Coaching KidLit Episode 40: Combining Cultural Aspects with Harshita Jerath

Sharon and Christy welcome Guest Harshita Jerath, author of picture books such as The Leaping Ladoo and Cooler Than Lemonade to discuss how she blends elements from her Indian heritage with American experiences in her writing, creating stories that resonate with broader audiences while maintaining cultural authenticity.

Visti Harshita online at:

Website: harshitajerath.com
Instagram: @hjjerath
Facebook: Harshita Jerath Books and Blog

Key Topics Covered:

Combining Cultural Aspects in Writing.
Definition of Culture.
Finding the right story structure for an idea.
How personal experiences and cultural backgrounds can uniquely shape a writer’s voice and stories.
Action items and insights on using cultural and personal lenses to develop unique stories.

Books and Resources Mentioned:

The Leaping Laddoo by Harshita Jerath
Cooler Than Lemonade by Harshita Jerath
A Sweet Diwali by Harshita Jerath
The Gingerbread Man

Listen:

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sharon Skinner: Welcome to Coaching KidLit, a podcast about writing and publishing good KidLit.

[00:00:07] Christy Yaros: We dig into various aspects of writing craft through a KidLit lens and provide inspiration and clear actionable items to help writers like you move forward on their KidLit writing journeys.

[00:00:19] Sharon Skinner: I’m Sharon Skinner, author accelerator, certified book coach, and author of speculative fiction and KidLit, including picture books, middle grade, and young adult.

[00:00:31] Christy Yaros: And I’m Christy Yaros, author accelerator certified book coach and story editor, focusing on KidLit, including middle grade and young adult.

[00:00:41] Christy Yaros: Hey Sharon.

[00:00:42] Sharon Skinner: Hey Christie, how are you?

[00:00:44] Christy Yaros: I’m good. What are we gonna talk about today?

[00:00:46] Sharon Skinner: We have another amazing guest. This. Episode, I’m very excited. We have Harshita Jerath with us today and she’s the author of Picture books, the Leaping Laddoo and Cooler Than [00:01:00] Lemonade. And she also has an early reader out called a Sweet Diwali.

[00:01:03] Sharon Skinner: Which came out the end of last year. She writes stories that blend elements from her Indian heritage with the experiences of life in the United States. She lives with her family in Scottsdale, Arizona, and her website is HarshitaJerath and we’ll put that in the show notes. But right now I just wanna welcome to our show, Harshita.

[00:01:26] Sharon Skinner: It’s so great to have you here.

[00:01:28] Harshita Jerath: Same here. Thank you so much Sharon and Christie. Hello everybody. Hello and Namaste lovely listeners.

[00:01:35] Harshita Jerath: Thank you for having me over. I’m super excited to be here and I can’t wait to share my journey with your listeners.

[00:01:41] Sharon Skinner: We’re excited to have you, and today we’re gonna dig into a little bit about your writing journey, but what really excited me about bringing you on the program is to have you talk about how you’re blending cultures in the books that you’re writing. So you are taking American [00:02:00] stories and some cultural aspects of your background and you’re combining them in these wonderful books and I would really love to hear a little bit about how you came to work that way.

[00:02:10] Harshita Jerath: So, to give listeners a little background, I grew up in India and I moved to the US after my marriage. So it was pretty natural that, the culture, . That I grew up in, that I was surrounded by, naturally seeps into the stories that I write. So, for the listeners, I would like to explain what is culture?

[00:02:34] Harshita Jerath: Culture basically is a combination of the things that we see and we don’t see. So it is, the language, it’s the clothes, it’s the food, basically the worldview. Everything that we are surrounded by forms a culture and that naturally, organically seeps into the stories that I write. So, like you said, Sharon, you will see both, two [00:03:00] threads pretty much, woven into my stories, the thread of culture, and also the thread, of universality, the themes that would resonate with the broader audience.

[00:03:13] Harshita Jerath: So you’ll see this duality, reflected in the stories that I write.

[00:03:18] Sharon Skinner: Your debut picture book is called The Leaping Laddoo and. I love it because I grew up on the gingerbread man, and this story takes elements of that story that I think many of us are familiar with, but it brings your Indian culture into it in a really spectacular and beautiful way.

[00:03:36] Sharon Skinner: What was the impetus of you coming up with that idea?

[00:03:40] Harshita Jerath: Okay, so, what happened for this is, the idea was growing inside me for several years because I was traveling to India with my toddler kids all the time. So, I read in all the mom books that when you are going, out of the comfort zone of kids, on a long travel, you need to prepare them in advance [00:04:00] and in order to do so, I would tell them in advance that once we land in India, what are the things they would be seeing?

[00:04:08] Harshita Jerath: So as soon as they, get out of the airport, I would say, you know, there would be loud. Noises. There will be honks. You will see, probably a wedding procession. I would just prepare them in an advance of the differences that they would encounter as soon as we get out of the airport.

[00:04:24] Harshita Jerath: So that was when the story idea was planted. I’m like, that would be amazing, right? To have a story that children, would be able to read and encounter all these, integral parts, of, streets of India basically. That is how the idea came into being, but I wasn’t sure how to put it in a story format.

[00:04:47] Harshita Jerath: I was clear about the elements that I want to show, but it was just stuck as a idea at that point in time. I. So one of the days what happened was I was making [00:05:00] laddoo for my son. Laddoo is an Indian round shaped dessert and my son loves it. So I was shaping it in my hand and one laddoo actually fell from my hand.

[00:05:11] Harshita Jerath: So at that time, it just struck me. It was like an aha moment, an Indian gingerbread man. And that was the moment I was able to integrate that story idea into this classic gingerbread man story. And I quickly noted it down, on my notepad. I keep one in my kitchen ’cause that’s where I get maximum story ideas.

[00:05:32] Harshita Jerath: So I quickly noted it down. I noted the imagery also. So, because I was very clear that, this is what I want to show in the book, and it flowed amazingly because of the cumulative structure of the story that Gingerbread Man offers. And, also because I introduced so many new things for readers who are not, acquainted with Indian Streets. So they would see different [00:06:00] imagery. They would see even a new language of integrated Hindi language in the story. So a lot of newness is there in that. And so it worked perfectly because, there is a known foundation of a classic story where readers know what to expect with all the newness that goes around with it.

[00:06:19] Harshita Jerath: So that’s how it came into being the leaping laddoo.

[00:06:23] Christy Yaros: So you weren’t trying to think of a, familiar structure first it came the other way around and then you were like, oh, this totally works.

[00:06:30] Harshita Jerath: Yes

[00:06:31] Christy Yaros: that’s great..

[00:06:32] Sharon Skinner: That’s a really good approach to it, and I do love that you have the Hindi glossary in the back of the book and you have the words so we understand them in context and we get to understand how to pronounce them correctly. I think that that is really fabulous and a recipe for Laddoo, which who doesn’t like a good recipe, right?

[00:06:51] Harshita Jerath: Yes, absolutely. if you would see that, somehow I realize that food always shows up in all my books.

[00:06:58] Sharon Skinner: I noticed that.

[00:06:59] Christy Yaros: Well, you did [00:07:00] say your best ideas come in the kitchen, so.

[00:07:02] Harshita Jerath: Yeah. So that is why, and I, I am a foodie. I enjoy good food. I like to cook food, and uh, I feel food is a big connector. That’s where all great conversations happen, and that’s where connections are made. So, yeah, it shows up. Can’t help it.

[00:07:20] Sharon Skinner: You actually bring the, kulfi right into, cooler than Lemonade as part of the story.

[00:07:27] Harshita Jerath: Yes, kulfi for, listeners who do not know, it’s the Indian frozen dessert very similar to ice cream. And, that shows up in my second book called Cooler Than Lemonade.

[00:07:41] Sharon Skinner: So what inspired you to write cooler than Lemonade? Did that also come out of the kitchen or was that something else?

[00:07:48] Harshita Jerath: Yes and no. Because the idea was inspired by my younger son who keeps, coming up with big ideas to earn money. So one day it was, I still [00:08:00] remember it was pretty hot in Phoenix, Arizona, July, and he came to me and said, what if we open a kulfi stand at a farmer’s market? So that is how the first idea was planted.

[00:08:12] Harshita Jerath: So what started as a. project to help him to, open a kulfi stand actually, led to creation of this book.

[00:08:21] Harshita Jerath: So he never ended up opening a KFI stand at a farmer’s market. But thanks to him, I have a book now.

[00:08:28] Christy Yaros: Well, his ideas immortalized forever.

[00:08:30] Sharon Skinner: In cooler than Lemonade. I like how you took the idea of, the kulfi stand, but instead of just going straight there, you started with the lemonade stand as an idea for the business, and then kind of. Brought it along, spoiler alert, kulfi enters in toward the end of the story.

[00:08:47] Sharon Skinner: But, did some of that conversation around, opening a stand and all of the ins and outs and what it would take, when you were talking to your son, did that also enter in as you were developing this story?

[00:08:59] Harshita Jerath: [00:09:00] Yes. the story that you see right now, it wasn’t like that initially the initial draft or the setting was in, a farmer’s market, and I wrote several drafts. With the setting in Farmer’s Market where the kid opens a kulfi stand, but that wasn’t the direction I wanted the story to go in because I didn’t have enough knowledge about opening something at a farmer’s market. So it involved taking a license. It involved so many things that, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include it in my story. What I wanted in the big idea of the story was to introduce children to running a business, what it involves at a higher level. Introduce concepts of entrepreneurship.

[00:09:41] Harshita Jerath: So, during that time I started reading all about entrepreneurship so that I could guide my son. I read different kind of books. I even read, Entrepreneurial magazines, everything I could, so what started, in Farmer’s Market ended with a lemonade stand [00:10:00] because I realized all the concepts I want to introduce are much easier in that setting of a lemonade stand. So the challenge after that was how to make my book stand out because there were already so many picture books related to lemonade stand. I wanted my book to be different. And my brain was really working that I have all these concepts that I wanted to introduce children to.

[00:10:26] Harshita Jerath: And, It came about using this structure

[00:10:30] Sharon Skinner: So you have the competitive structure of the kid across the street or down the street who’s also opening a lemonade stand, and then the pricing that goes back and forth and all of those kinds of things. I think that. That’s a really great way to introduce kids to the idea of retail and sales and how to run a business and all of those sorts of things.

[00:10:52] Sharon Skinner: You can see that you had a lot of ideas about what it takes to have a small business in there, but you [00:11:00] simplified it beautifully for a picture book. And I think that some of those concepts really come across in the illustrations and not all necessarily in the text.

[00:11:10] Harshita Jerath: Yes, yes. So we had a great. Collaboration, me and the illustrator, Chloe Burgett. She has done a beautiful gorgeous job. it came out beautifully. So there were some notes that I had mentioned, so that something that I had not written is. There. For example, the cost like 99 cents versus a dollar.

[00:11:32] Harshita Jerath: It’s not written in words, but it’s right there because it’s, very stiff competition. And there are some things that she added on her own. The end papers have their own story. If you. See that before and after the entire story is an end paper. She’s done a gorgeous job in that. Then the cover there is a surprise cover too, so it has two covers.

[00:11:55] Harshita Jerath: publisher loved both the covers and now my book has two covers, [00:12:00] so it was exciting and the interplay of emotions between Eva and her little brother Aru. All those things have come out, beautifully. I love, a page where the competition is, so evident that the competitor

[00:12:17] Harshita Jerath: Jake, shows up, with, bodyguards and, free cookies and all those additions. So I just love the way she added all those details and it’s come out, really nice. The story has come together very well.

[00:12:33] Sharon Skinner: I love that illusTration that you’re talking about. With the bodyguards and everything because it really shows how the, competition escalates , and she’s really struggling to figure out how to make things work when this kid he’s just got it going on.

[00:12:48] Sharon Skinner: Until she finally figures out how to make this work. Do you wanna talk a little bit about some of the concepts that you were able to bring into a picture book realm because a lot of these concepts [00:13:00] are higher level concepts that we don’t normally see in picture book.

[00:13:04] Harshita Jerath: Absolutely Sharon. It was, Quite an effort. Let me tell you this because I did a lot of research and for any picture book, because picture books are so great because you have to simplify the idea. All the complex ideas need to be simplified for kids to understand, and in doing so, even adults.

[00:13:22] Harshita Jerath: Understand that part. So what happened was, like I said, I wanted to introduce all business concepts as much as possible. So it starts with, idea generation. So Eva, the main character, she comes up with big ideas to. solve problems basically. So she comes up with a idea of lemonade stand in hot summer.

[00:13:43] Harshita Jerath: So it starts with how to generate ideas. So I wanted kids to understand that what are the various ways ideas can be generated? . And that’s what you see in this book as Eva tries to generate different kind of ideas. She brainstorms, she meditates, she doodles. [00:14:00] She’s being creative in, coming up with ideas.

[00:14:02] Harshita Jerath: And then, she opens a lemonade stand, encounters competition from her neighbor, and then they get into a rabbit hole of this. Competition, who’s better? Who’s gonna do something? And jake also has really big ideas. So, it was really challenging for Eva to stay put. I wanted to show that it is real like competition.

[00:14:26] Harshita Jerath: When you open a business, competition happens and there would be a failure. So there can be, right. You have to fail in order to move forward. So that’s when all is lost and Eva has to wrap her business. And, she is like, okay, I can’t, open a lemonade stand anymore. So She just closes her lemonade stand.

[00:14:45] Harshita Jerath: So I wanted to show that in my book that embracing failure and she’s really low and she’s not able to come up with any more ideas. She was supposed to, because that’s how she’s shown in the book that she always keeps coming up with brilliant ideas. But [00:15:00] now she doesn’t have any ideas because she just

[00:15:02] Harshita Jerath: lost her creativity until she’s helped by her little brother who nudges and ask her to be creative again by making kulfi. And that’s when she’s in that creative space, after taking a pause, she’s back in her zone and she’s understands that, okay, now this is another idea she can work with.

[00:15:22] Harshita Jerath: She’s back in business and you will see that she’s doing a structured experimentation all the time. That was another concept I wanted to introduce design thinking. So once she has an idea, she takes the idea, she forms a prototype, she makes kulfi, she shares it, with, family, with other people who, give her star rating, and then she launches it in the world.

[00:15:49] Harshita Jerath: So structural experimentation and then finally launching the product in the new world. And I also wanted to show that there are [00:16:00] different ways to succeed in life or in business. There’s not just one way. So it’s a story of originality also. And in the end, what starts as a competition ends with a collaboration.

[00:16:13] Harshita Jerath: What starts as a. Classic lemonade stands, ends with kulfi and lemonade together.

[00:16:18] Sharon Skinner: I love the collaboration at the end. I love how that’s how they figure out how to work together

[00:16:24] Christy Yaros: So then the way that you had her take, her special, unique, culture and blending that in was ultimately what makes her succeed? Is that sort of a lesson you also wanted kids to, take away from that?

[00:16:36] Harshita Jerath: not about the culture, but more about being original or not, just following the race because, you have to come up with your own originality in business. What sets you apart? it just happens that culture is part of it, because that’s what I know, or what we live, what my kids live.

[00:16:56] Harshita Jerath: So that’s how it comes into the picture. [00:17:00] But my idea was more to show that, like I said, there are different ways to succeed, not just one way.

[00:17:06] Sharon Skinner: So you have two picture books how did it come to be that you then moved into, writing an early reader?

[00:17:12] Harshita Jerath: It was Something I want to try, I want to, explore , in children’s literature. So when this opportunity came in being, I saw that highlights is a class in writing early readers, and I jumped into and I really enjoyed, and I already had stories that align with the early reader and. it all worked out.

[00:17:38] Sharon Skinner: So you took the class and you wrote the story, and you were already agented for your picture books, and was the same agent, engaged for the early reader?

[00:17:47] Harshita Jerath: Yes, same agent, there aren’t many publishers who do early readers, so it was very limited and, it’s a different ballgame entirely, even though early [00:18:00] readers are also books with pictures, but they are written differently and their market is different because see, picture books are designed to be read.

[00:18:10] Harshita Jerath: by parents, or adults to children. Pretty much that’s the of the picture Books. They can be read by children alone, but typically they’re designed to be read by an adult to a child. While early readers are designed, to be read by child. That’s first independent reading experience. So the. way they’re written is quite different than the. Picture books. So it was challenging, but really fun challenge.

[00:18:38] Harshita Jerath: the way this story came into being is it’s inspired by my childhood pet I used to call him Dollar. It’s funny though, right in India, a dollar, he was named after, Richie Rich. Magazine, . So These are inspired by my pet dog dollar. So I have, plenty of stories, pertaining [00:19:00] to my pet dog, and my agent submitted more than one story and they picked up this Diwali story to be published.

[00:19:09] Christy Yaros: So how did you get into writing in the first place? What inspired you to start writing for children, I mean obviously specifically, but writing more in general.

[00:19:17] Harshita Jerath: Like it said, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a small step, and the first step was, when I was a kid, I used to maintain a diary. And I would write all my thoughts there, feelings.

[00:19:32] Harshita Jerath: And the first time I opened a Hallmark card and I read the verses in it. That was very inspiring to me and I felt, that the words can be so powerful. So I tried to emulate the same thing in my writing journal or diary at that time when I was a kid.

[00:19:49] Harshita Jerath: And that was the first small step I would say. My first attempt at writing my own poetry I didn’t take writing as a career, Only after [00:20:00] moving to after having kids, when I took break from my corporate career, that’s when the desire to write rekindle. And then I took my second small step in this journey, which was to open my blog. That was the first step in sharing my writing with the world. So I, open my blog, it was, I think in the year 2016 is when I did this. the third small step that led me to this journey was around the same time when my husband gifted me a course in, writing because he saw my interest in writing and he gifted me a course, which was writing for Children’s Market, once I took that course, there was no looking back and I completely got immersed in this writing for children. So that’s how it started, and I found my agent. In end of 2019, and then the first book came out in 2022, [00:21:00] second in 23 and the third one, and it was last year

[00:21:03] Sharon Skinner: how did you find your agent.

[00:21:05] Harshita Jerath: Through Twitter. At that time there were, there used to be lots of pitches, right? Twitter pitches. It was one of the pitch, I can’t remember which one it was, but it was some picture book pitch. And I pitched my leaping laddoo story And I got a heart on it. And that’s how I got to meet my agent. And since then, we are together.

[00:21:28] Sharon Skinner: So You never know how, as long as you’re out there seeking the resources and you’re making the connections. You never know how it’s going to play out. Right.

[00:21:38] Harshita Jerath: true. I feel this writing is a passion project, completely fueled by passion. Because, it can take, several years, lot of time can go by without, signing any deals without, your books being published. So you have to really love and fuel it [00:22:00] with your passion.

[00:22:01] Christy Yaros: So what are you working on next? Are you sticking with picture books or are you working on more, early readers?

[00:22:06] Harshita Jerath: Both. I’m also trying my hands on early chapter books. So I’m just trying out different things and there are a few picture books that I’m working on. One of them is in submission mode and another in revision. So I have a pipeline, at least I try to keep things in pipeline.

[00:22:24] Sharon Skinner: so Harshita, what is your process when you’re working on a project?

[00:22:28] Harshita Jerath: It starts with an idea for me. just like Eva, the main character in Cooler than Lemonade, she, keeps coming up with ideas and when she is creative, that’s when the ideas come to her. But when she isn’t the ideas, stop coming to her pretty much. it’s true for me also.

[00:22:45] Harshita Jerath: So when I’m in a, uh, creative. State of mind. I’m open to ideas and I keep noting them down whether they make sense or not. I have a notepad in my kitchen. Then I also store it in the notepad, on my phone. So I keep a list [00:23:00] of running ideas. so there are times when I have no ideas, but then there are times when in one day I can get so many ideas.

[00:23:06] Harshita Jerath: So it starts with an idea and, not all ideas turn to books or stories, right? Some just stay there for years, or months, and maybe they will not form a story at all. But some of them are very clear to me like the leaping laddoo it all clicked together and I even had the imagery in mind and for cooler than lemonade, I had the theme, right? I knew I wanted to share running a business, entrepreneurship. And I also knew that the character would be driven like my son. So I had the character as well as, the theme in mind and from there I kept trying different ways to write the story.

[00:23:45] Harshita Jerath: Same thing for a sweet Diwali. I had stories, from my memories growing like my pet dog. And I just found a way to share it as an early reader because didn’t have too much tension. The stories, not much conflict, [00:24:00] just, easy enough, so perfect for early reader.

[00:24:03] Harshita Jerath: So it all starts with an idea for me. Yeah.

[00:24:06] Christy Yaros: Yeah, that’s something we say all the time, right? A lot of times it’s a moment.

[00:24:10] Christy Yaros: An idea, but it’s not a story and even though picture books seem easy, they’re not and finding that thing that’s gonna actually turn it into a story that can be read aloud and enjoyed and followed and gives the illustrator, stuff to work with it takes time and it’s hard.

[00:24:27] Harshita Jerath: Absolutely. I agree with you, Christy, because, for picture books, one thing I feel, is very important is relatability to children. Even if there is an idea. But if it is not relatable to kids of that age, then that idea will not, turn into a picture book or into a full fledged story.

[00:24:46] Harshita Jerath: And, picture books are different, right? Because. they need to appeal to both adults and children, right? That’s what makes them a little different than other genres. because adults [00:25:00] buy them for children. So in some way you need to have a appealing factor for adults who are buying the books as well,

[00:25:08] Sharon Skinner: it’s true we talk all the time about having a target reader in mind, but for picture books, you really have two target audiences that you kind of have to balance between.

[00:25:17] Harshita Jerath: Absolutely. I agree. So for that, what I do is when I’m writing, I always keep adults in mind, even though the prime audience are children. So adults are always there back of my mind because When I was choosing books for children, I would think will my child enjoy it, find it, engaging, but at the same time, first it hits me, right?

[00:25:41] Harshita Jerath: it comes through me, I filter it, and then it reaches to my child. So the same concept I apply when I am writing, when I’m on the other side, that I keep it in my background. How will an adult accept the book?

[00:25:56] Christy Yaros: Right when we talk about the gatekeepers and who it is that we have to get [00:26:00] through, and The older the child gets, the more likely you can get it into their hands. But for sure with picture books and early readers, unless you’re at the Scholastic book fair and you have a bracelet that comes with it then the kid is not usually the one that’s picking that up.

[00:26:11] Christy Yaros: It is definitely, it’s an adult.

[00:26:13] Christy Yaros: As you know, we always like to leave our listeners with an action item so that they can apply what they’ve gleaned from our conversation. So what is it that you would love to leave our listeners with today?

[00:26:24] Harshita Jerath: I have a tip. we kind of touched upon it during our discussions. I want to say. invest enough time in choosing the right story structure for your idea. So even if you have a amazing idea but not the right story structure that would illuminate it, your story would not move forward the way you want it to be.

[00:26:49] Harshita Jerath: So I will explain it to you what I mean by it. So, for example, take my first book, the Leaping Laddoo. The idea was, introducing the streets [00:27:00] of India to children. And I had, imagery, I knew the key elements I want to show in that book, which were, the chai vendor. would see a wedding procession dancing girls, all those kids playing game of cricket.

[00:27:15] Harshita Jerath: So I had identified the key elements that propelled my story forward, but it didn’t really turn into a real story until I identified the story structure for it. So once I figured out that it would work best, a cumulative story, structure format, that’s when everything clicked in and it turned into a book and it got sold.

[00:27:39] Harshita Jerath: So that’s what I mean, that identifying the right structure for your idea is very important. So that was book number one for book number two, cooler than Lemonade. I started with a theme of sharing entrepreneurship concept and, Character, inspired by my son. And, I tried different things and what worked [00:28:00] for it was a classic story structure.

[00:28:02] Harshita Jerath: If you see that the main character does several failed attempts, and there’s all is lost moment. And in the end everything is tied together. That’s a classic story structure. And similarly for, Sweet Diwali, which is an early reader. I had different stories about my pet. I wanted a story structure that doesn’t have too much of conflict, easy to read.

[00:28:25] Harshita Jerath: And I found that early reader, which comes in series because I have different stories to tell, would be perfect for this. So when you have a story idea and it is not, Progressing the story is not progressing. One thing, authors or writers can look at is seeing if they have planted it in the correct story structure format.

[00:28:47] Harshita Jerath: So there are can be circular story structure, classic cumulative. There are then how to story structures. Now picture books can be lit, written in a letter format. So just [00:29:00] try, experiment and see which story structure would help bring out the story you would like to share with the world.

[00:29:07] Sharon Skinner: That’s a great action item.

[00:29:09] Christy Yaros: I love that. That was very informative. Sharon, what do you got?

[00:29:13] Sharon Skinner: So for my action item, it’s adjacent to what Harshita you just went over. I would. Recommend that if you have an idea for a story or a seed for a story, that you dig into your own experience and find those things that resonate from your own experience that might feed that story and that story structure that you’re talking about.

[00:29:35] Sharon Skinner: So the way that you’ve combined your. Different cultural experiences from two different countries. We all have different kinds of experiences throughout our lives where we’ve experienced different things in different ways, and I would recommend that if you have a seed for an idea, that you start to explore it through those different lenses of your experience and how you’ve viewed things in the [00:30:00] world. You can look at it from a kid lens or from an adult lens or, from a school child lens, or from a work lens, but from your personal experiences, a travel lens. If you’ve gone to other countries, there are so many ways that you can look at that story and pull it into a very personal space.

[00:30:18] Christy Yaros: That’s great. I love that too, because that’s taking the things that Harshita was talking about earlier with taking what’s you, what’s original and what’s creative? And combining that to make the story, that only we can tell in the way that, we can tell it. I think that’s a great way to do that.

[00:30:33] Harshita Jerath: Yeah. Is, that’s what forms our unique voice. I would say voice our fingerprint very unique to us.

[00:30:40] Christy Yaros: Absolutely.

[00:30:41] Christy Yaros: Okay, So I’m gonna give you a more practical one taking what both of you have done. What you were making me think of is having two running lists, going of different types of story structures and then also ideas and then looking at those together.

[00:30:54] Christy Yaros: Like, okay, is there anything that’s jumping out at me? But kind of to do that, I think taking a step [00:31:00] back and going and looking at picture books, mentor text to see what is the stories that I like and what structure are they using and how are they approaching that? And maybe taking notes on that to see the different ways that you can come about that.

[00:31:14] Christy Yaros: Because even though you named a couple. That form how most picture books and maybe a lot of stories are written, they’re all so different in the way that they actually execute that idea. So that’s what I would suggest is reminds me of grad school and having to do my hundred picture book paper, having a hundred picture books lined up in my, office and reading all of them to see that while there’s universal, there’s also the different ways of doing things.

[00:31:37] Sharon Skinner: I love that Christie, because it’s very, you, you know that, analytical side of it, and I love the idea of the list, because it’s actually a combination of how I see you approach a lot of times with your spreadsheets and your data but also with that puzzle piece that I like where you’re trying to connect the dots across, you know, it’s sort of like that word match that, we used to do as a kid. [00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Christy Yaros: Yes. Well, that’s, what I was imagining as, you were explaining your, presence. So I’m thinking, I’m like, oh, like a list of ideas and then a list of things, and then we’re like, okay, I don’t know what I wanna work on. Like choose one from column A and choose one from column b, and like, what can you do?

[00:32:13] Sharon Skinner: And the idea of looking at your mentor texts and maybe doing a list of how they did it, what was the concept or the theme and what is the structure, and seeing how that lines up can also give you some ideas on how to do that matching. I just think that’s great.

[00:32:30] Christy Yaros: Yeah, and hopefully getting you out of that. This is just an idea and into, this is a story stage.

[00:32:37] Harshita Jerath: It actually, as I shared about it, it sounds, very clean, but writing in itself is very messy. It just doesn’t come that easily, that systematically you have to do so much of back and forth. And this process, I realized only when I look back and I connected all the dots that this is what I’m doing all the time.

[00:32:57] Harshita Jerath: so it wasn’t like black and white. It’s [00:33:00] all gray. And between that gray is where we find these little tips or these little ways of doing things differently.

[00:33:10] Sharon Skinner: I appreciate hearing that it’s messy. You know, it sounds very, oh, you just do this and you just do that. And we talk all the time about craft and we’re constantly giving our listeners some ideas of how to approach these things. But it is messy. It’s a creative act, and it also requires a certain level of craft and understanding and that analytical side in order to bring it together into A finished product that is, as you said, relatable and accessible to readers. So thank you so much for sharing that with us. This has been great.

[00:33:44] Harshita Jerath: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed our talk and I hope it’s useful to the listeners.

[00:33:50] Christy Yaros: So where can our listeners find you? You we will put in the show notes, the list of your books and such. But given, how things are changing so much lately, [00:34:00] where are you on social media? If you are on social media?

[00:34:03] Harshita Jerath: I have my website, which is my full name, harshitajareth.com. Then I’m also on Instagram, and my user name there is HJareth and I’m also on Facebook, as Harshita Jerath books and blog.

[00:34:21] Christy Yaros: Great. we look forward to connecting you with our listeners, and thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you everybody for listening, and we’ll see you soon.

[00:34:30] Sharon Skinner: Bye for now.

[00:34:31] Christy Yaros: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Coaching KidLit, a writing and book coaching podcast for writers who want to level up their KidLit writing game.

[00:34:39] Sharon Skinner: For more about us and to discover what a book coach can do for you, check out coachingkidlit. com and follow us on social media.

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For more information about Sharon Skinner, visit bookcoachingbysharon.com or follow her on Instagram @sharon_skinner_author_bookcoach and Twitter @SharonSkinner56.

For more information about Christy Yaros, visit christyyaros.com or follow her on Instagram and Twitter @ChristyYaros.

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