Writing this book was a different experience from writing fiction. For one thing, my name was suggested to the editor by another library colleague. I knew writing nonfiction would be different and recruited my friend Geri, so we could share the work. The two of us wrote a proposal for the book and were pleasantly surprised when it was accepted by Rowman & Littlefield.
The biggest difference between my experiences writing fiction and my experience writing nonfiction was the actual process of writing. And I don't just mean having a collaborator. We wrote this book out of chapter order and sent the individual chapters to our editor as we completed them. With fiction, the entire book is written before I send it to my agent.
While we were writing this book, we faced a number of hurdles. Since we set our own deadline with the initial proposal, we foolishly gave ourselves about six months to get this all done. Little did we know that I would accept another job and move 1200 miles during that time. And that's not even factoring in vacations and conferences!
We wrote the book for new librarians or paraprofessionals to give them some background, history, resources, and programming ideas to help them serve the teens in their communities. Our goal was to make it chatty and easy to read.
I hope Teen Services Today proves helpful to those library staff members who need and use it.
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