Everything I Need to Know About Writing, I Learned From Children’s Book Authors

I’ve spent a lot of years reading children’s books. Not only when I was a child myself, but the years I read to nieces and nephews, and the 15 I’ve been reading to my own children. For some of those years, I had little time to read anything written with an adult audience in mind. But that doesn’t mean I had to stop learning about writing for adults. Children’s books contain all the elements of good stories.

Dr. Seuss: Stories need rhythm. You can make up words, you can repeat entire phrases, you can even write utter nonsense, when the rhythm is there. The rhythm, the flow of the words, will carry readers through the story to the end. Don’t believe me? I challenge you to open Green Eggs & Ham or The Cat in the Hat and stop reading partway through. It cannot be done.

R.L. Stine: Watch a kid, even a reluctant reader, with an R.L. Stine book. Short chapters, quick action, lots of surprises and cliffhangers at the end of each chapter keep the reader turning the pages. Quickly. Chapter one of The Haunted Mask II from Stine’s Goosebumps series ends like so, “And then let out a long, high wail of horror.” Of course the reader is moving on to chapter two...which ends with, “Seeing Carly Beth, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”  And chapter three? “And screamed and screamed and screamed.”

J.K. Rowling: I I fall firmly in the “pantser” category. My first drafts are written without outlines. J.K. Rowling? Clearly a plotter. I’ve read through the series several times, having read them aloud to a few of my kids, and each time I am astounded by the new things I find. The necklace that is so important in book seven, makes an appearance in book five. I barely noticed it the first time through, but Rowling made sure it was there.

Lemony Snicket:  If you don’t know what “voice” is, A Series of Unfortunate Events will spell it out for you. “If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.” Great opening because it establishes the author’s voice. Dry, no nonsense, and yet somehow so funny.

L.M. Montgomery: Anne Shirley is probably the most memorable character from my childhood. She’s wonderfully flawed: a “little” overdramatic, holds a grudge, and is extremely vain about her hair. She’s so much fun you can’t help but love her—probably because of her faults, not in spite of them.

What children’s authors have taught you about writing?

Links Tent

Resources:

• A big thank you to Suzanne Boles for tweeting this great resource: Freelance Writing Writer’s Guidelines.
• Last week, I told you to follow Elizabeth S. Craig, right? If you listened, you already know about the Writer’s Knowledge Base, the search engine for writers. She tweets links to the best content on writing and then adds them to this database.

Novel Writing:

• How much is too much character description? How much is too little? Janice Hardy at The Other Side of the Story answers this question in her post Tall, Dark & Handsome: How Much Do You Need to Describe Your Characters? 
• Here’s a post I found thanks to Write It Sideways. Roz Morris offers 3 Fixes to Make Your First Novel Fly, beginning with Hook Your Reader by the Head AND the Heart. Check this out along with the other two fixes on her blog, Nail Your Novel.

The Writing Biz:

• Jennifer Represents, a blog written by Jennifer Laughren, a literary agent who specializes in children’s and YA fiction, discusses when authors should discuss how long they’ve been trying to hook an agent, and who’s already rejected them. When to Keep Your Trap Shut? Almost Always.
• BubbleCow, another great resource for aspiring authors, lets you know that There Are Only Three Possible Reasons Why You Have Not Yet Been Published.

Why I Write

At a recent meeting of my local writing group, we were asked to write about why we write. Like everyone else, I wrote about how writing is a part of me, how it’s something I don’t really have a choice about.

What I’ve been thinking about since is why I write as a career, and why I aspire to one day see my novel published. There are so many other things I am capable of doing for a living that involve less rejection and fewer blows to my ego.

When I was a kid, I dreamed of changing the world with my words.

In reality, much of what I write is practical stuff that I hope is helpful to some people, but isn’t exactly the answer to world hunger or saving the rain forest. But sometimes I’m fortunate enough to write about something that really matters, something that truly helps someone.  One article I’m especially proud of, The Reality of Motherhood...What Nobody Tells You appeared in the July/August 2006 issue New Beginnings. Thanks to Google Alerts, I’ve found people who have posted new links to this article because they think it’s important.

If my article or story reaches one person who needs to hear my message, then I’ve made a difference. And that’s why I write.

Links Tent, Twitter Style

Not so long ago, I finally found my way onto Twitter, and discovered many of the people who write the blogs I follow, along with a whole bunch of other great information. I’ve been tweeting and retweeting some of the best info I’ve come across. Here’s the best of the best:

Great Resource:
The Bookshelf Muse blog: writing tools and musings about reading, writing and other randomness. There are two great thesauruses (thesaurusi?) in the right-hand column: an emotion thesaurus that lists over 60 emotions and and corresponding actions, and a setting thesaurus that will help you anchor your scenes using all of your senses.

Editing and Story Writing Information:

• If you’re not following Elizabeth S. Craig on Twitter, you should be. She posts great links to great content every day. I found many of these links through her tweets. 
• 6 Common Dialogue Mistakes to Avoid, written by Lynette Labelle at Chatterbox Chitchat.
• The Problem—and Reality—of Adding –LY, from The Muffin, brought to you by WOW—Women on Writing.com 
• Lessons From the Slushpile: Good vs Great from the Inkhaven blog.
• Janice Hardy, author of the MG fantasy, The Shifter, has a great post on her The Other Side of the Story blog about Edits vs. Revisions: One on One Death Match.
• The Blood-Red Pencil blog has lots of “sharp and pointed observations about writing,” including this post about Combining Characters.
• Ingrid Sundberg, self-professed writing conference junkie, shares what she learns on her blog Ingrid’s Notes. Here’s a great example 10 Tests to Prove Your Manuscript is Ready for Submission.
• This post, Are Filter Words Weakening Your Fiction? is a great reason to add the Write It Sideways blog to your blog roll.

The Three Rs: Rewriting, Revision and Rejection

Rejection is a (big) part of any writer’s life. We’ve all read about how often great and successful writers were rejected before their novels were accepted—and knowing this can take the sting out of the rejections we receive. We can also take steps to try to limit the number of rejections we receive, by revising and rewriting our manuscripts until they are polished before submitting them. Fortunately, there are lots of agents, writers and editors out there who want to help us do just that, and here is some of the best advice I found in the blogosphere.

Weronika Janczuk, a new agent D4EO literary posts about what she thinks about when she critiques a manuscript in her post My Editorial Letters. It’s like a cheat sheet for writers—a list of all the things you need to consider when you are revising your novel.

Another agent, shares how she evaluates full manuscripts on Kidlit.com. Don’t be thrown by the kid lit angle—this is an excellent post and helpful regardless of the genre in which you write.

Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do) from Holt Uncensored: Number one on this list is the use of repetition, such as repeating a crutch word. I’ve written about my crutch word, “just” a few times, and given you a couple ideas for finding yours (the find and edit feature of Word and using word clouds). The repetition referred to in this post goes a lot deeper than crutch words though...and that’s just the first item on the list.

Some practical suggestions on revisions:

• Scenes: Five Simple Questions for Revision from FictionNotes: These questions help you dig deeper into each scene to add depth, emotion and conflict to your novel. 
• The Writing is in the Rewriting. Deep down, we all know that, but when our critique partner suggests cutting a scene we really love, we don’t always want to listen. Stacey Ballis, in a guest post on Writer Unboxed, shares how she gets through the sometimes difficult process.
• Kathy Temean at Writing and Illustrating shares some practical suggestions for making the revision process easier and for making your sentences come to life in her post Novel Revisions.

Want to know why you’re being rejected?

• Agent Kristin , over at Pub Rants, passes along the disheartening news that she doesn’t read beyond the first two pages of 90% of the submissions she receives. She writes about four Killer Openings to avoid—killers because they kill your chances of having an agent read beyond them.
• Sarah, an associate literary agent with Curtis Brown, Ltd. shares the types of writers who “makes her reject you” in Lessons from Peggy Olson over at Glass Cases.
• And, saving perhaps the best for last, The Blood-Red Pencil blog offers the Top 25 Reasons Your Submissions are Rejected—after as little as one paragraph. The tips are from the Surrey, BC Writers Conference where agents and editors read aloud the first few pages of submissions to see how far they would read before they rejected the work.

Revise, Rewrite and (hopefully) avoid rejection.

Links Tent: Writing Software, Edits, Query Letters, Submissions

Thanks to Bubble Cow for sharing this news: Penguin UK is accepting non-agented submissions until October 2010. Find out How to Submit Your Book To Penguin. While you're there, add Bubble Cow to your Google Reader. Lots of great info about how to get published.

I stumbled across yWriter5, free writing novel writing software from Spacejock. I've just started playing with it but it's intriguing. You can easily keep track of how many (and which) scenes your characters are in, the word count for each viewpoint character and so much more. If you're already using this software, I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Want a professional editor for your novel? You can win a FREE edit from CA Marshall of your manuscript up to 100K. Check out Julie Lindsay's blog, Musings From the Slush Pile for details.

If you're querying, there is lots of great advice out there. What do you do when the advice you read is contradictory? Start by reading Nathan Bransford's great post on How to Deal with Contradictory Query Advice. After that, check out these query critiques: Query Shark and Literary Rambles: Erin's Queryhttp://caseylmccormick.blogspot.com/2010/09/public-critique-erins-query.html.

Who Do You Write Like?

You've probably come across this site already, but if you haven't, give it a shot. Paste a sample of your writing into the box and find out who you write like. I'm not sure how much--if any--analysis actually goes into it, or what that analysis might be based on, but it's a fun little distraction.

I pasted bits from the opening three chapters of my novel, each written from a different character's viewpoint. These are my results:

Ch. 1: Douglas Adams
Ch. 2: Raymond Chandler
Ch. 3: Margaret Atwood

Not even in my dreams, but thanks so much I Write Like.

Today's Backup Reminder Brought to you by One-Care

Do you back up your computer? I'm amazed by the number of people I know who don't. I hear horror stories all the time from friends who have lost everything when their computers crashed.

Mine just did, last week, apparently caused by some One-Care glitch that screwed up the whole thing. At first, I couldn't get on the Internet. I couldn't access Control Panel. Then I couldn't log onto the computer at all except in Safe-Mode, and then only for a few minutes before the computer shut off.

The fix was relatively simple, although a little scary. My computer hard drive was wiped out and the operating system re-installed. It's working great now, and I'm breathing again thanks to the successful return of all my files. Thousands of pictures and all my articles, stories and novels-in-progress are all safe and sound.

Are yours?

Back up often. Back up now.

Writing Tics

Nathan Bransford had a terrific post the other day, You Tell Me: What is Your Writing Tic? These are the bad habits that creep into our writing at alarming rates. Characters sighing all over the place, or rolling their eyes or nodding. I read through many of the comments and felt better that several people shared one of my big ones, using the word "just." I also found a lot of other things to be on the look out for in my own writing.

Another useful tip I found in the comments was a link about Wordle, a free online tool for creating word clouds. Word clouds show you which words you use most often in a piece of writing. Tracy Buchanan explains it really well in the post What Are Your "Crutch" Words. The beautiful thing about Wordle is that you can cut and paste your entire novel into the cloud generator and see what words you've overused.

I created a word cloud of my novel in progress and made a list of words to seek and destroy when I edit. I probably don't have to tell you that the word "just" was bigger than I'd hoped. On the plus side (?), I used the word "back" even more often.

Wasting Time

I don't know about you, but I never have enough time to write. Don't get me wrong. I write every day. Sometimes I even write a lot. But there's never enough time to write as much as I'd like. I've been working steadily at getting rid of some of my little time wasters. Even when I'm logged in and working on the computer, I can sometimes go MINUTES without checking email. I'm exaggerating--a little--but my point is that I know I'm guilty of wasting time like this, and I'm working hard at creating better habits.
The WM Freelance Connection has a fantastic post today, When a Writer Wastes Time on Unnecessary Evils (and That Writer is Me).  It's an honest look at some of the little ways in which we wast time--and then complain about how we don't have enough time to write.

One of the things I cut from my routine was writing my blog, but I think I've carved enough "few minutes" out of my time wasting to get back at it.

Ring-Master's Law of Deadlines

When you are on deadline:

1. You will always get sick—usually with something that affects your brain power and/or your ability to speak.
2. At least one child will also get sick, miserable and clingy.
3. None of your sources will be available to talk to you in the few hours that all of your children are at school.
4. Your child will not be able to amuse himself, remain quiet or keep himself out of trouble for the two minutes it takes to double-check something by phone, no matter how content, quiet or out of trouble he was before you picked up the phone.
5. Because of the above, you will be plagued with self-doubt about your writing, editing and time management skills.
6. You will get the assignment done on time anyway and move on to the next one. There are no excuses.

Honest or Nice?

When friends ask me to edit or review their writing, I worry that they are really asking me to tell them what great writers they are. After all, I’m their friend and I’m supposed to be nice to them...right?

My dilemma is that my idea of being nice might not be the same as theirs. I don’t think it’s nice to tell them that their novels/stories/essays/articles are great when there are problems with them. To me, helping them make their writing as strong as possible to give them the best possible chance of publication, is being nice...even if that means telling them that a character is not real enough or a storyline sags.

If you don’t buy that, take a look at these posts by a couple of literary agents:

Janet Reid, aka Query Shark (that blog alone should prove my point) posted some statistics to torture yourself with in 2010. Publishing is a tough business.

Rachelle Gardner tells you what your friends might be afraid to and suggests you Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. For a (in Ms. Gardner’s words) “kinder, gentler, and much more informative” take on the same topic, she refers you to Michael Hyatt’s post.

Quick Tip: Team Up to Reach Your Goals

The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it not only challenges you to reach a difficult writing goal (1667 words per day), but it helps you be accountable for that goal with its forums, word counters and support. But November is over all too quickly (especially if you're behind on that word count!) and then all that great stuff is NaNo more.

The solution? Find a new support team.

InkyGirl invites you to join her in The 1000 Words/Day Challenge in 2010, or one of the lesser-word count challenges (500 or 250 words a day). Her goal is simple: to inspire writers to write.

Heather Wright at The Wright Words wants to Fill the NaNo Void too.  She has a simple way to help keep you motivated in sticking to your personal writing goal.

Links Tents: Goals and Resolutions

I'm taking back what I said about not making resolutions this year after reading a few great blog posts about them. Here are some "must make" resolutions:

• Blogalicious offers this list of 13 New Year's Writing Resolutions every writer should make.
• Freelance Folder chimes in with their own list of 10 New Year's Resolutions Every Freelancer Should Have. 
• Heather Wright suggests a resolution all of us should make, whether we are writers or not, with A Resolution for All Occasions. 

If you have set, or are trying to set, more concrete goals, here are a few blog posts that will help you with that:

• Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent, suggests Setting Goals and Finding Joy, and includes a few more links to help you in your goal. (Apologies to both you and Ms. Gardner for the pun--I really can't help myself.)
• Quips & Tips for Successful Writers helps you set your Blogging Goals--7 Types of Goals to Set for Your Blog. (I have an addition to that list for bloggers like me--posting regularly.)
• We all know how quickly well-intentioned goals and resolutions can fall by the wayside, so QueryTracker.net offers suggestions for Setting, Keeping, and Achieving Your Writing Goals This Year.
• Men With Pens has a series of posts about project management, which involves SMART goals and SMART freelancing. The last installment, Keep the Freelance Clock Ticking, includes links to the other parts of the series.
  

New Year's Goals

My apologies for being MIA for so long. The holidays, a deadline and family took precedence and my usual “plan ahead” philosophy fell by the wayside. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and rang in the New Year with family and friends.

Now that the festivities are over, it’s time to take stock, reflect on last year’s accomplishments, and think about what 2010 will bring.

I don’t make resolutions, but I do set goals for myself. This year, I’ve focused on business/writing goals. I’ve set goals that challenge me but aren’t so high that I don’t believe I can reach them . . . although I did set one in November that seemed impossibly high and managed to hit it. (Remember NaNo?)

What about you? Do you make New Year’s resolutions or set goals for the coming year?

Quick Tip: Dialogue Tags

One thing that drives me crazy about children's books is how often they use the word "exclaimed." The other is that no one ever "says" anything. If they aren't exclaiming it, they're shouting it, or whispering it, whining it, declaring it, stating it, demanding it, groaning it or--my personal pet peeve--smiling it. (How the heck do you smile dialogue?)

The bigger problem is that we start off reading books like this, and sometimes those dialogue tags continue into our adult writing. Simple is better.

The point of dialogue tags (he said, she asked) is to make it clear who is speaking. It's not so we know how the character says something. That's what strong dialogue and actions are for. So use said and asked only, or nothing at all. Don't use a tag if you don't need one--slip in a beat (bit of action that will tell us about your character more than the dialogue tag will) instead. The dialogue should be able to stand up on its own, and if it can't, it's the dialogue and not the tag that needs editing.

When you go through your novel, give yourself $2 in quarters. Every time you come across a dialogue tag besides said or asked, or find a qualified said (said stiffly, said angrily) take away a quarter. Do you still have a few quarters left when you get to the end? If not, go back and beef up your dialogue and make sure that you can justify each of those fancy tags.

Links Tent: Market Directories

Are you looking for a home for you writing? Here are some great online resources to help:

WritersMarket.com, the online home of Writers' Market,  is a subscription based site that offers searchable listings for both fiction and non-fiction, a "MyMarkets" function that allows you to bookmark the markets you're most interested in, and an online writing community.

Peter's Place of Freelance Journalism has a huge database of Canadian markets, photography markets, American magazines, book publishers and more.

Duotrope's Digest has a database of fiction markets, searchable by genre, pay rate, length, etc.

The Writer Gazette has a Call for Submissions page that brings you over 600 paying markets for your work.

Places for Writers offers a listing of markets and contests.

Need more? About Freelance Writing offers these 5 Blogs with Writing Markets, Not Gigs. Check them out!

NaNoWriMo Winner?

The month of crazy (aka NaNoWriMo) is over. I took the challenge at the beginning of November thinking I had no chance of reaching the 50,000 word finish line, but I had a lot of other goals in mind. I wanted to get a good start to my novel, I wanted to learn to turn the inner critic off long enough to pound out a few thousand words, I wanted to get in the habit of writing a lot daily, and I wanted to remember how to have fun with my writing again, having spent the last year or so editing more than writing.

I had a blast writing this past month. My storyline took off in directions I hadn't considered at the start; ditto for complications that arose. I learned to write at the computer (I've always written long-hand before--but no time with this challenge) which increased my writing speed, and I fully practiced what I preach about squeezing writing in every spare moment. And the only way I could even come close to hitting the word count was to completely ignore the inner critic/editor and just let loose.

So I hit my goals--I was a NaNo winner in my books long before my word count was validated by the evil NaNo computer (evil because it knocked 500 words off my original, barely over the finish line submission), but I was still stupidly happy to reach the word-count goal as well. What can I say? I'm a competitive person and I find it hard to leave a challenge unfinished.

The problem is that by the end of it all, I was focused strictly on the word count, and that had never been what it was about. I wasn't even having fun anymore. I was stressed and half-panicked that time was running out and I was 500 words short (courtesy of the evil NaNo computer). James over at Men With Pens puts the whole thing into perspective with his post Did You Reach Your NaNoWriMo goal?

So . . . would I do it again? Probably not. I plan to take what I learned from this experience and carry it through my writing from here on in. Am I glad I did it this time? Absolutely.

Quick Tips: Find and Edit

Find and Replace is a handy little feature in Word, one that comes in especially handy when you decide to change a character's name halfway through a novel. It's also one of my favourite editing tools, because I can use it to eliminate unnecessary adverbs, remove at least a dozen or two usages of the word "just," and find out whether somebody is right and I really do start too many sentences with the word "And." And yes, I probably do.

You'll find the Find feature on the right-hand side of the Home tab in Word 2007. Click on it, type in the word you're looking for, and click on "Find Next" if you'd like to go through each instance. You probably knew that already.

Try this though: Click on Find and then type a word. Let's use "just," because, unfortunately, it's one of my bad habits. Now click on Reading Highlight and then Highlight All. Yup, there's the bad news. Word highlighted 193 instances of the word "just" in the 44,008 words in my NaNoWriMo piece. And no, I'm  not deleting any of them yet. That would be editing, which I am not doing until at least December, plus it would lower my word count by 193. Time is short. Instead I might throw in a few more "justs" just (oops) to get my count higher.

Want to see how many times you've started a sentence with "and?" Click on Find, and then type in "And"--with the upper-case A. Now click on More, and tick the Match Case box. Click on Reading Highlight and Highlight All . . . 133 sentences for me. Wow.

You can also use the feature to find out how many "ly" adverbs you've used in a piece. Type in "ly" into the Find box. Or you can use it to find any other overly used word--really, very, etc. to see if you have a bad habit to worry about. One or two instances is probably no big deal. 747 . . . Time for some serious editing.

Now you can hit the Find Next button and decide on a case-by-case basis if you are going to keep the over-used word, of if you can use a stronger word instead.

Links Tent: Editing

My apologies for being missing in action over the last couple weeks. I'd tell you that it was due to the fact that the other rings in my life took up my time and left with me none for posting blogs, but I hate excuses and refuse to make them. Instead, I'll tell you I had sick kids, a sick me, a move to complete and NaNoWriMo to catch up on (and, yes, I'm still behind but finishing it is still a possibility).

Louise DeSalvo sums up my logic about not giving you these excuses (ahem) in her guest post on Christina Baker Kline's A Writing Life blog: Why Having Kids is No Excuse. I think this should be required reading for any writer who can't find time to write.

Chuck at the Guide to Literary Agents Blog shares these 7 Reasons Agents Stop Reading Your Chapters. These include some big picture problems that you'll want to take care of.

A. Victoria Mixon has some more big picture advice for you in her post Developmental Editing. She writes a developmental editing letter for an imaginary client, Xavier, who is actually a composite of several real clients and offers suggestions about theme, backstory and characters.

Writing Forward presents 10 Helpful Editing Tips that will work whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, a novel or a business letter.

C. Patrick Schulz focuses on the pesky adverb in his post: Tips on Eliminating Unnecessarily Overused Adverbs. You know you're not supposed to use them!

Finally, Janet Reid, Literary Agent has some sure-fire, undisputable advice for How to get no more rejections, EVER!