My company, Wood Lily Publishers, received a call the other day from a person interested in getting published. Their loaded question, “How do I get published?”, caught me off guard for a moment. My mind raced frantically trying to sum up in a short answer all the information I had learned over the last fifteen [...]
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Writing is a craft, and like so many crafts, the more a writer can learn technically, the better their writing will become. With so many people writing today, there are an unlimited number of resources to improve the craft of writing.
I’ve always been a writer, mostly through journal writing, but when [...]
I’ve touched briefly on the topic of entering writing contests before in a previous post, and the benefits, but I’d like to re-iterate some information here. I belong to the LinkedIn Children’s Publishing Group, the Aspiring Writers Group and the Aspiring Writers Blogs Group. At first I was tentative to join [...]
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Writing for middle grade fiction is not easy. Age groups and their interest levels spell a big difference in their reading likes and dislikes. Middle grade readers can be divided up into ages 8 to 12, 10 and up, and young adults (YA) aged 12 and up. Depending on school systems and [...]
Have you ever considered writing to a specific audience outside of the norm? An author can sit down and write for a specific genre (i.e. science fiction, fantasy, and general fiction), age group and topic. What about writing for those kids who are reluctant readers? Kids, who have trouble reading at [...]
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I’ve attended more than a few writer’s classes and meetings where the topic of ‘doing your homework’ with regard to manuscript submission has been discussed at length. ‘Doing your homework’ refers to the research a writer should do to determine the appropriate market trends and publishers to submit a manuscript to. [...]
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We all set them. Whether it’s for weight loss, achieving financial gain or for personal reasons, we all set out with goals or New Year’s resolutions each and every year. Did you finish that novel in 2009? Did you even start it?
Over the last few years, I’ve published two children’s books, [...]
When writing for an audience, it is important to remember the senses.
Much of a story can be defined as flat if the sense of touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell don’t affect the characters you are writing about. If you include what a character is feeling with their senses, you draw the reader into [...]
The first annual Calgary Children’s Book Fair and Conference featuring local children’s authors and illustrators is set to take place Saturday, November 14, 2009. Promoter and children’s author, Simon Rose (The Doomsday Mask 2009), took the challenge of creating and administering this new book event.
When asked why he wanted to bring [...]
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I’ve received a few calls this week from people who have written a children’s book and the question asked is one I’ve heard several times before, “What do I do now?”. They have some knowledge of the publishing industry, but not much. I am not sure how much writing experience they have, but the question [...]
