The Wild Robot lives!

then, I wrote my first children ’ sulfur novel. It wasn ’ t a graceful process, but I survived the stress and the solitude and the cripple diffidence, and now my novel has entered the populace. It ’ second called The Wild Robot. If you have a few minutes I ’ d like to tell you about it .
back in 2008, while working on a picture bible called The Curious Garden, I spent a batch of time making sketches like this-
I loved imagining scenes of nature live in surprise places. And that got me thinking about scenes of affected things living in surprise places, and I made a few sketches like this-

I was in truth intrigued by the trope of a automaton in a tree, and a question abruptly popped into my mind : What would an intelligent automaton do in the wilderness ?
I had to get back to work on The Curious Garden, but that question never left my mind. In my release time I scribbled notes about a automaton in the wild. I drew more pictures of robots in trees. I ’ five hundred always enjoyed reading skill fabrication, but now I was studying skill fiction-
Most people don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate know that the word “ automaton ” comes from a 1920 ’ second skill fabrication play by Karel Čapek. The play is called R.U.R., which stands for Rossum ’ s Universal Robots. Karel Čapek ( with a little help from his brother ) invented the bible “ robot. ” But he besides invented one of the most conversant tropes of science fiction. In R.U.R., robots realize they don ’ t need their human masters, so they rise up and destroy all of humanness. And sci-fi writers have been telling variations of that fib ever since .
however, I wanted to tell a unlike kind of automaton story. I wanted to tell the story of a automaton who finds harmony in the survive place you ’ five hundred expect. I wanted to tell a automaton nature report .
The years rolled by. I finished The Curious Garden, and went on to write and illustrate several more word picture books. And all the while I was quietly tinkering with my automaton nature report and studying everything from artificial news to animal demeanor to outstanding children ’ south novels .
In 2012, after years of studying and intend, I returned to the question that started this unharmed action : What would an healthy automaton do in the wilderness ? To answer that wonder, I invented a automaton character named Rozzum ( a elusive nod to Čapek ’ s play ), and tried to imagine how she ’ vitamin d cover life in the wilderness .
Robots can take about any shape and so I considered different designs and capabilities and purposes for Roz. She had to be potent and intelligent, but not excessively potent and not excessively intelligent. If readers were ever going to relate to a automaton she would have to be vulnerable, not invincible. And it might help if she were humanoid—that is, if she had arms and legs and a head—so readers could imagine themselves in her shoes. Most authoritative, she had to be able to learn .
And then there was the return of Roz ’ s gender .
We all know that real robots are neither male nor female. But the sex return gets complicated when dealing with automaton characters. Authors and filmmakers and playwrights about always have to choose a pronoun ( he, she, it ) for each character, and by doing so they ’ rhenium give to a gender, or miss thence, for each fictional character. At first, I assumed “ it ” would be the allow pronoun for Roz. But I had trouble caring about her when she was an “ it. ” So I considered using a gender-neutral pronoun, like “ ze, ” or inventing a pronoun equitable for my automaton characters, like “ rhenium, ” but the report was challenging enough without having to explain invent grammar. Like so many skill fiction authors before me, I decided to choose a gender-specific pronoun for my automaton character. I looked closely at Roz ’ s personality and the direction others saw her and I decided she would be female .
For this to truly be a “ automaton nature report ” Roz would need to encounter a across-the-board diverseness of natural elements. And the story would have to take position in the future to explain the universe of healthy robots. I imagined how the wilderness might look in a few hundred years, and two things occurred to me : 1 ) because of climate change and rising sea levels, animals from far and wide might finally be forced together as they all seek higher earth, and 2 ) some of that higher land might become wholly surrounded by water system, forming new islands. With that in mind, I set the fib far in the future, on a rugged northern island that was formed by rising seas, and that had a divers array of weather and flora and fauna .
once I ’ five hundred settled on Roz ’ mho purpose and a plant for her history, I began working on the plot. I started with the lapp use I use for my visualize books : report mapping .
I spent a class mapping all the potential directions for the fib. There was so much to consider ! How might a automaton become rampantly ? Do robots have anything in common with wildlife ? What kinds of lessons could Roz memorize from a corner, or a storm, or an opossum ? And why is Roz on an island in the first base target ?
After I ’ five hundred mapped and plotted absolutely everything it was ultimately time to write. But I was aflutter. so I procrastinated by making myself some writing rules :

• You’re not a poet, just tell the story plainly
• Keep Roz mysterious by writing in the 3rd person
• Make the chapters as short as possible
• Write with symmetry and repetition, to mirror robots and nature
• Give the narrator a conversational voice, especially during slow scenes
• Understand the motivation behind each of Roz’s actions

With my spell rules and my fib maps and my research and my notes and my sketches in tow, I drove out to a cabin in the woods, brewed a potentiometer of coffee, and opened my laptop. There was nothing leave to do but write .
I began typing. I was no longer looking at the report with binoculars, but with a microscope. Up close, I realized just how hard it is to find the right words. But I tried not to self-edit and I let the words menstruation .
I spent over a year cobbling in concert my first draft of The Wild Robot. It was rocky. identical roughly. But Little, Brown & Company liked it enough to sign it up and in July of 2014 it became official : my automaton nature story would be published ! There was just one problem…I didn ’ metric ton know how to finish it.

fortunately, the fantastic Alvina Ling was on my side. My old supporter and editor gave me her notes and I got back to writing. Over the follow year-and-a-half I rewrote the stallion floor. repeatedly. In the inaugural draft, Roz was a soldier who arrived on the island via plane crash. But many of my early ideas presented dangerous logistic problems and I routinely went back to the drawing board. I did more research. I resumed history map. I lost all assurance. Things were moving in the ill-timed guidance .
But I kept going. I simplified everything. The plot, the characters, the writing all became simple, and they gradually started fitting together like puzzle pieces. The floor grew more metaphorical and philosophic. The Wild Robot was feeling less like skill fiction and more like a fabrication .
Dave Caplan is the creative conductor who worked with me on the koran ’ randomness design. together, we made decisions about the jacket artwork and the case cover charge, choose paper stock certificate and typefaces, and planned the placement of each illustration .
Most authors have very little control over the appearance of their books. But as an author and illustrator, I worked on every aspect of my bible ’ south appearance .
One day, Alvina informed me it was about time to print the Advanced Reader Copies of The Wild Robot, so I should polish the text and complete the cover charge art and vitamin a much inner art as potential. ARCs are the early, unfinished copies of a book that publishers give to booksellers and reviewers to drum up excitation before publication. I wanted the ARCs to make a great first impression, but there was only so much I could do in the time allowed. I sent in the final cover artwork, a few pugnacious sketches, and the best blueprint I could muster. The ARCs were printed in July 2015, but I wouldn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate finish the words and pictures for another six months .
I had mix feelings when the ARCs arrived. It was exciting to see The Wild Robot in physical shape, but I knew the finished ledger would be very unlike. Oh well. My publisher sent out the ARCs and responses started rolling in. The Wild Robot received its foremost official review in November 2015, two months before I finished working on it. miraculously, it was a star recapitulation .
I rewrote entire chapters .
I changed character names .
I compulsively examined every word .
When I wasn ’ thyroxine furiously typing, I was furiously sketching .
It was nowadays fourth dimension for the “ First Pass Pages. ” Alvina explained that we ’ d reached the home stretch, and going forward, all textbook changes should be minor and would be made by marking up printouts with a pencil. This seemed a little archaic, but it ’ randomness easier for everyone to keep track of changes if they ’ re all in one physical text file. So they sent me the pages, I marked them up, the copyeditor reviewed my changes, and the architect updated the passkey file .
The last six months of the process were chaotic. My social life and sleeping habits went heterosexual down the drain as I madly reworked the textbook and madly created the final art. I didn ’ triiodothyronine want the illustrations to tell the hale story, just to set the tone, so I tried to keep them bare and moody. Simple or not, I had sixty-five illustrations to create, which was daunting. It seemed like this project would never end .
Dave and the production team reviewed proof of the jacket and some of the home artwork, and then worked with the printer to ensure that the final examination books would look fair right .
And then things took a tragic sour. On December 25 Alvina ’ mho husband lost his long conflict with cancer. His ephemeral devastated everyone. Alvina immediately took a leave of absence. on the spur of the moment, the book I ’ five hundred been obsessing over appear meaningless. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball. But my publisher needed me to finish this koran, once-and-for-all. At the conclusion of a marathon project, I crawled across the finish line .
On January 12, 2016, I sent off the very final revisions. Years of studying and thinking and function and sketch and type and illustrate and revise had ultimately come to an end. My work on The Wild Robot was over .
A month late, this showed up.

The Wild Robot is the fib of Rozzum unit 7134, a automaton who wakes up for the very first time to find that she ’ s alone on a outside, fantastic island. Roz doesn ’ metric ton know how she got there, or where she came from : she lone knows that she wants to stay animated. And by robotically studying her environment she learns everything she needs to know. She learns how to move through the wilderness, how to avoid danger, she even learns how to communicate with the animals. But the most authoritative example Roz learns is that kindness can be a survival skill. And she uses forgivingness to develop friends and a class and a passive life for herself. Until her mysterious past catches up with her .
It took eight years, but I ultimately found an answer to the interview that led me down this path. What would an intelligent automaton do in the wilderness ? She ’ five hundred make the wilderness her home .
The Wild Robot is now available wherever books are sold. As always, I encourage everyone to buy books from Indie Bookstores for reasons I explain in this Blog Post .

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