Inspiration and pet peeves

My middle-grade novel revision is moving along, but not as quickly as I’d like. Part of the reason is that I’m editing faster than my critique group meetings. Sounds weird, I know, but I’ll explain. You see, we meet twice a month and can take up to five pages to each meeting. After each meeting, I edit the pages for which I got notes, then keep going. But once I’m past the next five, I feel like I don’t want to go on too much farther because I’ll only be taking the next five to the critique group. So I go a little further, then go back, then browse the Internet… I can’t get motivated to move on because I feel this resistance. Does anybody else have this problem? I should just keep going, shouldn’t I?

Anyway, onto the subject of this post. In my dawdling, I’ve been reading writing-related articles online and found some good ones I wanted to share.

First up, an article from NPR about a book called The Lace Reader and how it came to be. The author and her husband self-published the book and got the word out in book clubs with a particular interest in the book’s subject matter. In fact, the author even gave the book clubs pre-published manuscripts with a request for notes, which got them intrigued and gave them a feeling of being invested in the book (I would assume). After self-publishing the book and getting word out, the author got interest from an agent, who then got interest in a bunch of big publishing houses and finally signed a deal for $2 million. Wow! Now, of course, this is a-typical. But, it’s an example of what can happen if you’re passionate and smart and, most of all, if you follow through. Even without the $2 million deal, this story is great, because this lady had an idea, wrote it, was passionate about, built fans for it and made it a success. If she can do it, so can we. Click here for the full article. There’s an excerpt from the book too.

Second is a blog post from Writers Digest’s Guide to Literary Agents about agents’ and editor’s first chapter pet peeves. Some are purely subjective (Stephany Evans of FinePrint Literary Management says she’s turned off by protagonists called Isabelle who go by the name of Izzy, but I’d guess there are plenty of agents and editors who aren’t bothered by that), but most of them are good reminders or eye-openers for our own work. Too much or unnecessary exposition is mentioned by a few of them, for example. Best part, the magazine has a bigger list in the print publication, which will be online in a few weeks if you can’t get to your local magazine rack. Click here for the full blog post.

Third, I was turned on to this through agent Kate Schafer’s blog. Author Cory Doctorow has a great column in Locus magazine about writing for young adult, the pleasures and pit falls. He talks about it as a privilege because “it matters,” because through books, these young readers are finding out how the world works. As he says: “there are kids who read your book, googled every aspect of it, figured out how to replicate the best bits, and have turned your story into a hobby.” I can fully agree with this from first-hand experience. With my first Sir Newton book, Sir Newton’s Color Me Cayman, a 10-year-old reader (these aren’t YA by any stretch of imagination) said that after he had gone through the book, he went on his computer to Google the Cayman Islands. That’s one of the best compliments the books have received. Doctorow also talks about a great job one indie bookstore called Anderson’s is doing to get kids reading. We need to encourage all bookstores to be doing things like this. As Doctorow says, people who go into bookstores are already hooked; we need to go to them to get them hooked. Click here for Doctorow’s full column.

Fourth and fifth, two things from one of my favorite blogs (because it’s informative, inspirational and very entertaining), A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing by author J.A. Konrath. First, he has put up a message board where writers, agents, editors, fans can chat about the industry, books, etc. Click here for his message board. Second, Konrath has compiled his years of useful blog posts into an ebook about writing and getting published, which he is offering as a free download on his website. Click here for his website. There’s also lots of info about his books – he’s a master at marketing — so check them out as well.

Got any links you’d like to share?

Write On!

Finding ideas

One of the most asked writer questions — I’d be willing to bet, but I haven’t done a formal study — must be “Where do you find your ideas?” I’ve been asked it a lot, and I’m not a well-known writer. I’d guess J.K. Rowling could feed a school-full of children for months if she got a penny for every time she’s been asked this.

There is, of course, no one answer. Some people get ideas in dreams, and some people get ideas everywhere from walking around the supermarket to driving to taking a shower.

Driving and showering are often creative times for me, apparently, according to articles I’ve read, because those are times when your brain is on autopilot, requiring little concentration (although judging by most drivers, we might be on autopilot a little too much on the roads) and allowing our brains to wander. I’ve also gotten quite a few ideas, and solved a few plot problems, in church (it’s wonderful to sit there quietly alone, very peaceful).

Dreaming is the same, a time when your brain can play and new ideas can pop up. The difficulty with dreams is that many of us don’t remember our dreams. I’ve read the advice to keep a book next to my bed to jot down ideas as soon as I wake up and before they dissipate, but it doesn’t often work for me, as my dreams seem to go bye bye as soon as I open my eyes. Some people can have just a scene, an image that sparks a story (how Stephenie Meyer was inspired for Twilight), or the entire story can unravel in a dream. The other day, my husband told me his dream, which was a fully fleshed out short story, complete with twist ending and social commentary. I’m so jealous.

Sometimes dreams do stay with me, however, and those are the ones I figure I should try to pay attention to, as they must have fought hard to stay in my brain. I had one such idea the other morning. There was more to it when I was dreaming it, but when I woke up, all that stayed with me was the title and a vague idea. But it’s promising and I think has the makings of a good picture book. Better yet, I told me husband the idea, and he filled in the ending. Maybe he had the same dream I did.

One writer I chatted with on JacketFlap one day said her stories come from a title. I had been complementing her on the fun titles of her books, and she said the titles pop into her head and she formulates a story around them.

However the ideas come, the important thing is to write them down — no matter how small — and allow them to seed, grow and produce fruit in our brains and on the page.

So, I’ll ask it: Where do you get your ideas?

Write On!

How to find critique groups

In my last post, Sandra asked how to find critique groups. So, here’s a quick rundown.

I write for children, so I found my critique group through the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, of which I’m a member. If you write or illustrate for children and you’re not a member of SCBWI, I highly recommend joining. It’s a great group, with fantastic conferences and supportive, friendly members. Writing can be a lonely pasttime and having like-minded people around who you can share with is priceless. SCBWI has regional chapters that have volunteer-run critique groups in various areas. SCBWI also will help people connect with other local writers to form new critique groups.

SCBWI also has an online manuscript critique group in its message boards, where writers can upload their work and whoever’s online can read and offer feedback. The drawback to this approach, rather than an in-person group, is that some writing might not get much feedback, while others could get a lot. I’m not sure why that is, but a couple of the pieces I put up had readers (it shows how many people looked at the page), but not many of them left notes.

If you’re not in a group such as the SCBWI, there are plenty of resources online, but you can also check your local bookstores. Face-to-face crtique groups are often held in bookstores once or twice a month, and they’re often listed in the bookstore’s events. A number of people have shown up to our critique group because they heard about the meeting through the bookstore, not through SCBWI.

A bookstore is always a great place to find local writers. If you can’t find a critique group in your area, you can start one. Ask the bookstore manager if they’d mind you putting up a sign asking local writers if they’d like to join a critique group. (First ask if the manager would mind you holding the group there if you can get it started.) I think most writers are hungry for connections to others who can understand what they’re going through when they write, hungry for people they can bounce ideas off of, share their work with and get support and encouragement on the days inspiration might not be flowing as well as they’d like. Put up a sign at your local bookstore and I’ll bet you’ll have a number of writers respond. It’s also good for networking locally.

As well as the online manuscript critique on the SCBWI message board, the world wide web has lots of other online critique groups. Before I joined SCBWI, I searched Yahoo Groups and found a bunch on children’s writing, even more on fiction writing and even more on just writing. Online, just as in an in-person group, try them out and see if they fit you. If not, move on to another group. From my last post, you want people who are at least as experienced as you but preferably some who are more so you can grow. And you want people who know how to critique, not insult. People tend to be a bit looser online, hiding behind the anonymity of a screenname. But … let me say that again … BUT, only a few people are like that. There are plenty of good online groups out there. So if you find you’re not comfortable with the first one you try, try another one, and another one, until you find a group you’re comfortable with.

Where to find these online groups? I already mentioned Yahoo, but there’s also Google’s groups service. Another option is simply plugging “writer’s critique groups” or just “critique groups” into Google, Ask.com or your other favorite search engine. As well as groups, you’ll find articles on how to start and manage a critique group and how to critique effectively (something you can pass around to members as they join).

Here’s a few pages I found in a Google search. I’m not recommending them, as I haven’t read them thoroughly, but I have skimmed them and they seem like good places to start:

Fiction Factor (for all fiction writers) article on Five Considerations Before Joining a Critique Group. Extends the information in my earlier post.

Underdown.org article on Writer’s Critique Groups and Where to Find Them. At first glance, looks like a comprehensive list with lots of links. Talks about children’s book writing, but could be useful for all writers.

Writing-World.com list of links on Critique Groups and Discussion Groups. Links to articles as well as online groups for horror writers, sci-fi writers, romance writers and everything in between. Plus, links to great sites such as Predators and Editor as well as contests.

Critters Writers Workshop. I hadn’t heard of this group before, but it’s an online community/critique group for sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers, run by the vice president of Science Fiction Writers of America. Membership is required (to the workshop, not SFWA), but it looks like it’s free.

Short Story Group. Online community/critique group for short story and poetry writers.

And, finally, CritiqueGroups.com. Another online community/critique groups site. Membership is required, but it’s free.

Do you know of any others?

If you try any of these, let us know how it goes.

Write On!

Praise for critique groups

Being a member of a good critique group is like gold for up and coming writers. I am blessed with a great group of talented and insightful people who help me see problems or even places in my story or writing that I can do better. They push me to be the best I can be.

 

Critique groups can be in-person or online. Both can work, but what makes the group good is the members.

 

Choosing a critique group is like choosing a tennis partner: You want to be within your peers or those more experienced than you as much as possible. You want to be able to learn from your group, so you don’t want a group that is less experienced than you. Now, some members in your group might be less experienced, and that’s fine. I’m not saying they can’t provide good feedback; they are readers, afterall. However, if all the members of the group are beginners and you’ve got some experience, you might be better served finding a group with members who you can learn more from.

 

Good critiquing is kind of an art in itself. You want to be encouraging, truthful, not negative – definitely not mean — but most of all, useful. I’ve had my share of critiques that aren’t useful. In one online critique group I used to be a member of, one critiquer said she didn’t like my story because she was a grandmother and she couldn’t bare the idea that her grandson wouldn’t want to visit her (as in my story). It was truthful, not negative and not mean, but it wasn’t very useful. As much as grandmother’s might not like it, kids don’t always want to visit their grandparents. And what I was looking for was critiques on the writing, how well the story flows, is it interesting, are the characters believable.

 

I have found that in the group I’m attending now, and, like playing tennis with someone better than you, it is helping to grow my writing faster than if I didn’t have the group. We’re so close to our work that we will often miss things, problems as well as opportunities. A good critique group helps you see these. Sure, you might find them on your own, but that could be in draft four or five. The group can save you time.

 

But what if you’re just a brilliant writer and everyone who has ever read your work thinks it’s great? (That’s all of us, right?) I’m sure there are authors who have been published without ever joining a critique group — never say never — but I’d say they’re few and far between. Maybe you’ll be one of them, but why take the chance? When you send out a manuscript to an agent or editor, you want it to be the best it can be. If you’ve done your research, found the perfect agent, seen him/her speak at some conferences and you know he/she is the agent for you, you want to show off your absolute best work because he/she might not be interested in seeing another submission.

 

That’s why tonight, I’m going to my critique group.

 

What’s your best critique group advice?

 

Write On!

Getting organized

I don’t know if it’s the summer heat, the late nights or the extra day-job hours I worked last week, but getting up early to write just wasn’t happening. I resolve to do better this week, and started off with getting up at 6:30 this morning to get a bunch done. It feels good.

 

But, because there are days, sometimes weeks, that zip by without me getting in some writing, I’ve felt the need for better organization to help me remember the details of the story and help me write it.

 

You’ve probably heard of having — or have — a character bible, or a file somewhere that lists the main attributes of your character. I created one in a Word doc when I was writing the first draft and formulating the characters. When ideas popped in my head, I jotted them down, noting which ones I was using and which I was keeping around just in case. It’s an informal jumble of a doc and not terribly useful anymore.

 

So, now that I’m revising the book, I’m creating a new character bible, this time in Excel. I’ve got a worksheet for every main character and a misc for events or misc characters that pop up. And I had fun color-coding the tabs on each sheet. I don’t really know what the colors represent, but they look fun.

 

The sheets contain discriptions, characterizations, actions, etc., some copied out of the novel itself. Anything I need to help me make sure the character stays the same throughout. If he has blue eyes at the beginning, he can’t suddenly have green eyes in the middle. Clicking on his Excel sheet is much faster than trying to find his description in 200+ pages of novel.

 

Now that I’m going back through my novel, I’m noticing things at the beginning that I had set up to recur throughout or later in the book, but somewhere along the lines, after a hiatus, they had been forgotten. Now, I’m jotted those down too, in things-to-do-in-the-revision notes and in my bible.

 

To help save me time, as time is limited between the day-job, housework and life in general, I’ve also created a Words Excel file. Here, I’m collecting lists of useful words that I need often. For example, walking or looking are things a character will probably do a lot in a book, but good writing is about using the word that best describes the way he walked or looked. The problem is that, at 6 in the morning, or during a day-job lunch hour as you write keeping one eye on your watch, the most creative words might not come to you. That’s fine. That’s what revision is for. But having a list of words you can pluck from is helpful, especially words that fit your story or your character. It’s like having a thesaurus that only gives you the words that will work for you.

 

Of course, you could just search the thesaurus every time, but sometimes, you might have to search a couple times to find the right word, taking up precious time. But if you’ve found this word once before and recorded it in an Excel file, or however you like to get organized, you can look it up again easily and quickly when you need it again later in the novel.

 

For example, in my novel, I’ve got a character who tends to fight a lot. Look up “fight” in the thesaurus, and you get a bunch of words like scrap, tussle, battle. But if you need words the characters might say as they threaten each other, you’ve got to look up a word like “pulverize,” which gets you a few more words, like demolish, destroy, annihilate. But then you need words for the fight itself, so you look up “punch”, and you  get box, smack, swat. Not all these words will work for a middle-grade novel in the point of view of an 11-year-old boy. So, after I’ve done these searches once, I can record all the words pertaining to fighting that will fit my story and characters. Now, when he has another fight in 20 pages, I’ve already got a bunch of words at my finger tips.

 

You can do the same for “walked”, recording strut, stumble, stroll, and “looked”, recording glimpsed, glared, leered, ogled. How many times do you write, “character A walked to the door”. Now, you can quickly and easily make it more creative, “character A strolled to the entryway” (ok, not brilliant, but you get the idea).

 

And you can use Excel’s sorting tool to put all the words in alphabetical order for quick browsing.

 

I don’t know if these tools will work for you, but I’ve found them useful, and hope you will to.

 

What do you do to stay organized with your writing?

 

Write On!

Why do we write

Literary agent Nathan Bransford put up a post last week posing a hypothetical question (click here for the post): If someone could tell you the future, would you want to know if you will be published, and if you found out you wouldn’t, would you still write?

 

The post got a lot of people talking, 186 and counting, according to Bransford in a later post (click here for that post). And in that later post, Bransford answered one commentor’s suggestion that writers want an agent to tell us whether we’re any good or if we should just pack it all in. Bransford’s answer is a great one, I think: “Who knows, anyway?” (He gives a couple other answers too, but you should read the post. It’s good. In fact, the whole blog is good.)

 

Bransford, while a great agent and very knowledgeable, I’m sure, is one person, and his likes and dislikes are very different from yours and mine. Everyone’s are. I hate licorice and love mushrooms, but my husband is the opposite.

 

So, no one person can read another person’s work and say, “You’ll never get published.” (Now, sure, there are some things that will help make that a reality, like bad grammar and spelling. Writing is a skill and an art. It needs to be nurtured, practiced, perfected — as much as it ever can be perfected, of course — and writing shouldn’t be sent out to agents, editors, etc., until it’s ready.) If the work doesn’t interest this one agent or editor, it might interest another.

 

Remember, even the most successful writers were rejected before they got published — often plenty of times. In his “On Writing” book, Stephen King describes the 3-inch nail where he used to hang his rejection letters. The nail was completely filled before he got his first acceptance. Alice Sebold’s first book was rejected roundly, and it wasn’t until “Lovely Bones” became a hit that her first book was published. And even the giant among children’s novels, “Harry Potter,” was rejected before someone asked to see the whole manuscript.

 

Who knows if any of these rejectors thought, “This guy/gal will never get published.” The point is, they didn’t know. All they knew is, the work/the writing didn’t speak to them enough for them to think it was a viable business proposition for them — but that doesn’t mean it would’t be for someone else.

 

My answer to Nathan Bransford’s hypothetical question was that if I had to be told whether I had the stuff to be published and I was told no, I would still write, because writing is more than getting published. Writing is a journey, something us writers have a need to do, a desire to do. The getting published part is a fabulous bonus. The getting paid part and making a living off it part is a dream come true.

 

But the best part, is when you’re sitting in front of your computer/notebook and the whole world around you has disappeared, replaced with the characters in a new world formed in your head, and you get to spend a few minutes, hours, afternoon, whatever, living in their world, creating, imagining. That’s the best part.

 

What do you think?

 

Write On!

Chapters for a children’s book

When I was writing my middle-grade novel, I didn’t pay much attention to page counts and chapter length. Mainly, chapters were broken up by scenes.

 

But during my hiatus — after getting to The End — I finished reading “Barkbelly” by Cat Weatherill and was amazed at how short her chapters were and how many she had: most chapters have only 2 to 3 pages, 5 seemed to be a max, and the book has 63 chapters in a total of 309 pages.

 

A quick look at some of the other books on my shelf and she seems to be the exception: The sixth Harry Potter book has 30 chapters, the first of which is 18 pages, with a total 652 pages; “The Lightning Thief,” the first in the Percy Jackson series, has 22 chapters and the first is 15 pages with a total 375 pages; “Nightmare Academy” has 17 chapters, the first being 21 pages with a total 310 pages. “Eragon” has 59 chapters, the first only 3 pages, the second 10, for a total of 497 pages.

 

What does this mean? Well, first and foremost, do what’s right for the story. But second, feel free to experiment.

 

“Barkbelly” got me thinking about chapter breaks in a new way. Not that I think I have to limit chapters to five pages, but that I don’t have to use them to show a change in a scene. In ”Lightning Thief,” Rick Riordan often changed the scene in the middle of a chapter and started a new chapter in the middle of a scene — but when something really exciting was happening. It reminded me of my days studying screenwriting, especially for the TV. TV shows are really formulaic — even more than you think. But one thing they all have in common is placing a major plot turning point or exciting moment right before the commercial break to ensure their audience will stay on that channel.

 

Books, I would say especially children’s books, should do the same. “Barkbelly” is wonderfully written and very sweet, but it’s a simple story that intrigues because of the oddness of the characters and situations more than the action. Short chapters, I suspect, keep young readers interested and feeling as though they’re moving forward. Weatherill split her chapters by scene breaks, mostly, so her scenes are short, but she could have had multiple scenes in chapters (in a few cases she does, but then the scene is only a few paragraphs showing a transition between the last scene and the next).

 

Following Riordan’s method of ending the scenes at WOW parts, right in the thick of the action, keeps readers coming back to find out what will happen in the rest of the scene, much less the rest of the book.

 

As readers, we often think chapters are good stopping places, be it bedtime or whatever. Parents might tell their kids they can read one or two chapters before they go to bed. Having the ends of those chapters right in the middle of the action practically guarantees that readers won’t want to put the book down, and if they do, it’ll be all they think about until they pick up the book again.

 

Weatherill kept her chapters short perhaps recognizing that kids have short attention spans and by finishing a chapter, they feel invested in a book and as though they have accomplished something. Plus, she ended some chapters with a harbinger: “If he had known about the shock he would receive the next morning, he wouldn’t have slept at all” ends chapter 54. Not for use when you’re writing in the protagonist’s point of view, of course.

 

I had one or two chapter breaks like Riordan’s in my novel, but most were scene changes, not unlike Weatherill’s but with much longer scenes. During my revision now, I’m looking at these differently. When I typed The End, I had 20 chapters and about 206 pages. I’ve already found some interesting places to split the long scenes in early chapters and have added those as chapter breaks. I’m probably at about 24 chapters now and I’m only on chapter 8, which used to be in the middle of chapter 6. I don’t have any chapter quota I feel I have to hit. My goal is merely to make sure I have the most exciting chapter break possible.

 

How do you determine when to break for a new chapter?

 

Write On!

Revising from notes

At my critique group a couple of weeks ago, someone asked me what I wanted to achieve in my revision of my middle-grade novel, if I had specific things I knew I wanted to do.

 

During my break, I had thought about this a lot — anxious to start working on the novel again and get back into that world. But even before I had finished the book, I had plans of what I wanted to do when I got around to the revision.

 

When I started writing the novel, I would revise as I went, a habit brought over from two things: a) being an editor in my day-job, and b) being used to writing shorter pieces, short stories, articles, etc. But the problem was, I found that I wasn’t getting anywhere. I spent six months, probably, writing and revising the first three chapters (there were originally six, maybe seven chapters that got condensed down to the first three). On the one hand, doing that early on, I think, helped me get a good grasp of the characters and the foundation of the story. I wrote so many scenes and so much background that ended up getting cut, but they were still in the life of my protagonist, they still shaped his character, and because I know they happened, I know him so much better.

 

However, because I wasn’t moving on, I was getting frustrated. So one day, I decided to finally follow my husband’s advice — he had been telling me to stop revising and just move forward for ages; why don’t we listen? — and just get to the end of the story. Revision would come later.

 

The novel moved much faster after that, and I felt much more freed creatively to just let the words flow and not worry too much if they weren’t the right words. Somewhere in the middle, I realized I had gone astray a bit with the plot and needed to go back and fix some things so that new things would make sense.

 

I contemplated doing those revision immediately but finally decided against it. I didn’t want to get caught in that cycle again. I was on a roll, and I just wanted to get to The End. So, I instead made notes, lots of notes, for what I had to do when I started to revise.

 

Those notes are now my bible. And as I’m revising back at the beginning, I’m seeing little details that I had added with the plan of having them pay off later, little harbingers of things to come. Only they were dropped somewhere along the line, forgotten in one of those times when I took a hiatus from writing the novel. (Another good reason to write every day, or as close to it as possible.) And those harbingers are going into my notes now too, so I can now have them pay off when I get further into the book.

 

What are you trying to achieve when you’re revising?

 

Write On!

Getting to the point

Writer’s Digest’s Maria Schneider put up an informative post the other day about things she heard at when she accompanied the magazine’s contest winners on their New York agent meets (lucky them). I won’t plagarize her information here, but one caught my eye for further review: The elevator pitch, be able to sum up your story in two minutes.

 

In screenwriting, they call this a log line, and it would really be even less than two minutes. It should be at the most two sentences — two short sentences.

 

I always found this hard, and I wasn’t the only one. Hollywood seminars have entire sections designed to help aspiring screenwriters write their best log line.

 

I think one of the difficulties for us authors — be it of a novel or screenplay — is that we don’t see our stories as just the main arc that runs from beginning to end. We see our stories as the main arc, plus all the emotions and choices our characters make, plus all the difficulties they get into, plus … etc., etc. Ask us to describe all that in a couple sentences, and our brain goes, huh?

 

But Maria Schneider is right. When we’re at conferences, retreats, etc., we need to be able to succinctly and confidently say, “My novel is about …” and not take up so long that the agent/editor standing in front of us starts looking at her/his watch.

 

And we should know it by heart. I was in this situation once, and my brain went blank, completely blank. I couldn’t remember my main character’s name much less what the story was about. I got there in the end, but I looked pretty embarassing. Believe me, you don’t want to be there.

 

The thing is, we can trim down our story to a few sentences, because every story has a main story, and that’s what you want to focus on. Our protagonist has a need, an event that has flamed that need, and a barrier he/she must get through to achieve that need. I’m simplifying of course, but that’s the point.  (Note, a synopsis is longer.)

 

Writing your elevator pitch is an interesting and useful exercise for every author to do to make sure your writing is not trying to be too much, not trying to tell too many stories in one.

 

Another reason it’s a good exercise is that it forces you to choose just the right words to say what you want to say, to describe your work, using the least amount of words as possible. And that’s something that’s good for our writing in general. In your novel, screenplay, article, whatever, every word should add something to the story. It should say something about plot or character. Every Word! (Sure, “and” and “the” might not, but the words around them should.) If you’re writing a picture book, this is even more important.

 

So, get out a notebook, your computer, whatever you use to write, and formulate the log line for your novel or screenplay, or whatever you’re working on. It’s more difficult than it seems — because you also want it to intrigue, impress, tease, make the reader want to know more — but it’ll be worth it. You don’t have to get the perfect log line in one sitting; most don’t. But while you’re writing your bigger piece, working on your log line will help you stay on track as well as editing to be efficient with words. And when you’re ready to sell your work, you’ll be well on your way.

 

Let me know how you do.

 

Write On!

Reading to write

I’m back on the novel. Last week was still really busy, but I jumped into the rewrite of my novel anyway. Time to start waking up at 6 am again! New goal: Finish the rewrite by November.

 

I’ve also made strides with the Sir Newton Color Me Florida book. Drawings are completed and fixed up in the computer. All that’s left is finishing the layout and final editing.

 

During my novel hiatus, I still worked on it through reading. Any time I’ve been stuck in my writing, reading has helped bring me back. The more you read, the rhythm of the story, pacing, dialog — it seeps into your brain like osmosis. To get you in the mood — so to speak — for your own work, read books that fit what you’re writing. If you’re writing a fantasy, read a fantasy. If you’re writing in first-person, read a book that’s written in first-person. Also, read what’s hot, what your target audience is reading.

 

How can you find the best books in your area? Librarians are a great place to start. They’ll be able to tell you which books kids are checking out the most. The message board on the SCBWI website is a good source too, if you’re a member. You can also try the good old Internet. I found a great link for this while I was doing some research yesterday: A message thread on Amazon detailing the best books to get middle grade boys to read. (Click here to read the thread. Make sure to read the post from Julie M. Effertz.) Write down these books, and that’s your must-read list.

 

What books are you reading right now? What’s on your must-read list?

 

Write On!