Renowned author talks life, education with Bain students

By Jen Cowart
Posted 6/6/18

By JEN COWART Recently, Hugh B. Bain Middle School welcomed Wendelin Van Draanen (wendelinvand.com) to their school, and her imaginative wit and creativity was on full display. Van Draanen is a renowned young adult author who has written more than two

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Renowned author talks life, education with Bain students

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Recently, Hugh B. Bain Middle School welcomed Wendelin Van Draanen (wendelinvand.com) to their school, and her imaginative wit and creativity was on full display.

Van Draanen is a renowned young adult author who has written more than two dozen books for middle grade and young adult readers, including student favorites such as Flipped, Swear to Howdy, The Running Dream, and Runaway, as well as the popular Sammy Keyes mystery series for middle grade readers. Van Draanen presented two dynamic speaking presentations for two groups of students as well as taking the time for a book signing session.

As she began her presentation, Van Draanen, a former middle school teacher and mother of two, immediately caught the students’ attention as she moved back and forth across the stage, and her lively speaking manner kept their attention throughout.

“I’m an author and at your age, I could never have imagined being an author,” she told the students. “English language arts drove me crazy. That was a class where I could never figure out what the teacher wanted. Math made sense to me. You do the steps and you get the answer. I went on to college and became a math and computer science teacher, but I have 34 books. How did that happen? Sometimes life takes you to places you didn’t expect to go and didn’t want to go.”

She went on to describe her own unexpected experiences that led her to start writing. She spoke about her family, immigrant parents who came to America from Holland and started a business, which was burnt down by arsonists. Six months later her father died of complications from a brain tumor operation.

“We went from being a normal family to having to deal with death, despair and destruction,” she said. “There were dark days and years. I had anger inside and heartache about missing my dad and I didn’t know how to move forward. I’d wake up in the middle of the night out of a nightmare, and my heart would be pounding.”

Van Draanen began writing about her anger and how bad things happen to good people, and how wrong and unfair life was. She realized, however, that in her writing she could write her own, better ending to her stories, which would give her some closure. She got to write about the bad guys getting caught and put in jail.

“I didn’t have to stick with the way things had happened,” she said. “I could do whatever I wanted. I could torture them a little bit before they went to jail, or I could kill them off.”

She outlined for the students how she began writing with the intent of being published, sending off manuscript after manuscript, getting rejected by publishers nearly a dozen times over ten years’ time, writing during the early morning hours before work, after putting her kids to bed or after the end of a long day of teaching, until finally one of her Sammy Keyes stories was accepted by Random House publishing, a call she received at school one day.

“After ten years, Random House wanted all four of my Sammy Keyes books, and they asked if I would write some more,” she said.

Van Draanen wrote 18 of the Sammy Keyes books in total, following the lead protagonist from her first day of seventh grade through her last day of eighth grade. The books were translated worldwide and she received an Edgar Award for her work.

“That’s like winning the Oscars for authors,” she said.

All told, Van Draanen’s books have been made into movies, translated worldwide and are loved by readers around the globe. After teaching for 15 years, she left in order to devote her time to writing full time. However, she told the students that even as an experienced author, it’s not a quick, easy job to write a manuscript fit for publication, and she showed them what her manuscripts look like before and after they’ve been edited and revised multiple times before going to print.

She noted how, as a student, she disliked revising and editing as she tried to figure out what it was her English language arts teachers wanted, she now appreciated the feedback and constructive criticism.

“Revision is not the enemy,” she said. “Revision is your friend. I now love revision and I do it 20 times before I send it to the editor and the editor sends it back with an editorial note and I send it back and she sends it back with little red marks all over it, just like in school, but now my attitude is different.”

Prior to the end of her presentation, Van Draanen spoke to the students about how she used some of her real life experiences and encounters as inspiration, which helped her to develop her characters and her story lines. She spoke about the various genres she has written, from mysteries to stories where the characters were homeless or handicapped, to stories about young love or those where the characters were suffering from dementia.

As she wrapped up her presentation, Van Draanen left the students with powerful words of wisdom.

“Dream big, work hard and don’t give up,” she said.

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