Posts tagged ‘inspiring’

September 1, 2012

New Writing, New Ideas

It’s been a lovely, long, hot summer in Saskatoon and, while I have been editing and keeping up with the Wattpad workshops, I haven’t been generating much new writing. I’ve finished a draft of a book and tinkered with another project, but I haven’t had the thrill of filling a blank page with a new story for a while.

Sometimes, when I’ve been focusing on edits for months, I start a new project by thinking about the end result. I get caught up in my imagination with what an editor might think. I am immediately stuck. I can’t write a thing. It’s scary to think about who might read a book one day, the judgements, reviews, argh! And so I give up before I’ve begun.

I deal with this in two ways

- 1) I close the door to all that noise. I shut my office door and ignore the world outside. I disconnect from the internet. I switch off the phone.

-2)I remind myself that I’m my first reader. The book has to please me. In fact, before it’s even a book in my head, it HAS TO BE A STORY.

It’s September first and time for me to get back to regular blogging, writing and dreaming. What are your writing goals for September?

 

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May 22, 2012

Practice Description

Look at the face of this woman (randomly selected from the internet – you can chose another stranger if you prefer, but careful not to stare for too long at someone in a cafe if you select someone in real life!)

Notice the details.

Start writing: describe her, describe her eyes, her hair, her mouth, her cheeks.

Write more. Use different words, words that take longer to find, words you have to hunt for in the crevasses of your mind.

Think about what her personality might be like, what she might be thinking.

Try to capture her image in words in the same way this photograph captures her visually.

Try to get a hold of her personality on the page, make her into a real character.

Remember, you should be doing this with the cast of characters who inhabit your imagination, whether you decide to share it in your final story or not.  Your readers deserve no less.

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January 19, 2012

10 tips for writing children’s picture books

1- Don’t preach to your readers or try to moralize, the story will come off as heavy handed.

2- Unless you are an illustrator yourself, publishers tend to want to choose their own illustrators.  They usually have a bank of artists that they like to use and they don’t necessarily want to work with your friend/aunt/neighbour etc

3- If the story is over 1000 words, it is probably too long.  Just as an example, Where The Wild Things Are, one of my favourite picture books, is less than 400 words.

4- According to rumour, Dr Seuss wrote a thousand pages for every page he published.  Even if this is not exactly true, it gives a sense of how many times a picture book needs to be rewritten to make it perfect.

Just because it is short, doesn’t mean it is easy.

5- Read contemporary picture books.  There is scope and opportunity to write some wonderful, cool things.  See what’s out there so you don’t limit yourself.

6- Read your own text out-loud.  It doesn’t have to rhyme, but it does need rhythm and cadence.  Language is key.

7- Remember you are writing for people who can’t yet read themselves.  This is the thing I find most exciting about picture books – the author is introducing words and stories to fertile imaginations.

8- Strong characters, strong narrative, and beautiful language are baseline requirements.  Again, don’t think that because the book has only a few pages, that you can skimp on any of these elements.

9- 32 pages is the conventional length for a picture book.  Make a dummy book by folding eight sheets of paper in half.  Don’t use the first couple of pages, these will be for titles.  The dummy book is for your eyes only (i.e. don’t send it to a publisher), but it is very worth doing as it shows you visually exactly where your text is working well and where it is lacking.

10- Now get someone else to read your book out-loud to you.  Notice where they stumble.  Remember, your readers will be children and also their caregivers – keep in mind the adult who has to read the book again, and again, and again to a tiny inquiring mind.

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