Sarah Mackenzie (00:05):

Welcome to the Read Aloud Revival. This is the show that helps your family fall in love with books, fall in Love with homeschooling. I’m your host, Sarah Mackenzie, and I am delighted today to have a repeat guest on the show. Laura Martin is the author of some of my very favorite page turners for books, including The Edge of Extinction series and Glitch, which is a time traveling book you will not be able to put down. I ignored a lot of laundry while I read that book.

(00:35):

She’s also the author of several other books. We’re going to put them all on the show notes. Hoax for Hire, Monster Missions. We’re going to talk about them. Last time she came on the show, we were talking about resistant readers, kids who say, “I don’t like reading.” How do you get them to start reading. In that first interview, I love when Laura told me that she had would have sixth grade boys come into her classroom saying they didn’t like books and she took it as a challenge to make books they couldn’t put down. And she did it, because so many of her books are page turners.

(01:03):

Anyway, Laura, I am just absolutely delighted to have you back today. Thanks for coming on the show.

Laura Martin (01:09):

I’m so excited to be back. Yeah, when I was here the last time, I kind of had my teacher shoes on because I was a seventh grade language arts teacher prior to being an author, but now I’ve been an author longer than I was ever a teacher. So I feel like I get to come back and be a writer now and talk about all the writing things, where before, I don’t know if it was imposter syndrome or I just only had one book out, so I’m like, not a real writer yet, I only have one book, so I should talk about teacher stuff.

(01:35):

So I’m excited to come back and talk more about raising kids who are creative and teaching writing and just my own writing journey, which has been really fun so far too. And I do write books for that surly seventh grade boy in the back of the class who says, “I don’t like reading.” And I wanted something they couldn’t put down. And so that’s kind of what has always been behind the way that I write books. I want un-putdownable books and I want just a really fun adventure because when I was a kid, that’s what I looked for in a book. I looked for a book that would take me to somewhere cool and have a fun adventure, meet new people, creatures, and all the things. So that’s kind of what I’ve always written because those are the books that I fell in love with as a kid.

Sarah Mackenzie (02:20):

Well, I think you can tell that your books read somebody who’s a reader. I mean, they were written by somebody who reads a lot of books that are the kind of books you don’t want to put down. I told this story the first time you were on the show, but I’ll mention it again that two of my kids who were, at the time, they must’ve been like 10 and 12 or something. They read The Edge of Extinction books, which have dinosaurs on the cover, everybody. I’ll put them in the show notes. This is not my normal genre. And so I was like, they were telling me, “Mom, you have to read this.” And I was like, “I don’t have to read this, but I’m really glad you enjoyed it.”

(02:53):

And then when my son read it in days, like two days or three days or something and was like, “Mom, you have to read this.” I was like, okay, give me that book. What is going on over here? And then for sure I ignored all the other things I had to do while I read it. And that was just the beginning because I’ve read all of your books since then and you have a new one out called Wander Lost.

Laura Martin (03:12):

I do. I’m really excited about this one and there’s backstory to it. I took a while for Wander Lost to be a reality because I got an argument with my publisher about what it would be about. But yeah, you guys had Edge of Extinction because I wrote you a letter and said, hi, I’m nobody with one book, can I be on your podcast? And I’m so thankful that your kids pulled me out of the pile and decided to give it a chance. Because honestly, I wouldn’t have given a dinosaur book a chance either, because you never know what idea is going to be your idea, the one that changes the trajectory. If you had told me that my idea was going to be a dystopian novel with dinosaurs set in Indiana, I would’ve been like, that’s a hard pass for me.

(03:52):

You never know what your idea is going to be because at the time I was teaching language arts. Language arts teachers are supposed to write about World War II. We’re supposed to be serious literary people. And people used to ask me, what are you writing a book about? And I’d have to be like, well, it’s about dinosaurs in Indiana. And then even after Edge of Extinction was finished and it didn’t have a contract yet, and I was working on writing Float, then I had to [inaudible 00:04:15] to say, well, it’s about kids who float and catch on fire and end up at this camp with a kid who disappears. And so it was never serious or literary, but it’s where I find happiness in my writing and you kind of have to write the stuff that you like to write, even if it’s not necessarily what your highbrow college self would’ve thought you’d be writing.

Sarah Mackenzie (04:35):

Well, they’ve all got the hooks that pull kids in, I think. The whole dinosaurs in Indiana or kids that catch on fire or float or have special superpowers that get them into all kinds of predicaments.

Laura Martin (04:45):

Or Bigfoot.

Sarah Mackenzie (04:47):

Or Bigfoot, their family is responsible for all of the Bigfoot stories and sightings or a time traveling. But the job of these time travelers is to stop other time travelers from changing history. I love describing these to the kids because I feel like they’re so easy to be, like, here’s the premise, and then you’re like, I know they’re going to read that one.

Laura Martin (05:08):

Well, I think that’s because that’s where I always start is… so there’s two kinds of writers. There’s a plotter and a pantser. And a plotter is someone who gets an idea and they sit down and they have pages of notes and they outline it and they have the whole novel mapped out before they sit down to write one word. I’m not that kind of writer. I’m the opposite. I’m the fly by the seat of your pants writer, they call us pantsers. And we just get an idea and we open up a new Word document and we just start typing. And so all of my books started with that hook. Like, oh, what if there’s a kid who can float but he can’t control it? Or, oh, what if there’s a kid whose family is responsible for every Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot sighting for the last hundred years? Or what if there’s a kid who has to go back in time to catch people who are trying to mess up history?

(05:50):

So everything starts with that hook, with that idea. And then I have to figure out what happens in the rest of the story, what the ending looks like. And that’s kind of the hard part because a planner is heading out on a road trip with your old Map Quest directions. You know exactly where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. And a pantser is just like, we’re going north and we’re going to know where we’re going when we get there. And so it’s kind of a surprise to us always what the ending is because we don’t see it before we get started most of the time.

Sarah Mackenzie (06:18):

So tell me more about getting ideas, because I know that’s something that you’ve talked about before and you came to RAR Premium actually, and talked to kids about that idea of the dinosaur book actually came from a note that you jotted down in your phone, I think, years and years before.

Laura Martin (06:33):

I took a picture of a dinosaur. I was on fall break and I was in New York City with my mom and I saw a little dinosaur about the size of a golden retriever, took a picture of it and captured the idea that had flashed through my brain of what if dinosaurs came back. Would this be somebody’s pet? And then it wasn’t until my phone said, eight months later, you’re out of storage, delete something that I found that idea again.

(06:55):

But ideas are funny. And my whole first year of doing author visits right after Edge of Extinction came out, I kept getting this question at the end of my author talks, they’d say, well, where do your ideas come from? And I was always a little baffled, because I was like, I mean, the same place your ideas come from. There’s no magical place that authors go to get ideas. And I was kind of stumped about how to answer it because I was like, how do you explain ideas? And then that summer I figured it out and I figured it out because I let my two oldest kids stay up to catch lightning bugs for the very first time. I have four kids now, but the time my oldest were, I want to say four and two, or they’re real little, and I’m so excited because in Indiana, this is a core memory thing. You get your jar and you run around, you catch your lightning bugs. I’ve only seen lightning bugs one time in my life.

Sarah Mackenzie (07:45):

Or fireflies.

Laura Martin (07:46):

Yeah, yeah. Or fireflies. Yeah, yeah. I’ve only seen them once. This analogy works really well in Indiana. If you’ve never caught a lightning bug, you’re going to have to Google it. But they get their jar and they’re running around trying to catch these lightning bugs and it goes horribly wrong. They can’t get one in the jar, they’re crying, someone skins a knee, someone loses the lid of their jar. And I was like, holy cow. I had to teach them how to do this. I hadn’t realized I had to teach them the technique of catching a lightning bug because there is one.

(08:13):

And I said, “Okay, guys, here’s what you do. When you see that lightning bug light up, you got to keep your eye on it because if you look away for even a second, it just disappears into the night. It’s crazy. You look away and they’re gone forever.”And I said, “You keep your eye on it and you run as fast as you can until you get your hand around that bug. You put it in your jar, you put your lid on it, now you’ve caught a lightning bug.”

(08:32):

So they’re starting to finally run around. There’s bugs in their jar, they’re all excited. And I was like, oh, this is how you explain ideas. This is how ideas work. Because our brains come up with these awesome ideas all the time. I always call them what ifs because every good book starts with what if this is possible? And kids are the perfect what if age. They have 30 to 50 cool ideas every single day. What if I could fly, but mom, what if this bird came and took my sandwich? What if this… Your kids just like rapid fire. But the thing is when they go to bed tonight, they won’t remember one of them because, while our brains are really great places for thinking up ideas, it’s a horrible place for storing ideas.It doesn’t do it.

(09:11):

So if you talk to any creative, whether it’s someone who started a business or created an invention or wrote a book or wrote a song, whatever, they’ll pinpoint the moment when they got their hand around the idea and they got it in the jar. When they thought up that idea and they captured it. And I can go through all of my books and tell you the exact moment.

(09:29):

For example, Hoax for Hire, I was in the middle of teaching a seventh grade language arts class. We were using a nonfiction book called Tales of the Cryptids, which a cryptid is like a creature, like a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster. We were having a debate. One side said Bigfoot exists, the other said he didn’t. We were debating. And I had one of those what if ideas? I was like, oh, what if there was one family who was responsible for it all? What if behind every single time someone saw a Loch Ness Monster it is this family? And I still remember standing in front of my class of 30 kids and saying, if I don’t write this down right now, it’s gone. I won’t remember this idea when this class is over. So I went over to my little planner, wrote it in the margin, and then went on with life.

(10:06):

And then after Edge of Extinction and Float came out, my publisher came up to me and said, what’s your next book going to be? We have a contract for Laura Martin book four. And I went through my file, because I keep an idea file where anytime I get rid of a notebook or a planner, I make sure I didn’t write an idea in it. If I did, I rip it out. And I’m going through it and I found that page that said, what if one family was responsible for it all? And in parentheses, I’ve written Bigfoot. And I was like, bingo. That’s how you follow up dinosaurs and floating kids, with Bigfoot.

Sarah Mackenzie (10:35):

Bigfoot, yeah.

Laura Martin (10:36):

And so many times young writers say, “But I don’t know what to write about.” And I’m like, well, then you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t have a list upon list of ideas that you’ve been gathering over life, then you’re doing it wrong. You can’t sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper and say, now I will think of something cool. It just doesn’t work that way.

(10:55):

And the sad thing is, as we get older, adults get boring and our brains get full of grocery lists and our kids’ sports schedules, we get one or two cool ideas like a month, right? It’s rare. Our brains don’t do what kids do anymore. So we have to really pay attention and catch them. So I have a whole thing in my notes app and I have a file. It’s one of those accordion files, it opens like this that you jam your stuff in. It’s like the world’s worst organizational tool.

Sarah Mackenzie (11:20):

It really is, yeah. It works.

Laura Martin (11:21):

But I just jam all my ideas in there because it doesn’t have to be organized. And actually doing that is the reason why Wander Lost happened is because I had a list of ideas that I could go back to. So I actually wrote a totally different book, sent it to my publisher, said, look, here’s my next book. What do you think? And they said, we’re going to pass on that. We don’t like that book. But why don’t you send us a list of every book idea you’ve had with a short couple sentences about it and we’ll pick an idea and then you can do that one. And I was like, oh, okay.

(11:54):

So I had to go through my notes, I had to go through everything. I pulled out 15 ideas and I think I titled the document-

Sarah Mackenzie (12:00):

It’s pretty impressive.

Laura Martin (12:01):

Throwing spaghetti at the wall. Because I was just like, what’s going to stick? What do you want? But it was also kind of fun to say what cool ideas have I had that I can turn into something? And sometimes it’s tricky because in my Notes app have a sentence and I’m like, what was I thinking there? What’s that idea? But in there I had a line, and I still remember I got the idea when I was driving my kids somewhere, I was at a stop sign and I said, huh, what if there is a family with a curse that could fall in and out of board games, but stuff came out when they went in? Kind of Jumanji, but kind of how Edge of Extinction is kind of like Jurassic Park but not, you can always put your own spin on an idea.

(12:37):

And that was one I pulled out and I pitched this idea for a book called Board Game Bound. I said it’s about this family and they have this curse and they go in and out of board games, but stuff comes out. Their mom’s been kidnapped, and these two twin boys have to go into these board games to try to figure out where she’s hidden and get her out. And they have this kind of crazy grandfather who’s kind of showing them how to do all this. And I loved that idea. And my publisher came back and they said, we like Board Game Bound, and then they actually said they liked this other one too. They said, of these two, pick one. But if you do Board Game Bound, a couple things. One, you can’t call it Board Game Bound because we can’t put the word board game in a title because no one will read a book about board games anymore. And I was like, really?

(13:17):

And they said, and secondly, it can’t be about board games, you have to make it about video games. And I was like, oh, I’m not going to do that. I was like, I’m so sorry, but I will absolutely not write a video game book. Because if you read Float and you read Vanishing Act, some big themes in there are that real life adventures and real life friends are better than anybody you’re going to meet on a screen. And I felt like writing that would just go against everything that I’d done so far. And my kids would be like, you giant hypocrite. We can’t have video games and you’re going to write a book about them. Plus, it would be writing about a country I’d never visited. I’m not a video game person.

(13:54):

Finally, after a year of going back and forth, my publisher said, fine, write your board game book, stubborn author you, but put a video game element in. And so I said, fine, if that’s what it takes to make this book happen. And so I did. I put a video game element in and I made it the bad guy because they didn’t say how I had to put that video game element in. But Wander Lost got to be a book, which is at that point, that’s what I really wanted. I had this story in bubbling in my brain for a year, and I just wanted to write it. So I’m really excited about this one. It’s a little bit like Jumanji meets Wreck-It Ralph, where they’re going in all these different board games. But when I pitched it, I said-

Sarah Mackenzie (14:34):

Actually think it has a little bit of Holes in there too, to be honest.

Laura Martin (14:38):

Yeah, a little bit.

Sarah Mackenzie (14:38):

A little bit of the tone of… Yeah.

Laura Martin (14:39):

I love the book Holes. I’m going to take that as a giant compliment.

Sarah Mackenzie (14:42):

Yeah, it is.

Laura Martin (14:44):

But when I pitched it, I was like, I would love to use real board games because when I had the idea, I pictured them going in out of Monopoly and Hi Ho! Cherry-O and Candyland and all these board games. It would be so fun. And they said, you can’t do that because of copyright. We’re like, we’re not going to go through that hassle. And I was like, oh, that’s okay. I can make them up. Which was dumb because making up board games turned out to be really hard.

Sarah Mackenzie (15:09):

It’s like making up a whole bunch of mini books to be in your book, kind of.

Laura Martin (15:12):

Exactly. Exactly. And I would think of a game, I’d be like, oh, that’s so unique and different. And I’d go on Google and Google is like, no, it’s not. Somebody has thought of that already. So I ended up using a mashup, combining different elements of different games. And if you look at the cover of Wander Lost, you can see all the different games the boys are kind of falling through, jumping through. And then anytime I tell someone that, they’re like, oh, well, are you going to develop a board game? I’m like, no, that sounds like a lot of work. I have no idea how to make a board game. I have a hard enough time carving out time to be a writer, let alone a board game designer.

Sarah Mackenzie (15:50):

Although I think kids who read Wander Lost might be inspired to try to recreate some of the games because they are pretty fun sounding.

Laura Martin (15:57):

That would be, and if they do, they should send them to me because I would love to see them. That would be neat.

Sarah Mackenzie (16:02):

Yes. That would be so cool. Okay, so this last summer you did something you called Camp Creative, right?

Laura Martin (16:10):

Right.

Sarah Mackenzie (16:10):

Tell me more about this, because this isn’t a camp that you did for your own kids. This is a camp for other kids. Yes?

Laura Martin (16:16):

This is an idea that had been kind of percolating in my brain ever since I stepped away from being a teacher. So I was a teacher for a long time, and the great part about being an author is that I still got the really fun parts about being a teacher, I would say it’s the author equivalent of being a grandparent, you know how grandparents get to come in, do all the fun stuff and not do the heavy lifting? The teacher equivalent of that is an author because we get to come in, we do all the fun stuff, we talk about books, we get them all riled up and we don’t have to grade their essays, which is lovely.

(16:43):

But as much fun as all that was, I wasn’t getting to connect with young writers and help young writers be writers. And that was something that I loved to do when I was a teacher.I was the head of the Creative Writing club. I was doing all this stuff on the side. And so for a lot of years I was like, I should do a camp. I should do a creative writing camp. And at first, I was kind of that imposter syndrome of would anyone really want to do a camp with me? I only have a couple of books out. But the idea kept coming, but unfortunately, so did kids. And I was looking at these four small children and I was like, well, what do I do with them while I’m having a camp for other kids.

(17:19):

So I kept putting it off and kind of putting a pin in that idea. But every summer would roll around, and I was kind of sad that I hadn’t figured out how to make that happen. So I decided to just put a post out on my town’s mom’s Facebook page and just say, “Hey, are there even any kids who would want to do a camp like this?”And I kind of pitched it as the kind of camp I would’ve wanted as a young kid who wanted to be a writer, who wanted to be an author. What’s the camp that would’ve helped me become a better writer at that stage in my life? What are the mentor texts I would’ve found beneficial? What are the writing lessons I would’ve needed? What kind of feedback would I have needed on my own writing? That kind of thing.

(17:59):

So I sent this out into the internet universe, and within hours I had over a hundred responses of moms saying, yes, I have a kid like that who would love to go to camp like that. And so I kind of went, well, I’m just going to jump and hope that appears. So I put a Google form up and I said, here, we’re going to do camp on this week. And I had a whole bunch of kids sign up, which was fun. I ended up doing it at my house, at my dining room table. I had two different groups of 11 kids. It was supposed to be 10, and then I added two bonus campers, one of which was my daughter, and I made her promise that she had to be a camper and not my kid. She’s like, but can I call you mom? I’m like, yes, that’s fine. But that’s it. You’re my camper.

(18:38):

And it was so wonderful. I had to find somewhere for my other kids to go. I sent them off to their own camps for the day. But it was really fun to get to talk to the next generation of creatives and brainstorm with them and give them the mini lessons. And they just loved it and I loved it. It kind of filled my bucket. So I’m hoping I get to do it again next year.

Sarah Mackenzie (18:56):

This sounds like something young Sarah would’ve absolutely loved. I remember a young writers’ workshop I went to, I must have been, I don’t know, sixth or seventh grade, something in there. And I even remember one of the exercises that we did at that young writers camp, workshop, I guess it was more like a workshop. But it was a first line free rights kind of thing where you would just get the very first sentence you had to keep continuing on the story. So I taught this exercise in RAR Premium to the other kids because 30 years later I still remember it and love it so much, and still find it really useful to get my brain going in a more creative way. So I’m curious, can you give us an example of something you might do at your camp?

Laura Martin (19:39):

That’s actually one of the things I did. I had pulled 25 of my own books that had fantastic opening lines, and I just rapid fire read opening lines. And I said, what did you notice about them? Not one was like Sarah Jane is 12 and has brown hair and brown eyes. The whole point of an opening line is to get you to read the second line. And the point of the second line is to get you to read the third line. So we talked about that.

(20:02):

I passed around opening lines and they got to either use that or if they had their own opening line to go with, they used that instead. I read the opening pages of Maniac McGee because I talked about how every young writer seems to want to do this information dump at the beginning of their story about who their character is because they feel like you need to know all that. And I showed them this is the only way that works is if you have a character like Maniac McGee who was born in a trash can and has a pet cockroach who has this legend surrounding him.

(20:32):

The other one I read to kind demonstrate that was the opening pages of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, because that’s another crazy interesting character where you get all the information about the character, but why does it work? Because she’s incredibly interesting. She’s this outlier personality. She’s not like Bob the banker heading to work with this coffee every day, boring as can be.

(20:51):

So I talked about that. We talked about the writing process, and I kind of debunked some things that maybe they had heard at school. I’m like, at school, you probably heard the writing process was like, write a outline, write a rough draft, revise my rough draft. And I was like, that’s not really the writing process. The writing process is whatever you need to do, whatever your process is that makes it possible for you to write. So my writing process is I have to write first thing in the morning, because I have four young kids and by the end of the day, my brain is fried. It’s fried. It doesn’t think creative thoughts anymore.

(21:26):

So if I want to write, it’s got to be before they wake up. I told them part of my writing process is coffee. One of my books is dedicated to coffee creamer and that’s the truth. And I said, I need quiet. I said, I can’t have any kind of music with lyrics. I can have piano music or something like that, but if it’s lyrics that’s what’s in my head. And I kind of walked them through, here’s all the things that I need, this is my process and then I can sit down and I can be creative. And it’s whatever your process happens to be.

(21:55):

And so I kind of talked about that. There’s actually a really cool book. I want to say it’s called The Secret Life of Writers. It’s an old one. And I bought it when I was a teacher and ripped it apart and laminated it, and it’s all these writers who talk about what they need to do to write. And one guy has a picture of a wall of Post-it notes, and that’s how he puts his together. Another guy talks about how he has to be sitting in his squeaky old office chair and it’s like duct taped together and it has to be that office chair and they go through all these different things. One girl talks about how she has a ring of keys that she found in her dad’s desk when he passed away that was just unknown keys. And when she sits down to write, she picks up the unknown keys and writes about what it opens. And so just cool things like that.

(22:37):

I passed those around. We talked about that. So it was just a bunch of really fun little lessons. We talked about sensory details. I passed around stinky fish bait and all this kind of stuff to talk about how smells can really bring a memory out. I had them go back into their work they were doing and add sensory details to it. We did a lot of fun stuff like that.

Sarah Mackenzie (22:57):

I love this so much because one of my own pet peeves with most writing curriculum, especially creative writing curriculum that I’ve seen, and I usually see the curriculum that’s written for homeschoolers, but it’s the same thing that I remember from when I was in school, which is, again, that same thing you mentioned. Well, first you need to come up with your outline and then you need to write a rough draft based on that outline. And it’s so interesting to me because now as somebody who interviews authors all the time, you find out pretty much nobody does it that way. There’s plotters and pantsers, pretty much nobody writes an outline the way that we were taught in school. So I love that you are the school teacher who’s like, okay, I know what you’ve been taught in school, let’s talk about how it’s really done.

Laura Martin (23:36):

And even when I was a teacher, I would always say, guys, school creates this environment that’s not real where you can write the most boring thing in the world and somebody has to read it, your mom has to read it, your teacher has to read it. Someone will read what you wrote, even if it’s awful and boring. In the real world, if it’s boring, no one’s going to read it. Nobody’s going to read it. So I used to have what I think I called it the boring rule. And if I got two sentences in and I was bored, I gave it back to you and I said, make it interesting because I have to read 160 of these, so please make this worth reading.

Sarah Mackenzie (24:13):

Mercy.

Laura Martin (24:13):

And I told them, and I said, you could have… if you’d look at college entrance essays, if they had two kids with the same grade point average and they’re looking at their essays and one is that perfect introduction paragraph and body paragraphs and they’re all perfect, but it’s boring and this one maybe has some errors, but man, this kid is creative and this is interesting, and what a unique perspective, this is the kid who gets in. And that’s the same for jobs too. Protecting that creativity in our kids is important because that’s such a viable thing that a lot of people are losing in this age of let’s stare at a device all day.

Sarah Mackenzie (24:46):

It’s so interesting to me that, taking this out of the creative writing space a little bit into just like a report, like a five paragraph essay or that idea of in your paragraph you’re going to have a topic sentence and then sentences that support it and then a concluding sentence that tells you what… You read those no where, they’re nowhere in the world. The only place you ever read them is school so I cannot figure out why for the life of me, we are teaching this to kids as a good writing strategy.

Laura Martin (25:10):

No, teaching kids to think creatively and write creatively I think is such a huge advantage today.

Sarah Mackenzie (25:17):

Now, I know you’re really committed to that nurturing creativity in your own kids as well. And your oldest is 10 now, I think you said, right? So tell me about what that’s been like for you. What is raising a creative kid look like for you?

Laura Martin (25:30):

So it’s interesting because I was also a creative kid, and so I remember driving my type A mother crazy because I was like projects and ideas and all over the place, and now God gave me a little one of me and it’s like, here you go, figure it out. And so I am not that type A personality where my mom was able to force me to be an organized human. So it’s been interesting because I see so much of myself in her and it’s fun to also kind of come alongside her as a creative and be like, I get it, I get that ideas are messy. And I saw a quote once that I love that said, “Creatives don’t have messes, they have ideas laying around all over the place in piles.”

Sarah Mackenzie (26:11):

I like it, yeah.

Laura Martin (26:12):

And that’s very true. So one of the things that we’ve done for her, because she’s 100%, I think, going to be in the creative field, she’s going to be an author, illustrator or something along those lines because she’s just a fabulous artist. But it started with putting a desk in her room and she would get something we called special time at night. And it was because she’s our kid who is an energizer bunny, does not require a whole lot of sleep, but Lord, we just needed the day to be over at some point. And so we said, you know what? After your little brothers go to bed, you’re going to get 45 minutes in your room. You’re going to get to listen to an audiobook and you’re going to get to do your art. And she thought it was the best thing she’d ever been told that she could do.

(26:53):

And it was great for us as parents because we got a minute, a beat at the end of the day, and she has been this since, I want to say pre-K, and she’s going into fifth grade now, and she just has listened to hundreds upon hundreds of audiobooks and just created and doodled and made all the art. And one of the things we did recently, because she’s my messy creative, and that desk was just exploding art all over the place. I was like, you know what? We have a space under the basement stairs, like Harry Potter, under the stairs. I said, we’re going to make that your art studio. So we put her desk down there, we put shelving, we put a big cork board up. She has an extra table down there, cute little lamps, and that’s her art space. And it’s wonderful because we can shut the doors and we don’t have to see the art mess.

(27:43):

So I told her the creative mind is messy, but creatives work better in an organized environment. If your desk is clear, you’re going to have a better time making art than if you can’t find a square quarter because it’s so full of sculptures and everything else. And I just remember watching her when she was little and being like, okay, if you’re going to raise a creative kid, you just got to take your neatness standards and just really lower them in life, and it’s okay. We’re just going to let it go.

(28:10):

I love your analogy where you talk about how if you offer kids watermelon for dessert versus chocolate sundae when it comes to technology, and they’d be happy with the watermelon unless the chocolate sundae is there. If we had said, okay, you can either do an audiobook and art in your room or you can go watch TV, she would’ve gone watch TV. 100%.

Sarah Mackenzie (28:29):

Definitely, yeah.

Laura Martin (28:30):

Or here’s an iPad, but that was never on the table. So she’s been delighted with having an audiobook and art time. And actually when she’s in trouble, that’s the first thing that goes. It’s not technology, it’s not anything like that. It’s her audiobook and you’d just think we took the sun away for the day.

Sarah Mackenzie (28:47):

I love too how you really validated her identity as a creative person by giving her a special space. It reminds me of Tomie dePaola who told me once that when he was young, and I can’t remember how young, but pretty young, I want to say six or seven or something like that. His parents, even though they were really overcrowded and had too many people living in this small house already, cleared out the attic and made him an art studio and that he felt like that was a vote. Like, oh, I don’t just think I’m an artist, my parents think I’m an artist, enough to make space and give me a grown up place for my creativity, which is what you’ve done too with your cupboard under the stairs.

Laura Martin (29:25):

Yep. It’s for a little Harry Potter nook under the stairs, and it’s lovely.

Sarah Mackenzie (29:30):

I know there are tons of listeners who are writing, trying to write, who are also moms who are trying to figure out how to make it work. And because you have become a writer and a very successful writer who’s doing many books while you are also raising young children, I wonder if you have any words of wisdom to share.

Laura Martin (29:50):

So I was always kind of frustrated with the timing of becoming a writer because I tried for six years to get a book published, and then within two days of having my daughter, who was our first child, I got my dream agent to be like, yes, let’s do this. And so God handed me babies and a writing career at the exact same time. And so I had to just kind of figure out how to make it work when I went from gobs of free time to essentially what felt like no free time because I had this baby that didn’t sleep and refused to nap and all these things. So I had to make a few rules for myself pretty early on to stick to make sure that I also got this writing stuff done.

(30:26):

So I mentioned it before, I do my writing first thing in the morning because I feel like as a mom, by the time the day is over, you’re just fried, you’re done, you’re brain, you’re tired, you’re going to sit down to write and you’re going to be grouchy. You’re just not in the right head space. And so I try to write before my kids wake up. So for a long time, that was at 4:00 in the morning, because I had a kiddo that thought 5:00 AM was when his life should start. That kid now sleeps in until 7:00 which is huge. Moms with teeny tiny kids, there is hope. At some point they will start sleeping. I did not believe it.

Sarah Mackenzie (30:56):

And then you won’t be able to get them out of bed at some point.

Laura Martin (30:58):

Yeah, we’re not there yet. So that was one of… The other thing I made a rule for myself is I tried to never do anything when the kids were sleeping that I could do when they were awake. For me, my creative brain, I can’t sit in the same room with my kids playing and write. My brain has to go to this other world where I’m writing about other characters and I’m not on high alert for kids pulling things off counters, kind of thing. If my kids were sleeping, I could write, or if my kids were at preschool.

(31:24):

So at any time I had that time when they weren’t around, I tried really hard to just put blinders on and just get the writing done because if you don’t, you’re like, oh, I’ll just move the laundry over and I’ll get dinner started for the next hour. I’ll make lunches for the next hour. I’ll get this cleaned up or that, and all of a sudden your writing time is gone and then the kids awake or whatever. If I could figure out how to do it when the kids were awake, I didn’t do it when my kids were asleep and I kind of protected that time as time to get some work done and time to write, and that’s been huge.

Sarah Mackenzie (31:56):

Okay. So Laura, one of my favorite things you said the last time you were at Read Aloud Revival is that one of the things that all authors say is the best writing advice for young or any kind of writer is to read, read, read, read, read. Read all the books. Which is great advice, but you’ve put a little spin on it that got my attention when you were on the show and you said you thought way more important than reading books with your eyes, like we think of as reading, is reading them with your ears through audiobooks. So do you still stand by that? Tell me more about that.

Laura Martin (32:27):

I 100% stand by that, and I preach audiobooks to anyone who will listen because I feel like so many parents are like, oh no, well, that’s the easy way out. But honestly, if you want to create a writer, I feel like there’s so much goodness in audiobooks so think it’s twofold. I think that audiobooks hit for me at a time when I would’ve maybe put down books because life got busy and stopped reading because I was doing all these school activities. But instead, I popped Harry Potter in my cassette player, that will age me, my cassette player with my extra cassette, and I would go for a run because I was training for cross-country and it just hooked me on audiobooks and I never went back. So when I was doing any kind of chore, I had an audiobook in my ear.

(33:07):

I remember one summer I worked for my dad and I filed and alphabetized for an entire summer with an audiobook in my ear and just filed. But also I have always been a very quick reader and a very fast reader to the point where my mom used to be baffled and say, you can’t spell, but you’re such a good reader. And I think I wasn’t seeing the words, I was just seeing… I was able to read quickly without really, until I wasn’t getting those language patterns in my head to be a writer, you get them through your ears. So I’m a huge proponent of audiobooks for that.

(33:40):

Also, I feel like, and this is just because I’m speaking as a mom who has a kid who is struggling with reading, audiobooks help protect the love of story when you have a kid who is struggling with the actual decoding of words, because I feel like so many kids lump reading and they’ll say, oh, I don’t like reading, and I have a kiddo who says that. And I’m like, no, no, you don’t like learning to read. It’s just like no one likes learning to ride a bike. You fall on your head and it hurts, right?

Sarah Mackenzie (34:08):

Yes.

Laura Martin (34:09):

You can’t say you hate riding a bike until you’re flying around your block like it’s second nature. And so I feel like it protects the love of story and you can kind of separate and say, no, no, you just don’t like learning to read, but you love reading because you love listening to read out loud, you love listening to audiobooks.

(34:26):

And one thing I will mention, if you have a kid who struggles with reading, I would highly, highly suggest that you look into vision therapy because I had a kiddo that that was life changing for, who was reading and they couldn’t track down the line, they were skipping lines, they were skipping words, they were skipping three lines down. And I kept listening to these different podcasts and I figured out that, you know what? Maybe we should just get their vision checked. And it’s not that they didn’t have 2020 vision because they did.

Sarah Mackenzie (34:55):

Okay.

Laura Martin (34:56):

It was that their eyes aren’t aligning correctly and they can’t focus to read down a line. And a lot of times that will show up as ADHD like symptoms. If you have a kid who can’t make their eyes focus because it’s uncomfortable and I don’t want to sit here and this is hard and now I’m done. So I did want to mention that because that was something that was like the golden key for one of my kids that they now can read book after book after book, but before they couldn’t and it was a struggle and it was hard. And if I hadn’t figured that out, I feel like they would’ve maybe not been a reader. So there might be a mom out there who just had a light bulb moment like I did when I heard this. I went, oh, maybe that’s the problem.

Sarah Mackenzie (35:36):

I’m kind of having one of those light bulb moments because there’s a kid of mine that I’m thinking interesting. There’s nothing wrong with their vision, but when they read aloud to me, I can watch them, they kind of do skip around or you can almost watch their eyes and see them move to different parts of the page.

Laura Martin (35:54):

It’s like listening to a CD that’s skipping because they’re skipping over words, they’re skipping down three lines, up two lines.

Sarah Mackenzie (36:00):

And it’s about aligning your eyes, basically then. So it’s like a physical thing.

Laura Martin (36:04):

It’s a physical thing, it’s like a muscle.

Sarah Mackenzie (36:07):

So interesting.

Laura Martin (36:07):

And after round of vision therapy, like a night and day difference.

Sarah Mackenzie (36:10):

Wow. Okay. And how long was that round of vision therapy for your kiddo?

Laura Martin (36:14):

I want to say it was about four or five months of going once a week. And then we had certain things that we practiced at home with getting them to focus their eyes. There was a string with a bead, they had to follow down and follow back, and they had pictures they had to focus and make them come together, things like that. So I had never heard of it before this, and it is a game changer. So if you have a kid who’s struggling in that way, it’s worth looking into.

Sarah Mackenzie (36:38):

Oh, I’m so glad you mentioned it and I could be looking into it myself. So Laura, thank you so much for coming back on the show. We’re going to put links to all of your books in the show notes.

(36:48):

And listeners, I am especially excited for you to get your hands on Wander Lost, her newest book. I think your kids are really going to enjoy it. If you’ve got any kid who says, I’m not a reader, or I’m not into reading, I’m not into books, I can’t find any books I like, anything that sounds remotely like any of that, my suggestion is to get one of Laura’s books, any of them, just pick the one that you read the description of and think that might work. Read aloud the first chapter and then suddenly run out of time to be able to keep reading them. You can either transfer it over to an audiobook or just hand it over to your child and say, I’m so sorry I can’t keep up with this. I’ve got something else to do urgently at this moment and see what happens. I bet you might see a kid get pretty excited about reading.

(37:31):

Laura, thanks so much for coming back on the show.

Laura Martin (37:33):

Thank you much for letting me come back. It’s always a joy to chat and it was so much fun.

Sarah Mackenzie (37:39):

Now let’s go listen to what the kids are saying about the books they’re loving.

Carter (37:48):

My name is Carter and I am eight years old and I live in Virginia. I recommend The Two Towers because there were ants.

Ariel (37:58):

Hi, my name is Ariel. I’m nine years old and I live in Massachusetts. My recommendation is the Warrior Series because they’re so suspenseful and they make you want to keep reading.

Samson (38:12):

Hi, my name is Samson. I am eight years old. I live in Massachusetts. My favorite book is The Candy Makers. I like it because it’s a real page turner and once you start reading, you can’t stop because it’s so good.

Matthew (38:30):

My name is Matthew.

Speaker 7 (38:34):

And where do you live?

Matthew (38:35):

In Massachusetts.

Speaker 7 (38:37):

What’s your favorite book?

Matthew (38:37):

Elbow Grease.

Speaker 7 (38:41):

And why do you like Elbow Grease?

Matthew (38:42):

Because it’s so cool.

Elliot (38:45):

Hello, my name is Elliot and I’m seven years old. I’m from [inaudible 00:38:52], Wyoming. My favorite book is The Favorite. Why I like it is because it has secret guide in it.

Abigail (39:02):

Hi, my name is Abigail and I’m nine years old and I’m from Cheyenne, Wyoming. My favorite book is the Winged Feather Saga because it has lots of adventures.

Melody (39:17):

Hi, my name is Melody. I’m 5-year-old. I live in Virginia. I like the Three Princesses Sisters because she finds her horse and she watch her kitten, and she tried to find it in the woods.

Violet (39:42):

Hi, my name is Violet and my pretend name is Scar and I live in Oklayama, which is an imaginary world in Oklahoma. And I recommend the Dragon Girl series by Maddy Mara. It’s a good series because it’s about girls, they turn into dragons, and also they have to save this place called the Enchant, the Magic Forest, and also they have to stop the Shadow Spirits and the Fire Spirits. You’ll go to the Fire Spirits along the series. And have a nice day. Bye-Bye, my pretend name is Scar.

Sarah Mackenzie (40:39):

Thank you kids. If your kids would like to tell us about a book they love head to readaloudrevival.com/message to leave a voicemail and we will air it on an upcoming episode of the show.

(40:54):

Show notes for this episode are at Readaloudrevival.com/248. That’s where you’ll find all of Laura’s books. And I’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. In the meantime, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.