I never imagined that my book journey would take me to Nepal, a country of diverse cultures, natural beauty, and some of the highest mountain peaks on our planet, including Mount Everest. I came to Nepal at the invitation of close friends whose children attend Lincoln School in Kathmandu. They put me in touch with the school librarian, Jeremiah, whose passion for books and hosting authors made my participation possible.
Jeremiah organized a three-day schedule that was packed with activities from start to finish. He also processed book orders, which were at fifteen before I arrived…a figure that would multiply by the end of the week. He told me a parent had asked him if the story was appropriate for children given the way the characters speak. Jeremiah didn’t see that as a problem for the intended audience of teens. He had a lot to say about book censorship and banning and felt that kids, including his own, are fully capable of making choices about what they want to read.
I traveled eleven time zones to get to Nepal, and as I write this blog over a week after my arrival, I’m still adjusting to jet lag. Fortunately, Nepal is a coffee-lovers dream, with cafés scattered all over Kathmandu. Lincoln School even has its own mini-café – a useful resource as my circadian rhythms tried coming to grips with their new reality.
With or without the coffee, though, the energy of the school would have kept me wide awake. The students were brilliant, and I appreciated their curiosity and enthusiasm. Many have parents who are diplomats or humanitarian workers, and they have lived all over the world. My life has been as itinerant as many of theirs, which was an immediate point of connection.
Each morning, I gave an assembly on Deficient to a different grouping of students – elementary, middle, and high school. I shared the characters and themes of the book and read a couple of passages before opening the floor to questions.
Though I worked in youth empowerment previously, I wasn’t prepared for the undiluted enthusiasm of the elementary school students, which took the form of questions such as:
- “Can Yalamba draw someone’s arms or legs falling off?”
- “How do the shuttlebuses hover?”
- “What does dystopian mean?”
- “What is grit?”
- “Are you a senior in high school?”
- “Do you think the world will end?”
- “How many drafts did you write?”
- “What did you like most about living in Colombia?”
- “Are you rich?”
After the assemblies, I carried out workshops on how to create multi-layered characters, utilizing content from Debra Dixon’s GMC: Goal, Motivation, and Conflict. This book was recommended to me as I was editing Deficient, and one publisher told me they would only consider my manuscript once I addressed issues relating to the GMC of my protagonist. I adapted the content of the workshop for the various ages of the students at Lincoln. For middle school and high school students, I made links to movies or shows they liked and the characters they see on screen. I used the example of Moana to analyze her GMC and inner conflict – the flawed worldview that changes by the story’s end.
For the elementary school students, I passed around my Deficient trading cards and challenged them to create their own characters who were students at Achewon Egalitarian Academy. They had to come up with a name, superpower, goal, motivation, and conflict. The work that came back was fantastic, and the students were thrilled to show me their characters the following day.
The character trading cards were probably the biggest hit of the week. I passed these out at random, and students went on to trade them during lunch, recess, and class (sorry teachers!). I overheard one boy say, “I want a Landon card because he looks like me!” That made me smile and proved how a diverse cast of characters can mean something to someone who feels underrepresented in books or other forms of entertainment. Many of the students were drawn to the character Gwen since she has the most powerful stats. I love that because it challenges certain flawed assumptions people continue to have around gender and strength. That said, each character found love in the eyes of various beholders. Several students chased me down after classes to see if I could sign their cards.
Creative writing is an elective for high school students, and I engaged with two creative writing classes. Four students summoned up the courage to share their work with me and solicit constructive feedback. Their pieces were unique in style, and several explored fantasy or sci-fi concepts. Commenting on young people’s creative work is not something I’ve had to do in a while, and I tried to be generous with positive feedback while offering some constructive insights based on my own experience. I couldn’t help but notice them cringing as I silently read their work. I knew exactly how they felt – that sixth sense, as tangible as taste or smell, of knowing you’re being judged. I wanted to soften the experience for them, but there wasn’t much that could be done. Cringing is part of the writing process whether one likes it or not… at least until the receiving of reviews and critiques feels more natural. The GMC proved to be a helpful approach for delivering feedback, since I could use it to challenge the writers to understand their protagonists’ desires, fears, choices, and behaviors more fully.
And I, in turn, received some feedback of my own from the students of Lincoln.
“You need a character who can speak to animals!” one said.
“The book should be in Spanish,” said a student from Colombia.
“Deficient should be a graphic novel!” said another.
“I’m ten chapters in,” a Nepali boy said. “Your book is awesome.”
(He later asked me if he could have one of every trading card. Sometimes flattery works wonders… of course he got them!)
“My younger sister can’t stop talking about your book,” said one of the high school students. “She loves the characters.”
“This is a book I’ll listen to for twenty minutes every night for the next two years,” said an elementary school student. (I don’t know if he’ll actually do this, but the fact that he thought about it means the world.)
“You’ve inspired me to write,” said a thirteen-year-old with an exceptional gift from the creative ether. When I read her work, I was floored. My feedback consisted mainly of “Keep going,” and “You do you!” Her voice reminded me of a modern Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, a book she hadn’t yet read.
“She’s going to win a Booker Prize one day,” her English teacher said.
My experience at Lincoln has been the largest-scale interaction I’ve had with my book’s primary target audience to date. This has been priceless for me, since I realized that the themes of my book are hitting home for young people of various ages. They can relate to a character like Alé, who struggles with being an outsider, and they’re able to explore his goals, motivations, and conflicts, including conflicts of the heart. Through Alé, they now understand what a worldview is and the powerful forces at play when someone’s worldview changes. And many are writing their own works, channeling their creativity to create new characters and worlds.
I found myself reflecting fondly on the experience at Lincoln School over the weekend while touring Swayambhunath Monkey Temple in Kathmandu. The temple is lined with prayer wheels carved with mantras. The act of spinning the wheels signifies an offering of compassion to the world and shifting away from self-centered desires and attachments. It’s about what we give, not what we take.
As much as I tried to give at Lincoln School, I can’t help but feel I’ve taken away so much more. So I spun a wheel for that, hoping others will share in the feeling too.
What a wonderful time for you….