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Sunday night I was walking the Season Premier of The Walking Dead (Yes, I’m guilty of watching a show with Zombies – who knew?).

Anyway, they always have great commercials that tie into the theme of the show and KELLY CALABRESE was the main female in the commercial. So exciting! Kelly is an actress and writer from NYC and someone who is very active with volunteering with the NJSCBWI. Congratulations, Kelly!

If you have Cable TV and have on demand, you could watch it to see Kelly. She is the redhead in the first or second commercial.

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Eileen Cameron and Doris Ettlinger new book RUPERT’S PARCHMENT, Story of Magna Carta! on the granting of Magna Carta will be available in bookstores on February 2015 to help celebrate the 800th Anniversary on June 15, 2015.

Eileen and Doris’ book, G IS FOR THE GARDEN STATE, has been chosen by the NJ 350th Anniversary Committee as one of the best 101 books on NJ for the Anniversary.

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Mamalode is a magazine. A website. A movement. Their readers and writers are moms—with a smattering of dads, kids, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends.

On October 8th, Mamalode(Parenting/Motherhood Website) Magazine published Jennifer Reinharz most recent blog post, “The Day I Deleted Minecraft; a letter to my son.” She is very excited about the opportunity of becoming a contributing writer for the magazine.  

From October 8th-November 8th Mamalode will track the number of “unique views” of Jennifer’s essay on their site. The number of views, likes, comments, and shares is directly tied to her recognition (financial and otherwise :-).
Jennifer wrote saying, “Like many of us, my dream is to be a published Kidlit author with agent representation. However, the contest and writing opportunities, or as I like to call them “nuggets” that you often share are worth pursuing.  My path to Kidlit author has yet to be a straight line, but I can’t help but think that getting a chance to connect and share one of my stories with the Mommies, etc. is an example of heading right direction.

So help Jennifer and please click this link to her article:

http://mamalode.com/story/detail/the-day-i-deleted-minecraft-a-letter-to-my-son

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Sarah Dotts Barley

Sarah Dotts Barley has joined Flatiron Books as senior editor, focusing on YA crossover. Previously, Barley was an editor at Harper Children’s/HarperTeen.

Anne Heltzel has joined Abrams as editor, primarily acquiring books for its middle grade and teen imprint, Amulet Books. She worked previously as an associate editor at Razorbill and is also a published author.

At Scholastic, Liza Baker has re-joined the company as vp, executive editorial director of Cartwheel and Orchard Books. She was most recently executive editorial director, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

Echoing Julie's excellent post of earlier this week, well presented conferences provide us writers with up-to-date information and much needed optimism. Also ditto in Florida as in New York for the good future for children's books, with hard copies co-existing with digital.

Last month I crossed Alligator Alley (Rte 75) from southwest Florida to Miami to attend the 2012 Florida SCBWI Conference. The theme was "Mad About Children's Publishing" with this theme carrying through the Saturday evening dinner with editors and writers costumed in Alice in Wonderland character garb. There was a lot of fun as well as many great and interactive presentations and workshops from such inspiring guests as Lin Oliver of National SCBWI and award winning author Donna Jo Napoli.

Of all the terrific sessions, the one I focused on driving back on Sunday across the Everglades was the fascinating workshop on The Art of Friendship in Children's Picture Books by Tamar Brazis of Abrams Books. We discussed the nature of friendship, especially among very young friends. Tamar asked us to consider what makes a friendship close and how to show this, including showing affection for a friend, sharing fun, interests and problems, understanding a friend's concerns and worries, all without telling and particularly by using dialogue.

I started composing on the drive home! Such inspiration! The most important item to consider, besides the plot and story arc, is the development of character and affection between these characters in that most limited space of the picture book. I love my new characters that were born at the conference and when crossing back over Alligator Alley, and after much revision I hope some editors and children will love them too!

What inspirations or new guiding principles have you gleaned from a writing conference or published articles recently?

I'm writing this new post while traveling in the magnificent southwest. We have been hiking in the red rock city of Sedona this week. Once you leave the bustle of downtown Sedona and find your trail head and swing off down the path, you forget the business of town and enter the quiet and solitude of this inspiring land.

Since some of my books are non-fiction, the natural beauty here starts my literary juices flowing. Many believe that positive energy emmanates from special vortexes here. The unique splendor of the land does inspire me to write as I gaze at these incredible rock formations and start to figure how to explain these wonders to children in a way that will interest and entertain them and convey to them the sense of beauty and the science of the sites.

We also visited the Grand Canyon, just a few hours north of Sedona. This is such an awe inspiring place in its vastness and beauty. So again jolted, I jot down new ideas for manuscripts on rivers, erosion and canyons that must differ from my book, CANYON, but which will tell another story of this fabulous world.

And now I need to sit down when we return home and form these ideas into text. Forming ideas - like nature forming canyons and rock formations - hopefully my ideas take form faster than in geological time!

That's what we writers need - time - a difficult commodity - and sometimes it seems like it does take eons to complete a manuscript, bring it to the critique group, revise and refine it, and hopefully bring it to a firm formation, and not to have to abandon it, as we have been talking about here this month.

Inspiration - Time - Formation

Better get started!

Articles, surveys, studies, publishing facts, individual preferences and anecdotal tales come fast and furiously in news print, TV and Internet news cycles on the Future of the Book and the Death of the PB - "Picture Books, Long a Staple, Lose Out..." (NYT), (thepaperwait -October 13, 2010). The decline of the hard copy and printed page, increase in e-books and e-reading devices, "The ABC's of E-Reading," (WSJ), as well as one of the most pertinent articles for writers from the WSJ, "Authors Feel Pinch as E-Books Upend Publishing," bring an unknown future to authors.

In the midst of the many articles cited here and many others published over the last several months, I received a letter for a contract change from Sleeping Bear Press, publisher of my book, G IS FOR THE GARDEN STATE, one of SBP's 50 state alphabet series.

We are being digitized!

SBP was recently approached by an e-retailer to convert their books to digital form to be used with school smart boards. The smart boards are great interactive tools, with students often using handheld responders to write or give answers. SBP will monitor the publishing and financial success of the venture.

This development is exciting. I can sense what interesting information can be presented in this form, how intrigued the children could be at using information in this new manner, and how many children can be reached with this technology.

The report in the NYT on 9-29-10, titled "In Study, Children Cite Appeal of Digital Reading," describes a study by Scholastic Publishing. About 57% of the children between 9-17 said that they are interested in reading an e-book, while 25% said that they had already done so. A Scholastic officer said that "this was a call to action."

Parents and teachers, concerned that children are so immersed in computer games, testing and the speed of technology that they may not have the interest or time for reading, can take heart. If e-books entice them to read, it would be positive.

The future and technology is moving fast (one tech article suggests that the laptop is dying, being replaced by much smaller and faster equipment). Many publishers, librarians, teachers and writers can't see through the cloud in the crystal ball. One of the major parts of this new mix for writers is the declining revenue produced by e-books. One article mentions that authors of e-books receive about 50% of the return they were paid for hard back books.

A question for children's writers - - will you continue to write, or be able to afford the time to write for children, with such declining profits? We are children's writers because we love it, but people also need to support their families. How will the economies of digitization affect your writing life?

I am pre-posting this article by two weeks, so when the post is first up, I'll be visiting the great site of Machu Picchu in Peru. Perhaps in the intervening two weeks more news flashes on the health of writing and books will be published, making this post outdated - like print books and laptops?

Several bright spots in the ball - the Scholastic study says that even though the children surveyed want to read e-books, they also don't want to give up their real, hand held, print books. One of the librarians I interviewed about this said, "Well, PB and print books are still popular and comforting...and they don't have to be plugged in or need batteries!"

Imitation and learning from the experience of others is, as the old proverb says, the most sincere form of flattery. Learning from experienced writers and studying their habits is good training, and, complementary. Hopefully what we work away on and produce will be well-received so that important writers are pleased and flattered.

Recently I was viewing writers' websites and was fascinated with Jane Yolen's. As an author of over 300 books and noted as one of the best children's authors of our time, Jane noted on her journal/blog that she was currently working on at least six WIPs, at the same time. Wow - busy, prolific and hard working. What an example.

Jane's writing is also an inspiration for me - her style and mastery of poetry and sense of imagination of children. Look at the wonder of Owl Moon. With her smooth ease and expertise of language coupled with her love of nature and the environment, Jane brings adventure to the life for children. Her work day is committed, too - committing to and controlling five to seven WIPs with different manuscript lives at the same time.

Who are your favorite children's authors - past or present - and how do they inspire you to imitate them? Reading about Jane has re-inspired me to really commit the time as she does and to get to concentrated work - on a number of my WIPs. Maybe someday some one will be flattering us through imitation.

Usually my work station is my desk at home at my computer comfortably located by bookshelves piled high with research books, hard copies of manuscripts covered with comments and a cold diet coke.

At the end of the week we are heading north from Florida to New Jersey in a car packed to the gills with clothes, business papers and my computer and manuscripts. Lugging all the stuff into the motel at night isn't pretty.

So my work station for the next week will be the front seat of the car with my lap top and my paper copies of stories. Actually as you get moving down the highway it's great to break the tedium with work - it's actually easy to work - as long as the driver watches the road.

Most importantly, I want to guard my manuscripts so I carry my laptop, forward manuscripts to my email to download back in NJ and also store them on my flash stick. And then I guard the flash stick.

When I start to move with all my writing gear I'm reminded of a friend of mine's aunt. She wrote novels long before there were copy machines, computers and flash sticks to store work. The aunt would arrive at family parties carrying a large metal roasting pan, in which she had protected her latest manuscript! She was afraid her house would burn in her absence. What a relief that we have flash sticks.

So now we're off on a long drive but I know I can improvise and work at my movable work station. Where are your best spots to work and how do you improvise?

In the NEW YORK TIMES' Saturday Art Section there was a fascinating article about Colum McCann, author of LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, who just won the National Book Award. McCann spoke about delving into other peoples' lives for a glimpse of significant but small events that were large influences in their lives. He listened to many voices as he traveled around the country, seeing each story, whether it spoke of generosity, terror, sadness, nastiness or love, as part of a larger story or novel.

McCann talked about "listening to other voices," part of the research a writer does in developing the story - children's authors and adult novelists.

So yesterday as I was reading the article I was sitting on a plane, confined for several hours. There were a lot of small children on board and I started to listen again to other young voices. Some didn't want to sit still, others wanted FOOD, and others settled in to read their books or watch a video. There were many voices and as things quieted down, I listened.

What do we notice when listening? When there are many voices? What do you concentrate on?

It was a shining and clear day and I listened to the four-year-old two seats away by the window. As the plane lifted off from Newark Airport we looked down at the Port of Newark/Elizabeth and at the ships at the loading docks next to the giant cranes filling up their cargo holes in preparation for setting out to sea. We watched small pleasure boats on New York Bay leaving white wakes in their paths, and as we headed inland a bit, she exclaimed at how green it was! Yes, I said, that's our Garden State!

She had many interesting insights and I listened for all I was worth. Someday a fragment of the voice will make it into a children's story. I'm going to keep listening - and writing.

What are the voices that you notice, concentrate on or collect?

We've just returned from a glorious trip to Turkey where we were enthralled with the vibrancy of modern Istanbul and the richness of their ancient cultures. We saw wondrous Hellenistic and Roman sites, amphitheaters and temples. Overlaying all was the deep sense of history and the memory of the story of those who had walked there before.

As I prepared for the trip, I read Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk's book, Istanbul, Memories of a City. The book is memory - autobiographical, looking at Pamuk's childhood and family life with the backdrop of his Istanbul as he saw it, with the soul of a city saddened by the decline of their former empire symbolized by signs of decay of the once proud mansions lining the Bosporus, sinking under their peeling paint and sagging frames.

Pamuk weaves memories as he draws in the reader into the middle of his family's living room and dinner discussions. What an incredible job he does in setting the scenes and recalling the personalities present, whiffs of fragrant foods served and swirls of conversations.

The details - can we do the details as he does?

What details he slides so smoothly into the story that set the readers in the immediacy of the place. What a great example for writers to see his art. I have been mulling over his techniques, trying to conjure up such depth of memories from childhood - lunch meals, picnics, chores, interactions of family and friends, the color and sound of the time and place.

I found Pamuk's example fascinating. Digging for details of memory. When writing for children how do you dig for details of your childhood? Details that are common to children now as well as back in your time? Perhaps- excitement in the house, happy or tense, fear of being left at home, out of things, of really being left and having to stay with other relatives, as almost cast off, as Pamuk, times of great fun with a circus coming to town or being taken sledding in the winter with frost bitten toes or to a big game in the summer or hide and seek on a hot evening when you would have liked to have hidden from the mosquitoes.

How do you dig for memories and with what do you dig?

As I watched W.S. Merwin, American poet and the recipient of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, be interviewed on television this week, I was fascinated to hear this great poet speak of language, sound, and the expression of emotions and ideas through sound.

It was enlightening to hear him explain the use of vowels in emotional contexts and the joy or grief they can express, and how consonants are used to form these sounds into words and expressions of the emotion or thought.

When writing for children, either in prose or poetry, the apt use of sound is critical. Often, I think, we might forget the sound of our language when we wrestle with character development, plot and setting.

Sound is one of the underlying elements that a reader might not recognize as a power in the story, verse or novel, but it's a strength that adds some of the depth and emotional charge to the tension or feel of the text.

The onomatopoeia of the language, where the word imitates the natural sound of the object or action, enhances the reading experience, especially for children. In a simple line such as "the eagle soars," the child can feel the swish of upward movement and speed and perhaps even thrill of the great bird flying high.

How do you use sound in your writing?

Recently, when reading up on writing advice and how to improve one's work, I happened on a quote from Mark Twain.

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very,' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

Today editors might not delete damn in children's manuscripts except in books for smaller children, but the message on the lesson from Twain stays the same. To improve my writing I need to continually prune unnecessary words. Any words that I think "actually" make the point more emphatically and importantly but actually get in the way of clear action and movement of plot are only only window dressing. I need to cut and clear so the story itself is emphatic.

In clearing I also need to follow Twain's reasoning a little further and keep it simple. In revisions, I need to remember to cut the scenes, dialogue and plot points that are clogging up the flow of the story.

Some methods of attacking these problems are putting aside the manuscript for a time and working on another book so I'm refreshed when I come back to this manuscript and I can edit with new eyes, or taking it to my critique group where the writers will ably point out where the problems lurk.

How do you focus on keeping it concise - the extra words that clutter, and the scenes that bog down the manuscript?

How does an author make history come alive for young readers? To make stories, set back in times that may seem remote and disconnected to today, exciting reads?

I recently attended a literary seminar where the topic was historical fiction. Well-known writers debated the definitions of books of historical fiction, novels and straight history. There were various opinions as to how free authors can or should be in historical fiction with the lives, words and actions of real historical figures, people who have lived and acted on the world stage. To make the story work as a novel, to enhance plot or to make the characters more believable, does the author have a little leeway with actual known facts or is it acceptable for the writer to expand on the actual facts to make a more exciting or gripping story?

There was great discussion and difference of opinion.

As a writer of historical fiction for children I found the discussions fascinating as well-known authors discussed their craft. Frequently there aren't enough letters, diaries, audio tapes, etc. to reconstruct sufficient dialogue to make a story work, so the writer has to improvise. But the conscientious author will try to make the story ring with an improvised story line and dialogue that is as close as possible to the historical figures' personalities, the truth of their characters and the events in which they were involved.

It was fun to see this interplay at the seminar and exciting to attempt to write captivating and accurate stories of history for young people.