Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The check's in the mail!

I opened the mailbox today and received a nice surprise-- a check from Wee Ones magazine for a story that's being published in their May edition. The story is called "What's in a Name," and I wrote it more than two years ago. I'll post the link to it when the new edition is up.

Friday, April 25, 2008

What a great week!

I haven't had this productive of a week in a long time, at least when it comes to my writing. How wonderful to be relatively free of outside commitments for a change! I did interviews for a "Gallant Kids" feature for Highlights and wrote the article today, I wrote another Highlights non-fiction article based on an interview I did a year ago, and I finished tweaking a humorous picture book on the same topic. A great week... yay!

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Copyediting for Stories for Children magazine,

For the next couple of months, I'm helping Stories for Children online magazine with copyediting, until they find someone who can do the job longterm. It was a lot of fun proofreading the different stories and articles this morning. There are so many talented children's writers! And SFC is an excellent online magazine for children, as well as a great market for writers. Here's a link to their site: www.storiesforchildren.tripod.com.
One error I noticed in two separate stories, misusing the word "laid" for "lay." I'll try to clear up the confusion in my website's "Writing Tip of the Month." The site is www.secondsetofeyes.com.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

"My Beautiful Mommy"

This is a link to a self-published book that Newsweek is giving a lot of attention to: My Beautiful Mommy. It's written by a plastic surgeon for kids whose moms who are getting boob jobs and tummy tucks. My own tummy is feeling pretty nauseated right now ... As Editorial Anonymous says, the book makes you feel like sparkly pink spiders are crawling on your skin.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/132536

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Tag, you're it!

I was tagged by Rachel.
Here are my sentences:
"He could no more explain why his life had turned bad than he could explain why his life had been so good up to that point. Did he choose to grow up in a stable family? Did he have control over where he was born, when he was born, or to whom he was born?"
This is from A Grace Disguised, How the Soul Grows Through Loss, by Jerry Sittser.
(It's excellent by the way.)

SCBWI spring conference

Angelle Pilkington, an editor with the Penguin imprint Puffin Speak, spoke about the reasons 90 percent of "slush pile" manuscripts are rejected outright.

Top 5 Reasons:

  1. It doesn’t fit the list. For example, it’s too institutional for paperback or too similar to what’s already on the list. That’s why it’s so important for writers to do their research first. Check Publishers Marketplace online on a regular basis because that gives clues to what an editor wants.
  2. There’s too much like what you’ve written already out in the market.
  3. There’s no hook—no commercial appeal. It must have marketing/promotional potential. You should be able to sum your book up in a sentence that’s going to grab people, especially in paperback. It needs broad appeal.
  4. Characterization doesn’t have enough depth. Characters must grow, and must have appeal. They must be age appropriate and have natural dialogue.
  5. The writing just isn’t there. Don’t have time to mentor and guide a writer even if the story itself has potential.
Nothing she said was startling, but I still thought this was a helpful list.

I cleared my whole day (well, practically the whole day) for writing. I finished writing the first draft of a fact-based nature picture book that's been in the making for a year. I conducted interviews last April, so it feels wonderful to have finally used that information. I plan to do a separate, and very different, version for a Highlights non-fiction article.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

SCBWI spring conference



I'm going to post some notes from the editors' speeches at the Orange County SCBWI conference last week in Temecula. I'll start with an excellent talk by Stacy Cantor, editor with Walker Books for Young Readers.
She focused on picture books, and discussed how essential it is, in a story of 500 words or fewer, to make sure each one is exactly the right word. She had some fun examples from the first draft of Where the Wild Things Are, which was originally called Where the Wild Horses Are. What a powerful change just in that single word in the title (prompted, I believe, by Maurice Sendak's inability to draw horses. But whatever the reason, it changed the whole tone of the story.)
Cantor also handed out all of the drafts of and editorial notes for a charming picture book called Chicks and Salsa, written by Aaron Reynolds and published by Bloomsbury. It was a fascinating peek into the working relationship between an author and an editor, as well as a lesson about how critical revision is.
Finally, she listed five "rules" for picture books:
  1. If you’re going to use repetition, make sure it’s there for a good reason and doesn’t talk down to your readers.
  2. Introduce your main character and main conflict right from the beginning.
  3. Each sentence you write must, in a very clear way, further the story.
  4. With every step and with every word, you must be thinking about your PB illustrations. They should tell about 50 percent of the story.
  5. They must be kept in childlike situations. Be thinking like a child and never forget who your audience is. What concerns do they have? What feelings do they have?
These are all fairly basic points, but ones that picture book writers ignore often. The next time I revise a PB text, I plan to go through each of these points to make sure I've adhered to them.

Friday, April 4, 2008

"Lets Play Two"



Poor Ernie Banks. The statue designed as a tribute to him and his famous slogan became infamous immediately for what it was lacking: an apostrophe.

The Cubs quickly fixed the error, thanks to all the amateur copyeditors out there.