Fantasy Career: Justin Minkel
This post is part of the Life With a Slash series of profiles on people building multifaceted careers . You can find previous profiles here.
Justin Minkel is an elementary school teacher. He’s pretty good at it. He has won state and national awards, including becoming the 2007 Arkansas Teacher of the Year and one of four finalists for the National Teacher of the Year, and has hobnobbed with educational bigwigs from former governors to the Deputy Secretary of Education. But if you get him into conversation he will eventually let slip that teaching is not his only occupation. Justin is also a writer. He writes fantasy novels for readers in the middle grades (kids ages 9 to 14). He has written three of these novels, in fact. (It’s fun to watch this conversational exchange. People recover pretty quickly, but there is always an instant of slack-jawed wonder as they absorb this news.)
Justin is devoted to both his teaching and his writing, and he agreed to be profiled here as part of an occasional series on the ways that people blend multiple passions in their careers.
Let’s start at the beginning. Tell us about your books.
All three novels are part of a series called The Calamon Chronicles, named for a town where sorcery and commerce mingle in the docks and taverns each night. The most recent novel is about five kids with powerful magical abilities who run away from home to start their own Academy of Sorcery—a magical school designed, built, and taught by children. Every one of my students has at some point daydreamed about what school would be like if it was run by children instead of adults, and this novel sprang from that idea.
Why did you first decide you wanted to write a book?
I think the book decided it wanted me to write it, and I went along for the ride. Indian musicians have this concept that musicians don’t make the music, they just channel it for awhile—the music goes on whether they are there to play it or not. Writing has always been that way for me. When I sit down to write a novel, I feel like an archaeologist—I’m not creating these cities and ships and mountain ranges, I’m discovering them. They were there all along.
A lot of people would be daunted by the prospect of writing a novel. Were you intimidated at first? How did you get started? And how do you keep going?
Each plot had its origin in a single moment. The first novel came from a story my dad told me when I was seven years old about a dragon shrunk inside her mountain to the size of a gem. I wondered one day, “What would happen if she got out of the gem, and started returning to her original size at a terrifying rate?” That single ‘I wonder’ led to the manuscript of my first novel, Shammara’s Story. Once I discover the characters, they seem to do things on their own, and I just follow them until my part in their story ends. Phillip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, has a simple but profound quote: “Responsibility and delight can co-exist.” Writing and revising a novel takes discipline and time, but there is no greater sense of wonder than watching a world unfold.
Your books have a lot of detail. How do you get to know your characters and the fantasy world they inhabit?
I write down a lot that never goes into the manuscript. In my second novel, The South Beyond, the main character is an inventor. Before I ever began the manuscript itself, I described the clothes hanging in his closet, his daily routine of inventing, his experiences on a gnomish fishing boat years before his part in the novel begins. That backstory would be far too detailed to include in the book, but it helped me to inhabit this character, named Pockets, until I felt I could sit down across from him in a coffee shop and buy him a cup of tea. Once the characters are that familiar to me, I don’t have to pause in the writing to wonder “What would Pockets do here?” He just does it.
How has your teaching affected your writing, and vice versa?
If you’re going to write for children, you have to know children, and teaching has helped me to do that. Each week, I meet with five of my former students (now 5th graders) to get their feedback on the manuscript I finished this summer. They read a chapter a week, and then tell me what they liked, what they think I should change, and why. Children aren’t just smaller versions of adults—they perceive the world, everything from time to friendship, differently than we do. Gaining that perspective is critical to writing books they’ll want to read.
Is your writing a hobby, or a career, or something in between? What do you see as the long-term balance between your teaching and writing?
Writing is a career for me—I just don’t get paid for it yet. I approach the craft of writing with the same scrutiny I bring to the craft of teaching. I set aside the money and time to attend writers’ conferences organized by groups like the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. I hired a local novelist I respect to help me revise my second novel, and spent three years on those revisions before deciding the manuscript was ready to submit to agents and publishers. One of the wonderful things about teaching is that it leaves you with plenty of time and imagination each summer. During June and July, I write for three or four hours every morning, and I think more about dragons and dwarves than math lessons and seating charts.
What will the cover of your first published novel look like?
My students asked me that question last week. When I asked them for suggestions, Gizelle wanted the cover to feature the heroine of the book—a twelve-year old Weather Sorceress named Agony Illyria, daughter to a murdered pirate lord. Jacob thought the cover should depict the main male character, Griffomere, a carousing teenage satyr. So maybe the publisher will go for both their ideas—Griffomere with his lute and a flagon of elderberry wine, Agony standing beside him with sword and wand drawn.
Justin Minkel can be contacted at justinmink@yahoo.com. He is also developing a website for the novels, CalamonChronicles.com, which will be active in a few months.