Subtitle: The obligatory end of year wrap-up.

Last year was one where I moved (again), started a new/old job, graduated with my MFA in Writing for Children, started the redesign of this website, simplified some of my commitments, shortened the list of unread books on my Kindle down to just 67 (from over 200!) and continued to strengthen personal relationships. We also held our annual CWHV conference as well as a first page and query event in November, which resulted in some attendees receiving a manuscript request from our panelists. Ultimately, it was a pretty good year.

My one wish for 2015 is that I will be able to find more time to write and publish. While I was in grad school, I managed to publish six short stories over two pen names, including one Effie story (Effie Goes to Prom) and two stories in the Now Hear This! series (Don’t Haunt This Place and Lover I Don’t Have to Love). However, last year, in 2014, I didn’t publish anything.

It feels a bit like I’m starting from scratch – which is probably not too far from the truth, given the way that Amazon works their algorithms and how many other people have started producing indie books over these last two years.

That said, I’m excited to jump back in there!

Effie’s Senior Year: The Complete Effie Stories will publish on March 8, 2015, and will include all six Effie stories, including a brand new final story, Effie At Graduation.

Effie At The Wedding is currently available free on iTunes, Barnes and Noble and Kobo in celebration of the return (and end) of the Effie series.

Also, if you want to be notified of future book updates, you can sign up for my mailing list and receive two free short stories – The Engine Driver and Haunting at Heidelburgh Mansion.

I’ll also be participating in Multicultural Children’s Book Day this year, and as I re-evaluate how and where I want to connect with people (as it turns out, I’ll probably never make a Vine), I hope to spend more time with you on the blog in 2015.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to share a new book with you, but I’m excited to say that the final short story in The Effie Stories — Effie At Graduation — is in the works.

And! And…!

I can share with you the cover of the compilation of all six stories, Effie’s Senior Year: The Complete Effie Stories!

If you can’t. breath. one. more. moment. without. updates…

Okay, maybe that’s just me.

But if you’re even just slightly short of breath and you would like a review copy, you can sign up here. You can also sign up for email updates about Effie’s Senior Year and all of my books, or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads.

On Saturday, Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley hosted First Impressions: A First Page and Query Event. We had reached max capacity for critiques, but were able to accept a few listening registrations for those that still wanted to learn from the pages of others.

What really struck me as attendees walked in, was the sense of community that was there. You could see people catch sight of someone and walk over to give them a hug. Somehow, in all the planning, I’d forgotten that our event, though the third for us, is really an outgrowth of an already flourishing community of children’s writers and illustrators in the Hudson Valley.

But back to the conference! As this is 2014, nothing could be done before we turned off our phones.

Once we were ready to begin, my fellow committee members and I read each page or query letter individually.

Afterwards, Susan Kochan and Jennie Dunham were each given the opportunity to respond with what was working for them on the page, and what could be improved upon.

After all the pages and queries were read, we had about half an hour left for a Q&A session with the editor and agent.

Finally, it was all hands on deck for clean up!

All in all, a very successful event. Also, our annual June conference featuring hands-on workshops for writers will be June 13, 2015. Save the date!

More personally…
I’ll be closing to editorial work for the holidays, but you can sign up for updates to hear when I reopen.

I’m also writing stories just for you! Take a look at these short short stories inspired by reader prompts and click here to submit your own prompt.

Finally, if this blog isn’t enough, you can also sign up for updates about my books or editorial work here, and/or you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads.

Stripe had been trapped for seven days in The Basket, pressed against the bodies of over a dozen like him.

It had started to smell.

At first, The Basket was a relief. After a whole day of physical labor with very few breaks, The Basket reminded him of the security and respite that came from being home. But as more and more laborers were tossed into The Basket, he realized that it wasn’t home at all. It was just one more insult to his physical self.

He had been used up. The very fibers of his being had been trained to pull the sweat off of others and carry the Empowered through their day.

And he knew the cycle would start again. He and his partner would be used and Purified and then used again. He didn’t know how many more Cycles he could withstand.

He was already on his Seventeenth Cycle.

To pass the time, he sometimes told the stories that had been whispered from generation to generation since the early 1900’s.

“It was in the years before The Spark,” Stripe said, as he curled around his partner. “The work was hard but the Cycles were gentle. After a use, there were days in the sun. The breeze would caress your heels, your ankles. Sometimes two, three days would be spent in this glorious suspended animation.”

He sighed.

“But our generation doesn’t know this life. Now The Basket is like purgatory, and we wait for our turn in the turning, sloshing turmoil of the Cycle. We hold our partners dear because in this place, it is common for two to go in but only one of us to come out.”

He could see his partner start to curl into a ball. He moved closer.

“It’s okay. I won’t let them separate us.”

But he knew there was no way that could happen. No way he could promise that they would both come through the Cycle together. Unless….

Unless they skipped THE WASHING.

—
This piece of flash fiction was inspired by a challenge to “write a post-apocalyptic story from the perspective of the socks.”

I have a new Comment and FAQs page complete with a comment form. My first question comes from someone who sent it as a test for the form, but who I will answer anyway.

The question is, “What was Beethoven’s favorite fruit?”

Well. Let me tell you a story, my friend.

Once upon a time in Vienna, when the town was not connected to any sort of questionable meat that comes in a tin can, there was a brilliant young man called Ludwig and a terrible, mangey cat named Meowthoven. As it happened, Ludwig was a composer of nine symphonies, five piano concertos, thirty-two piano sonatas and sixteen string quartets. Meowthoven was officially the composer of innumerable heat-fueled wailings and the occasional hiss and growl when the pluckiest of squirrels (Do they have squirrels in Vienna? Let’s pretend they do.) Anyway, when the pluckiest of squirrels dared to cross his windowsill.

You see, Meowthoven was particularly fond of acorns, which made him unusual for a cat and an enemy to neighborhood squirrels. But his use for the acorns was even more unusual still. Every day that Ludwig sat at the piano forte to compose, Meowthoven would stalk the space beneath the composer’s bench and swat an acorn as hard as he could at the composer’s shins when he chose the wrong note. So unofficially, Meowthoven was the composer of nine symphonies, five concertos, and thirty-two sonatas. (Something about a string quartet made him frisky, and so he could not swat at Ludwig’s legs when he was wailing for lady cats nearby.)

Later, when Ludwig was deaf and had his ear to the floor, Meowthoven would plant his furry self against Ludwig’s forehead, and swat the acorns right at his nose.

From such a close proximity, an acorn can leave quite a welt. And let’s not talk about what happens when you get an acorn to the eye.

However, there were days when Ludwig felt a sense of respite. For when Meowthoven could not find any more acorns – whether because the squirrels had wisened up and kept their stash away from Meowthoven’s territory, or because Meowthoven was starting to lose one of his senses as well – he resorted to whatever fruit was left around the house.

Grapes are much softer than an acorn to the nose. And that, my friends, is why grapes are Beethoven’s favorite fruit.

Next question?

As a co-founder of Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley, I’m thrilled to share news of our First Impressions: A First Page and Query Event happening on November 15, 2014 at St. James Church in Hyde Park, NY!

Participants can submit either a first page or a query letter, and will receive feedback from our two panelists:

Susan Kochan is an Associate Editorial Director of Putnam Children’s at Penguin Group. She has been with Putnam for twenty years after a short-lived career as an elementary teacher. She acquires fiction and nonfiction from young picture books through middle-grade novels. She looks for lively picture books that have a perfect combination of humor and heart and chapter book and middle grade characters who kids can’t help but want to befriend.

She is the editor of Betty G. Birney’s Humphrey and Stephanie Greene’s Princess Posey series, as well as the I Wanna books by Karen Kaufman Orloff, The Three Ninja Pigs and Ninja Red Riding Hood by Corey Rosen Schwartz, The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School and Loose on the Fire Truck by Laura Murray.

Jennie Dunham (AAR and SCBWI member) has been a literary agent in New York City since 1992. In August 2000 she founded Dunham Literary, Inc. Her clients have been New York Times bestsellers and have won awards such as Boston Globe Horn Book Honor, New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, the Charlotte Zolotow Award, and International Reading Association Award. Her agency represents children’s books for all ages from novelty and picture book through middle grade and young adult as well as literary fiction and non-fiction for adults.

Registration can be found here, and you can also sign up for event updates through our newsletter.

There are times in your life when you must invoke the power of the squirrel.

9/27/14 – Smithsonian Museum Day

And, as I am currently running around like a squirrel who has lost her winter nuts, this is clearly one of those times. Squirrels remember where they buried things months later. I can’t even find the ditty bag that I used in the laundry last week.

That’s not to say that things haven’t been good – in fact, they’ve been great! I’m settling into pretty much all three things in the Carrie Bradshaw trifecta, and have found some time to start reading again. (Earlier I finished Tangled by Carolyn Mackler and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem. I have recently started Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. If you want to follow my reading without waiting for a blog update, you can also befriend me on Goodreads.)

In all of this kerfluffle though, I found myself pronouncing that a writer must lead an interesting life in order to write interesting things. And I received some push-back, because that idea was nuts. (Ba-dum chhhhh!)

10/10/14 – Underlit Tracy is an unattractive Tracy.

I think, perhaps, what I should have said is that a writer must look for inspiration in the things that bring them joy. And pain. And hurt. And solace.

So even though I haven’t been able to put the pen to the page as much as I would like to lately, I’ve been discovering new things to be inspired by. And I think that, for now, will have to be just as good.

If not better.

8/31/14 – Lexington Ave., NYC

I’ve been reading Gloria Steinem’s Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, and I thought I’d share these two jewels from the introduction:

“I still thought that writers were more credible when they concealed their personal experience. I had a lot to learn.”

- Gloria Steinem

“A revolution without humor is as hopeless as one without music.”

- Gloria Steinem, writing on what she learned from Flo Kennedy

While Steinem is speaking about journalism in the former quote and the feminist movement in the latter, to me I think they both speak to the desire as we begin to write to put on the page what we feel is the most-respected or even expected thing of us.

So write something brave this weekend, fellow writers. Write brave.

I prepared this for a grad school presentation, and I hope it will be helpful for you as well. As you go through the list, note your gut reaction to the following phrases. There are no right or wrong answers, this is just a jumping off point as you consider representation.

True or False:
I would prefer my agent be tougher in negotiations than more responsive to me as a writer.

True or False:
I would prefer a smaller agency with more a more personalized approach rather than a big agency where I’d be on a list with a lot of A-list clients.

True or False:
I would rather have an agent submit as widely as possible verses smaller, more targeted rounds.

True or False:
I am looking for someone to build my whole career, instead of just this particular book.

True or False:
I take criticism to heart and need to be told bad news very gently.

True or False:
I am okay with not hearing from my agent unless s/he has an offer or other news.

True or False:
I want to be at an agency with lots of New York Times Bestsellers, even if it means that more time will be spent on their work than mine.

True or False:
I don’t need my agent to be nice to me. I need her to make me money.

True or False:
I am a prolific writer and don’t feel like I have time to do editorial rounds with every project before it goes out. I want someone to submit and let the editor worry about revising if they’re interested.

True or False:
I value a personal connection with my agent, as well as a working business relationship.

As you look at your responses, you’ll probably notice a preference towards a smaller or larger agency, an editorial vs. non-editorial agent, and the level of interaction you desire.

To download this as a .pdf, you can also click the button below. Hope this helps!

Last week, I had dinner with a friend of a friend who wanted to write but didn’t know how to start. Among the things we talked about was starting with the “what if…”

What if your head was a literal watermelon?

What if a girl with severe social phobia was forced to run for class president?

What if every time someone said “barge” the streets realigned?

And then from that what if – be it a character problem or a world building detail – you start filling out the bones.

Who wanted to turn your head into a melon and why?

How will the girl either get out of running – or win the election?

How would the world be different if maps were good for no more than a few minutes?

My own stories have started with either a character speaking to me, like Effie, or a big what if:

The Engine Driver – What if emotions were dictated by music?

Hot Ticket – What if “cool points” weren’t figurative? How would that change the social hierarchy?

Some of my works-in-progress also started from “what if…”

Pudding Boy started with a sketch and a what if.

Luminary with a quote from Walter Benjamin and a what if.

How have you used the big “what if?”

Like millions in my generation, Robin Williams’s films were touchstones of my childhood and adolescence. I remember the time my parents thought they bought us Aladdin, but it turned out to be a knock-off version (Not. The. Same.) One of the first VHS’s I ever received as my own personal copy was Hook. We watched Mrs. Doubtfire pretty much whenever it ran in syndication, even years after the film had come out. And I wished that Robin Williams was my captain in Dead Poet’s Society. (I was also appropriately creeped out by the psychological thriller One Hour Photo and uplifted/saddened by the story of Patch Adams.)

Years ago (nearly a decade), I started a webzine for writing by and for teens. It was short-lived, but one of the comments in the forums was from a girl who wanted to know if it was still okay to be really sad years after her mother’s death. I was an English major and had never lost a parent, and didn’t feel like I could offer much. I could only say that she should reach out to somebody, perhaps her school counselor or therapist. I didn’t hear back, and I still think about that comment. I hope that she is okay, and that life – while different – is still worth it to her.

What a responsibility we have as people that open ourselves up in our art and/or online. When we invite others into our world, we also invite their world into ours. Even if it’s just a small part of their world. Even if they struggle and never share it with us. Even if every comment is a “nice post!”

If you are struggling with depression or emotional distress, please reach out.

Call 1-800-273-TALK.

Veterans can also call 1-800-273-8255 – same number as before – and press 1.

If you have other resources, please leave them in the comments.

It’s been a busy last two years, but it all culminated last month in the presentation of my MFA in Writing for Children:

Sneaking back in to get a picture of my shiny, new MFA in front of the Simmons sign.

While you don’t need an MFA to get published or work in publishing, I entered the MFA program to get back into an academic setting, to push my craft, and to satisfy my own personal goals. I had actually filled out the MFA application several times while I was at Curtis Brown, but just hadn’t been ready to make the leap.

So…I came! I saw! I leapt! (And I still look awful in those caps!)

In celebration, I chopped off all my hair and got ready for our second annual Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley conference. As per last year, I critiqued manuscripts and was available to talk about my editorial feedback between writing workshops.

Yes, this photo is staged. But right before the camera showed up, we’d just finished talking about the critique in real life!

During the day, I sat in Jill Davis’s picture book workshop, since I had just spent my two master’s mentorships working on novels. I left with some notes and ideas for how to take the pb I was working on to the next level.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been watching the Amazon-Hachette dispute, and it’s led me to make some decisions. Some of my friends in publishing have cancelled their Amazon accounts, but I don’t feel this is quite the right way for me to go. As an indie author who is also interested in traditional publication, there is a distinct advantage to being on Amazon that isn’t quite matched by other outlets. (Yet. I would LOVE to see Barnes and Noble and other sites become more search friendly, experiment with new author promotion tools, etc.) I am also an Amazon Affiliate, which doesn’t bring in much, but does help with the cost of server space, etc. for this blog.

So I asked myself – what is more important to me? That my books be read or that my books be sold? And if it’s more important for me to be read, then why accept that the only way to do this is through larger distributors? (Okay, partial-answer: because it works.)

But now that commencement has come and gone, I’ve decided that I’m going to take a page from Cory Doctorow’s book and offer my books here as free .pdfs, as well as at the regular price on various distribution sites (including Smashwords, Amazon and Barnes & Noble).

The short stories from the Now Hear This! series are already available for free download here. I hope you enjoy!

Finally, in a similar spirit of giving and creativity, I leave you with a picture of my made-the-day-before-the-race red tutu, and an image of the new dance craze that is sure to sweep the nation.

Behold! The Floppy Chicken:

The Floppy Chicken — the best dance move nobody’s ever heard of.

Happy Saturday, everyone!

In a recent Freakonomics Podcast, Steve Levitt said, “Enjoying what you do, loving what you do is such a completely unfair advantage to anyone you are competing with who does it for a job.” He goes on to explain that people who love what they do will think about it on their off-hours — on the way to work, on the weekends (or for most of us writer types, in the shower) — and that extra effort pays off as opposed to somebody that considers their work just a job that they do from 9 to 5.

Makes sense, and it also dovetails nicely with what I’m currently reading. In Daniel H. Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, he outlines several studies that show that external rewards can actually be de-motivating once one’s basic needs are met. In other words, once a person links an external reward (like a bonus or raise) to work that they’re doing, they suddenly spend less time doing it. The joy of the work gets lost when the prospect of reward becomes first and foremost.

And like Levitt said, the productivity suffers. But so does the creativity.

Pink quotes a study of art school students, which found that artists were more successful both after graduation and nearly twenty years later, if their motivations were more intrinsic (for the love of art/joy of creation) versus extrinsic (for the fame and fortune.)  Likewise, the study found that the artists who were intrinsically motivated produced better art… and the extrinsic rewards then followed.

Non-monetary extrinsic rewards
This makes me think about how easy it is today for a writer to lose that joy of creation even before there’s any significant financial reward.

If you write a blog post, you can get a to-the-minute report of how many people have read it. You can count comments, and likes, and shares and tweets.

If you self-publish a novel, you can get nearly hourly sales reports. You can count reviews. You can get a thrill from a huge promotion or by setting the price to free and count downloads.

If you traditionally publish, every six months you can pore over royalty statements. You can count reviews on Amazon and hope for starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly or School Library Journal.

Everybody can count Twitter followers, retweets, Facebook likes, Instagram shares, etc. Those that have published can track countless bestsellers lists, or find themselves on an Amazon best-seller list in a category so obscure that  very few sales are actually required to chart.

(Those under contract have, arguably, an even tougher roadblock to writing for the joy of it. It’s hard to hear the word “deadline” and not feel the pressure of “work.”)

In short, it’s nearly impossible to be a creative person and not risk succumbing to some external reward.

What to do?
I’m certainly not advocating that we stop paying artists for their art. In an age of automation, creativity should be valued even more highly than it currently is. But how can we as individuals keep the joy when we seem to be biologically programmed to lose it at the prospect of reward?

Simple living blogs would suggest a digital sabbatical to temporarily handle most of the non-monetary extrinsic rewards.

Pink would recommend providing optimal circumstances to get into the “flow” as you’re writing.

Drive also focuses on mastery as a goal that one cannot reach, but is ultimately the most satisfying. He would encourage writers to identify the areas of their craft that they are weakest in, and “practice, practice, practice.”

Comment time!
How do you stay intrinsically motivated?

When it comes to rejection letters, “Anything other than ‘yes’ is ‘no.’” Right?

Credit: Luke Beard

Last night, I was doing my laundry, eating a caprese salad (minus the tomatoes, olive oil and fresh basil), and listening to iTunes shuffle through my library. John Mayer’s “Friends, Lovers, Or Nothing” started to play, and while he’s probably correct when it comes to love, he definitely doesn’t have it quite right when it comes to revision requests.

Earlier this year, a writer friend had just received her first rejection letter, and the agent had given her some editorial feedback and offered to look at the manuscript again.

I was super excited for her. Her first submission ever turns into a revision request — what great news!

She, however, was confused. She had read the letter as a very polite but standard, “no, thank you,” and was going to set it aside.

Editors and agents will only offer to read the manuscript again if they are truly interested in seeing a revision and potentially working with you.

So if you received some editorial feedback and an offer to resubmit — congratulations, and get to work! They are giving you the opportunity to strengthen the project because they see something promising.

If there was no offer to read the manuscript again, then take heart. You and said editor/agent can still be friends on your next project. You just won’t be lovers on this one.

Still not sure what your rejection means? I deconstruct some rejections at When Should You Revise?, or you can leave a comment with your question.

Agents and editors want characters that jump off the page… but what if your character prefers to stay home with a book?

Juliet, the protagonist of my middle grade mystery Hot Ticket, is clearly an extrovert. She can’t stand that there is a mysterious ticket dispenser in John Jay Jr. High that is giving everybody except her a hot ticket. She wants to be the center of attention — and if not the center, then she wants to receive some attention. Even if it’s negative (in the form of a shame ticket.)

But the protagonist of my last mentorship project, which is a middle grade superhero adventure, doesn’t seek the limelight like Juliet did. He’s got spunk, but I knew he wasn’t like Juliet at all. He figures out how to use his unique powers to defeat his nemesis — but he doesn’t want the rest of the class to know he’s a Super. In fact, it is vital that he stay hidden.

As I fleshed out the plot and minor characters, I still couldn’t fully figure out who Peter, my protagonist, was. I tried flipping through books that describe personality archetypes (i.e. “The Leader,” “The Helper,” etc.) but nothing really fit. I flipped through some craft books on character, but that didn’t really shed any light on Peter either. Peter is funny, but he’s not an attention seeker. His favorite activities tend to be creative — and most artists like to work alone.

It wasn’t until my mentor, Julie Ham, said to relax and have fun with it — to try having Peter interact with others in more scenes to bring out his personality — that I realized what word encapsulated Peter.

Introvert.

But can you have a dynamic, fully-formed, “jump off the page” introverted character?

Quiet doesn’t mean passive.

In the beginning of my mentorship, Julie recommended Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School and Other Scary Things.

Alvin Ho has a distinct personality — even though (or perhaps because of) the fact that he is so fearful of everything that he can’t speak at school. It’s how he handles his fears that makes him interesting. After all, not every character would create a Personal Disaster Kit to survive second grade.

Alvin might fear new social interaction, but we also see him blossom where he’s comfortable: at home, and around his brother. These are opportunities to see another (perhaps more active) side of Alvin, and helps us to relate even if he’s afraid of things that we, as readers, are not.

Quiet doesn’t mean loner.

Introverts need room to reflect and do their critical thinking, but then they come out of their ‘down time’ with a plan of attack. Peter has a creative outlet that lets him regroup by himself, even if he doesn’t know that that’s what he’s doing.

But he’s not alone. He’s interwoven into the fabric of the classroom – even if he’s not, like Hot Ticket’s Juliet, trying to raise himself a few levels on the popularity ladder. He has a best-friend, a potential Super nemesis, and a Regular school playground bully nemesis. And like a majority of introverts, he’s most comfortable with his best friend Rowdy, and on-guard when talking to the new kid in class.

In fact, one of the biggest emotional problems that my protagonist has derives from his introverted tendencies. Like most introverts, he truly values his fewer but deeper friendships — and his inability to tell Rowdy that he is Super provides a constant strain on their relationship and Peter himself.

Quiet doesn’t mean boring.

Quiet characters can still be funny. There is a ton of humor in Alvin Ho, and hopefully there is a ton of humor in my mentorship novel.

Peter’s parents have a punny, slapstick type of humor. There is situational humor in an absurd plot. And while Peter does not always say funny, witty things, he frequently thinks them. Even if Peter’s best-friend isn’t in on the joke, the reader is.

Still having trouble with character? Start with this character checklist and this discussion of passive characters in query letters.

Who are your favorite “quiet” literary characters?

Join us for a day of hands-on workshops and an inspiring closing keynote!

Registration for the 2014 Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley Conference is now open. In order to assure a truly hands-on experience, participation is limited to 50 people. Registrants must chose either the novel-writing track with Stacey Barney or the picture book track with Jill Davis. Please see below for more information about this year’s faculty!

For more information about the conference format and to print the registration form, click here.

This year’s faculty:

Stacey Barney
Revisions: A Writer’s Workshop for Middle Grade and Young Adults Novels

Stacey Barney is a Senior Editor at Penguin/Putnam Books for Young Readers and acquires a wide range of middle grade and young adult fiction and nonfiction, and select picture books. She has edited 2013 Coretta Scott King Honor-winning, Ellen’s Broom by Kelly Starling Lyons and illustrated by Daniel Minter; Kristin Levine’s award-winning The Lions of Little Rock; Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy, a YALSA Top Ten Book for Young Adults; The Black City series; Boys, Girls & Other Hazardous Materials by Rosalind Wiseman, NYT bestselling author of Queen Bees and Wannabes, the book that inspired Mean Girls; the NYT bestselling Ask Elizabeth by accomplished actress Elizabeth Berkley; award-winning Sparrow Road by Sheila O’Connor and most recently The Well’s End by Seth Fishman and The Secret Hum of a Daisy by Tracy Holczer.

Jill Davis
Building Plot from Character in Picture Books

Jill Davis is an Executive Editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books’ Katherine Tegen Books. Previously she worked at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Bloomsbury, Viking, and Crown and Knopf, and was editor of Elizabeth Partridge’s Printz Honor winner John Lennon: All I Want Is Truth and NBA finalist This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie. She edits picture books, graphic chapter books, middle-grade fiction, and teen fiction. Jill Davis holds an MFA in Writing for Children and YA from Hamline University is the author of three picture books, and is currently at work on a middle-grade novel.

Alan Katz
Writing with Humor

Alan Katz is the author of more than 30 highly acclaimed children’s books, including nine Silly Dilly Songbooks including Take Me Out of the Bathtub, plus poetry books OOPS! and Poems I Wrote When No One Was Looking, the Ricky Vargas series, many popular board books, and the new eBook series LIEographies. Alan has also been a six-time Emmy-nominated writer for TV series including The Rosie O’Donnell Show, animated series Taz-Mania and Goof Troop, various Nickelodeon shows, the Tony Awards and Grammy Awards, and a lot of network specials and game shows. He has also created comic books, trading card sets, web videos, TV commercials and hundreds of other special projects for kids and their parents.

Tracy Marchini
Off-site Critiques

Tracy Marchini is a freelance writer and editorial consultant. Before launching her own editorial service, she worked for Curtis Brown, Ltd. for four years. In this role, she developed and sold an original book concept for the Ogden Nash Estate, pitched and negotiated audio rights, pitched merchandising ideas, and provided editorial feedback.

Tracy has been published as a children’s book reviewer, newspaper correspondent and copywriter. She has been accepted for publication in Highlights Magazine and is the author of Pub Speak: A Writer’s Dictionary of Publishing Terms. She is currently earning an MFA in Writing for Children from Simmons College.

Happy New Year, my quacktastic blog readers!

My friend shared with me one of her resolutions for the new year, and I liked it so much that I decided to do it, too.

Behold, the Gratitude Jar:

It’s so easy as a writer to compare yourself to others:

- who got an agent/book deal/etc. first
- who is selling more books
- who has better reviews
- who has more fans/followers/comments/etc.
- who has written more words this week

But true happiness is appreciating what you have. So every day, I’ll end by putting a piece of paper with what I’m grateful for in the jar. Some days, I’m sure I’ll just be grateful to not be sitting in traffic. (Let me tell you about the time I sat in traffic for four hours to go eight miles…) But most days, I think it’d be hard to find something to not be genuinely grateful for.

And those days that it is hard, are probably the days when you need the gratitude jar the most.

At the end of the year, I’ll open it up and read all the great and wonderful things from the year before. 365+ moments of gratitude. Are you with me?

One of the benefits of being a writer is that you can work from anywhere, right?

But that’s not 100% true, is it? Your environment affects your ability to write. When the kitchen is too messy, I can’t sit at my desk and write. When there’s too much clutter on my desk, I can’t focus on the screen in front of me. And when I leave for a retreat, I subconsciously think about some of the stuff left at home — whether it’s stuff that still has to be fixed/maintained/cleaned/etc.

Over the years, this drive to hold on to things has also cost me money, be it in storage fees or not wanting to sublet when I’m away for over a month because of the things that would be left behind.

Decluttering is about both stopping the flow of unnecessary things into the house, and also culling the things in your house so that only what is useful is left. It’s not an instant process, though. I have only this summer gotten rid of a stack of VHSes (some still in plastic wrap!) and given away a DVD/VCR combo. I still have a ways to go.

Today, and going forward, I challenge you to relook at what surrounds you. Do these things make you happy, or weigh you down? (Consider that every knick knack is one more thing you have to dust, and five less minutes of writing, talking to a loved one, etc.)

I know in your closet, there is a pair of pants that are your “I hate these pants and only wear them on laundry day.” Give them away. Spend more time in the pants you love.

“Simplicity September” is a series of posts designed to focus on simplifying and refocusing. See the previous posts here:

Simplicity September: In Writing
Simplicity September: In Relationships

Writing is time intensive, and so what and/or whom you spend your time on becomes that much more precious. So as the summer winds down and we all go back to work, school, etc., it seems a good time to stop and think about what and who is important in these coming months.

But first, let’s talk about Facebook.

There are two types of Facebookers — those that “friend” everyone they’ve met, and those that “friend” only the people they would invite into their home. I try to limit my personal Facebook to the latter category (though I do have a much more open Facebook Page), but still there is no way for me to keep a close relationship with 200+ people. (Dunbar’s number says the limit is closer to 150, though even then, I can’t tell you how 150 people in my circle spent their summer.)

Some of my friends are hardcore users, and some are not. And I wonder if we begin to feel a false sense of closeness to people that update more frequently. Afterall, is closeness based solely on knowing what that person did over the weekend, or does closeness require more of a deeper, emotional exchange?

So take a minute and ask yourself:

• Who do I want to have a closer relationship with?
• How can I reach out to them, one-to-one?
• How can I make more room for them in my life? (Yes, this might mean that you have less time to look at the posts of someone you went to elementary school with twenty years ago and haven’t spoken to since.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an email to write to a close friend.

“Simplicity September” is a series of posts designed to focus on simplifying and refocusing. See the previous posts here:

Simplicity September: In Writing

As part of my MFA program, I’m currently working with a mentor on a fantasy YA novel.

One thing about semester deadlines, is that it forces me (somewhat of a pantser) to really think about where the novel is going and how I’m going to get there. So to simplify the drafting process, I’ve laid out the following for myself:

The Pitch
I wrote out the story as if I was pitching it in a query letter. I wanted to get down, in two paragraphs, what I want the novel to be, what drives my main character and what she needs to accomplish before she faces XXX consequence.

Needs/Motivations
I asked myself the following questions, and wrote a couple sentences in response to each:

• What does Raina (my protagonist) want emotionally? Physically?
• Who or what is stopping her from achieving this goal? Why?
• How will she try to get what she needs?
• Will she succeed or fail?

Finally, as this is a fantasy and I am generally a novel-length contemporary writer, I started a new page for World-Building Details. I outlined some things that Raina can do that others can’t, and also the places where she is deficient because of her status. I also left myself questions to explore later — either through the novel or to continue thinking about as I draft.

This story weaves together a cannon of previous works, and so that also means that as I fill out these questions and build my world, I am considering how what came before affects my story. In weaving the previous works with my own, there has to be something that my manuscript illuminates, adds, or forces the reader to think about in a different way. As I answer the questions above and build my world, I think about how my story’s world will work alongside and against the previous cannon.

My birthday is coming up, and to celebrate I’m giving away three copies of Don’t Haunt This Place.

The blurb:
Seventeen-year-old Amanda has just learned that she’s pregnant by her crack-dealing boyfriend. Estranged from her family and most of her friends, the pull of the drugs, Billy, and her old way of life is strong. But she can’t do to her baby what her mother did to her. She has to find a way to break the cycle.

The disclaimer:
It’s not Amanda’s birthday. But this is one of the pieces that I’m happiest about writing this year, so it seemed a good way to celebrate!

To enter, follow the instructions on the Rafflecopter below!

I’ve been thinking about ways to make more physical/mental/emotional space, partially inspired by some of my favorite minimalist/simple living blogs:

Becoming Minimalist
Be More With Less
Slow Your Home
The Minimalists
Mnmlist

Now that almost everything can (or is) housed on someone else’s servers, do you still keep unbound paper copies of your published works? Is a paper back-up required if you can download/buy the ebook?

Authors, how are you handling this?

What I’m reading now: 
As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child & Avis DeVoto by Joan Reardon

Between Wendy Davis’s filibuster, the severing of Tor’s relationship with James Frenkel and the general sociopolitical climate, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about gender.

But first, a quick note on the difference between sex and gender. You are biologically a sex. If you are born with two x chromosomes, you are female. Born with an xy, and you are male. But one performs a gender. You enact what it means to be masculine or feminine.

In gender theory, you’ll find two major camps – essentialists and constructivists.

An essentialist view of gender holds that women are innately born to nurture. They are creators. Men are innately born to command. They are destroyers. They perform their gender not because they’re told to, but because it is who they are. (But then, one asks, is a woman who doesn’t feel motherly no longer feminine?)

A constructionist view of gender says that gender roles are constructed by society. Society – in the form of culture, media, parenting, etc. – tells girls that they should like pink, and boys that they should like blue. Culture says that men are protectors, and women need to be protected.

It may seem like it comes down to nature vs. nurture, and one might say, “Well, it’s probably a bit of both, isn’t it?” And then that would be that.

But the problem is that an essentialist view is extremely limiting to both genders. And a constructionist view means that we — writers — as culture producers, have a responsibility to look at how we portray both men and women.

I don’t have answers. But I think it’s worthwhile to ask yourself:

How do gender norms inform my writing?

Am I trying to reflect the current experience, or write the world as it should be?

Can I avoid didacticism and tell a good story, while being aware of the way my characters fit into a larger social narrative?

What I’m reading now: 
As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child & Avis DeVoto by Joan Reardon

I just started reading As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child & Avis DeVoto, which was compiled by Joan Reardon.

The letters are collated in a way that the reader feels a cohesive arc. Julia and Avis first “meet” through a letter sent by Julia to Avis’s husband, and they then bond over their fondness for a good (non-stainless steel) kitchen knife. They subsequently work together on bringing what we now know as Mastering the Art of French Cooking to publicaton. Reardon acknowledges that the reader is not seeing every letter between the two women, and that their correspondence lasted well beyond the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She also acknowledges that she omitted some letters in order to give both women equal weight in the book.

In the letters, we learn a bit about Julia’s politics and worldview, but we’re still focused on the main arc: a growing friendship based on culinary pursuits.

This editing of backstory is necessary in fiction as well.

A character’s backstory must be relevant to the main plot, or illuminate something the reader doesn’t already know about the character. Backstory can be used as foreshadowing, but not everything a writer knows about their character needs to be revealed to the reader.

Take a look at your current work-in-progress, particularly if it’s in first person POV. Are there unnecessary ‘letters’ that can be edited out?

What I’m reading now: 
When You Were Mine by Rebecca Serle
As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child & Avis DeVotoby Joan Reardon