As a writer, literacy is important to me, but not just because I want to make sure there’s a market for my books — literacy helps children grow. Author and librarian Jeanette Larson has been a supporter of the literacy celebration Día, which happens annually on April 30, since it was founded in 1997. So,…
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Saturday was the monthly meeting of the great Austin chapter of the SCBWI at the awesome independent bookstore BookPeople, and all who attended got a healthy dose of inspiration. The speaker was author Jessica Lee Anderson, who taught about dealing with the ups and downs of publishing through songs — and yep, she even sang.…
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Revision update: Things have been going well. I’ve been steaming through the chapters, getting about six done in the past few days. It feels good. Utah Children’s Writers’ Scott Rhoades wrote a fun New Year’s blog post yesterday with some ideas to help writers in this year. I thought I’d share my favorites and add…
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Current word count: 38,753 New words written: 1,205 Words til goal: 1,247 / 78 words a day til the end of September Down to less than 100 words a day needed to meet my goal. Yay! But this word count is actually for Saturday’s writing, because I didn’t write either yesterday or today, but I’ll be back on track…
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As with many other industries, the last couple quarters have been rough on publishing, with houses downsizing with huge layoffs, closing imprints, and restructuring to bundle imprints together with the same staff. Some smaller publishing houses have closed altogether. Before Christmas, calls went out on many blogs, including mine, for people to put books on their gift…
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All’s going well in my continued unofficial participation of National Novel Writing Month. This morning I was back to revising chapters I had already written in my first draft. Everything was going well until I started looking back at my original layout for the book and realized some of my early ideas that weren’t used…
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It has been more than a week in my unofficial participation in National Novel Writing Month. Yay! Got up early and spent about two hours in front of the computer. I can’t report that I got that much done, I’m afraid, but I was there, fingers poised over keys and occasionally pressing them. Today I…
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My middle-grade novel revision is moving along, but not as quickly as I’d like. Part of the reason is that I’m editing faster than my critique group meetings. Sounds weird, I know, but I’ll explain. You see, we meet twice a month and can take up to five pages to each meeting. After each meeting,…
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I’m back on the novel. Last week was still really busy, but I jumped into the rewrite of my novel anyway. Time to start waking up at 6 am again! New goal: Finish the rewrite by November. I’ve also made strides with the Sir Newton Color Me Florida book. Drawings are completed and fixed…
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