Goals: December, Week 3

Last week was pretty productive in spite of everything.

The picture book went out to the agent.  Check!

The middle grade went to the editor.  Check!

I obviously need to finish pulling that workshop together.  And I would like to do a bit more on four picture books.  A bit.  Not taking anything to final.

But good luck to me because Christmas vacation started last Thursday at 4 pm.  My son tells me that he wants to write a story over break so I should be able to pull together some writing time.

But I’ve also promised him something fun every day.  That will be amazingly good for both of us.

–SueBE

Call for Manuscripts

I don’t normally post over the weekend but the deadline for this one is 12/31/09.

Untamed Ink, Lindenwood’s journal, is looking for short stories and poems.   Check out their guidelines.

Now, back to baking Christmas cookies.

–SueBE

Innovation

How do you react when a new opportunity comes your way?   Do you shake your head and sigh when you see a market listing?

“I only write fiction, not nonfiction.”

“I like to read historic fiction, but it’s too much work.  I only write contemporary.”

Maybe what you need to do to enliven your writing in 2010 is to try something completely new.   Write an essay.   Try first person if you normally write in third.  Maybe the research you did for your novel could feed into a magazine article.

Just because you’ve never done something before, doesn’t make it impossible.  Give it a try.  A few little actions can add up to something big.  Check out the video below to see what happened when someone thought outside of the typical “performance” box.

–SueBE

thursday: Why Bother Reading Your Work Aloud?

I seem to be thinking of my writing friend Kris Nitz a lot lately but that makes sense since I’ve been working on rewrites.  Rewriting means that I’ve been thinking about craft.  Kris is a top-notch writer and gives some of the most amazing spot-on critiques.  I always refer back to her comments when I’m working on a rewrite.

I also consider the things that Kris does when reworking her own writing.  One of these things is to read her text out loud.  Whenever she suggests this to us, her writing friends, I catch myself avoiding eye contact.  I can see reading my work out loud for a picture book, but even then . . . do I have to?

Apparently, I do and so do you.  If  you won’t take Kris’s word for it, read this interview with Kate DiCamillo for a few more award-winning reasons why.

–SueBE

Call for Manuscripts

Have you been sitting on a manuscript for a children’s cookbook or activity book?  If so, this may be the right time to polish it up and get it out to Gibbs Smith.

Good luck!

–SueBE

Rewrite Success

What does it mean when you just can’t get going on a rewrite?  That all depends on you and on the project.

The big rewrite I’ve been avoiding was on my chapter book.  Why was I putting it off when I had marvelous feedback from my critique group?  In part, because I didn’t like the ending and knew I had to rewrite it.

What writers knit when they aren't rewriting.

Again.

That said, I wasn’t sure how to rewrite it.  Fortunately, I decided to reread the comments I got back from writing buddy Kris Nitz.  Kris had spotted a place midway through the story that, by altering slightly, I could use to show growth in my character.  She also pointed out that I needed a bit of a story arc involving the parents and growth in the relationship between them and my POV character.    Great feedback, but not the easy answer I yearned to find.  As always, when stumped, I avoided my computer and went to my knitting.  A few rows in, I knew how to combine the two into a satisfactory ending.

If you’re stumped, look at the comments you’ve received.   Look at your own notes.  Give yourself some time and distance from the project and you may find that the solution has been in front of you the whole time.

–SueBE

Goals: December, Week 2

Hurray for me!

Tonight I outlined the workshop that I’ll be giving in January.  It is a multi-genre workshop for newer writers so I was having problems narrowing the focus.  Two of us brainstormed tonight after dinner and now have an outline (more on that later).

Saturday, I finished the rewrite on my chapter book.  I’ve been putting it off because I knew the ending needed a fix but wasn’t sure just hot to do it. Fortunately, a critique partner’s comments game me a nudge in the right direction.

That means that both submissions are ready to go out as soon as I get the cover letters done.

So what will I be doing this week?  Writing the cover letters, working on the writing workshop and various picture book writing tasks.  I still have a list of things to wrap up this month so I’ll see what else I can accomplish this week.  It is just such a relief to have the ending on my chapter book finally come together.  I’ll post more on that later this week.

Off to play a quick game and then early to bed.

–SueBE

Business relationships

Whether you write here and there when you have time or your writing is serious business, keep your business relationships just that — business.

It feels odd to have to point that out, but apparently some writers just don’t get it.  They send editors and agents the kinds of e-mail that many of us consider spam.  You know what I mean — precious baby animal photos, pleas (often bogus) to help ill or missing children . . .

Need I go on?

I should hope not and I wouldn’t have even written this much on the topic, but apparently agent Janet Reid felt it was necessary.  Somehow, I don’t think she came to this conclusion lightly.

No one is saying that you can’t be chatty with your editor, within reason, but there are limits.

–SueBE

Natalie Goldberg

Why do you write?  How do you write?

I don’t know if it is just the time of year, but I seem to be answering these questions more and more lately.

Here is Natalie Goldberg with an answer beautifully phrased.  Just remember, that when it comes to the actual writing part, we all do it a bit differently.  What then are the similarities from writer to writer?  The fact that we are all exploring the things that are most important to us and that we are drawing on our own lives and experiences.  See what Goldberg as to say about this as it related to her latest book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir.

–SueBE

Job Boards

Several mornings a week, a make a quick pass through various job boards, looking for listings that pique my interest.  While some of them fail to do that, they do succeed in cracking me up.  My favorite phrases include:

• “Must have full control of the English language.” Absolutely no rogue adverbs allowed.
• “Passionate but witty writers wanted.” Does the author of this phrase assume that if you are passionate your are dim or that you are humorless?
• “Are you a specialist in your field?” Well, I am a writer and I must be a fair hand at it, but I’m guessing you mean some other field altogether.

While I don’t automatically rule out a job just because of an odd turn of phrase, there are others that I pass up without a second glance.  I do not register on boards of various kinds that require a credit card number, I do not submit work to sites that offer payment only to the “top three entries as voted on by your peers,”  and I do not work for pennies — even 1000 of them.

Still, I do manage to apply for about 3 jobs a month.  Of these, I get a response from 20-30%.   Not high, but it does keep the lights on which also means the hard drive is whirring as I work on my next project.

–SueBE