Me, at a Hats Off to Women's conference.

Below is a little about Noelle Sterne and a brief excerpt for the readers to see if the article appeals to them.  

Writer, editor, writing coach, and consultant, Noelle Sterne holds the Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and publishes in writers’ and mainstream magazines. Her articles have appeared in Archetype, Children’s Book Insider, Pure Inspiration, The Write Place At the Write Time, Writer’s Digest special issues, Writers’ Journal, and The Writer. Her short storyabout a boy with healing powers appeared in the Star Stepping Anthology (2008). Noelle is currently working on a collection of essays offering candid counsel and relentless support to writers: First You Find Your Desk: Start Writing and Keep Writing with Less Agony and More Joy. 

As a children’s author, do you know you can use more resources to publicize your book than mainstream authors? I discovered many of these avenues after the publication of my children’s book Tyrannosaurus Wrecks: A Book of Dinosaur Riddles (HarperCollins). This book, in print for eighteen years, was featured on the first
dinosaur show of PBS-TV’s Reading Rainbow, which continues to air
and is now on DVD. 

Great newsletter from Darcy Pattison that arrives in my email box Check it out and subscribe.

8 Ways to Enrich Your Character: FICTION NOTES‏

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Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.   8 Ways to Enrich Your Character

Character Revision: 8 Ways to Jumpstart a Make Over

You have a first draft, but you realize that your character needs work. How do you retrofit a character when you revise?

I don’t think of a personality transplant. Instead, I try to add to and enrich a character. Here are 8 suggestions on how to revise your novel’s character.

By Ginny Wiehardt, Fiction Writing Guide | My Bio

• My Bio
• My Blog
• My Forum

http://www.best-childrens-books.com/childrens-book-ideas.html?hop=write3

I briefly scanned the article. it looked like something that might help a newbie, so check it out.

Http://www.darcypattison.com

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Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.   Mentor Texts: Novels to Learn From

I’m finally — after two major life events, a grandchild and my daughter’s wedding — ready to start a new novel. I’ve found two mentor texts that I’m hoping will show me something about how to proceed.

Novels to Imitate and Learn From

Educators often use mentor texts when teaching writing to kids. The idea is to choose texts that in some way model the type of writing you want as a result. This means you need a good vision for the end result, or the mentor texts you choose won’t help.

For my new novel, I know that I”ll have quite a few characters and that the POV will probably change often; each section might be quite short; that I might be playing with 3rd person and omniscient POVs. I’ve been looking around and found two that are interesting in this respect.

The first is the 1979 Newbery book, The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. It features over a dozen characters; it moves in and out of omniscient and 3rd; it has very short sections. Interestingly, Kathi Appelt’s Newbery Honor book, The Underneath, also features multiple characters and she us

*8 Good Writing Practices* By Neil Gaiman.

Special thanks to  Judith Hans-Price for sharing the article with Iowa  SCBWI listserv. There are few better than Neil to use as a expert in the writing field.

*8 Good Writing Practices*
 

  1. Write.
  2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
  3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it,
  finish it.
  4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it
  to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that
  this is.
  5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for
  them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they
  think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
  6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches
  perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the
  next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
  7. Laugh at your own jokes.
  8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance
  and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule
  for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So
  write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it
  as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that
  matter.

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 10:54 AM PDT

Whether we came to it early in life or late in life, chances are there was someone along the way who crystallized that feeling of, “Hey, I want to do this” or, better yet, “Hey, I can do this.”

Who is the most influential person (or people) who set you on this path? Was it an author, a mentor, a loved one?

My most influential writing personages have been Roald Dahl, who made me want to be a writer when I was a kid (I subsequently moved onto other dreams), and my wife, whose support was there whenever I battled the Am I Crazies.

Recently I was asked to do a presentation and I had no idea where to start. So, I went on the internet in search of some basic information on where to start. I needed to know “tips” and fast as the speaking event was the next day.

Here is something that I found that just might help others faced with the same dilemma. Be sure to follow the link to get the entire article.

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadpres.html

Big Dog’s Leadership Page – Presentation Skills

• Introduction
• The Voice
• The Body
• Active Listening
• Nerves
• Questions
• Preparing the Presentation
• Habits
• Tips and Techniques For Great Presentations

Templates PowerPoint Visual Aid Presentation Presentation Outline and Training Outline

Introduction

Presentations and reports are ways of communicating ideas and information to a group. But unlike a report, a presentation carries the speaker’s personality better and allows immediate interaction between all the participants. A good presentation has:

• Content – It contains information that people need. But unlike reports, which are read at the reader’s own pace, presentations must account for how much information the audience can absorb in one sitting.
• Structure - It has a logical beginning, middle, and end. It must be sequenced and paced so that the audience can understand it. Where as reports have appendices and footnotes to guide the reader, the speaker must be careful not to loose the audience when wandering from the main point of the presentation.
• Packaging – It must be well prepared. A report can be reread and portions skipped over, but with a presentation, the audience is at the mercy of a presenter.
• Human Element – A good presentation will be remembered much more than a good report because it has a person attached to it. But you still
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It’s my humble opinion, of course, but one could learn alot from subscribing to this newsletter. I know I do.

http://www.darcypattison.com

Subscribing to a good newsletter is a great way to acquire the skills needed to grow as a writer. The reader has the opportunity to benefit from the journey of a more experienced writer. With a newsletter it comes right to your email. You can print it off and take it with you to read at your leisure or you can put it in an email file to look at later.

Darcy Pattison ([email protected]) on behalf of Darcy Pattison ([email protected])

Can you say that in a novel?

Are there untouchable topics in literature? No, of course, not. But there are topics that are difficult to do well, or it feels like you are preaching.
You know the ones: alcoholism, abortion, medical ethics, underage drinking, etc. These are hard to put into a story or novel and have it work.

Dealing with Flash point, Difficult Topics

I’ve been listening to Mary E. Pearson’s novel, The Adoration of Jenna Fox and she does a stunning job of addressing medical ethics. It’s reminiscent of Peter Dickinson’s 1989 novel, Eva, but takes the discussion in new directions. Here are some of the things she does right as an author treading lightly.

Character. The novel works because the character is front and center. This is above all a character novel, with all the ethical dilemma from the medical “miracle” taking place within the character. She IS the ethical problem and has to resolve how she feels about herself. So, it’s not a theoretical issue; it’s an issue of

I have been working on building my skills in regards to pitching, when I came across this in my email. Nathan’s way of putting what “Voice” is resonated with me. Be sure to sign up for this email newsletter.

Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent‏

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Sent:	Mon 5/10/10 6:28 PM
To:

Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent

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How to Craft a Great Voice

Posted: 10 May 2010 02:14 PM PDT

Voice is one of the most difficult writing terms to define and pinpoint. We might know it when we see it, but what’s voice made of, really? You hear so often that agents and editors want “new voices” and “compelling voices” and voice voice voice. So what is voice? How do you cultivate it? And how many rhetorical questions do you think can I fit into one post?

Voice, at its most basic level, is the sensibility with which an author writes. It’s a perspective, an outlook on the world, a personality and style that is recognizable even out of context. You could drop randomly into a David Sedaris story or an Ernest Hemingway novel and probably guess the author within a few paragraphs because they have strong, unique voices. An author’s voice is often imitated (think: Tolkien), but a truly original voice can never be duplicated.

So what makes a good voice? How do you cultivate one?

Among the essential elements:

Style: At its heart, voice is about style. And not just style in the sense of punctuation and how the prose looks on the page (though that can play a role), but style in the sense of a flow, a rhythm, a cadence to the writing, a vocabulary, lexicon, and slang the author is drawing upon. A voice can be wordy (William Faulkner) or it can be spare (Cormac McCarthy). It can be stylish and magical (Jeanette Winterson) or it can be wry and gritty (Elmore Leonard). It can be tied to unique locations (Toni Morrison) or it can be almost wholly invented (Anthony Burgess). But whatever the flavor of the writing, a good voice has a recognizable style.

Personality: A good voice has a personality of its own, even when the novel is written in third person. There’s an outlook that is expressed in a voice. It’s a unique way of seeing the world and choosing which details to focus on and highlight and a first draft of how the reader will process the reality of the book. Think of how CATCH-22 captured the absurdity of WW-II by boiling down irrational rules and presenting them at face value, or Step

Lisa Graff, one of the speakers at the recent SCBWI conference, suggested when you are setting up your main characters in your novel, you should consider the following things.

1.     Voice

2.     Personality

3.     Goals

4.     Conflicts

5.     Ways to overcome the conflicts

6.     Emotional Arc

7.     Narrative Arc

8.     Setting

Lisa Graff, former Associate Editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, spoke to the SCBWI members about the importance of distingushing their project from the hundreds of other project that land on an editor’s desk. She covered the need for a fabulous cover/query letter that would catch an editor’s eye.

For those who are not sure what the difference is between a query and a cover letter Lisa provided a simple explanation. She said for the most part they are the same letter. The difference is that the cover letter is sent with a submission.  Query letter do not include a submission for the editor to consider for publication.

Prior to selecting the publishing house to query or submit a cover letter and submission to, it is important to do your research. Finding the right publishing house will increase your chance of getting an acceptance. Go to the library or a bookstore to see what books are selling. Check out the publisher’s catalogs. Get a copy of the Writer’s Market Guide or other similar books to see what publisher is accepting submissions. Once you’ve determined what publisher you think fits your work best, be sure to follow their specific guidelines.

Now you are ready to write your letter.

Lisa answered the question that is often on the mind of a new writer,  What should I include in my cover letter?

First, she said, you should make your cover letter your professional introduction to an editor. Be concise but brief, not more than a page of text. Editors are busy people, just like us.

In your letter, you should describe yourself and your project.  Your letter should detail your publishing history as well as demonstrate that you are a rational sane person who they would love to  do business with.

Then, you should wrap up your letter with a gracious thank-you.

Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary Agency, was one of the speakers at the Iowa SCBWI conference this past week. She revealed the type of books that she is currently looking for: a lyrical voice, tight characters and complexed character in character-driven/plot-driven books in the genres of Middle-Grade and YA, though she does picture books occasionally.

Eight Ways to Make your Manuscript Stand Out is what her presentation focused on.

1.          Find your voice as a writer.  A new writer might ask What is voice and How do you find it?   Ammi-Joan expressed it best by explaining it is the writer’s own unique way of expressing themselves.  This happens when a writer puts themselves inside their character head.  Ways that you can develop your voice can include: determining whether or not your character will be in the first or third person or writing a diary from your first character’s point of view. You can brainstorm and write down what you come up with for your mc.

2.          Be unique like everyone else. It might sound strange but finding out what you are all about just might make your story stand out.  Knowing yourself will give you a unique angle to your work. A mother who is raising a child with Aspergers knows what it is like to deal with those challenges. A writer who is a single dad raising a daughter knows how hectic that can be to navigate the different ages. They bring their own experiences to their writing.

3.          Start with a bang. Your title should be something that catches an editor’s eye. It is the first thing that they will read from your submission. It should evokes a promise of what is to come in the book.  

             Then, it should be followed by a great first line. For a pb book, it gets your reader to the gist of what the story is all about. Given the limited word count, getting to the gist is crucial.

            A great first paragraph sets up the conflict. It tells the reader what the main character desires. It lets the reader know about the setting of the story.

          In a novel’s first chapter, the writer should foreshadows events that will come the novel in chapters that follow. It should make the editor as well as the reader want to continue reading.

4.          Do you want your manuscript to be the best it can be before you send it out for an editor to consider? Ammi-Joan Paquette  suggests getting involved with a critique group that you trust. The second or third set of eyes can see things the writer might miss.

5.          Accept the value of revision. Writing is a process. Revision time is  a time to explore the various options or techniques that you will  use to construct your character, plot, conflicts: things like first person vs. third person. Consider giving your reader a visual break by using a variety of sentence lengths. Mix in some dialogue, or provide some white space.

6.          Consider the “tone” of your submissions. Evaluate the readability of your manuscript. Is your main character real? Do they talk like real people talk? Can you see the characters as real people?

7.         Raise the stakes. Think about the worst thing that could possibly happen to your character. Make it exciting. Make sure that you fulfill the promise that the beginning of your story gave to your reader.

8.         Let it seep. Once you are done revising, you should leave your manuscript alone for a few days, a week or even a month. Give it time. It allows you to come back and look at your work with fresh eyes.

8b.      Ammi-Joan added a post-script.  She said to give your submission a sense of depth. Have it entertain the reader, yet bring something else to the table.

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Just one more sleep!

2 days ago ago by katswhiskers. Spam? Tags: twitter, writing, Karen Collum, chat, Picture Books, Children’s Authors, #pblitchat, #KIDLITCHAT

I just took the time to check out the workshop with Evelyn B. Christensen on the Institute of Children’s Literature’s Writer’s Retreat. Evelyn is the author of many puzzle books which is something that I have always wantedto do.

She graciously shared the link to her website where her instructions for making puzzles and word searches exists. Be sure to check out the website @ http://echristensen.atspace.com/ and the ICL workshop she did @http://institutechildrenslit.net/.

Writing and Illustrating‏

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To find out the other tips offered by Rachelle Garner, go to http://kathytemean.wordpress.com/

2 Comments on Writing and Illustrating. Kathy Temean’s blog., last added: 3/4/2010