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Join in the celebrations from 1 -5 November 2013. These will be held in the Cape Town area. For more information, visit: http://scbwi-sa-10-years.blogspot.com/

We’re discussing getting published this month at the Children’s Book Hub, so I’ll be devoting a few posts here to that topic.

Here’s a familiar Catch 22: Agents don’t seem interested until you’ve been published, and you can’t seem to get published without an agent. How to break the cycle? Expand your definition of ‘getting published.’  One way to do so is to include children’s magazines.

Consider submitting your work to one or more of the many popular children’s magazines, such as Highlights, High Five, Ask, Cricket, Ladybug, Muse, National Geographic Kids, or American Girl, to name but a few. Being published in a children’s magazine is an important credit for a bio or resume – and most magazines pay for published work, sometimes very nicely.

Writing for children’s magazines can also provide nice opportunities to write outside your usual genre or comfort zone. Many magazines for young readers publish short stories, but an even greater number focus on non-fiction articles that cover a range of topics, and some even publish poetry for young readers. If you choose to try your hand at article writing, remember that when writing non-fiction for children that it should still read like a good story, with all the same elements that draw the reader in: a degree of tension or suspense that compels the reader to want to know more, evocative language or imagery that incorporates the senses, emotional resonance.

The annual publication “Magazine Markets for Children’s Writers” details all the magazines in print, along with their submission guidelines and contact info. You can order a copy directly from Amazon.

One caveat: if you’re interested in writing for children’s magazines, be sure to read a number of them first. You will get a much better sense of the marketplace and what the style and approach of each magazine may be from the magazine itself than from encapsulated submission guidelines.  And you may be surprised by the content of some magazines for young people today… it’s a different world for children now than it was when we ourselves may have been reading Highlights!

What am I learning about writing lately? One thing I'm learning is that the possibilites of what types of writing I can pursue are as endless as the subjects about which I can write. Sometimes thinking about all the things I could write and submit is a bit like walking down the cereal aisle of the grocery store. It's overwhelming--especially when you're hungry. I need to focus on narrowing my

Macmillan South Africa would like to invite writers to develop new literature for young adults. For more information about this project click on the title above.

Fantasi Books/Boeke has a great opportunity for writers to create ghost stories. Click on the title above for more information.Also, see the link to Fantasi Books in the Websites of Interest below right.

I recently watched Head, the 1968 movie featuring the Monkees. Man, talk about weird! The movie is comprised of vignettes strung together in an odd way that makes sense and leads to the ending. Jack Nicholson cowrote the screen play. This movie is not for everyone--there are clear drug references and the fragments give the movie a weird, dreamlike quality. For me, the movie was strange and literary. I'm still thinking about it.

If you like all things sixties/seventies, if vintage is you, if you use words like dig and groovy, this movie is for you. Head intrigued me enough to Google it. When the movie first came out in 1968, it failed, but it has a strong cult following, even now. Proof: Cameron Crowe used the Porpoise Song to close Vanilla Sky, the 2001 movie featuring Tom Cruise. The Porpoise Song also closes Head.

Check out the Porpoise Song in my new sidebar feature: Clip of the Week (scroll down a little). But before you go, please leave a comment and vote in Summer Friend's first ever Battle of the Bands: The Monkees VS Smash Mouth, performing "I'm a Believer."

The Monkees


Smash Mouth