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Archives: For Writers
Writer Resources
What’s Here: Scroll for Big-Picture Insights
Thinking about writing for children and/or teenagers? Here are the easy answers:
- Yes, it’s as hard as writing for adults.
- No, you probably won’t make a lot of money, even if you do sell a book.
- No, selling a first book is no guarantee of a second just like selling a second is no guarantee of selling a third and so on.
Children’s-YA Book Agent Interviews
This selection of agent interviews may help you in identifying candidates to query or invite to your writing conference.
Keep in mind that sometimes agents retire or move to a new literary agency. Double check before proceeding.
Keep in mind that agents’ tastes evolve on a personal level and in response to the industry.
Creating Books for Kids and Teens
The Authorial Voice in Today’s Discourse: The Page, Podium, Platform, Persona (And Nurturing Your Writer’s Heart), delivered by VCFA WCYA inaugural Katherine Paterson chair, Cynthia Leitich Smith.
Book Reviewer’s Slush Pile
By © Sue Corbett
Children’s Book Reviewer
Miami Herald/Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire
Newspapers receive thousands of books a year — that’s in addition to the other thousands of press releases, story ideas, phone calls, news tips, etc., they receive — all vying for limited space in the feature section.
So to get newspaper attention,
Writing for Children and Young Adults: Reading and Writing
Would you try to make a movie without watching some movies? Lots of them? Thousands?
Books have to accomplish much of what a blockbuster movie does. They have to capture the same audience.
Meanwhile, the big-budget movie maker has millions of dollars and a promotional budget, actors, special effects, sound effects, musical scores, etc. We have some carefully arranged lines and curves on paper.
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Writing for Children and Young Adults: Living and Writing
For those of us who’ve fully embraced the writing life, the idea of “writing” and “living” as separate categories doesn’t always make sense. Writing is life, right?
Absolutely, but that synthesis doesn’t always flow as well as we’d hope.
Many of us wear multiple hats. I’m a writer, an author speaker, a writing teacher,
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Reflections for Beginner Writers
Writing for Children and Young Adults: Journaling
When I was young, I imagined writers curled up on window benches, wearing knotty sweaters, drinking cinnamon-orange tea, and scribbling the pearls of their existence.
I don’t do that.
I don’t even really use phrases like “the pearls of their existence.”
But I do scribble. I have little notebooks tucked here and there all over my cozy condo.
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Writing for Children and Young Adults: Pre-Writing
Your invisible playmates? The ones who whisper to you in the forest or as you daydream in your garden or play in the sand or stare up at the stars… Tell them I said “hi.”
Ask them if they wouldn’t mind your sharing some of their stories with young readers.
Treat them nicely. Sometimes they’ll confide in you you;
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