Character Sketch: Gary Schmidt

"I handed the test in five minutes before the end of the day. Mrs. Baker took it calmly, then reached into her bottom drawer for an enormous red pen with a wide felt tip. 'Stand here and we'll see how you've done,' she said, which is sort of like a dentist handing you a mirror and saying, 'Sit here and watch while I drill a hole in your tooth.'" –from Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars

Perhaps the biggest pull about this author is the way he speaks to the heart of things, whether in his novels or in a conversation face to face. Gary Schmidt writes fiction for young adults (and the young at heart), and has published over thirteen novels and collaborated on several others, including two Newberys and a Printz Honors. He is the father of six children and teaches at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI.

Balancing Act

With so many commitments, how does he balance being a professor, working as a writer, and caring for family? "That's the question," Schmidt says and laughs. After a pause, he adds, "Sometimes you have to say no." He takes academic work with him when he travels, grading on planes to avoid small talk with people next to him (especially salesmen). This semester he only teaches class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with academic meetings every Monday; on Wednesdays and Fridays he stays home and writes. Sitting alone with a typewriter he's used for over forty years, he writes about 500 words a day, leaving the next sentence jotted in the margin. Supper to 9:00pm is always family time, which may include a game or two of euchre, bringing in wood for the fire, or running with the dogs.

Professor-ship

When he joined the English Department in 1985, Schmidt first started teaching English 101, called English 100 at the time, as well as British Literature and History of Language for Professor Wiersma, who was on sabbatical that year. Within his first or second year of working at Calvin, he proposed a medieval literature course that quickly joined the ranks of classic English Department courses. He also taught Children's Literature, another new course for Calvin.

Other writers often ask him when he's going to stop teaching and write full-time. "There's this weird notion of teaching as a chore," Schmidt says, but "I love teaching here." He wouldn't give it up for the world for two reasons: "I could make a living as a writer," he says, and he really likes teaching. "I don't want to give that up. Why should I?"

Writing

His first work of fiction was rejected. Since then he has collaborated with many authors, including Calvin professors Donald Hettinga, Susan Felch, and Charlotte Otten. Schmidt is best known for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, which was awarded both the Newbery and Printz Honors in 2005, and The Wednesday Wars, also awarded a Newbery in 2008. His most recent book, Trouble, was published in 2008 by Clarion.

"Before anything else, a book has to be a good story. You have to get the reader to say 'What happens next?' or 'I can hardly wait to turn the page.' … That's the big thing" (from YouTube video "Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt").

His publisher, Houghton Mifflin, is fantastic: no hurry, no worry. No deadlines, and no contracts until the book is ready to be published. "They fussed at first," he says, but have since then come to a good understanding. "They will never press for a deadline." Schmidt admits that he's not going to be a "300-book" kind of author, and he is okay with that. It usually takes him a year to write the first draft of a novel, and then another six to eight months to revise.

Hobbies (other than writing)

Schmidt enjoys gardening and chopping wood in his spare time, but doesn't do much else. He loves working with dogs a lot, mostly border collies (because they're smart). For the past several years, he has been also been involved in the English Department's annual Writer's Retreat along with Professors William Vande Kopple and Nancy Hull.

Schmidt vs. Technology

The well-known author does not use facebook, twitter, myspace, or anything "technological," he admits with an abashed grin. A Calvin student and writer by the name of Chris Nivens created his facebook fan page for him, and Schmidt's son David kept it up for a while after Nivens graduated. Schmidt does get forty to fifty author- or work-related emails per day, all of which he usually reads but doesn't always respond to. Sometimes he spends two or three hours in his hotel room while traveling going through his inbox, but only if he's already finished grading papers.

The YouTube video entitled "Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt" was filmed by his publishing house, which has finally taken the reins to do promotional works for him.

Influential teachers

Most fans are curious about the types of English teachers he had while growing up, based on Schmidt's novels and his career as writer and professor. Schmidt recalls that his high school English teachers were "fabulous." He most enjoyed Mr. Smith and Ms. Saunders, a "nun who renigged her vows" to become a teacher and who had his class read The Canterbury Tales, Jane Eyre, and many other classics.

Not all of his teachers were stars, however. Some of them "compensated for a lack of interest with meanness." When Schmidt student taught in his senior year, he was told to stay away from the teachers' lounge to avoid "burnt-out teachers and their cynicism." There was a mix of the fabulous and the not-so-great, he says, teachers who shouldn't have gone into teaching.

As a junior in college, he took a course in medieval literature with Professor Thomas Howard—the class that convinced him to go into medieval literature as his field of study. Schmidt took three out of four professors in Gordon College's English Department, and he describes all of them as "totally committed." One professor had a course on Steinbeck that was by invitation only; students read a book every week and went to the professor's house in Manchester-by-the-Sea—"isn't that a cool name?" says Schmidt—for dinner, wine, and discussion. At the end of the course, they only had to write a two-page paper; it was a "fantastic experience."

From New York to Michigan

Schmidt was born in Hicksville, New York, on April 14, 1957. His father was a banker who wanted to be a gardener, and his mother was a teacher. "He had a really green thumb," Shmidt mentions, relaying his father's desire to own a nursery. "He should've done it." Schmidt grew up near Manhattan in a small community of Irish Catholics and Jews before leaving the state to attend Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.

While at college, he met his wife, Anne, and the two soon married little more than a year later. They both attended graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where Schmidt earned an MA in English literature. Six years later, he complemented that with a Ph.D. in medieval literature and found himself part of Calvin College's English Department shortly afterward.

Current projects

Schmidt's newest story will be published in April. Okay for Now, set in 1968-1969, follows the story of Doug Swieteck, the new kid in town. It is written as a companion book to The Wednesday Wars, but not necessarily a sequel. The book deals with the issues of wholeness, as reflected in Doug's mission to bring together a historical plate collection, as well as survival in a hostile place. Schmidt is also working on a third novel that follows the story of Meryl Lee Kowalski several years after The Wednesday Wars takes place.

Trends in student writing

Students are beginning to "see [writing] vocationally," Schmidt says. "People do see the possibilities of being life-long writers. There is a real, growing interest in getting things out there and published, and that's a big deal." Student writing also comes with some economic interest: coupling a literature major with a writing minor, for example, looks better to prospective employers. Writing will be offered as a major at Calvin College starting next fall.

The Old Buck Farm

Currently, Schmidt lives with his family on the Old Buck Farm in Alto, MI—a neat 45 acres of black walnut trees, an herb garden, a fruit garden, and an old barn. When they first started looking for a house, he and his wife "really wanted a rural experience, something outside the city." Both were interested in finding a house with some history to it, and some land. As much as Schmidt loves teaching, he knew he "didn't want everything in life to be Calvin College."

The house dates back to 1837. "I can't go digging anywhere" he says with a smile, without uncovering some buried oddity or another—nails, horse shoes, and even a flat iron, which he kept.

Random facts

He really did have a Mrs. Baker (the teacher from The Wednesday Wars) for an English teacher in grade school. She really did hate his guts.

Schmidt read Tolkien as a child.

Jiggs, the beagle, was his favorite dog growing up.

He loved reading fantasy.

One of his "next book" projects has a bit of Old English in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o63fnpkSnzw