My new agency is a blessing in so many ways. I love, love, love my agent. But I also feel like I've joined a family - her co-agents, her staff, and all of their talented clients. The agency recently held a retreat - a fabulous experience - and it was like the best party of all time.
Some of these gifted writers I'd known for a long time and are old friends, and some are new friends. One of the latter is Anna Staniszewski. She writes for "tweens" and her voice is spot-on. Hilarious, charming, moving, wacky, smart. So I invited her here today to talk about that voice and give us a few insights.
And I hope you'll check out her new release, The Prank List.
Born in Poland and raised in the United States, Anna grew up loving stories in both Polish and English. Currently, she lives outside Boston with her husband and their crazy dog. When she’s not writing, Anna spends her time reading, daydreaming, and challenging unicorns to games of hopscotch. She is the author of the My Very UnFairy Tale Life series and the Dirt Diary series. Her newest book, The Prank List, releases on July 1st from Sourcebooks. You can visit Anna at www.annastan.com.
Here's Anna:
This brings me to my second point: Avoid cliches. Just because you hear kids on TV saying certain things doesn’t mean that kids in real life and/or kids in your books would say them. If you’re going to use catch phrases and slang, it’s often better to make those up rather than rely on real ones that will probably feel tired in a matter of weeks.