Aspiring authors and artists were encouraged to follow their dreams and write or draw, even if they’re only 10 years old, Grades 5 and 6 students at St. Michael School were told by children’s author Stephan Kozan on Thursday.
The Pennsylvania-based writer shared how he got into writing children’s books and book publishing, and was accompanied by artist Lindsay Arnold from North Portal.
Kozan told the students that as a student himself, he liked writing poetry, and then started writing short stories on his own before deciding at the age of 12 to write a longer story, writing it on a typewriter.
The writing attempt was forgotten until one day, as an adult, he was cleaning out his garage and he found the typewritten copy of his story. He showed the students the copy, which he has had framed to remind him of his first attempt to write a children’s book.
“I don’t think it was that good, but I took out bits and pieces that I liked, developed new characters for it and expanded it, and turned it into ‘Journal of a Lifetime’,” he said, which was his first full-length published children’s book. “You’re right where I was. For those of you who want to write, you don’t have to wait until you’re an adult.”
One of the exercises that Kozan has enjoyed using with students is called flash fiction, which he first learned about in college while taking creative writing. The idea is to be given a word or idea, and to just start writing on the spot.
“The cool thing is you’d be amazed at how creative you are,” he said, noting when he was doing presentations like this to classes, sometimes they would submit their writing samples to him from this exercise.
One flash fiction story was submitted by a 10-year-old boy, and he said, “I was so blown away by it and captivated by it, I called him and asked, ‘how would you like it if we turned it into a book?’”
Noting that some of the students in the class were 10 also, he pointed out that they too could potentially write something that could be made into a book. “I can’t promise you books, but it’s cool to see what creativity comes out of your mind,” said Kozan.
The contributions of an artist to illustrate the book is important also, said Kozan, but he had no artistic abilities beyond drawing stick figures. In working with an artist, however, he needs to be able to provide ideas about what scenes or illustrations he wants so they can produce concept art, and once approved, these can be developed into full-blown illustrations for use in the book.
With one artist he worked with, the artist was able to produce over 50 illustrations for his first book.
As Kozan submitted his story to 14 different publishing houses and was rejected by all of them, he decided to establish his own book-publishing company, and he publishes his own stories as well as submissions from other writers and illustrators.
Asked how long it usually takes him to write a book, he said it’s different for every author. He takes anywhere from 12 to 16 months, where some writers he knows can write a book in six to eight months.
