Start spreading the news...I signed up for SCBWI's New York Conference. It's my first time! I even dropped the big bucks for the pre-conference events. I'm excited to say the least. And nervous. And pumped. And did I mention nervous?
Mo Willems will be there. And Jane Yolen. And Lois Lowry (!!!) Yowza!
I'm trying to decide what story to take for the intensives. It's a little bit like a Cinderella story. You feel like you're dressed in rags, but you know the right dress is out there if only your fairy godmother would come along and whoosh it into existence. Except then you realize there is no such thing as a fairy godmother, and you've got to whoose that story up yourself. Gaccck!
If you're going, let me know. I'd love to meet you. I should be easy to spot. I'll be the one in the homemade ballgown, hoping to find my Prince Charming!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
How Do You Know When A Story Just Won't Work?
I've seen this pop up on blogs occassionally, so I know there's some advice out there somewhere. I have a story...the robot story, you may remember from my last blog...that seems to get worse with every rewrite. Most of my stuff gets better with revision, but this one just can't find a voice. I'm thinking I need to retire it. My critique group suggested as much at my last face-to-face.
So how do you know when to give a story a peaceful burial? It's hard for this one, because I'm emotionally vested. It was my first story, and the one my group loved at first. I don't know why it's lost its way. Unfortunately, I've sent it in to be critiqued at the Missouri conference, so I'll have to resurrect it one more time post-mortem. I wish I had sent another one, but in a moment of weakness, I thought it was worth the CPR.
There is one more life-saving maneuver to try. I think I'll rewrite it in first person, andsee what comes out. Maybe Alberta (or Juliet as she was called previously...I got criticized for changing the name, too!), wants to tell the story herself. I hope she can help, because I've got the funeral home on speed dial.
So how do you know when to give a story a peaceful burial? It's hard for this one, because I'm emotionally vested. It was my first story, and the one my group loved at first. I don't know why it's lost its way. Unfortunately, I've sent it in to be critiqued at the Missouri conference, so I'll have to resurrect it one more time post-mortem. I wish I had sent another one, but in a moment of weakness, I thought it was worth the CPR.
There is one more life-saving maneuver to try. I think I'll rewrite it in first person, andsee what comes out. Maybe Alberta (or Juliet as she was called previously...I got criticized for changing the name, too!), wants to tell the story herself. I hope she can help, because I've got the funeral home on speed dial.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Taking it to the Next Level
I've noticed a trend in my early drafts, and my critique partners have as well. While I am a fan of "quiet humor," it seems that I could improve my writing by taking it to the next level. In other words, I need to ramp it up a bit and open my mind up to the possibilities.
For example, one of my earliest stories, and one that is being reworked in light of my recent conferences and manuscript exchanges, is about a girl who builds a robot to tie her shoelaces. She is "a dreamer" I say at the beginning, but as a critique friend noticed, she really doesn't do anything outside of her house to move the plot along. Great insight. There are so many wierd and wacky things she could do to teach her robot how to tie laces, but I haven't opened that world up to her. I forget sometimes that kids are much more open to the strange and fantastic. I may think it is unusual to go to a ballet about shoelaces, but a child wouldn't. (Hmmmm...that gives me an idea!)
So that's my goal over the next few weeks. Ramp it up. Take it to the next level. Stretch those brain cells. You have a plot, now dream!
For example, one of my earliest stories, and one that is being reworked in light of my recent conferences and manuscript exchanges, is about a girl who builds a robot to tie her shoelaces. She is "a dreamer" I say at the beginning, but as a critique friend noticed, she really doesn't do anything outside of her house to move the plot along. Great insight. There are so many wierd and wacky things she could do to teach her robot how to tie laces, but I haven't opened that world up to her. I forget sometimes that kids are much more open to the strange and fantastic. I may think it is unusual to go to a ballet about shoelaces, but a child wouldn't. (Hmmmm...that gives me an idea!)
So that's my goal over the next few weeks. Ramp it up. Take it to the next level. Stretch those brain cells. You have a plot, now dream!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Too Sad for Words
I saw an article in the New York Times today that made me sad, sad, sad. See "Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children" at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/us/08picture.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1.
This article predicted the death of the picture book, because parents feel that they do not challenge their children enough. Evidently, five year-olds are being persuaded to read Harry Potter instead of Curious George these days.
I am sort of left speechless. Of course, I have stakes in this argument, being a picture book writer wanna-be, but as a parent, I'm also confused and astounded that picture books are deemed less appropriate for budding readers than chapter books.
I have three comments:
1) The article raises the point that picture books can have more complicated vocabulary than a chapter book. YES! The pictures can paint a definition of a word easier and perhaps better than a text-filled chapter book can through its context alone. I just read a book called Violet the Pilot with my daughter this weekend. It has big words out the wazoo. My five-year old daughter had to ask for help reading them. Good for Violet.
2) The article did not discuss libraries. Only booksellers. I can understand why picture books are lanquishing in bookstores. A $16.00-$18.00 book is a hard sell to parents strapped for cash in this economy. (And it raised the issue of lowering prices on picture books. Maybe it's time...) But what about libraries? I often use them as my go-to source for picture books when I can't fork out the dough for a picture book to stay in our home collection. Picture books will always have a home there (of course, there's the funding issue for libraries as well...).
3) What about the graphic novel? This type of book has seen a huge jump in sells the past couple of years. Who are these readers? Maybe they are the wee ones who are pushed out of picture books when they are three, yet longing to immerse themselves in a visual as well as semantic world? The industry shows that these are popular books. Pictures sell. Maybe the industry should take another look at an almost dead genre: the picture storybook. Publishers have pared down picture books so much (many won't even look at anything over 500 words), maybe parents are feeling guilty about picking up such an brief story. Flesh out a few of those books...see if parents return to them. You don't have to read the whole story in a night. Break it up, or let the kids soak it up by themselves. Let it be their guilty pleasure.
4) Okay, I have four points, and could probably think of more if I sat here long enough. Stop growing kids up too fast! If we start chapter books when they are 4, then they move to MG by the time they are 6, then it's on to YA when they are 9 or 10. Do you know how hard it is to find a YA with suitable content for a 9 year-old? It's hard. My 9 year-old son is an amazing reader, but I'm not ready for him to pick up YA yet. And I will still let him pick up the occassional picture book because he enjoys them, and because many of them are just as challenging to the creative half of his brain as MG fiction.
If you are a writer or a parent who cares about picture books, spread the word about this article. Let the industry know that the picture book is not dead. It just needs some believers.
This article predicted the death of the picture book, because parents feel that they do not challenge their children enough. Evidently, five year-olds are being persuaded to read Harry Potter instead of Curious George these days.
I am sort of left speechless. Of course, I have stakes in this argument, being a picture book writer wanna-be, but as a parent, I'm also confused and astounded that picture books are deemed less appropriate for budding readers than chapter books.
I have three comments:
1) The article raises the point that picture books can have more complicated vocabulary than a chapter book. YES! The pictures can paint a definition of a word easier and perhaps better than a text-filled chapter book can through its context alone. I just read a book called Violet the Pilot with my daughter this weekend. It has big words out the wazoo. My five-year old daughter had to ask for help reading them. Good for Violet.
2) The article did not discuss libraries. Only booksellers. I can understand why picture books are lanquishing in bookstores. A $16.00-$18.00 book is a hard sell to parents strapped for cash in this economy. (And it raised the issue of lowering prices on picture books. Maybe it's time...) But what about libraries? I often use them as my go-to source for picture books when I can't fork out the dough for a picture book to stay in our home collection. Picture books will always have a home there (of course, there's the funding issue for libraries as well...).
3) What about the graphic novel? This type of book has seen a huge jump in sells the past couple of years. Who are these readers? Maybe they are the wee ones who are pushed out of picture books when they are three, yet longing to immerse themselves in a visual as well as semantic world? The industry shows that these are popular books. Pictures sell. Maybe the industry should take another look at an almost dead genre: the picture storybook. Publishers have pared down picture books so much (many won't even look at anything over 500 words), maybe parents are feeling guilty about picking up such an brief story. Flesh out a few of those books...see if parents return to them. You don't have to read the whole story in a night. Break it up, or let the kids soak it up by themselves. Let it be their guilty pleasure.
4) Okay, I have four points, and could probably think of more if I sat here long enough. Stop growing kids up too fast! If we start chapter books when they are 4, then they move to MG by the time they are 6, then it's on to YA when they are 9 or 10. Do you know how hard it is to find a YA with suitable content for a 9 year-old? It's hard. My 9 year-old son is an amazing reader, but I'm not ready for him to pick up YA yet. And I will still let him pick up the occassional picture book because he enjoys them, and because many of them are just as challenging to the creative half of his brain as MG fiction.
If you are a writer or a parent who cares about picture books, spread the word about this article. Let the industry know that the picture book is not dead. It just needs some believers.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Crawling Up through the Inferno
I told my husband the other day that writing felt like travelling through the levels of Dante's Inferno (okay, minus the eternal and unrelenting punishments). You start at the bottom, the 9th level, and slowly work your way up to the limbo stage...waiting perpetually for that call into the promised land of publication. But the weird thing is, you don't see it that way at the beginning...
When I first started submitting, it felt like a golden time. You send your baby into the void and know that someone, somewhere will think it's the best piece of literature since Shakespeare. You are blissfully unaware of the purgatory that awaits. Then, the first rejection comes. Okay, we still have some pieces out. We'll get it next time. Then the next rejection, then the next.
Before you know it, you've racked up quite a collection. You're thinking you won't need to buy wrapping paper next year. Then you realize it. You're at the bottom of the pit. You've got to scratch your way to the top. It won't be easy. Who were we trying to fool? Why did we think a little revision here, a fixed typo there, could get the job done?
I don't know what level I'm at now. I'm not a 9, but I don't think that I've reached Limbo yet. Maybe I'll give myself a 4. I've learned a ton, but there's a few pieces of the puzzle still out there. I hope they're not hard to find...maybe just hiding out under the couch.
When I first started submitting, it felt like a golden time. You send your baby into the void and know that someone, somewhere will think it's the best piece of literature since Shakespeare. You are blissfully unaware of the purgatory that awaits. Then, the first rejection comes. Okay, we still have some pieces out. We'll get it next time. Then the next rejection, then the next.
Before you know it, you've racked up quite a collection. You're thinking you won't need to buy wrapping paper next year. Then you realize it. You're at the bottom of the pit. You've got to scratch your way to the top. It won't be easy. Who were we trying to fool? Why did we think a little revision here, a fixed typo there, could get the job done?
I don't know what level I'm at now. I'm not a 9, but I don't think that I've reached Limbo yet. Maybe I'll give myself a 4. I've learned a ton, but there's a few pieces of the puzzle still out there. I hope they're not hard to find...maybe just hiding out under the couch.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Conference...with Benefits
One of the best things I get from going to conferences (besides the information and critique sessions with real live agents, editors and writers) is my growing number of contacts.
The KS conference was quite a coup in terms of the great friends I made. In the weeks since the conference, I have joined an online critique group for picture book writers; I have established a relationship with another budding critique group for short story writers, and I talk regularly with new writer friends around the midwest.
I was debating whether to attend the MO conference because of its close proximity to the KS and national conference in NY (which I am going to for the first time...yikes!), but I decided to give it a go again this year primarily because of my wonderful experience at the KS conference. I'm sure I'll see some of my friends there, and I hope to make new ones.
If you are an aspiring writer and have ever wondered whether it's worth your time to go to a conference, then wonder no longer. Go! Go! Go!
The KS conference was quite a coup in terms of the great friends I made. In the weeks since the conference, I have joined an online critique group for picture book writers; I have established a relationship with another budding critique group for short story writers, and I talk regularly with new writer friends around the midwest.
I was debating whether to attend the MO conference because of its close proximity to the KS and national conference in NY (which I am going to for the first time...yikes!), but I decided to give it a go again this year primarily because of my wonderful experience at the KS conference. I'm sure I'll see some of my friends there, and I hope to make new ones.
If you are an aspiring writer and have ever wondered whether it's worth your time to go to a conference, then wonder no longer. Go! Go! Go!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Tomorrow the World! (Today the Toilet Bowl)
If you're like me, you get to a place where only a good toilet-scrubbing can help. I wish I meant this metaphorically, but I don't. I literally mean that scrubbing the toilets is the only thing that can make me feel better.
We all have a to-do list a mile long, right? When my list gets so long my brain starts sizzling, I head for the toilet brush. It seems that a good 'ole house-cleaning does wonders for my creative, spiritual, emotional (add whatever physio-psych word you want to add here) life. My mother used to wake up at 5:00 and vacuum the house. I thought it was crazy and a sure sign that I would have to institutionalize her later in life (or myself due to lack of sleep in my growth years), but now I kind of get it. She needed to clear those cobwebs first thing in the morning, or she couldn't focus the rest of the day.
I find the same is true for me now. Maybe it's sign that I'm older. I can't concentrate on too many things at once. Then again, maybe cleanliness does lead to godliness, or at least a decent approximation of maturity. Whatever the reason, I gladly pick up that toilet brush and scrub away.
We all have a to-do list a mile long, right? When my list gets so long my brain starts sizzling, I head for the toilet brush. It seems that a good 'ole house-cleaning does wonders for my creative, spiritual, emotional (add whatever physio-psych word you want to add here) life. My mother used to wake up at 5:00 and vacuum the house. I thought it was crazy and a sure sign that I would have to institutionalize her later in life (or myself due to lack of sleep in my growth years), but now I kind of get it. She needed to clear those cobwebs first thing in the morning, or she couldn't focus the rest of the day.
I find the same is true for me now. Maybe it's sign that I'm older. I can't concentrate on too many things at once. Then again, maybe cleanliness does lead to godliness, or at least a decent approximation of maturity. Whatever the reason, I gladly pick up that toilet brush and scrub away.
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