Episode 41: Jarrett J. Krosoczka, NYT Bestselling Author/Illustrator
Mary is joined by NYT bestselling author/illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka to chat about his experience in children's publishing. He shares the challenges and gratifications of reaching across different age categories and the importance of illustrations in storytelling. Listen to hear his tips on writing within established franchises (like Star Wars), how to pivot a picture book idea into a graphic novel series, and memoir writing.
transcript for Good Story Podcast Episode 41: Interview with Jarrett J. Krosoczka
Mary (00:01):
Thank you so much for joining us at The Good Story Podcast. My name is Mary Kole, and with me today I have graphic novel, picture book, middle grade, young adult, Ted Talk speaker superstar, Jarrett Krosoczka. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jarrett (00:44):
Sure. Thank you for having me. My name is Jarrett Krosoczka. I'm an author and illustrator of books for young people, and that encompasses picture books, graphic novels, illustrated chapter books, and I feel very grateful to be living out my childhood dreams.
Mary (01:01):
That is wonderful. And you have also done some autobiographical writing, right?
Jarrett (01:09):
Yes. So I have two graphic memoirs, which are for young adults, so teen and older.
Mary (01:17):
How did you come to children's books specifically?
Jarrett (01:20):
I always loved to draw, so as a kid I was drawing all the time and I'd come home from school and I would grab my sketchbooks and some drawing material and I would create my own stories. And really what I'm doing now is just an extension to what I've been doing my entire life. Why books for kids? I mean, one is that they use a lot of pictures, so I love telling stories with words and pictures together. I also started working with kids when I was in high school. It was an audience that I loved serving, and it was just a natural progression for me to go into books for kids. I mean, it started with picture books, which were for the very young, and I never wanted to be just one thing. I never wanted to create just one character, so just over my career would just follow the path of whatever idea and where it would take me. And so some ideas were then, these weren't for preschoolers, they were for elementary school readers and the memoirs are for older readers because they're much more heavy hitting than my younger stuff.
Mary (02:34):
Yeah. And have you ever had a project, just interestingly enough, have you ever had a project that started out maybe as a picture book idea or a picture book character or something that sparked in one age category that ended up pivoting ever?
Jarrett (02:51):
Yeah, so aside from my young adult graphic memoirs, I'm probably most known for my Lunch Lady graphic novels, which are for the elementary set (grades 3 and 4). It seems to be the sweet spot for those books. But that originally original concept was actually a picture book because I was a picture book author illustrator. I was about to get my second picture book published. And so that was the narrow field for which I defined myself. And I had this idea about a book about the secret lives of lunch ladies. And I just thought, well, it has to be a picture book, what I make. And as I kept brainstorming, kept working on the story over, which was several months and which became years, I then realized that the story was, it just kept growing. This lunch lady, she's solving mysteries, I would need much more than just 32 pages. And I tried writing it as a chapter book, and while you can have illustrations in a chapter book, I knew early on that a lot of the humor would come in the visuals, and ultimately it became a graphic novel for the grades 3 and 4 and that buffer that as well. I mean, I've met fifth and sixth graders who love the books; I've met first and second graders who love the books.
Mary (04:10):
So children's publishing is very sort of segmented by category, by age group, by word count, all of these things. But to your point, I hear from a lot of readers, librarians, booksellers that say, “Hey, I have these reluctant readers that actually are not where they're supposed to be.” Has that been a gratifying thing to sort of reach across those categories?
Jarrett (04:35):
It is. Ultimately, I just want to tell stories with words and pictures, and I feel so lucky that my books and stories connect with readers and to hear from caretakers and educators that the Lunch Lady books made their kids want to read. The Lunch Lady books were first published in 2009, so that initial wave of readers, they're all well into their twenties now, and I get to meet them either via social media or in person at book events, and it's so very gratifying.
Mary (05:09):
That's a really good point about not actually getting to necessarily always interact with the target audience. You are sort of finding entry points via librarians, booksellers, parents who sort of bridge between you and the kids, but you also do a lot of school visits and a lot of events where you do meet those readers.
Jarrett (05:30):
I do, yeah. I mean they're what we call in the book business the gatekeepers, because those readers should not be on social media themselves. And so yeah, you really rely on those booksellers and those librarians to introduce your books to their readers. And I've been so lucky with the Lunch Lady books that the librarians and booksellers have reintroduced the series again and again every few years as a next generation of kids come through their stores and libraries. And I do visit a lot of elementary schools and high schools and also colleges now. It's a big part of what I do is giving talks, which they're more like a one man show than it is a lecture per se. It's a multimedia presentation with slides, and I share the artwork I made as a kid, and I feel very grateful that that aspect of my business is finally back to what it was before Covid hit.
It's been a long four years where first the obvious, which was everything was locked down, nothing was happening. As things looked like they might be picking up, a different variant would come through and an author visit takes at least a few months to plan. Oftentimes they're planned 6, 9, or 12 months in advance. And anytime before this academic year, we weren't really exactly confident what it would be like in six months time. So while I masked started doing some author visits again, and gosh, maybe it was the very, very end of 2021 or beginning of 22. At any rate, I'm finally back to the pace it was before Covid hit.
Mary (07:22):
Did you find yourself doing virtual programming in that time or was there something, was there an aspect of interaction missing there that you're now back to?
Jarrett (07:33):
Oh, I went live on YouTube every single weekday, giving art lessons for the kids who were stuck at home. Starting on the first day of lockdown all the way through the spring, all the way through May, every single weekday at a locked time. Families could know that they could come and draw with me. And so for several families, it was like before schools knew what was happening, how to program. I was one of the few consistent things they had in their day in those early days of Covid. And I've always loved video, I've always loved technology, and so I'm speaking to you today from a production studio that I started building right before Covid hit. And still when we had no idea Covid would come, I just wanted an area where I could produce videos, produce strong lessons, work on podcast stuff that was separate from where I make the books and not next door to where my kids were playing necessarily. And so because I had the space, that's why I picked up right away and going live every single day.
Mary (08:46):
That's amazing. And it seems like not only were you there to generate some kind of continuity connection for those kids to almost be a stop gap in school programming. We all remember as schools sort of scrambled some more successfully than others, but was there maybe also an element of helping kids express what was happening to them and how they felt in a very uncertain time?
Jarrett (09:15):
Yeah, I just felt like I was doing my part in the grand community of humanity. I felt like it was my ability to serve readers and artists and families that were all stuck at home and giving tools for young people to be able to express themselves through comics as well.
Mary (09:38):
And it sounds like that's a very personal mission for you because of how you grew up and certain experiences that you had early on where art was maybe an outlet.
Jarrett (09:50):
Yeah, art was a complete salvation for me. Even though art is my vocation, I've always used art to benefit and improve and work on my mental health, and I feel very lucky that I always had empty sketchbooks within reach growing up.
Mary (10:07):
What brought you to the point of wanting to tell your personal story in your two YA graphic memoirs and to reach that slightly older audience that you had maybe not communicated with before?
Jarrett (10:24):
So my very first picture book was published in 2001, and when I received the contract for that book, which was at the very, very start of the year 2000, I started thinking about how I might be able to tell the story of this kid who loved to draw, but he was dealing with parents who had addiction problems and then he grew up to have a book published. But every time I'd sit down to write that book, I would hesitate out of fear. And I found myself cherry picking different aspects of different personalities in my family and my life. It dawned on me pretty quickly that I was not yet emotionally ready to write a book about my own childhood. And in essence too, I mean I was 22 then, so I was still really close to it and I needed more distance. I dove into all of these other picture books and those Lunch Lady graphic novels and the Star Wars: Jedi Academy books.
(11:21):
And that gave me all of this knowledge about bringing words and pictures together. And the first Ted Talk that I delivered, I talked about growing up in a house that was plagued with addiction, and I would meet so many young people who would make connections with my childhood because they too had a parent who was addicted and there was this real feeling of answering a call, whereas I thought, oh, I might want to write a book about growing up. It was no, I need to write a book about growing up. I really feel like I have this responsibility because I know these emotions very intimately. I know the disappointment and I'm able to deliver the story in a very unique way with words and pictures. So ultimately from initial thought to published book, it was 18 years.
Mary (12:16):
Wow. Well, did you ever then approach any of those kind of cherry picked nuggets that you mentioned in picture book format?
Jarrett (12:26):
No, because it would involve my grandmother cursing. Right. Yeah, no, there's nothing from Hey, Kiddo that made it into those early picture books other than maybe family resemblance.
Mary (12:43):
Sure, sure. And as you were saying, you have probably over the spread of your career, you have probably captured readers when they were picture book age and then into the Lunch Lady series or Young Jedi as they grew, and then to Hey, Kiddo age. And so you have sort of nurtured maybe even some of the same kids as well as grabbing new audiences with each new generation.
Jarrett (13:11):
Yeah, it's pretty wild. And that's exactly what happened because the kids who were born the year my first book was published, they were then the right age for Lunch Lady when that was released and then they were the right age for Hey, Kiddo, when that was published.
Mary (13:26):
It's like Green Day makes a generation defining album with every new crop. That's great. Mine was Dookie in 1994, and I quickly moved on to Punk Farm to still feel cool once I became a parent.
Jarrett (13:44):
That's funny. That's funny.
Mary (13:47):
And now you are also speaking to colleges. How did that come about? Even though a lot of your body of work is intended for younger audiences.
Jarrett (13:57):
There have been several colleges that have had Hey, Kiddo be the required summer reading for their first year students. And so I've been going to give lectures at various colleges for a program at the beginning of the academic year for all of those freshmen who read the book. And what's wild is then those college aged kids had Lunch Lady when they were young as well. So yeah, I love speaking on the college level and the high school level, too. It's a lot of fun for me.
Mary (14:30):
How do those readers interact with the work maybe differently than some of your younger readers? What are they pulling from it? How are you able to engage differently?
Jarrett (14:42):
What's interesting is sometimes they don't make the connection that the same person who made Hey, Kiddo also made Lunch Lady, which I love because I purposely try to make them look and feel like very different books until I see a slide will pop up of the Lunch Lady books and I'll see that moment of recognition in their faces. But for high school and college students, a lot of it's on this deeper level of “Wow, yeah, I'm going through that exact same thing right now and I'm trying to process it and this book is helping me process some of those bigger emotions that I have.”
Mary (15:16):
So putting aside yourself as a character, how do you usually come to a story where you create other characters? Is it character first in terms of some idea, is it inspired from some element of your life? Is it a drawing that just you're like, who is that?
Jarrett (15:37):
It always starts with a character and a character drawing and some doodles. So in my sketchbooks, I might come up with a concept and I'll just draw the character and draw the character in a few different positions, in poses and then maybe scribble a few words down here or there and then start charting out the beginning, middle, and end or three act structure depending on the length of the book. And it gets to the point where it's lived in my sketchbook so much that it's just sort of demanding to be typed out. And from there I write a very terrible first draft and that gets hammered into shape until it's decent enough to move on to sketches. And then we go through the sketches and try to figure out, okay, am I effectively telling the story with the words and pictures coming together? Before I then go to the final artwork.
Mary (16:30):
And the graphic novel format that you use, how does that change the process of self-expression? If it does.
Jarrett (16:40):
I don't know any other way, but to tell stories with pictures. So it's just always how I've expressed myself.
Mary (16:52):
So when you're writing and you're thinking of three act structure, you're thinking of story, you're thinking of storytelling, you're thinking of dialogue, all of these other components that go along with the visuals, is there anything that you've really struggled with? Is there anything that you have sort of really had to challenge yourself to grow as a creator?
Jarrett (17:12):
I mean really all of it, just time management and coming to the harsh realization that time and accolades does not equal confidence. And I still second guess myself constantly; writing is just a really difficult process to take these jumbled ideas you have in your head and get them onto the paper. I will probably always struggle with that. And I've come to the realization too that that's okay and it's a part of the process and it's a part of my journey to be on a constant quest for self-improvement.
Mary (17:55):
Don't ruin it for the people. They don't want to be thinking about still having a crisis of confidence many years into their career.
Jarrett (18:04):
No, yeah, to be fair, the few artists I know who are very confident are also jerks. So there's that.
Mary (18:12):
I can confidently say that you are not a jerk. I mean a lot of your rhetoric so far has been about the larger mission and serving your community and all of this stuff. I don't get a lot of ego.
Jarrett (18:28):
Well, thank you for that. But that's the upside of lacking self-confidence when it comes to your work.
Mary (18:39):
I like that, you are finding the silver linings. But no, I think to your point, it is very tempting to think, Hey, I give Ted Talks or I'm a finalist for the National Book Award. I am going to feel pretty good once I tick this box or once my wildest dreams come true, or once I have x number of books under your belt. And I think that's almost a limited way of thinking, and you're putting a lot on those external markers of validation.
Jarrett (19:12):
And you have no control over those external markers. So the only thing that you can control is the work itself, and that's where you should be putting your stress and anxiety, not award seasons.
Mary (19:26):
I like that the gas in that engine is still stress and anxiety. It's just channeled in a more productive medium.
Jarrett (19:35):
Exactly. Exactly.
Mary (19:37):
So let me ask you this, so we are humans, we have self-doubt, we experience moments of creative crisis. How do you personally know when a project has it, when you should channel that anxiety into following it through to its conclusion? Because a lot of writers wonder, should I give up? Is this one worth it? And what feels like self-doubt can make that distinction very difficult.
Jarrett (20:13):
I mean, whether or not I get a contract for the book. When I put a pitch out to my publishers, now it really goes out on maybe an outline, maybe a sample illustration. So I don't submit a lot of material now. So that's a great plus. I don't have to give them a sample chapter. It's typically a four to five page PDF, and there's something I can be confident on. That's something I didn't get to do early on in my career. So what drives a project forward is if the people around me also say, “Yeah, that is pretty good.”
Mary (20:54):
I love that. Yes, we do hear from well-published authors that they can sell on proposal. That is a beautiful perk of it. Have there been any projects that have maybe not met with the kind of enthusiastic response you were hoping for?
Jarrett (21:12):
Yeah, I had a book that was published several years ago, a small series. It was called Platypus Police Squad, about these platypus who are cops. It was kind of like Lethal Weapon meets Frog and Toad & Friends. And my main publisher didn't like it. We went out to several publishers, several didn't like it, but I got two publishers that were really into it. One said, but could they be in grade school? And I said, no, because I think the humor is that they're just adults. And then another publisher picked it up. And the downside for me though is it was released, it was nominated for some state awards, but then Zootopia was released and thematically it was exactly the same. And so Zootopia kind of buried that project for me, but it was a journey and I learned from it. And not every book that you make will be earning royalties down the line, but for me, I feel very grateful that the ones that do make a big difference for me.
Mary (22:26):
Well, you were able to do it, it sounds like, and then something out of your control came along in a big kind of splashy way. So how do you square that with yourself? So you got to do it, you learned something from the process. Is it sort of a catch and release? It's out there. It's going to do what it's going to do.
Jarrett (22:49):
It's out there and it's an illustrated chapter book. And I had an itch to write a chapter book. And a biggest thing I learned is that I wasn't really, I didn't like the process as much as I liked making a graphic novel, but I do hear from librarians here and there about how much their class might really love the book. So it's my dark horse, it has its fans out there, but it's not what I would call an obituary book.
Mary (23:28):
What is an obituary—Oh, it makes it in the headline?
Jarrett (23:32):
Right? Yes. If I were to die and they only had space for a few titles, they would mention Lunch Lady and Hey, Kiddo, maybe Punk Farm. They just wouldn't mention Platypus Police Squad in the obituary. So yeah, I have that in my head. Not every book is going to be an obituary book, and that's okay.
Mary (23:53):
And yet you were able to find a champion for it, and you still hear from readers. So there really is the lid for every pot.
Jarrett (24:02):
And it was option to be a movie too with Walden Media, but of course that fell apart because Zootopia.
Mary (24:10):
Zootopiaaaaa!
Jarrett (24:11):
Really truly. Yes.
Mary (24:15):
So I am not a visually talented person. I just am not. You very clearly are. And it seems like that's how you ideate. That's how you gravitate toward projects. That's how you enter sort of the portal of character. For writers who may not have this gift, when you talk about creating with words and pictures, if we have a writer who is creating a chapter book that will be illustrated with spot illustrations or writing a picture book that will be illustrated by a talented somebody else, do you have any advice for how you think about pictures and text and how they play together?
Jarrett (25:07):
Well, even when I'm writing the manuscript, I’ll italicize illustration notes for myself later, so I can communicate to the editor that, okay, there's going to be a part of the story that's told through the art. When I bring the words and sketches together, then I have a little balance back and forth. I might need a few more words here. I might need to strike the sentence here. So I have illustrated only a few times and I've had vastly different experiences. I've had somebody who I never met, never have heard from that person, not even a note on publication to say, hey, look, we did it. Thanks for making that art, like zero zip. And it's weird. And the way it works, so your listeners know, is that the publisher chooses the illustrator and the publisher acts as the conduit for notes.
Mary (26:02):
Intermediary slash diplomatic buffer.
Jarrett (26:06):
Exactly. And then I had somebody who started DMing me on social media to try to circumvent the publisher to get me to send them the notes first. And that was the whole extreme other and totally inappropriate. I had to screenshot it and send it to my agent to say, somebody else is going to have to have this conversation with this author. This is not cool. And then two other books were illustrated for friends of mine, and that was something where we kind of, the author pitched it with my sketches with it. So there was some emailing back and forth before we even sent stuff to the publisher. All three very different experiences, right?
Mary (27:01):
Wow. Hopefully it was easier to work with your friends.
Jarrett (27:05):
Significantly.
Mary (27:08):
Wow. Well, I'm glad that you passed that off to the agent to deal with. See, diplomatic buffer.
Jarrett (27:18):
They’re the one to have those difficult conversations.
Mary (27:22):
And what are the types of things that you prefer to convey visually rather than in text? Because a lot of writers who are kind of coming to this dichotomy between text and illustrations and sort of the alchemy that happens there, they tend to go really heavy on the text.
Jarrett (27:41):
I tend to think of the illustrations as the adjectives and the adverbs for the story. So that's how it compliments it. Or there's a B plot that is being told exclusively with the artwork. So that happens in a few of my picture books as well.
Mary (27:58):
Give me an example.
Jarrett (28:00):
So in Peanut Butter and Jellyfish, there's this little clam at the bottom of the ocean, and whenever you can see the bottom of the ocean, you see that clam and that clam is reacting. I gave it eyes, obviously clams don't have eyes, but it’s reacting to what's happening in the story. And when I read this book aloud to schools, I announce that I want to make sure that everybody is reading the pictures carefully. And then I draw the protagonist, there was a jellyfish, there's a seahorse, there's a crab. And I said, but there's a fourth character. But that character is never once mentioned in the text. And across the board, the kids will have been reading the pictures, but the adults have not. And so the adults are avoiding eye contact with me. And when I say reading it to a crowd, I'm talking like the pages are projected the size of the wall, so they can't miss details if they're looking carefully.
Mary (29:00):
And what do you think that something like that adds to the story? I mean, it obviously is a big enhancement and really connects with the kids who are not reading yet.
Jarrett (29:13):
It gives them something to discover. Yeah, I remember reading some of the Mercer Mayer porcupine picture books when I was a kid, and there was always a grasshopper and a spider that were kind of in the background of each illustration, and I always thought that was so cool.
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Mary (30:37):
Total U-Turn here or left turn. Young Jedi. You have developed a lot of your own IP, intellectual property characters, all of that. What is it like to operate within a different world and a different franchise?
Jarrett (30:48):
Yeah, so this was about 10 years ago now. Someone from Scholastic and Lucasfilm reached out to ask if I would want to write books in the Jedi Academy series. And there had been three books that Jeffrey Brown had put together for Scholastic, and he wanted to move on to other books, and they wanted to keep the series going. And it was a bit nerve wracking at first because it's Star Wars, that's a big deal. And people, of course, the fans are very opinionated. I had to come to the realization that they were hiring me for me, they were hiring me because I was the Lunch Lady guy. And so I wasn't trying to create anything other than a book that I would normally make. For me, it was: What's the kid problem? What's the social problem between the friends? That's the first draft. And then, okay, now we're layer in the Force and lightsabers on top of that.
Mary (31:52):
Oh, that's really interesting. So the Star Wars-specific world building details came kind of after you had nailed down the human story, right?
Jarrett (32:04):
Yes, yes, exactly. And honestly, I was fearful that it wouldn't be a fun process. There'd be so many cooks in the kitchen, but it was quite the opposite. I found it very liberating to not have to invent the world. I invented some characters, but the rules of that world were already there, and that's the most difficult part about writing, especially the first book in the series. So I had a blast with it. It was a lot of fun, a great experience. At the end of making six books, I was like, okay, I'm ready to focus more on my own intellectual property and my own concepts.
Mary (32:45):
Were you handed a giant Bible?
Jarrett (32:48):
No, but there is an employee at Lucasfilm whose job it is to read every single piece of media to make sure nothing is contradicting something else and not contradicting something that happened previously. So really, that was the only notes back from Lucasfilm were mostly like, well, you can't have this character ride this vehicle because humans can't ride that vehicle. And so that wouldn't make sense. You physically couldn't do that. There's always great to have somebody who knows that world so well that I didn't make any mistakes.
Mary (33:29):
Just this continuity editor who is a human repository of the Lucasfilm universe, somebody has that job and is just the king of the nerds.
Jarrett (33:45):
He had some kind of website in the mid nineties that became the ultimate Star Wars fan website, and that's how he got his job.
Mary (33:53):
Well, why didn't my GeoCities X-Files fantasy website…?
Jarrett (33:59):
Well, it's about to get rebooted so you can get in touch with the folks there.
Mary (34:03):
GeoCities or no, X-Files?
Jarrett (34:05):
Yes.
Mary (34:07):
I was like, no, don't bring back that website. Interesting. All right. So when you are crafting these human stories, it seems like the relationships, the social dynamics are really sort of key to how you enter the plotting and also the relationships between the protagonists, the secondary characters, and the protagonist growth arc. So that is crucial for our, I would say even kindergarten students, but especially elementary, especially as we get into middle school, these social dynamics are really how kids define themselves and find their place in the world.
Jarrett (34:54):
Absolutely, yes.
Mary (34:55):
How did you become such a keen observer? Where do you get the juice for these friendships and these other dynamics?
Jarrett (35:04):
A lifetime of friendships that were great or terrible. Basically, it's my own life or observing quietly the world around me.
Mary (35:18):
How do you approach a protagonist's trajectory within that context?
Jarrett (35:23):
I mean, for me, I always think about, well, what does this character want and that character's want is going to drive the entire story. And that character's want can be something physical like a treasure. It could be something intangible, like a connection with another. So I think about what that big want is, and all of the decisions that character makes is going to be based around that want.
Mary (35:48):
Does the want ever shift or change as the character moves through the story?
Jarrett (35:54):
I mean, I guess it depends on the story. I mean, I can't think of anything specific, but yeah, I guess even some of the Jedi Academy books are probably some of the more deeper, more profound books for young readers that I wrote emotionally, they go way deeper than the Lunch Lady books. And so yeah, I guess that main character Victor had in his mind, what he expected to get out of Jedi Academy and what really happened and what he really got out of it.
Mary (36:24):
How do you track that across a multi-book series? You have several series long running under your belt, so how do you approach the extreme long view?
Jarrett (36:39):
The printed books with Post-It Notes on various pages. That's how I do it.
Mary (36:46):
And how do you sort of understand the characters as they evolve over so many books?
Jarrett (36:54):
With the Jedi Academy books, there were two trilogies, so I did have in my mind what would happen in each book. The Platypus Police Squad books, I had in my mind what would happen in each of the four books. So I tend to have a big picture arc as well as the arc for each individual book as well. And then an arc for also each individual chapter.
Mary (37:18):
Tell me more about that.
Jarrett (37:21):
Every chapter is like a little book. Every chapter has a little beginning, middle, and end. And so if you're thinking you're going to write a book and you're overwhelmed with the prospect of writing the entire thing, just focus in on each chapter and what problems are happening in that chapter, how that character deals with those problems in each chapter.
Mary (37:43):
Are a lot of your conflicts, do they come from within the character, from other characters, or from kind of world stuff like things going on around the characters?
Jarrett (37:55):
It depends on the books. With the Lunch Lady books, each book has a big bad, there's one big bad villain that they have to figure out who's committing these atrocities around the elementary school and how they stop them. With my memoir, that's a much grayer area because it's about complicated human beings. There's no hero or villain in those books. So a lot of it is internal for the protagonist. A lot of it is reacting to how the other people around him is dealing with their internal battles as well.
Mary (38:37):
So this is very personal. So please tell me to pound sand if you don't want to answer. But did that process of rendering these complicated human beings on the page, did it help you heal? Was it cathartic at all to understand the perspectives of those around you as you were growing up?
Jarrett (38:59):
Certainly, yeah. I mean, as an author, you're trying to figure out what the motivations of your character are, and in this case, these are real people. And well, my mother had a problem with drug use, but she didn't have a very stable home life herself. So there's a lot of responsibility that would lie at the feet of my grandmother. And then you think, well, what happened to her? What kind of abuse did she deal with when she was a kid? And you get to the point you're like, well, I'm not going to go back to Sweden to find the first crappy parent, right? And so writing that book in as it intersected with my becoming a parent myself, I have three kids and my kids were aged seven, four, and just about to be born when I was making that book. So that certainly helped me put all of that into perspective, and it definitely helped me have some forgiveness for my mother.
Mary (40:07):
So it seems like that was a difficult process, but also an amazing gift to sort of give yourself forgiveness, empathy aside, you understand yourself as a parent, you understand what other people may have been going through with just the challenges of being alive.
Jarrett (40:28):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it also was definitely challenging to relive a lot of those more difficult moments, but at the same time, it was a beautiful thing to relive the happier moments as well. Memoir is a really difficult thing to write, so you really have to tread lightly and carefully when you go into that kind of work.
Mary (40:52):
With yourself, with other people, a little bit of both.
Jarrett (40:56):
Both, both. But especially yourself.
Mary (41:02):
I have clients who write memoir who have really, really struggled with that recall just that kind of plumbing those depths and getting them out on the page and reliving them, examining them in the light sort of with current perspective. It's a really challenging thing.
Jarrett (41:22):
It is challenging. It is challenging. And for me, I was like, thank goodness. I was connected with a really good therapist and I have a very good support system here in my home now. But I tell young, especially young books, I meet a lot of young people, high school students who want to write about their lives. I'm like, you could just write it and not show it to anybody. You don't have to have the mentality that it's going to be published. You could just go through the process of writing it, writing it down.
Mary (41:52):
So you've written two memoir projects, and they are both sort of focused on different topics, different themes, interrelated for sure. How do you decide what is encapsulated in the plot, the structure of a memoir project, and why write two of these things?
Jarrett (42:16):
Well, I mean, it's the same as any book, right? You ask yourself like, well, what's the through line? So for Hey, Kiddo, the through line was this is a book about family. And then every scene you have to ask yourself, is this a scene about family? And if the answer is no, then it does not belong in that book. So for instance, there were some high school moments that did not make it to the final cut. Well, just because I didn't use it for this book, maybe it's going to be used for a future idea. There was a whole chapter in, Hey, Kiddo, about my time working at Camp Sunshine, working with critically ill kids. That lost chapter became a whole book in and of itself. So Hey, Kiddo, it spans 18 plus years, Sunshine takes place in one week. You could have a memoir that takes place in one day. We have infinite memoirs in us because there's so many beginning, middle, and ends happening in our lives.
Mary (43:14):
And do you find it interesting or challenging or what to still be living while writing retrospectively about your life? Are you a different person now than you were when your third child was about to be born? And how do you square the revelations that you had then that made it into the book? And maybe revelations you've had since?
Jarrett (43:40):
I mean, I'm always on the side of my protagonist, so if there's a preschool bunny who doesn't want to take a nap, I can't write that book from the perspective of the parent on why naps are important. A child would hate that book. With the memoir, this is from the perspective of 16, 17-year-old teenage version of me, and I have to get into the mindset of who I was then. So it doesn't really matter who I am today versus who I was five years ago. It's who I was back in the nineties when I was this age. And so I kept a lot of sketchbooks and notebooks where I dealt with my feelings in the notebooks. And when I review those notebooks, I could really tap back into the mentality I had then.
Mary (44:27):
So you're able to sort of channel that via these diaries, these journals, these sketchbooks that you've saved?
Jarrett (44:34):
Yes, yes.
Mary (44:36):
Did you discover anything really surprising when you were time traveling?
Jarrett (44:41):
Just how angry I was at that age.
Mary (44:46):
And do you grapple with that head on in the story?
Jarrett (44:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And I use the actual sketches in the book too. So whenever you see the Jarrett character draw in the memoir, you see the art I made at that age. So I was able to really bring the reader right into that story through those archival pieces.
Mary (45:10):
That's amazing. And you say for this particular story, there was no outright villain, right? Because everybody is a human being, just doing, just getting through the day. But you also do write stories with more overt obvious villains, but I would imagine that you still want them to have a measure of relatability or just something that makes them not cookie cutter big bads.
Jarrett (45:42):
Right. Well, that's to say I have to figure out what the villain’s motivation is. So the bus driver sabotages the bake sale. Well, it turns out she doesn't like all the crumbs on her bus, so that's why she destroys the bake sale. She had a reason. So from her point of view, she's not the villain. She's got her, she's got her own personal journey. But had I written my memoir when I was 22, definitely it would've been heroes versus villains, and it would not have been a nuanced story. I needed the gift of time away from those events to write that book.
Mary (46:23):
If you had sort of one piece of advice to writers, and I could pull out about 15 different things that we've talked about, including enjoying the process of creation rather than focusing on the product of creation, which you just dropped, and I didn't want to sort of let it pass unexamined. What's your advice for aspiring writers, aspiring illustrators, aspiring graphic novelists, what do you got for us?
Jarrett (46:54):
This is something that I tell the students I get to go visit high school art classes too. And this advice is across the board for any creative person that the point of making something isn't to make the perfect something. It's to learn about how you made that something, and then you carry that knowledge into the second something. And again, the point of that second something is not to make a perfect second something, it's to gain the knowledge of what you get when you've made that second something, and that knowledge and skill will carry with you throughout the rest your life should you keep creating.
Mary (47:33):
And speaking of the next something, what's next for you? What are you at liberty to share? What are you excited about?
Jarrett (47:40):
I'm behind on everything still. I feel like I'm still getting my sea legs securely on the ground after Covid disruptions, but I have more Lunch Lady. I have a new series, and I hope to write more memoir as well.
Mary (47:57):
Amazing. Well, Jarrett Krosoczka, thank you so, so much for speaking with us. For your time, your wisdom, and all of the wonderful books that you've put out into the world. And here's to a good story.
Jarrett (48:13):
Well, very kind of you to say, and I appreciate this conversation. Thank you.
Mary (48:20):
Thanks so much for joining me. This has been Good Story podcast with me, Mary Kole. I just want to offer a heartfelt thank you and bit of gratitude to the entire Good Story Company team. You can find out more at goodstorycompany.com. And of course, to all of you listening and taking the time to really dig into these conversations with me, this has been Good Story Podcast, and here's to a good story.
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