Tag Archives: writing tips

10 Inspiring Kite Tales Quotes from 2018

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by in Author's Perspective, Illustrator's Perspective, Tips and Tools

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nick-morrison-325805-unsplash.jpgI’m always grateful for the community and connection that comes from being a member of SCBWI. There’s no shortage of people willing to share advice, tips, and knowledge. And lucky for us, so many in the kid lit community have shared their stories and wisdom on the Kite Tales blog.

Whenever I need a creative boost, I like to reread Kite Tales posts for nuggets of inspiration.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Kite Tales stories this year. Hopefully they’ll inspire you too as you set your 2019 writing goals. Read on and click the links to see the full posts. Continue reading →

#KT250 4th Quarter 2018: 5 Tips To Get Your Work Contest-Ready

26 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by in #KT250, Tips and Tools

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#KT250 is a Kite Tales quarterly community contest, but unfortunately this quarter we did not have enough entries to complete the contest. So instead, we’re offering you some tips as you prepare your work for any kind of contest submission and re-posting all our winning entries from this year! We’re so grateful for all who participated and made our first contest year so special. We can’t wait to see what you do next year!

And if you have any news to share about your entries, we’d love to hear it in the comments or via our “Great News” feature!

To find out how YOU can enter, check out contest info here. Entries are now being accepted for next quarter! (Please re-submit if you submitted for 4thquarter 2018 and would like to be considered for the coming quarter.)

5 TIPS TO GET YOUR WORK CONTEST-READY: Continue reading →

Agent Nephele Tempest: Choosing Your Agent, Marketing Tips, Synopses, and Being an Equal-Opportunity Nerd

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Agent's Perspective, Writers' Retreat

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Nephele Tempest is on faculty for this year’s SCBWI-L.A. Working Writers Retreat (WWR). She joined The Knight Agency in January, 2005, opening the Los Angeles-area office. As an agent, she works with a number of talented writers, assisting them to hone their skills and build their careers. Nephele comes from a diverse publishing and finance background, having previously worked on the editorial side of the business, as well as for several major New York investment firms as a financial advisor and later a financial marketing and communications writer. Her previous experience provides her with insight into multiple aspects of the publishing industry and today she’s going to share some of it with us!

 SARAH PARKER LEE: You’ve been involved with SCBWI events in the past. Are you there just to give back or are you actively looking for clients? If the latter, what makes someone stand out from the crowd at these fast-paced events? Continue reading →

Paying it Forward: Going from Mentee to Mentor is Easier than You Think

08 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Author's Perspective, Tips and Tools

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By Sherry Shahan

Elizabeth Van Steenwyk signs her new picture book Blacksmith’s Song. (Peachtree Pub.)

I was clueless about children’s books when I signed up for a writer’s workshop years ago with the prolific Elizabeth Van Steenwyk. Her credits: Seventy-five fiction and nonfiction titles. Impressive. But what struck me most was her generosity.

After reading my WIP, Elizabeth offered to send it to her editor at a school book-fair publisher. Willowisp Press became home for my first six middle-grade novels.

When our SCBWI region began discussing a mentorship program, I knew I wanted to be involved. Continue reading →

Dealing with Grief and Loss Through Writing

18 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Author's Perspective, Tips and Tools

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By Michael Thal

My hearing loss wasn’t gradual. I went to sleep one night with good hearing and awoke deafened. Six years later the virus returned making my “good” ear clinically deaf and leaving me with a severely dysfunctional left ear. Grief for my lost hearing hit hard.

According to David Kessler and Elizabeth Kubler Ross in their book, On Grief and Grieving, there are five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Channie Amato, LMFT, puts it in perspective, “The stages don’t occur in an orderly progression. Grief affects each individual differently.”

Normally a highly-motivated individual, I sank into depression. I was a teacher who couldn’t understand a word his sixth-grade students said, and as a father of two young daughters, I needed to set a positive example. Prior to my hearing loss I never raised my voice to my girls. Now I was screaming at them daily. Things needed to change, and fast. Continue reading →

Target Marketing: Writing for the Whole Family

04 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Author's Perspective

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by R.S. Mellette

While the publishing world argues over what’s Middle Grade, what’s Young Adult, and what’s New Adult, I’m asking; whatever happened to “good for the whole family?”

Target marketing has been around long enough that most people think it’s the only way it’s ever been, but if you take a longer view of commercial art, you’ll see that excluding the majority of your potential audience is a brand new concept. Yes, I said “excluding.” If you write, or edit, or make acquisitions, or shelf for one specific age group, then you are limiting your audience. And by “brand new” I mean since the turn of the previous century. Continue reading →

#KTWriteOn with Author Marilyn Cram Donahue: Character, Voice

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

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KTWriteOn

Welcome to the second installment of the Kite Tales Writing Prompt: #KTWriteOn. Each writing challenge is crafted by a kid-lit publishing professional to help spark ideas and creative energy. This prompt was created by author and SCBWI volunteer Marilyn Cram Donahue whose latest middle grade novel, When Crickets Stopped Singing (Boyds Mills/Calkins Creek), will be published on March 20.

By Marilyn Cram Donahue

Are you looking for a boost of creativity? All you need is a pile of old magazines, some tape, and a sheet of 11”x17” paper. This is the ideal size, but you can also tape two sheets of regular typing paper together.

Step 1: Open the magazines and choose pictures that speak to you. Don’t analyze. Just think “AHA! I like that.”

KTWriteOn-Donahue1Step 2: Rip out the pages you like and use your fingers to tear around the edges of whatever part of the picture speaks to you. Why are you tearing?

Continue reading →

Community Corner with Author Ann Whitford Paul: Socializing with a Purpose

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Community Corner, Tips and Tools

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By Ann Whitford Paul

*Editor’s Note: After a successful SCBWI Los Angeles Writers Day, whether you attended or not, we thought you might be looking for more ways to “level up” your writing, no matter the stage of your career, so we asked author Ann Whitford Paul, who belongs to a lot of groups, to share some community-building, group-oriented ways you can do just that for this quarter’s “Community Corner.” Read on for her fabulous insights!

You’re a writer. You prefer to be alone in the peace and quiet of your home, creating ideas, developing and revising them. Still you know you should (and you want to) make time to be with others, just not so much that it interferes with your writing. What about joining or creating groups that may take you away from your computer, but also enhance your career? Continue reading →

#KTChat with Author Danielle Davis: Navigating Your Writing Process and Valuing Your Work

23 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in #KTChat, Author's Perspective, Tips and Tools

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On Twitter today (Friday, 2/23/18) from 4-5 PM PST, Danielle will be taking your questions and discussing her article on the writing process, how to find value in your work, and ways to keep moving forward, even when you don’t feel like it. Log into your Twitter account during our chat hour and use the hashtag #KTChat or @mention Danielle (@writesinLA) to join the discussion! If you aren’t on Twitter, leave your questions in the comments before the chat begins! Find SCBWI-LA on Twitter: @SCBWISOCALLA

By Danielle Davis, author of Zinnia and the Bees

Process fascinates me, in part because I find it challenging. It’s tempting to focus on other things that start with p: publication, perfection, panic, pretzels (snacks, help, right?) and, of course, the desire to polish off a manuscript and be finished.

Before my debut middle grade novel, Zinnia and the Bees, was published, I always thought that I wouldn’t have that “second book problem” because I had two manuscript drafts I already planned on pursuing.

But then I did have that second book problem. I had it big time. Continue reading →

Author Gary Schmidt: Know Your History, Balance Your Time, and Write the Hard Stuff

16 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Author's Perspective, Writers Days

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Gary Schmidt is a two-time Newbery award-winning author and professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and a Newbery Honor for The Wednesday Wars. He lives with his family on a 150-year-old farm in Alto, Michigan, where he splits wood, plants gardens, writes, and feeds the wild cats that drop by. He’s trading the Michigan cold for warm L.A. as faculty for this year’s SCBWI-L.A. Writers Day. Today, he’s sharing his experience and advice on writing emotionally heavy subject matter for kids, balancing multiple projects, and the historical fiction we all should be reading.

SARAH PARKER-LEE: You’ve shared that you weren’t a big reader as a kid until one particular teacher not only taught you to read, but taught you that you were capable of reading and understanding, that you weren’t “stupid.” How do you try to impart this same encouragement to your young readers?

GARY SCHMIDT: A good question. I think I come to the writing with the assumption that I’m going to ask the reader to do some work — and trust that they will be willing to do that. In Okay for Now, I have a character so emotionally hurt that he won’t articulate what he would like to say — and so many of his sentences end before he gets to the point — and often, he tells the reader that his story is none of their business. Or in What Came from the Stars, the reader is confronted with an alien language and has to figure out meanings — just like the characters. In Orbiting Jupiter the narrator is a naïve twelve-year-old kiddo, but the story he wants to tell is that of a very much older fourteen-year-old kiddo. In all those cases, the reader has a lot of work to do to figure out what is going on, and so has to become invested in doing part of the work of the novel. Succeeding at that involves a kind of competence that is, it seems to me, an article of trust between the reader and the writer that involves encouragement.

SPL: Many of your books aren’t as lighthearted or full of the typical middle-grade humor we often come to expect for that age group. Any tips on writing about heavier subjects for a middle-grade audience? Continue reading →