I’m thrilled to kick off my series of guest posts with a tale of perseverance from children’s author Caroline Starr Rose: I’ve been writing for almost thirteen years but never consistently looked for an agent until 2009. Because an agent isn’t a necessity in the children’s market, I figured submitting to an agent was an [...]
I’ve been realizing lately that writing has been slipping lower and lower on my list of priorities. There are so many other things vying for my attention that writing can feel like a luxury. But for me to feel like a writer, I need to be writing, which can be tricky when time is limited. [...]
My blogging time is going to be a bit scant in the coming weeks, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to put out the call for anyone interested in writing a guest post for my blog. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, my focus is pretty book-centric, so I’d be looking for posts [...]
On Wednesday I went over my notes from the EMLA retreat, so today I wanted to talk about some more general impressions. One of the most striking things about the retreat was the feeling of unity. Even though there were almost forty of us, all at different stages of our writing careers, it felt like [...]
I’m back from the EMLA retreat in Austin and still can’t believe what a wonderful weekend it was. There were almost forty of us, and every single person there was friendly and easy to talk to. I felt right at home with so many fellow writers. I’m going to go into more details in Friday’s [...]
I’m away at a writing retreat, but here’s an older post you might enjoy: Rejection is a natural part of trying to get your writing published, but that doesn’t make it any easier. We’re always told not to take rejection personally, but it’s almost impossible not to when the project you’ve been working on for [...]
On Friday morning, I’ll be hopping on a plane and heading off to Austin, Texas for my first ever writing retreat. Woohoo! I don’t know how much writing I’ll actually get done over the long weekend, but I’m going much more for the company than for the writing time. I’m so excited to meet a [...]
When I was young, I couldn’t get enough of stories set in space. Whether they were on spaceships, space stations, or other planets, those stories really got my imagination going. Because of that, I’ve been wanting to write a story that involved space travel for years now, but I never had quite the right idea. [...]
As I was reading Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, a handy little book on screenwriting, I came across an interesting checklist for figuring out “if your character needs more oomph.” I shared this with my writing class yesterday, and we agreed it was applicable to fiction writing as well as screenwriting. Ready to take [...]
It was such an odd feeling to send my revised manuscript back to my editor on Monday. On the one hand, I was happy with the progress I’d made. On the other, I could have kept working on it forever. That’s why deadlines are good; they keep you from tinkering with a manuscript for the [...]
