My husband and I braved the crowds and caught the movie adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief last night, and I’ve got some words of advice for writer Craig Titley and director Chris Columbus: Look over Angela Ackerman‘s seven deadly sins of novel writing; they’re important for screenplays too. Now, I’m…
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Day three of my reports from the Austin SCBWI conference, and today I’m featuring the advice of Arthur A. Levine Books senior editor Cheryl Klein. Earlier this week, we had two agents who were former editors: Mark McVeigh on the publishing industry and Andrea Cascardi on getting and working with an agent. Cheryl focused her…
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Sad news today that J.D. Salinger has died. His work lives on, however. Here’s a great Time article about Salinger, including the magazine’s 1951 review of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. At the end of the review, Time says: For U.S. readers, the prize catch in The Catcher in the Rye may well be…
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Manuscript update: Buried in query letter and synopsis writing hell. Yesterday, I promised more on synopsis writing today, so here goes. I went through this already with my first novel, but when I sat down to write the synopsis for my second, I felt like a toddler on uneasy legs. So, I did my favorite…
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Manuscript update: Wrote a first draft of my query letter in the wee hours of this morning before I dragged myself to bed. It’s not great, but a good start. A better version and the synopsis will be written next week. I just finished reading through a New Yorker feature about Neil Gaiman and was…
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Revision update: Contrary to my lack of confidence yesterday, I buckled down and just finished my revision! Yay! Now on to beta reads. Fingers crossed. The 2010 ALSC Award winners were announced earlier this week and with them, they bring an opportunity. We all know that reading good books is one of the best ways…
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Revision update: I can always tell the parts of my first draft where I was struggling. This morning, I found one of those parts at the beginning of this next chapter I’m working on, and I found a much better way to get into the story. One of the many — far too many —…
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Sad news today. Kirkus Reviews is closing up shop. Parent Nielsen is closing the trade magazine, which has become an institution in publishing, as well as Editor & Publisher. For all aspiring authors who have for years read about debuting books and their Kirkus reviews, they won’t have the opportunity to get a Kirkus review…
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Revision update: Two chapters done yesterday. None today. Work too hectic. A lot of print-on-demand options have popped up over the last few years, making self-publishing more of an option for writers. I recently tried one, Blurb.com, not for self-publishing, but for my mother’s 60th birthday gift. Mum wrote a bunch of poems a few…
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Day By Day Writer is thrilled to have debut author Fiona Ingram on the blog today. Fiona’s book The Secret of the Sacred Scarab tells the story of two boys who, during a trip to Egypt, stumble upon a 5,000-year-old mystery. The middle-grade novel was a finalist in the 2009 USA Next Generation Indie Book…
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