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Naomi Shihab Nye and Virginia Duncan
Naomi Shihab Nye, author (San Antonio, Texas)
Virginia Duncan, Vice President & Publisher, Greenwillow Books (New York, New York)
Naomi Shihab Nye and Virginia Duncan have worked together since 1989. They have collaborated on twelve books, including the poetry anthologies This Same Sky: Poems from Around the World, The
Tree is Older Than You Are: Poems and Paintings from Mexico, and What Have You Lost; the novel Habibi; the picture books Sitti's Secrets (illustrated by Nancy Carpenter) and Come with Me: Poems for
a Journey (illustrated by Dan Yaccarino); and the poetry collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. Naomi is currently writing (and Virginia is currently editing) a novel called Florrie Will
Do It, a picture book called Baby Radar (illustrated by Nancy Carpenter), and an anthology called Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems and Paintings from Texas.
Naomi: Virginia, some seventh graders were asking me how we work together. I told them that at this moment I am anxiously
awaiting your textual comments on a third-draft manuscript of a novel, rather like the notes their teachers might write in the margins of their papers. (Their eyebrows went up when I said this.) When
the manuscript with your well-written notes arrives (and I do truly love your handwriting), I will read ALL of them, and think about them for a few days. I will eat buckwheat pancakes for energy.
Then I will begin the fourth draft of the book, incorporating as many of your suggestions as possible.
"Will you do everything she says?" they asked me.
 "Probably not," I said, remembering our work on Habibi, which, as you will
recall, involved six drafts sent back and forth. "But I will certainly think about everything she says. I will entertain all her suggestions. And some
of them may turn into other changes on their own."
I told them it is like a conversation on paper—listening to one another, staying calm and optimistic, always being open to changes.
After you read the first two shockingly jumbled drafts of the current book,
we had conversations (I took notes) and you gave me lists of points to consider that helped direct my (hopefully) improved third draft. Students
always seem surprised to learn that writers need help and accept advice!
Did you ever work with any writers that needed NO help? Are six drafts of a novel typical for your
writers? Jacques Barzun, the writer and scholar, told me six drafts are "about the minimum."
Virginia: The four words I love most are "calm," "optimistic," and "buckwheat pancakes"! Did you also tell those
seventh graders that you and I are devoted to buckwheat pancakes and that we eat them when we are together? So far we have eaten buckwheat pancakes in New York City, Chicago, San Antonio, Atlanta,
Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. We liked the ones in Chicago the best. Did you tell them that we come up with ideas for new books (and ideas about how to make the books we are
already working on together better) when we eat buckwheat pancakes? It's a very strange phenomenon—and not an exaggeration!
 The fact that I know that you will be calm and optimistic when you read my
notes on the edited manuscript (and my handwriting, by the way, resembles chicken scratch) allows me to be free and honest and
straightforward in my notes. I know that you won't do everything I tell you to do, and I don't want you to. . . . In fact, I don't really tell you to do anything.
That would be presumptuous. You are the author of the book, not me. But if I mark places that I know (since I know you) can be better, or sentences
and paragraphs that I don't believe (either because I don't believe the way in which a character is saying something, or because I don't believe the tone,
or because words you have chosen to describe or write about something sound false to me), I know you will think about those passages some more.
Also, I mark places where I want to know more and places that I love and places where I am bored and wish you would get on with it. This, I hope, will help you think about the pacing of the book.
Naomi: You make me laugh! I will cling tightly to the words "get on with it." As a writer, it is such a huge relief to
have a trusted editor's eyes and more detached wisdom helping me discover "what the story is." If you had to make a metaphor for your role in this process, would you see yourself as a tailor? A
sculptor, dealing with my mass of lumpy words? A chef, adding and subtracting ingredients? Do you find the characters following you around, too?
Virginia: Just like Liyana (the main character in Habibi) before her, Florrie is living in my house. Florrie and her
brother True and their parents. I want to go to Florrie's family's restaurant for dinner (or buckwheat pancakes!). I want to sit on the couch and listen to a family conversation (or argument!). I adore the way you write family conversations. Some editors are writers too, but I am not. I can't imagine writing a novel, and I have no idea how you do it. It's terrifying. So, I suppose I would call myself a tailor and a sculptor and a chef . . . but most of all I am a reader. Who is Florrie, anyway? Is she you?
Naomi: I won't tell. But send her back to me ASAP. I miss her.
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Author-Editor Dialogues:
Rita Williams-Garcia & Rosemary Brosnan
Christopher Curtis & Wendy Lamb
Kevin Henkes & Susan Hirschman
Katherine Paterson & Virginia Buckley
Karen Cushman & Dinah Stevenson
Tracy Mack & Brian Selznick
Virginia Duncan & Naomi Shihab Nye
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