Six Questions with Heather Stigall

Heather Stigall uses her experience with children and her degrees in Child Development, Psychology-based Human Relations, and Social Work to create stories that speak to kids, including the picture books Gilbert and the Ghost and Paisley's Big Birthday. She is an active volunteer for SCBWI and a wife and parent to five children and one pup. When she's not writing, you can find Heather hanging out with her kids (hopefully at the beach), reading, eating chocolate, baking, or creating all sorts of treasures. You can connect with Heather through her website, or her social media links.

1.     To what extent is your writing inspired by your own experience, or by watching your children’s experiences?

A lot! When my children were young, I would say that they were a great source of distraction but also of inspiration! During those many years, I didn’t have as much time to write full story drafts, but every time one of my children said or did something funny or interesting, I would write it down. Sometimes something they did or said would trigger a personal memory of childhood, and I would write that down. By the time I decided to seriously commit to children’s book writing as a career, I had amassed a bushel of ideas.

2.     Once you’ve created a first draft, what’s your next step? Critique group? Check in with your agent? Tuck it away to let it age?

Because I often struggle to get that first draft written, I usually put my stories away right after I write them. Sometimes I put it away for only a week or two (especially if I’m particularly excited about the idea). Often, I put it away much longer (especially if I have another project in process). It helps me to have some distance from the story so I can look at it more objectively before making revisions. Usually, I don’t share with my critique partners until I’m stuck on how to revise further. It’s not until after at least a few more rounds of revision and sharing with my critique partners that I’ll share with my agent. I can only make a first impression once, and I want her to see the most polished version of the manuscript I can achieve before asking for her feedback.

3.     What piece of advice would you like to give to aspiring kidlit authors?

I think it’s important to understand that children’s book writing and illustrating is a business. We can pour so much of ourselves into our stories, so it’s understandable why rejections feel personal and can downright hurt. But there are so many reasons why an agent or editor passes on a manuscript, even a well-written, marketable one. Work on what you can control. Keep writing and submitting, keep improving your craft and making connections – your “yes” is out there!

4.     Where did you get the idea for this new book? What was your inspiration?

Gilbert and the Ghost, began with two things – a title idea and a childhood memory. The title came about during Tara Lazar’s 2020 StoryStorm challenge. Because I like wordplay, I thought “ghost writer” had potential for a picture book title. The childhood memory came from my happy place – the beach. When I was a child, my parents and aunt and uncle rented the same beach house for a few weeks each summer. One year, before we left our rental for the season, my cousins and I hid a note somewhere in the house, hoping to find a reply when we returned the following year. Surely someone would want to be our pen pal! The next summer, we checked our secret hiding spot. Did anyone reply? No. But our note was missing! Someone must have read it, right? Maybe they did reply, but another renter received the note before us. So, we tried again, for several years, believing that eventually we would become friends with another beach lover, even if we never met. With that memory in mind, I wondered if I could write a story about a child who wrote notes to a ghost he believed lived in his neighborhood, even though no one else believed. A friendship story between a child, who understood what it was like to feel invisible, just like a ghost, and a ghost, who might want a friend too. So, I did!

5.     Was this always the title for this project? If not, what other titles did you consider and how did you land on this one?

You can see from my answer to the previous question that the answer to this one is “no.” Although I loved the wordplay of the title “Ghost Writer,” and that’s the title I used when I submitted the manuscript to agents and then to publishers, my editor at Beaming Books suggested a change. She thought it wasn’t quite getting to the heart of the story, and since Gilbert (and not the ghost) was doing all the writing, it didn’t ring true. She was right. I brainstormed a few ideas including Gilbert’s Ghost and Gilbert and the Ghost, but I worried those titles might be too similar to an already published book called Gilbert the Ghost by Guido Van Genechten. As it turned out, the folks at Beaming Books also considered Gilbert’s Ghost and said that sales and marketing didn’t see any issues with the similarity of the titles. But there was one thing that bothered me. I feared using the apostrophe might be viewed as possessive, as if Gilbert owned the ghost. Beaming Books understood my concern and we all agreed to Gilbert and the Ghost as the official title.

6.     If you could tell readers one secret about this book, what would it be?

In earlier drafts of this story, Gilbert left other notes revealed a little more about him, including that he had a cat named Theodosia. I gave the cat her name because of a ghost story I read when I went down a rabbit hole of research one day. Theodosia Burr Alston was the daughter of former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr. In 1812, after her son died of malaria and she was well enough to travel, she boarded a ship from South Carolina to New York to visit her father. The ship never arrived and her body was never recovered. One legend says that her ghost haunts the shores of Bald Head Island, N.C., near where her ship was lost. Another says that her ghost, along with her father's, haunts a restaurant in Greenwich Village, N.Y., that used to be Aaron Burr's carriage house. I loved the idea of Gilbert having a cat he named after a ghost, but it was one of those darlings I had to kill during the revision process. The story was stronger for it, but I missed Theodosia the cat and I secretly wished Jess Mason (the illustrator of Gilbert and the Ghost) would include a cat in the art. In the end, I didn't get a cat, but I did get a Theodosia. You'll have to read Gilbert and the Ghost to find out how!