I first started writing, I would listen to published authors speak and think that I needed to do exactly what they were doing. Write at a set time every day. DON’T write at a set time every day. Write on the computer. Write longhand. ACK! Then at some point I heard a writer speak at a conference and they said, “This is the way that I do it. You will find your own way that works for you.” That felt really freeing because I realized there is no RIGHT way, there’s just the way that works for me. And even that might change over time, or depending on the project I’m working on.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? There are just so many great books that get published each season. Sometimes it can feel intimidating because I wonder how mine can stand out, but as both a reader and writer, all I can really do is revel in the skill of other writers. We really are lucky!

Carrie Finison’s Pigs Dig a Road, illustrated by Brian Biggs, is out now with G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers.