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I’ve talked these past two weeks about various aspects of writing. For those who still feel adrift because they just came into the field, I’m going to use this opportunity to provide a few paths to explore. These are ones I’ve found especially helpful over the past few years.

Wherever a writer goes or whoever she talks to in the field, she will always find help and guidance along the way. David Farland, the best-selling author and teacher, says, “Nobody makes it alone. We each build on one another.” Farland should know. He’s well-known in two genres and still teaches.

Take small opportunities to grow as a writer. If you swing it, attend a two-day event or conference in your area. You’re not any less a writer if you don’t have the cash for hotel expenses. If you can drive to the event each day and be home at night, so be it. The important thing is to meet and mingle with the writers who are there to talk about words, their use, and how you fit into that picture.

Many online opportunities recur each year.WriteOnCon is a free online writer’s conference with plenty of firepower to begin on the writing track. This year’s conference will take place on August 14 and 15, with the theme “Back to Basics.” The only thing you’ll spend on this one is your time and effort.

If you have the ability to pay a bit for instruction, but have family duties and a family; take a course, either on-line or at a local college. Many courses and workshops are available for varying costs. Currently there are a double handful of free online writing classes from major universities across the country. Their subjects range on everything from poetry reading and writing basics to academic and research writing, along with levels of editing prowess and technical work.

Several major writers offer workshops and classes as well. David Farland has several classes that will work for all levels of writing experience. He also puts out a free newsletter called “Daily Kick in the Pants” for jump starting a person’s writing day. This one is a real winner.

Learn how the business operates. For those who still think that being a writer is nothing more than putting some words on paper, handing it in to an editor, and sitting back to wait for royalty checks to roll in, get a grip on the nearest heavy support. Reality is about to slap you hard and send you reeling.

If your budget simply won’t stretch to include any kind of off-site conference or workshop, hop over to Suzanne Lieurance’s website. Suzanne knows this business inside and out and is one of the best writing coaches around. Her Working Writer’s Club was developed to help guide and encourage those who’re serious about writing. She also has a free newsletter that outlines everything that’s available for free or for members only. Check it out. You won’t regret it.

Writers and Editors Network also takes the business seriously. Check out its offerings, newsletter, and help. There are competitions and insider news as well.

Writer’s Digest also offers a free newsletter and free writing tutorials. Take the opportunity to see what’s offered and what will work for you. Julie Oblander is the Online Education Manager, who provides so much for the stu

There’s a niche for everyone. Deciding what is the right niche is crucial for the writer, because it marks one’s comfort zone and one’s interest. For those who’re shy, who can’t put themselves out for public notice, there are options galore.

One of the greatest confidence boosters for any writer is learning the craft to your very best ability. Take classes, join forums, and join a writer’s group where honest critiques are mandatory for participation. Each of these tactics will add a layer of skin thickener to your ego. The more confidence you can generate, the easier this business will become.

Find a preliminary direction for your writing energies. Experiment with a few genres to see where you feel comfortable working. Some people are born puzzlers. Other writers blossom within the greeting card market and do well developing lines of cards. Still other writers prefer writing magazine articles. More types of non-fiction articles are written each year than a fiction writer can think of in an hour.

If developing stories is your greatest satisfaction, fiction may be your best fit. In many ways, fiction takes in all the abilities of the other types of writing for different aspects of the genre. All fiction, for instance, uses facts about places, or personality types, or history. The reader doesn’t always recognize that fact because of how the story is woven and how much is removed from normal context.

Fiction oozes from a writer’s mind; its job to take a new story flower from a bud to maturity and its seeding, using hundreds of tiny components of reality, weaving fictional weft with non-fiction warp, so tightly, that the reader ultimately wants to live inside the story.

Get over shyness and go for it. For those of us who aren’t comfortable pushing ourselves into the spotlight or don’t like the feeling that we’re standing on a street corner and accosting passing business people, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. As a rule, shy people don’t make for good sales people.

In the writing world, shy gets you nowhere, very fast. I detest having to pitch an idea to an editor. I end up feeling like a used car dealer from the weed lot down the street, whose only claim to fame is that she lived long enough to retire from a real job.

The hardest thing learned in this business may be how to sell your ideas to the one with the checkbook.

Take your best shot. Use your best writing sample for the editor when submitting. Make your approach upbeat and positive. Most of all, believe that you deserve recognition for your work. If you can’t believe in yourself, neither will anyone else.

Know what you can do. Own your abilities. Be proud of them.

If you believe that you have a great idea, submit that idea to the editor in charge. Be specific in your presentation of the idea, and pitch it in such a way that it shows as a benefit to that publication. The worst that could happen is that the editor tells you “NO.”

What do dieting and writing have in common? They often travel together—and should. In writing, to diet means to determine what words, phrases, and extraneous content need to go. They represent the unwanted pounds that weigh down a manuscript.

Revision gives the writer an opportunity to go through her copy to tighten her sentences and rephrase passages for the most effective copy possible. According to best-selling author Roy Peter Clark, “…The concrete noun lets us see and the action verb helps us move. Experts on writing have always preferred strong nouns and verbs.”

For several years, writers have been urged to “trim the fat” of extraneous adverbs and adjectives. We’re encouraged to use lean, mean story construction for readers’ pleasure, while holding and expanding that pleasure with the ebb and flow of concrete detail and curiosity-generating abstract thought.

Purpose-driven writing takes time to conceive and deliver. Those in the writing business today have many recommendations for writers about their content. For instance, web content has specific parameters for the writer; length should run within 250-500 words, snappy headline titles grab a reader’s interest; copy should have plenty of pertinent links to other sites for more information.

When you stop to consider that readers of web content are, in general, looking for particular subjects, research material, etc., the standards derived are necessary and make sense. Keywords used within the copy help snag attention from search engines, while the organization of the copy finishes drawing in those engines.

Novels and magazines don’t have search engines, but searches are made. Readers talk to each other. The discoveries of one become shared knowledge and generate recommendations to other readers. Therefore, the same logic applies to novels.

Interest and reader staying-power is forfeited, if detailed descriptions bog down the reader’s quest to move with the story line. With non-fiction, writing rules for fiction can prevent an article from boring the reader to death. Poetry, too, uses some of fiction’s rules to keep the reader motivated and moving forward to the end.

The diet begins when the first draft is complete. Experienced writers know that by the time the first revision is finished, their stories have passed one hurdle of the editing process. Entire swathes of descriptive narrative lay on the editing floor. Subtext paths that went nowhere are removed. Most of all, the concrete feel of the piece has come to the foreground.

Parts and pieces of story line, description, character backstory, etc. have bitten the bullet, dying as they lived; in that brief twilight second from the writer’s hand.

With the second revision, more noun changes with precise action verbs bring paragraphs to attention. The few remaining adjectives are trade

All people have routines of some kind, and writers are no different. Routines can be elaborate, superstitious, or just plain odd. That’s allowable.

Contracted reading preferences can become as much a routine as the genres that keep a writer comfortable. During my teen years I concentrated on literary genre and classics. When I hit twenty, I moved on to—dare I say it?—romance novels. Okay, I was a normal young woman.

For decades after I left young adulthood, I read science fiction/fantasy almost exclusively. I had an entire library, floor to ceiling, filled with the genre. During the last several years most of that library was donated to larger lending libraries in my area.

Expanded reading can have a profound effect. On a whim, before getting rid of my personal library, I went to the local library and borrowed several books from the mystery genre and a few in non-fiction science. That whim led to a feeding frenzy of reading. A new world had opened up before me, showing authors, writing possibilities, etc. that I’d not anticipated.

I tried to read everything. Non-fiction came in so many forms that I almost glutted myself trying to sample all the entrees. I revisited ancient history—pre-Biblical–and philosophy, along with world history from 500A.D. to 1700A.D. History became a friend that could keep me fascinated for hours with its tales of intrigue.

“Salt” held me in thrall for days as I discovered its particular journey through civilization and the part it played in developing the world. “The Tao of Physics” left me speechless and questioning about the very nature of reality. Volumes on theology piled up beside the bed.

There was something wondrous and invigorating about expanding one’s book bag.

My personal expansion had come and I’d reveled in it. The groaning board of literature presented itself to my every desire. That’s when writing took over and contraction began.

Writing has its own form of contraction. For me, it was children’s literature. I studied it, wrote it, and enjoyed its delights. I still do.

After a couple of years my enthusiasm faltered. When I used my own style, stories didn’t work well. I couldn’t find the groove that would send me into the genre full-time. I’d never had problems writing fiction for children, until I started studying it and working with it constantly.

Ideas surfaced from everywhere. Short or long, stories moved inside my head. Fiction or non-fiction, it didn’t seem to matter. I was told that I expected children to read at level higher than standard. It was true. I expected kids now to be like kids when I was in school, and they’re not. The standardized language levels used now seem more elementary than those used in the 50’s and 60’s.

Once again, expansion would

All people have routines of some kind, and writers are no different. Routines can be elaborate, superstitious, or just plain odd. That’s allowable.

Contracted reading preferences can become as much a routine as the genres that keep a writer comfortable. During my teen years I concentrated on literary genre and classics. When I hit twenty, I moved on to—dare I say it?—romance novels. Okay, I was a normal young woman.

For decades after I left young adulthood, I read science fiction/fantasy almost exclusively. I had an entire library, floor to ceiling, filled with the genre. During the last several years most of that library was donated to larger lending libraries in my area.

Expanded reading can have a profound effect. On a whim, before getting rid of my personal library, I went to the local library and borrowed several books from the mystery genre and a few in non-fiction science. That whim led to a feeding frenzy of reading. A new world had opened up before me, showing authors, writing possibilities, etc. that I’d not anticipated.

I tried to read everything. Non-fiction came in so many forms that I almost glutted myself trying to sample all the entrees. I revisited ancient history—pre-Biblical–and philosophy, along with world history from 500A.D. to 1700A.D. History became a friend that could keep me fascinated for hours with its tales of intrigue.

“Salt” held me in thrall for days as I discovered its particular journey through civilization and the part it played in developing the world. “The Tao of Physics” left me speechless and questioning about the very nature of reality. Volumes on theology piled up beside the bed.

There was something wondrous and invigorating about expanding one’s book bag.

My personal expansion had come and I’d reveled in it. The groaning board of literature presented itself to my every desire. That’s when writing took over and contraction began.

Writing has its own form of contraction. For me, it was children’s literature. I studied it, wrote it, and enjoyed its delights. I still do.

After a couple of years my enthusiasm faltered. When I used my own style, stories didn’t work well. I couldn’t find the groove that would send me into the genre full-time. I’d never had problems writing fiction for children, until I started studying it and working with it constantly.

Ideas surfaced from everywhere. Short or long, stories moved inside my head. Fiction or non-fiction, it didn’t seem to matter. I was told that I expected children to read at level higher than standard. It was true. I expected kids now to be like kids when I was in school, and they’re not. The standardized language levels used now seem more elementary than those used in the 50’s and 60’s.

Once again, expansion would

Letter from Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, to Robert E. Howard, rejecting the first three Conan the Barbarian stories, although suggesting a re-write for one of them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Writers live and prosper by sending material out to publishers, magazines—print and online—and freelancing. Anyone who’s spent time around a writer picks up that working reality.

After April’s writing challenges wound down on the 30^th, May was ushered in with a group challenge to submit at least one poem, story, article, etc. each day for the month of May. Many of us groaned at the thought of such a challenge. Others took the reins in their teeth and charged ahead like their hair was on fire.

I’m one of those on fire. My reasons may be a bit different than some, especially those who submit on a regular basis. I’ve been trying to get one piece out each week for several months.

Suddenly I’ve been dared to find something, create something, modify something and get it out before bedtime each day. Finally, a serious dare that will help me create a habit that’s beneficial to my future.

In the first three days, I sent out one story and two packets of poems. I haven’t worked on today’s material yet, though I’ve decided what it will be. The story is ready and the market selected.

In the past three days, the story was rejected, as was one of the packets of poems. **Some editors are really quick. **

Not to be discouraged, I keep sending things out. Why? Because that’s what writers do; we send out our work until somebody buys it.

I read an article a few weeks back about rejection slips. The author talked about enjoying each one as it arrived; using it as wallpaper around one’s desk; and knowing, each time he glimpsed it, that he’d come that much further in the writing game.

I’ve thought about that philosophy this week as my inbox gathers virtual pink slips, and I’ve decided that he’s right. Without sending my work to publishers and magazines, I can’t count myself as a writer. Each time I receive that little rejection, it’s a signal that I’ve gained more confidence in my abilities.

It’s a flag of honor, knowing that someone read what I sent. The editor may or may not have sent a personal note with the rejection—I had that personal note on the story, and a form rejection on the poetry, so I’m batting 500, which is great. I can see each rejection as a success in its own right.

I’d submitted something to someone. It had been read and understood. It may not have fit the editor’s needs at that moment, but I’d succeeded in taking the risk.

In the case of the story, the editor told me how much he enjoyed my writing and would like to see more of it. Guess who’s getting my next effort. That editor’s note was definitely a successful rejection.

When using that philosophy each day, I’ve had one su

From left to right: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m doing something totally different today. This afternoon I had a conversation with a fellow writer and poet. We often have philosophical discussions, and this was no exception. I’d like to recreate a small portion of our talk.

Friend: In my little “boxed” way of thinking:

1. Photographers are seekers, first and foremost

2. Graphic artists are messengers

3. Composers are messengers

4. Singers are channels

5. Actors are mirrors

Me: Yep, I agree about actors. Are writers the interpreters?

Friend: 6. Writers, in my mind, are all of the above

7. Philosophers are interpreters

Me: Ah, okay, I can go along with philosophers. So, let me spell this out differently–

Writers are the philosophers who seek, through pictures, to channel messages and hold up mirrors to their readers, so that interpretations of reality can be seen and appreciated, and a future can be built upon that foundation.

Poetry is the perfect medium in its own way. It’s short, lyrical in form and presents a message, philosophical in method and presentation, and gives the reader an entire picture, however short. And there is music in the cadence and rhythm of the lines that bring home the message.

Friend: I like it. That should be your blog post. I think of ghost writers, for example…

Me: I think on some level it is true. Even the most out-there writers, like early King or Koontz, write about people’s fears and what they’re based on. They give an opportunity to imagine the lengths to which those fears can go. I think ghost writers are even truer for the example. They channel so much of       their client, the messages they gained while working with that individual, and so on. They may be only reflecting the philosophy of the client, but the  wording, phraseology is their own, which makes or breaks the philosophy.

Friend: I suppose as writers we go “I have something to say”… that something is definitely inspired somehow. Poetry is the most compact package as far as  writing goes. It also asks a lot of the readers.

Me: Which is what all messages do.

Friend: I mean… it is a push off a cliff compared to the steady rise of a roller coaster before it crashes down. Longer writing is more like the amusemen

Erik Kuntz, Amy Rose Capetta and Nick Alter made this video of the Austin Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators 2012 Regional Conference, Something for Everybody.  I get a kick out of how the thumbnail on YouTube shows me in the crowd, getting a hug from illustrator Marsha Riti. So of course I had to include it here. Erik, [...]

Month by Month CCSS Lesson Plans You Can Use Immediately in Your Classroom or School

School years includes many odd sorts of days.

• You unexpectedly finish a unit on Thursday and don’t want to start a new one until Monday.
• Holidays or special events make regular lessons difficult.
• You’re sick and need a substitute teacher for a day.

This group of seasonal ELA and writing lessons is designed to fill in those odd days with fun, easy, lessons which require a minimum of preparation and yet still meet the needs of the Common Core State Standards. We suggest activities for each month, but most activities are flexible enough for any season.

Meets Common Core Curriculum Needs

Each lesson is correlated to appropriate Common Core curriculum maps.

The Common Core State Standards (corestandards.com) include ten anchor standards each for writing and reading and six anchor standards for language. Each ELA activity in this book will list the anchor standards addressed, thus making them flexible enough to fit any grade level.

Each activity is meant to be:

• Flexible
• Fast and easy preparation
• Fun for students
• Aligned to the CCSS
• Correlated to CCSS curriculum maps

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• August 26 National Dog Day (argument)
• September 3 Skyscraper Day (informative/expository)
• October 2 – Write a Comic Strip (comic strip/narrative)
• November 21 – World Hello Day (letter writing/optional argument)
• December – Rudolph’s Top 5 Writing Tips (narrative)
• January- Frosty the Snowman (narrative)
• February- Evaluate a Website (argument)
• March – Gingerbread Man (folk tale/narrative)
• April 5 – National Read a Road Map Day (Reading/Creating maps as informational text)
• May 20 – Endangered Species Day (Informative/expository)

Order or Learn More

• Order from Amazon
• Read a Sample Lesson: Arguments–CCSS Essays Emphasize Logic
• To order by PO, please email.

Nook Kindle PDF Look for it in the iBook store.