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| "Get hoppin' bloggers!" Frog girl says. |
My objective is to answer 4 or all of the following questions and then link to three other authors (or 3 helpful links if I am lazy, which I might be since I did the Electric Run last night and was up until dunh dunh dunnnnh 1:30a.m. *YAWN)
1. What are you working on right now?
2. How does it differ from other works in its genre?
3. What experiences have influenced you?
4. Why do you write what you do?
5. How does your writing process work?
6. What is the hardest part about writing?
7. What would you like to try as a writer that you haven't yet?
8. Who are the authors you most admire?
9. What scares you?
1. What are you working on right now? I'm working on several different fiction picture books right now. Some of them are about chickens because we have three and they are such characters! I'd really like to try nonfiction at some point, but right now I'm just focusing on writing good picture books with the info I have at hand, aka the fiction that roils and boils out of my imagination. :)
5. How does your writing process work? When I first started trying to seriously write children's books in February of this year, I had ideas coming out of me like crazy, all in rhyme, bad bad rhyme. I've learned A LOT since then, in particular the components of an awesome picture book. I still type up all the random ideas that come to me, but now I spend a bit more time rolling the idea around in my head to find a story arc before I start writing. Then once I find it sometimes I have to FORCE myself to sit at the computer to type it out. Other times the story just sneaks up on me, most often while I'm lying down with my daughter before she drifts off and then I rush to the computer and try to get it all down!
6. What is the hardest part about writing? MAKING time for it. I have a 4 year old daughter and a 2 year old son. Some days I try to write while my son naps, other days my daughter needs some one-on-one time and so writing must wait. Lots of evenings after the kids are asleep I try to write or at least think a bit about my writing. :D Depends on how much energy I've got left.
7. What would you like to try as a writer that you haven't yet? I'd like to go to a conference! I wanted to go to LA SCBWI 13, but it seemed like too much (money and everything) this year. So I'm going to the Kansas SCBWI conference in October. I hope it's as wonderful as conferences I've read about other authors attending. I'd also like to do a writer's retreat. The Highlights Foundation Retreats sound wonderful and Julie Hedlund has sent out some others. I'll have to blog about them all soon for any authors out there who aren't in 12x12 yet!
8. Who are the authors you most admire? Some of my favorites are Oliver Jeffers, Jon Klassen and Jim Averbeck.
9. What scares you? Writing is a tough business, chock full of rejection. You can run into rejection in your critique group, your family and friends not to mention the well-known rejection from editors and agents. This can be tough to face, but you have to do what you love! Many well-known writers have faced a lot of rejection before they got published. "J.K Rowling was famously rejected by a mighty 12 publishers before Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone was accepted by Bloomsbury - and even then only at the insistence of the chairman's eight-year-old daughter." (Huffington Post)
Some helpful links for all you writers:
Sites I use while I'm critiquing other writers work and my own:
http://writingonthesidewalk.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/picture-book-critique-questions/
http://www.ebooks4writers.com/2011/04/how-to-critique-a-picture-book-text/
My favorite picture book writing class (wonderful and VERY affordable):
Susanna Leonard Hill - Making Picture Book Magic
A wonderful group for picture book writers:
Julie Hedlund's 12x12
A FREE Online Children’s Writers Conference:
http://writeoncon.com/
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