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Last week, after welcoming my new grandson into the world, I brought my 22 month old grand-daughter back to our house for a couple days. Of course – of course! – I took her to story time at our local library. Baby – Toddler Story Time If you want to write literature for the youngest, [...]
Career Evaluations and Study of the Market I rarely post personal things, but good news is made to be shared. This story begins a couple years ago when I was looking at what I was writing and realized I’d like to also write something about nature. I started looking for picture book ideas on nature [...]
Conflict, the type that motivates and moves a plot, comes from four sources. Yesterday, an editor asked for revisions on a very short piece which was meant for a kindergarten or first grade audience. The editor didn’t like the competitiveness between siblings. But when she contemplated taking out that conflict, she correctly understood that the [...]
Take a Reading Day Standard advice: read what you want to write. If you want to write a novel, then read mysteries or thrillers or teen or easy readers or whatever genre you want to write. Last week, I took a reading day and had great fun. I often advise people to read
I’ve taken a look at my statistics and here’s the top posts on Fiction Notes for 2009, in order of popularity. Five of these are the first page of a series of posts on a certain topic. The other five are individual posts. Novel Writing. 30 Days to a Stronger Novel. 30 one-minute creative writing [...]
Do you ever type up someone else’s picture book or a chapter from someone else’s book? I do. I find that just reading a selection, even reading aloud, doesn’t
I am researching competition for a picture book idea. I know there are topics with very stiff competition and I want to avoid anything similar to what has already been done. But this time, I am also researching how
The 33 page picture book No, there are no 33-page picture books. Not yet. At a recent conference, though, I had a discussion about why picture books are usually 32 pages. One person suggested
Stories You Might Find Interesting Janni talks about her revision process. I’m featured on the Cuppa Jolie Blog in conjunction with the Summer Revision Smackdown. Have you heard this? Dave Eggers has taken Maurice Sendak’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are and has written a 300+ page novel! It went from 324 words to 324 [...]
7 Children’s Picture Book Manuscripts in 7 Days I’m taking the 7 in 7 picture book challenge. Report on 7 in 7 for the first week of May, 2009 Overall: This was an interesting exercise that I’d like to repeat in a slower month, not May. Why is the Nanowrimo in November and this had [...]
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