The Guardian in the UK has a post, “10 Rules for Writing Fiction.” In it they asked authors for their 10 rules, so the compilation is over 1o0. I limited myself to only quoting 10 here. Elmore Leonard: “if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” Diana Athill: “Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the…
Rigidly enforce your boundaries. If you don’t maintain your schedule and environment, it will not be maintained. If you need to write, make sure you write. For my daughter, I have marbles on my desk. I move a marble every 100 words. She knows when all the marbles have been moved I will be available.…
I attended FenCon 2019 and went to a couple of panels by science fiction and fantasy authors that I thought had useful information for writers. Panelists Shana Swenson, 20 books published Mel White, NF and fiction Paul Black, 7 books Jan S. Gephardt, author/illustrator Patrice Sarath, 5 novels Tex Thompson Distractions are related to priorities. Make…
Years ago I went to a conference and attended a session on poetry editing. I think that quite a few of these tips are relevant to the picture book market. One point that relates back to the four exercises I covered earlier, is “Are you being original in your phrases and images? Avoid using clichés!”
Years ago I attended a Writer’s Workshop at a conference. There are four exercises that a writing group of 20 years has found useful. I thought they were interesting. For the Genre Bending exercise, I was given eccentric wizard and steampunk Wild West. Those were both within my powers of imagination and I tried to…
One of my favorite authors is the husband-wife team of Ilona Andrews. Several years ago I attended a writing workshop they held. Writer’s Workshop: Beginnings Includes things like Simple exercise: Picture parked police car by character’s home. The character is walking home and sees car. What is the character going to do? Discussion of internal…
One helpful suggestion for picture book authors is to create a storyboard of the book to see how the book would be read. Basically you have sixteen pages, folded. Cut three at the beginning and one at the end for paste outs (editor/publisher stuff). That means you have 28 pages of writing. The editor who…
While learning Bahasa Malaysia, I have discovered that some birds are metaphors in their language. The children’s dictionary says “owl” in English, for example, but the Malaysian translation is two words: XX bird. Owl is “ghost bird” literally. What would it mean to be a ghost bird? What does a ghost bird do that other…
Language Learning I am in the process of learning Bahasa Malaysia. I don’t live in Malaysia. I have only visited once, for two weeks. I don’t know if I will ever be able to return. Despite that, even before my trip, I was determined to learn the language. I visited the state of Penang. The…
Sometimes discouragement comes in the midst of celebration. Re-reading something I wrote I was delighted with how good it was. Then I thought how much I am enjoying this journey into children’s book creation and publishing. After that, however, I hit a bump. I thought “why?” I wondered if it was worth it. It may…
