Tag: author advice

Pulling Back the Covers

Leave a comment

You need to check out Kate Hart’s post about YA covers from 2011. Awesome graphics and information.

She also takes a good look at minority representation on covers. Not surprisingly, there’s barely any. Also:

“But hey! Only about 6.6% of our girls appear to be dead this year! Which is… still more than our POC representation! But only 1% are actively drowning! So… that’s… kind of a win?”

Curious to see if dead girls still dominate in 2012 and 2013. And can filigree maintain its hold as hottest cover design element?

Thanks to Kate for such an awesome resource!

Have Fun and Be Cool at Bookstore Events

Leave a comment

For most people, public speaking is scary. Everyone’s watching you and listening to you. If you’re giving a reading, you’re also sharing your creative work, which can be intensely personal (even if the story has nothing to do with your actual life). And you’re supposed to read for an hour and then answer questions about yourself? Who invented this kind of torture?

Fortunately, Jennifer Laughran looks at what makes a successful bookstore event. Hint: it’s not reading for an hour. One part I liked:

“Tip #6: Visual aids raise interest level. Kids especially love to see visual aids. I know one prolific author who has ALL his jackets taped together and unfurls them like a scroll and has kids hold it up – it stretches across the room! People think it is cool if you show off all the book jackets from around the world or early versions of book jackets that didn’t make it, or a funny story you wrote as a kid, or a writing notebook with a thousand cross-outs in it, or your own embarrassing childhood photo, the menu from the restaurant that inspired the book, or whatever. People love “behind the scenes” stuff and “making of” stuff, and kids love knowing that fancy published authors were just kids like them once upon a time.”

I love all the ideas here that aren’t related to you reading a selection of your book. That’s important, but I think these “behind the scenes” looks at the life of an author and the creation of the book. Once I attended a reading by Shannon Hale and for the most part, she talked about how she became a writer. She even showed us a giant roll of rejection letters she’d received from literary journals–a few of which I’d gotten myself. It was a huge relief to know that someone like Shannon had worked through rejection to get The Goose Girl published (and all her other amazing novels that followed). Thinking outside the standard reading box can be so much fun for your audience, who tend to expect the standard “reading followed by a Q&A.”

Jennifer gives a lot of info and suggestions, so make sure to check out the whole post. Have you attended any cool readings? Do you do anything to make your readings stand out?

The Joy in Writing

Leave a comment

I love this post by LimebirdKate (aka 4amWriter) about what to do when you’re in a writing funk. One part I like in particular:

“Writing is joyful – This must be the foremost reason I write. When I return to my writing, it can’t be because I have a deadline to meet, nor can it be about publication. It has to be because I love to create worlds. Once, when I spent about 5 years away from writing it was because I put too much pressure on myself. I didn’t think I was good enough. With that ridiculousness behind me, now I make sure that I write purely for myself—this is separate from any writing that I share with others. I never consider them for publication; I only write them for me. And I tend to them several times a week. Like cultivating a secret garden.”

I think “joyful” is the perfect word to use here. Even if writing involves work and focus, it should still raise your spirits in some way. When I’m having a hard time with a particular scene or story, I remind myself that, when I was younger, writing was something I did for fun. Of course I had ideas of being a famous published author at age 13, but for the most part I knew that these were stories I’d keep private. I wrote because I loved doing it; writing was like a game. Now, I try to remind myself that even though I consider writing a career, part of it should still be fun. Somehow that helps take the pressure off.

Make sure to click through for the rest of LimebirdKate’s fantastic suggestions. Do you have any particular tips or tricks to get back into the writing groove?

Second Novels

Leave a comment

At NESCBWI, I went to a workshop about expectations for your writing career and your second book in particular. It was refreshing to hear Cynthia Lord and Linda Urban talk about their struggles writing their second books. Urban mentioned spending a lot of time working on one book in particular and how it was a huge, stressful project. Ultimately, she had to set it aside fro a while and move onto something else.

It’s hard enough to think about getting published and how your first book will do. Then you have to worry about the second one and if anyone will like that. It’s like the work and worry never ends! (Apparently it doesn’t.)

Still, Rachelle Gardner talks about how second book stress doesn’t mean the end of the world. If your agent/editor doesn’t love your next manuscript, that’s okay. Gardner says:

“It’s true, many writers’ subsequent novels fall short of the mark. The most common reason is that most authors work on that first novel, the one that sold, for far longer than the second one. They may have even agonized over it for years. The following novels, by contrast, are usually written much faster and under the pressure of a contract and a deadline, so they might not be as strong…If you wrote one great one, and your second one is not quite as good, the world’s not going to end. You just fix it. Presumably you’ll have the help of whoever told you it wasn’t good enough—your agent or editor. You’ll get notes for revision and you’ll get to work. Or you’ll be told to junk it and start over. (Hopefully not the latter, but it’s been known to happen.)”

I think it’s good to remember that a writing career isn’t all or nothing. Sometimes there are disappointments, but that doesn’t mean your career is over. It’s all a process and it never stops being work. But on the upside, just because you write something that might not be your next book doesn’t mean that your agent will leave your or your editor will hate you. Again, it’s more work, but it’s not the end of your writing career.

Where’s the Love?

Leave a comment

It’s hard to talk about love without delving into the cheesy, the clinical, or the painfully awkward. (There’s a reason why the Literary Review has a “Bad Sex in Fiction” award.) So how do you write about romance without sounding like a total idiot?

Malinda Lo has a fantastic post about how to write a good kissing scene. She looks at a few examples of kissing in YA done well and examines how the writer managed to convey the right emotion. Lo is careful to look at the emotions going on behind the kisses and what they reveal about the people involved. One part I liked:

“This description brings up something that appears over and over in effective fictional kissing scenes: power. Not necessarily in a Fifty Shades of Gray way, but every time two people come together in a kiss, there is a physical and often emotional negotiation going on. Who is in control? Who is totally swooning? Are they both completely bonkers for each other? Or is one less bonkers than the other? This relationship negotiation occurs in every kiss and without it, the kiss can often feel flat.”

I love the reminder that there’s an emotional dynamic involved in kissing. It’s easy to focus on one character (especially if you’re writing in the first person or a close third) and forget that the kiss is happening to the other person as well.

Lots of other excellent advice here as well; make sure to click through and read the rest.

Be Fearless in Your Writing

Leave a comment

From this interview with Judy Blume:

Q: What do you do to fight censorship?

Well, I’m on the board of the National Coalition Against Censorship and I’m talking more and more with newer, younger writers now about there’s no such thing as a safe book.

If you think you can go into a little room and write a book that no one will ever challenge—I don’t care if it’s a picture book—if somebody wants to find something in a book, they will find something in any book.

So, write with passion and write what’s deep inside and kick that censor off your shoulder, just the way you have to kick your critics off your shoulder when you go into that room.  You can’t worry about things.

I guess that’s what I mean by being fearless in your writing.  That doesn’t mean that you’re not trying to write the very best books that you can write because especially when you’re writing for young people, they deserve the very best stories, books, characters.

In fact, the younger they are, the better it should be.

Love all of the above. Make sure to read the rest of the interview for more about Blume’s writing, New Jersey, and the upcoming Tiger Eyes movie.

Katherine Paterson in Lowell for Talk About Historical Fiction

Leave a comment

Grrr, I’m booked that night, but this presentation by Katherine Paterson sounds fantastic:

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, May 3, 2012
Where: UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, 50 Warren St., Lowell, MA

Paterson, the Library of Congress’s 2010-2012 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will talk about how historical research, a compelling plot, and a feisty female character combine to create a novel that breathes life into the story of Lowell’s 19th-century textile mills and the labor activism of “mill girls.”

Click through for more info. Apparently you need to reserve a space in advance. I had the opportunity to see Katherine Paterson at another NCBLA event, and she was fantastic. I’d love to hear her thoughts on creating compelling historical fiction.

(via The National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance)

Doing the Voices: Reader as Orchestra

Leave a comment

From this interview with awesome children’s book writer/illustrator Mo Willems:

MONTAGNE: You have a long relationship with writing for television. You’ve won six Emmys for your work at “Sesame Street.” And that kind of writing shows up in your books, it seems, not just funny but also really works and it’s very possible to read it out loud. Do you read out loud as you’re writing?

WILLEMS: I think it’s really important. I mean here’s the weird thing is. I write for illiterates.

MONTAGNE: Three year olds.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

WILLEMS: Right? So what that means is I am dependent on my orchestra. And my orchestra can be a parent, it can be a teacher, it can be a librarian. But I have to make sure that my orchestra is engaged. That they are, you know, maybe being sillier than they normally are; that they are yelling and jumping around, so that that’s what’s going to make the book work better. It’s very, very important. Also, because it’s a time to be together. You know, I want parents to be engaged and I want them to laugh, because then it’s cool. I think that sometimes parents forget that they are the coolest people in the world to kids. They’re just awesome. So if they’re enjoying reading books, suddenly the kid is going to say, wow, reading books is awesome.

I love the idea of the reader as the “orchestra” of a picture book. Willems does a great job capturing voice and making his characters really dynamic for the reader and the listener. You need to do the voices!