Gary D. Schmidt is the author of numerous children’s books, including the National Book Award finalist Okay for Now, the Newbery Honor and Printz Honor book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, and the Newbery Honor book The Wednesday Wars. He lives in Michigan. A two-time winner of the PEN Award, Ron Koertge is the author of Stoner & Spaz and Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, among other titles for young readers. He lives in South Pasadena, Calif. In a recent phone conversation, friends Schmidt and Koertge discussed their new middle grade novel told in vignettes, A Day at the Beach, and what makes them ideally suited as collaborators.
Ron Koertge: Do you remember e-mailing me about the project that turned into A Day at the Beach?
Gary D. Schmidt: I remember emailing you about three different projects and saying, “How about you pick one?” Remember what you wrote back? “Let’s do all three.” And now we’re on number four!
Koertge: I was very happy to see your e-mail. I thought that this might be a way for me to get back into kid lit. My last YA was Coaltown Jesus, a novel-in-verse pared down to the bone.
Schmidt: It’s a book I’ve taught in YA classes, brought to workshops, recommended to any writing student I’ve had—and handed to enough readers that Candlewick probably owes me some royalties.
Koertge: Still, after Coaltown Jesus, I told my wife that the only thing left was YA haiku, and there’s no market for that.
Schmidt: I’d roomed with you during our MFA teaching stint, and I knew how generative you are. I’d been thinking about a collection of stories set at a beach where I spent a week every summer when I was a kid. Everything takes place in one day, dawn to dusk: quick stories about lots of kids, dipping into the lives of all these people gathered together next to an ocean. You’d written flash fiction and poetry, and so 25 sketches seemed right up your alley.
Koertge: It also seemed like fun to write together. I’d never done that before.
Schmidt: I’ve collaborated a few times. I’d heard you lecture and read when we both taught at Hamline. I knew you’d written for Hill Street Blues and you were a popular, full-time poet. Plus, how many early morning walks did we take during those Hamline days? I basically loved the idea of hanging out with you again while we wrote a book together.
Koertge: Exactly. Why not? I knew you’d bring a lot to the table. You know 900 times more about middle grade fiction than I do—not that ignorance ever stopped me. I think after that first e-mail, I wrote a sketch or two.
Schmidt: No kidding. I sent you the first one, and you sent back four! I sent two more, and you sent seven.
Koertge: I was glad to be writing prose again! I already knew we worked at different speeds and came at things from different angles, but that actually ended up working in our favor.
Schmidt: By the time we were done, there were 45 stories, some totally independent of the others, some involving characters who show up several times.
Koertge: Some tense—like the abusive guy who gets surrounded by kids. Some funny—like the vaudeville one of the kid who loses his trunks in the surf.
Schmidt: Some poignant—the kid who carries his cancer-stricken father out into the waves. Some sort of redemptive—the boy band kiddo who finds his way back to his musical roots.
Koertge: In the end, we worked with Rick Margolis, our agent, to cut the collection down to 30 stories. We thought that would be hard, but we actually agreed on the list very quickly.
Schmidt: Right. We’d trade the manuscript. I’d take a turn looking it over and see that a sketch I’d worked on was MIA and I knew you had your reasons for cutting it—probably because I was being too sentimental. We honored each other’s artistic instincts from the start.
Koertge: I know! We never said, “I trust you completely.” But I absolutely did. We were pretty Zen about this project: no clinging, and minimum attachment to any story. I’m not sure we ever really articulated our intent for this book, but we both sensed the through line.
Schmidt: As the book evolved, for sure. We move from an early morning run by a brother and sister, to a late evening run by the same characters, who sprint off the page into the rest of their lives at the end.
Koertge: Plus there’s the mystery of the missing iPhone that’s not solved until the last pages.
Schmidt: Yes, that phone and what it meant to that kid!
Koertge: And pretty early in the partnership we thought a lot about this book on a shelf in a middle school classroom. We talked about how much reluctant readers like very short stories, and how middle school teachers could use the book as a treat: one story per day. As one fifth-grade teacher told you, remember? “A complete story in a seven-to-eight-minute read.”
Schmidt: And let’s not forget how teachers could invite students to write something of their own about a day at the beach. To use our own writing to get a kid to enjoy her own writing—what a good goal.
Koertge: Now on to our fantasy novel, Styx & Stones. Brace yourself, Hades. Here we come!
A Day at the Beach by Gary D. Schmidt and Ron Koertge. Clarion, $18.99 Apr. 1 ISBN 978-0-06-338092-9
