When questioned about my favorite authors, I have a long list. I also pretty much just say Kate DiCamillo and Jennifer Trafton. Upon my request for an interview, the latter said yes, and it became the happiest day of my life. I am thrilled to share my conversation with Jennifer Trafton, the author of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic and Henry and the Chalk Dragon, as well as (I have to mention it) the wife of one of my other favorite authors.
In your piece “The Art of Play,” you wrote that when you sit down to write, you are a child in your bedroom imagining with your toys. For years, I suppressed my own imagination, and everything I wrote was horrible. No one would accept it. Then I read your article. That day, I set myself free and wrote what the child version of myself wanted. It is now a published novel. Do you approach every creative venture in that way?
A writer since age ten, Jennifer Trafton has received the coveted starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publisher's Weekly. With her husband, Pete Peterson (author of the Fin's Revolution series), she lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where, when not writing, she creates art, illustrates, and teaches classes, workshops, and summer camps to kids. She holds multiple degrees and studied areas of history, literature, and theology.
Author and Artist Interview: Jennifer Trafton
In your piece “The Art of Play,” you wrote that when you sit down to write, you are a child in your bedroom imagining with your toys. For years, I suppressed my own imagination, and everything I wrote was horrible. No one would accept it. Then I read your article. That day, I set myself free and wrote what the child version of myself wanted. It is now a published novel. Do you approach every creative venture in that way?
Congratulations! It gives me great joy that I was a small part in releasing that freedom and childlike creativity in you again. Honestly, it is a constant challenge for me. I preach so often about the importance of play because I am not very good at it. If I were, I’d be a whole lot more prolific! No one knows more than I do how difficult it is to retain this ability as an adult. The only thing that helps me keep that faint spirit of playfulness alive in my soul is my memory of having had free rein to do so as a child.
I’ve learned this lesson the hard way by hitting roadblocks again and again in my life—periods when I allowed discouragement and fear and self-criticism to shut me down creatively. It’s impossible for me to make any real progress on a story, or any kind of art, as long as my adult brain is in control. When I sit down to be creative—whether that means writing a story or drawing a picture or arranging flowers on my kitchen table or whatever small ordinary thing I’m doing to make something new and beautiful—I am engaging in a battle against my fear, my pride, my perfectionism, my tendency to compare myself with others, my envy of others’ talents, my mental distraction, my despair over my own inadequacy. I have to lose myself for a moment. I have to become a child again, learn to play again.
A lot of these struggles found their way into my second novel, Henry and the Chalk Dragon. Like Henry I too have fought dragons, and the worst of my dragons are Fear and Self-doubt. During the many revisions of this book I was going through some of the hardest battles I’ve ever fought against those dragons. I’ve had to learn to be brave, like Henry, when making art and letting it out there into the world felt like an impossibly scary thing to do.
So, yes, I do try to approach creativity this way, though I don’t always succeed. In my writing studio are things that remind me of my childhood—my Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox, my Etch-a-Sketch, my favorite doll and stuffed animal, a photograph of myself at seven years old in my Girl Scout uniform, a bookshelf of my favorite children’s books. And my best writing days are when I can remember what it felt like to be that Jennifer, and to completely lose myself in the joy of a story, for its own sake.
I want to talk about one of your works in particular. The twist in The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, with the sleeping giant—I never, ever would have guessed that. What gave you the idea?
Sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly where an idea came from, but in this case there’s a story! When I was in college, I backpacked for a summer around Great Britain and Ireland, and I was especially fascinated by the beautiful shapes of the hills and mountains I saw. In one place, there were hills (actually, they were buried barracks) that reminded me of a dragon or giant with grass grown over the top—I couldn’t help but see this or that part as a leg or an arm or a tail. I wrote the idea down in my journal—and there are also, from that trip, scattered poems in my journal that show I was beginning to see sleeping giants everywhere.
But life went on, and I forgot all about it! Until years later, when I was writing a story about a girl who lost her hat in the middle of the woods in a thunderstorm, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. I looked back through my old story ideas and notebooks and journals, and I came across that idea of the sleeping giant from my travels. And then I knew that the lost girl and the giant belonged to the same world—and that unlocked the whole story for me.
How long did the ideas for both of your books sit with you before you wrote them?
I am a sloooooooow writer. Things have to bake in my brain for years before they’re ready to come out. On average, it seems to be about five years that I let the ideas for a story bubble around, make notes, write drafts of conversations or possible chapters, kind of live in the world for a while, before I settle down and really churn out a first draft (which typically takes about three to six months). I’ve just finished the first draft of a new novel, and it was almost exactly five years since I’d first had the idea for that one too. That said, I have stories in my brain that have been baking for a lot longer than that—one half-written that’s at least a decade old, but still isn’t “ready” to come out yet. It will eventually, I hope!
Would you say you are more like Henry or Persimmony?
I am definitely more like Henry. Persimmony is who I would like to be, in some ways—fearless and ready for adventure. But I poured my insecurities about art and my shyness and my wild childhood imagination into the character of Henry.
This is about you, but I’m such a fan of the Fin’s Revolution series I can’t help but squeeze it in. Of all your characters, who do you think would have made the best companion on Fin’s journey?
What a fun question! I was going to say Persimmony, but I asked Pete what he thought, and he said Mr. Bruce, the bus driver in Henry and the Chalk Dragon, because Fin would have needed his encouragement and wisdom.
We learn in Henry and the Chalk Dragon that you have to be brave to be an artist. Is there any other advice you’d like to conclude with?
As my husband often reminds me, the only way to fail as a writer is to not write. This may sound obvious, but it’s the #1 thing I have to tell myself on a daily basis. Just keep writing.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly where an idea came from, but in this case there’s a story! When I was in college, I backpacked for a summer around Great Britain and Ireland, and I was especially fascinated by the beautiful shapes of the hills and mountains I saw. In one place, there were hills (actually, they were buried barracks) that reminded me of a dragon or giant with grass grown over the top—I couldn’t help but see this or that part as a leg or an arm or a tail. I wrote the idea down in my journal—and there are also, from that trip, scattered poems in my journal that show I was beginning to see sleeping giants everywhere.
But life went on, and I forgot all about it! Until years later, when I was writing a story about a girl who lost her hat in the middle of the woods in a thunderstorm, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. I looked back through my old story ideas and notebooks and journals, and I came across that idea of the sleeping giant from my travels. And then I knew that the lost girl and the giant belonged to the same world—and that unlocked the whole story for me.
How long did the ideas for both of your books sit with you before you wrote them?
I am a sloooooooow writer. Things have to bake in my brain for years before they’re ready to come out. On average, it seems to be about five years that I let the ideas for a story bubble around, make notes, write drafts of conversations or possible chapters, kind of live in the world for a while, before I settle down and really churn out a first draft (which typically takes about three to six months). I’ve just finished the first draft of a new novel, and it was almost exactly five years since I’d first had the idea for that one too. That said, I have stories in my brain that have been baking for a lot longer than that—one half-written that’s at least a decade old, but still isn’t “ready” to come out yet. It will eventually, I hope!
Would you say you are more like Henry or Persimmony?
I am definitely more like Henry. Persimmony is who I would like to be, in some ways—fearless and ready for adventure. But I poured my insecurities about art and my shyness and my wild childhood imagination into the character of Henry.
This is about you, but I’m such a fan of the Fin’s Revolution series I can’t help but squeeze it in. Of all your characters, who do you think would have made the best companion on Fin’s journey?
What a fun question! I was going to say Persimmony, but I asked Pete what he thought, and he said Mr. Bruce, the bus driver in Henry and the Chalk Dragon, because Fin would have needed his encouragement and wisdom.
We learn in Henry and the Chalk Dragon that you have to be brave to be an artist. Is there any other advice you’d like to conclude with?
As my husband often reminds me, the only way to fail as a writer is to not write. This may sound obvious, but it’s the #1 thing I have to tell myself on a daily basis. Just keep writing.
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