Betty Birney’s Blog

I believe this was my first day of first grade (yes, I was and am tall). I think my mom is actually applauding the fact that my sister Janet and I are going back to school with our nifty new shoes, socks, and lunchboxes.

I mostly took the summer off from blogging – but definitely not from writing. I actually got a lot of that done. Now it’s back to school again and back to blogging for me. I will soon be visiting schools in L.A., San Francisco, Minneapolis and Chicago on a book tour sponsored by Humphrey’s publisher, Penguin. I have other dates coming up here in Los Angeles throughout the fall.

If you teachers, students and parents are having trouble transitioning back to school, check out Humphrey’s latest adventure: School Days According to Humphrey. Our hamster hero, Humphrey, is SHOCKED-SHOCKED-SHOCKED at the changes he finds in Room 26 as a new school year begins.

Here’s the new Hungarian cover for Friendship According to Humphrey. Strange color palette, I know. But it’s not as frightening as the cover for book 1. However, little Spuri continues to please in Hungary.

I’ve been busy writing and find that when I’m deep in a story, I just want to do that and let the blogging go by the wayside a little. A few new things:

-There’s an interview with me currently up on Brittney Breakey’s terrific Author’s Turf website. http://authorturf.com/

-I’ll be hanging around at the SCBWI Conference (Society of Children’s Book Writer’s and Illustrators)in L.A. starting next Friday. If you want to say hi, let me know.
The conference is completely sold out but if you want to write children’s books, this is the place to start. http://scbwi.org. The organization has been invaluable to me and to so many other published authors I know.

-I’m now tweeting as bettygbirney.

-You can friend me on Facebook as well.

Now back to work!

 Original cover               Current cover

It was January, 2003 and I was on (groan) jury duty. It was a messy, confusing (though absolutely fascinating) trial that was supposed to last 9 days and went on for over 3 weeks. Since Humphrey has a family audience, I’m not going into the details of the crimes.

We had a great jury. All but three had college degrees and a number of them had advanced degrees. We had a teacher, a computer expert, a professor, a social worker, and a high end chef. And a children’s book writer – me. One of the frustrations of jury duty is that you spend so much time sitting in the jury room and so little time in the courtroom hearing testimony. Twelve people with nothing in common except the trial – and that’s the one thing you can’t discuss. The personable chef was popular because another thing we all have in common is food. Eleven of the 12 of us started eating together daily, exploring areas of downtown we didn’t know, taking walks.

One day, we came into the jury room for a break and I called my husband on my cell. He said to call my agent, Nancy Gallt, right away, which I did. She told me that Susan Kochan of Putnam’s had made an offer on The World According to Humphrey. I didn’t know then how lucky I was to have Susan choose it because she’s the perfect editor for Humphrey. Naturally, I started jumping up and down – literally jumping for joy. When the call was over, my fellow jurors were dying to know what happened and they were as excited as I was. I celebrated my first sale of a middle grade with the kindness of strangers.

As we drew closer to the end of the trial, the testimony got even murkier. A mute person testified. We had a rebuttable witness to prove another witness was lying. We had a witness arrested outside the courtroom and a noisy, scary inmate fight in the elevator outside the courtroom. Our deputy ran out with gun drawn. We had a witness heartbreakingly sobbing, long-winded DNA experts, lots and lots of police – it happened that the victim was the sister of a police officer. When we finally started deliberations, it turned out my fellow jurors were as confused as I was. We really worked hard for 2 1/2 days under intense pressure to come to a conclusion because one of the 12 (the one who didn’t go to lunch with us, a stockbroker) was going to “walk” as he had an out of town wedding. That would have meant starting deliberations all over again with the remaining alternate; the other alternate had been dismissed.

We ended up with a hung jury on the most major charge. We all agreed  about what the accused had done but a technicality in the way the law was written became a point of contention. We read that law over and over. The social worker broke down in tears when we knew we were hung. “But he’s soooo guilty,” she wailed.

Still, I respected the people who couldn’t say “beyond a reasonable doubt” because of the wording of the law. (Think Casey Anthony.) We found him guilty on the other three felony counts which sent him to jail for a number of years, probably ruined his life, broke his family’s heart, etc. But he had done those things and none of us had the slightest doubt because he had admitted it on tape. (Admitted it because he didn’t think what he did was wrong. We strongly disagreed.) The prosecution was thrilled that we found him guilty as they knew it was a complicated trial. The family of the victim and the police detectives involved thanked us profusely.

I still think about them all: the jurors, the judge, the family of the victim, the family of the accused.

But I was thrilled to go home  -  a juror no more. I was now a middle grade novelist!

Three months later, at a party, I learned that Nancy had sold The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs to Caitlyn Dlouhy of Atheneum. It was a very good year.

I had the voice for Humphrey, I knew the setting and characters – I was ready to roll – almost.

I had one big problem: I don’t have (and never have had) a hamster. Rather than getting a hamster and totally alienating my beloved dog, Desi, I did tons of research. I read books – one was especially helpful because it delved into how a hamster thinks.  The internet was great because people who really love hamsters have lots of info and pictures and I learned why they were so lovable.  Then I had a brilliant idea and I called up Desi’s vet at Studio City Animal Hospital, explained the problem and was told to come on in. They’d bring in some hamsters and I could ask all the questions I wanted. Camera in hand, I headed down to their office. Judy, who assists the vets, turns out to be a Hamster Rescuer. She brought in two of her rescues (she has as many as 17) and was as knowledgeable as the vet herself. I did have to ask, “You rescue hamsters from what? Who’s out to get hamsters?” It turns out that when pet shops have hamsters that aren’t  perfect, they don’t want them. They call Judy and she takes the unwanted darlings and tries to find a home for them.

I learned a lot about hamsters and got a close-up look. If you really want to know something, it’s great to ask an expert. People are usually happy to share information, especially about something they love. The little hamster pictured was rejected from the pet shop because one eye didn’t open. He was one of Judy’s favorites and the inspiration for the third book, Trouble According to Humphrey, when Humphrey goes to the vet’s office and meets a one-eyed hamster named Winky! Kids are always asking me to bring Winky back and so I will.

There was one more thing to do before writing: outline. I rarely do a fancy outline like this any more, but I’m glad I did it for Humphrey. In my life as a children’s TV writer, part of the deal always involved writing a full (detailed) outline before getting the go-ahead to script. You get paid in steps so you get more for the script than the outline. However, my friends and I always used to secretly say that was funny, because the outline was harder to write than the script — and if you had a great outline, the script almost wrote itself. Now my “outlines” are mostly notes and lists and don’t look pretty. But I have to say, after years of thinking about Humphrey – and with this detailed outline – I wrote the book quickly and with ease, because in essence, it was already written in my head. Each morning I’d lie in bed and think about the chapter I was writing that day. (Amazingly on this book only, I wrote a chapter a day). I could see it play out like a movie — and then I’d get up and write it. No wonder Humphrey has had such a charmed life. So I wrote it and revised it a bunch of times (I revise a lot) and I handed it in to my agent, Nancy Gallt. And then … well, as they say in T.V.: stay tuned.

In my last post, I talked about the years spent taking notes on a story looking at a classroom through the eyes of a classroom pet. A lot of that happened in 1996. I didn’t actually write the book until 2002. One reason is that my primary career was writing children’s television, so children’s fiction took a backseat for many, many years, though it was my number one goal.  The idea about Humphrey took shape and my notes seemingly reflect a book very similar to the published The World According to Humphrey.  But what delayed the actual writing of the book wasn’t that I didn’t have time for it. It was because there was one key element that I hadn’t figured out yet: Humphrey’s voice.

Numerous  times during the years after 1996, I would try to sit down and write the opening of the book.  I’d immediately stop because I had a terrible problem: I didn’t like Humphrey! I’m not talking about hamsters in general. It was this particular Humphrey I didn’t like. He sounded like a a persnickety, know-it-all, slightly superior adult! At the time, I didn’t know exactly what I’d gotten wrong but each time this happened, I’d just put Humphrey aside and think, “Not ready to write that yet.” That was actually a good thing, because if I try to write something before it’s had time to simmer and ferment for a long time, it never works out. 

If I hadn’t been working on other books as well the T.V. writing, I might have wrestled with the voice at the time, but instead, I just put it aside.

And then, everything changed in 2002 when I got an agent. A wonderful agent!  I’d made a few sporadic but not too serious efforts in the past. But Nancy Gallt decided to take me on and everything changed. She focused on trying to sell The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs.  But now that I had someone to help me sell my work. I got more serious and motivated than I ever had been before.

Other things were going on in 2002. My son would be graduating from high school and going off to college in Boston – about as far away from Los Angeles, where we live, as you can get in the U.S. I was excited for him and happy about his choice but I also knew this was going to be pretty darn tough. So I decided to focus on the positive and throw myself  into writing the hamster book. It was do-or-die time for Humphrey. 

In March of 2002, I gave the opening another try. I look at my failed efforts and I suddenly “got” it: Humphrey was a kid! Instead of being a grumpy grown-up, he’d have a light, breezy, fun kid’s voice. And then I wrote: “Today was the worst day of my life.”  I usually rewrite the first line (or first paragraph)of a book after I finish it, but in this case, the first sentence of The World According to Humphrey remained. I think it’s a pretty good first line … if someone said to me, “Today was the worst day of my life,” I’d definitely want to know what happened.

The rest of the writing on this page is rough and not so great. As you can see, if I can’t think of the right word or name, I sometimes use **, knowing I’ll fix it later. Then I don’t get bogged down. Ms. Pickett was the original name of Ms. Mac. A lot of what’s on this page ended up a few pages later in subsequent drafts . But the best thing that happened on this page was that as I wrote, without premeditating it, Humphrey got the word “squeak” and “speak” mixed up and he repeated a word three times – both hallmarks of Humphrey’s way of talking.

Readers often ask me why Humphrey repeats things three times. I answer  that it’s because it makes him seem small and excitable. The truth is, it was an unconscious (or subconscious) choice. Yes, it probably looked ordinary, but March 10, 2002 turned out to be a very good day for Humphrey and me!