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***UPDATE 3/28/14: “Fiction Magic” is now fully funded! Thanks to everyone who contributed. You still have 9 more days to get some fabulous pledge packages, too!***
Sometimes writers need a good kick in the pants.
Wouldn’t it be great to have your own personal writing coach by your side every day to get you moving? She could whip the sheets off you each morning, bugle reveille in your ear, even toast you an Eggo while you shower.
Eh, who am I kidding? Writers don’t shower!
Anyway…
Author Deb Lund brought together her 20+ years of teaching experience in a magical way—with 54 surprising writing prompts, tips and tricks for you to apply to your work-in-progress whenever you’re feeling stuck. It’s like having that writing coach right there with you, only a lot less annoying. It’s “Fiction Magic”!
For years, Deb taught 4th- and 5th-grade students how to write, and she wanted to make it cool for them, so she developed these cards. Her real “aha” moment came when she realized that she could teach adults the same way she taught children, using the same FUN strategies. ABRACADABRA! These “magical” cards act as triggers to pull something out of your head that you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to coax out.
At the Oregon Silver Falls SCBWI Writing Retreat, star agent Jen Rofé of Andrea Brown Literary Agency attended Deb’s session and then exclaimed, “I want all my writers to have your cards!” Yep, she was that impressed. The only problem? Deb’s cards were a prototype that cost her $200 to produce. How could she make them for a dozen writers? A hundred? A THOUSAND?
Enter Kickstarter. Deb’s Fiction Magic campaign is on right now and it’s 94% funded already! But with just 10 days to go, she needs your help. And believe me, you want her help, too!
Let’s do a few tricks right now, shall we? Whip out your WIP and see if these magical remedies help!
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AGREE TO A BAD DEAL
Your characters must make some bad choices along the way. They may even have to negotiate for something they need or want with people they loathe. Characters may know they’re agreeing to bad deals but feel they have no choice. Or the deals appear good, but fall apart later. Or time factors make the deals even more ominous. Make the stakes of bad deals so high it’s difficult for your characters to back out of them.
When you feel stressed by all that’s on your plate, be gentle with yourself. Let your characters agree to bad deals, but the only agreement you need to make with yourself right now is to write, no matter how bad the writing may seem.
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REVEAL A SECRET
Secrets can be powerful tools or sources of trouble. Or both. What information could your characters unwittingly slip out to the wrong people? Characters could be in danger because of secrets. Other characters could reveal secrets that affect your lead characters, whether the secrets were theirs or not. In trying to cover up secrets or escaping from those trying to conceal secrets, what could go wrong? Who will be angry? Hurt? Feeling betrayed? Put in life or death situations?
Do you keep your dreams secret? Sometimes they need protection, but when you’re ready and the time is right, reveal them to others who believe in you.
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THROW IN AN OBSTACLE
If you’re lucky, you’ll pick this card over and over, because this is Key. Your characters are on quests. Delay them. Interrupt their journeys. Who or what could step in to make your characters stop in their tracks? The interruptions may be people, objects, circumstances, thoughts, feelings… Send your characters merrily down the road, and then run them into roadblocks. Keep tossing them unending hardship. Warm up your pitching arm and let it rip. Throw after throw after throw.
As a writer, you have plenty obstacles. For each one you throw at your character, remove one from your writing life! Where will you start?
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There are 51 more Fiction Magic tricks for you to try. But only if you help Deb reach her goal.
Check out her Kickstarter and create your own magic! (Even if that includes the bugle call. But that’s not for me. I am NOT a morning person!)
by As an author, I look forward to my next book release the way parents look forward to the birth of their child. After all, the release date is a birthday of sorts—the day my creation is real to everyone, not just me! If you’ve ever known someone expecting twins, the excitement is even higher—though, the fear associated with the event is also heightened.
This year, I’m having the publishing equivalent of quadruplets:
- DUCK, DUCK, MOOSE in January,
- ORANGUTANGLED in February.
- SNORING BEAUTY in March.
- Then, TYRANNOSAURUS WRECKS in April!
Like I said, I’ve got 99 problems, but a book ain’t one.
I get it. To have her problems, you might be thinking. After all, too many things publishing is a far better problem than too few. Or none at all. But there are problems created by my multiple birthing. Here are a few things you might not consider when praying for a year like this:
- The whirlwind of marketing becomes a tornado.
Since January, I’ve done three blog giveaways (the first was a DUCK, DUCK, MOOSE package of a book, a book, and a package of magic erasers, the second was a piece of Aaron Zenz’s original art, and the third is the autographed book we will give away here on this blog) with a fourth one coming up. I’ve done 42 Skype classroom visits—not including the 14 I have scheduled for the TYRANNOSAURUS WRECKS launch. I’ve flown to a conference in California and done a bunch of signings. I’ve revamped my website, I’ve had educator guides created, I’ve read the books so many times I have them memorized. And on the 7th day I rested…except, not really. Remember, all these marketing things are in addition to my regular job of writing, revising, preparing workshops, creating professional development. Oh, and raising all my kids. 
Too much of anything is good for nothing.
As much as we want to see our books in print, publishing is about more than just personal accomplishment—t’s about sales. While my ego might be excited by multiple books out at the same time, the market is another story. Have you ever heard of market saturation? Economic theory says in a given market, only so much growth can be supported. For authors, that means there are only so many new books a consumer will buy at a given time. Having too many books at once can actually reduce the probability that a fan will buy all of them, just because he may not want to buy more than a certain number of books within a short time period. This principle also extends to recognition. It’s highly unlikely that you’d have multiple books nominated for a given award in the same year. So you’ve increased your overcall competition by competing with yourself.- The “what have you done for me lately?” problem.
Let’s face it—people are basically raccoons, distracted by whatever is new and shiny. And if you have a bunch of books come out at once, chances are, that will be followed by a long gap until your next release. But a book only keeps it’s “new car smell” for a finite amount of time. When something else new and shiny comes along, you won’t be able to compete and the raccoons will move on.
So, who still wants to have lots of books published at once? And who doesn’t?
Well, let me tell you a secret—it’s not up to you.
For the most part, publishers work on their schedule. And their concerns aren’t your concerns. So books may come out slowly at regular intervals, or they might appear all at once. As authors, we don’t have much say in this.
So how do you deal with this? How can you turn all these negatives into something positive for you?
I’ve given you the problems, so let me propose some solutions:
- Find your overarching narrative.
Whenever I have a book release, I take the details of its inspiration and craft a storyline that matches to a theme. For example, every night at bedtime in my house, my kids go nuts. My son, especially, when he was younger, he refused to sleep—no naps, no bedtime, no nothing. He was absolutely convinced I was going to do something awesome. This became the backstory for CHICKS RUN WILD, and I’ve introduced the book to hundreds if not thousands of readers by telling this story. With each of your books, you should be creating a narrative as well—but when you have multiple books at once, think of an umbrella narrative that talks about all the books. For example, DUCK, DUCK, MOOSE and ORANGUTANGLED are both about having bad days (though they resolve that issue differently). When I talk about them together, I tell my audience about taking bad days, mistakes, blunders and turning them into inspiration. They’re also both about friendship, and the different ways your friends can help you get through a rough patch. When you have one narrative, that message starts to represent you as a brand instead of the individual products/books. And at the end of the day, you want fans of your brand, not just your book. - Coordinate efforts.
When you start marketing one book, leave yourself openings to market the others. For example, when I was booking release day virtual visits for SNORING BEAUTY and I had too many requests, I offered the folks I couldn’t schedule in March a spot on the TYRANNOSAURUS WRECKS release day. So instead of having to start from scratch for the next release, I’ve got some legwork done already.
Use this principle in your marketing materials, too. Having bookmarks printed? Think about designing something that works for all your new releases. Making postcards? Create a “New for 2014” card instead of individual designs.
Just breathe. As I said before, in the grand scheme of things, having too many things published at once is the better dilemma to have. Because if you’ve got to have 99 problems, at least a book ain’t one.
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Thank you, Sudipta! This is all good to know since I will be having two books released in 2015! Yikes! TWINS! Somebody boil some water!
Do you have any questions or comments for Sudipta? Leave a comment below and you’ll be entered to win a signed copy of one of her 2014 books, YOUR CHOICE! (And a tough choice it is!)
Also be sure to visit Sudipta’s awesomely nerdy blog, Nerdy Chicks Rule.
Hey, look at that! I finally got Sara Zarr on my blog! Let me introduce us: Tara Lazar, Sara Zarr. Sara Zarr, Tara Lazar. Woo-wee, that’s fun to say!
OK, enough fooling around. Let’s get serious. Well, maybe that’s not the right word. Let’s get mischievous. Because today we’re breaking rules!
The YA anthology BREAK THESE RULES explores the flip-side of those nit-picky little rules you’re supposed to follow when growing up. What would happen if you didn’t “grow up” and “be serious”? So what if you daydream, skip college or talk about religion? Must you really pick a side between jocks and geeks?
Well, 35 authors tell you to ignore “the rules”, just go ahead and break ’em. Because they did. And it didn’t kill them. Heck, they even came out on top. Check it out. (Even I’m in the book! I can’t believe they asked me. Maybe they knew I’m a scooter-ridin’ rebel.)
To celebrate BREAK THESE RULES, I thought it would be fun to learn what WRITING RULES some of the authors have broken. You know, we hear the rules all the time—rules about content, length and showing-not-telling. And in picture books: no rhyming, no art notes. We’re bombarded by rules at conferences, in craft books and even on this blog! (Yeah, sorry ’bout that.)
So today we’ll hear from Wendy Mass, Josh Berk, and of course, that author with the awesome name, Sara Zarr!
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When I talk to kids at schools about writing, I always tell them to be sure to keep their eyes and ears open when they’re out in the world and to closely observe what’s going on around them. The thing is, when I am out in the world, say at a busy shopping mall, the people around me may as well have three eyes and two heads for all I notice them. I never study people, I never notice what they wear, how they move, how their voice sounds, all those things you are supposed to do when you are trying to create believable characters. It all just makes me uncomfortable. That said, I do get inspired by things I see in the world, or hear, or read, just not people. So there you have it, my dirty little secret. On the positive side, if we cross paths you’ll never have to worry if you have spinach in your teeth because I’ll never notice .
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I quite possibly owe my entire writing career to the fact that some years ago I decided to break the first rule of writing: write what you know. I had a crazy idea to write a YA mystery novel about a deaf teen solving a murder. I knew nothing about writing mysteries and less about being deaf. But I was curious. And so I learned.
You can write about anything—or anyone—you care to. Curiosity and empathy are your greatest tools as a writer, not the limited scope of your own experience.
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The rule I break most often is “write a crappy first draft.” I work much better if I revise as I go. Which isn’t to say that my first drafts aren’t crappy. Because they are. As are my second and third, I’m pretty sure. But what I try to avoid is blindly thrashing through and pushing ahead no matter what, just to get the words in. For one thing, I don’t want to write myself into a corner or dead end and then have to throw out all the pages that got me there. For another thing, I get this unpleasant feeling of anxiety if I write forward knowing there are big problems behind me. If I feel my idea of a character changing as I write, I want to go back and at least patch up the previous version of that character before I get too much further. It’s like knowing I left my wallet at the restaurant or something. I have to go back. There’s always more revision to do, but I try to keep the crappy to a minimum along the way.
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Thanks, daring edict-evaders!
So get out there and start breaking rules. Be different. But most importantly, be WHO YOU ARE. (I’m Tara Lazar, not Sara Zarr. But maybe we could switch for a day?)
What writing rule have you broken?
Leave a comment to be entered to win a copy of BREAK THESE RULES, available now from Chicago Review Press.
When I was but a wee thing, our family would often drive past a restaurant sign in town: “Good Food and Grog”. So I pestered my parents, “What is GROG?” My father replied, “Grilled frog.”
HORRIFYING! Cooked Kermit!? Envisioning swaths of crisped, green skin beside a sobbing Miss Piggy, I vowed never to eat there.
Well, today I have put that childhood nightmare to bed. I have learned that GROG actually means GROUP BLOG. And, I’ve got a new kidlit grog to share with you.
Welcome author Todd Burleson, GROG spokesperson (who assures me he’s never roasted an amphibian over the coals).
The term GROG evolved out of a desire to gather a group of writers and form a new blog about children’s literature. There are several phenomenal group blogs in the literature world. Many gave us inspiration, but none of them met the specific needs of our group. And, in the spirit of all things creative, we came together to form this GROG.
Our aim with this blog is to provide:
G: Guidance and support
R: Resources on the craft of writing
O: Opportunities to expand our skills
G: Great folks who support readers and writers of all ages!
Each weekday we will be focusing on a specific topic. Here are the daily foci:
Mondays: Mentor Texts
We will look at how mentor texts and other approaches can help teachers and writers of all ages to develop writing skills. We envision doing book reviews here too.
Tuesdays: Tools & Technology
We’ll look at tools, often technological, that can help us as writers.
Wednesdays: Craft
We’ll focus on the craft of writing. Sometimes it will be a writing lesson, other times it might be a review of a book on writing.
Thursdays: Submissions
On Thursday’s we’ll focus our thoughts on submissions, contests, query letters and more.
Fridays: Finds
These will be a smattering of awesome discoveries that we want to share with you.
Now why start a group blog instead of just an individual one?
- Being practical, we knew that sharing the load would help us remain faithful to posting while also maintaining our writing, teaching, family lives.
- We believe that the power of the group is to harness our connections.
- We know that each of us has a specific passion. By harnessing the power of the group, we get to share many more ideas and hopefully will reach and benefit many others.
- We enjoy being together. When we chat or meet via Google Hangouts, the ideas and passions flow.
- Finally, its a way to make the world ‘smaller.’ We have group members all over North American and even one in Seoul, South Korea. We may not be in the same time zone, but we all are dedicated to supporting one another as GROGgers and reaching a larger audience.
We have some phenomenal contributors at all stages of publication, but all eager to share. They are: Jan Godown Annino, Marcie Flinchum Atkins, Todd Burleson,
Tina Wheatcraft Cho, Kathy Halsey, Suzy Leopold, Christy Mihaly, Janie Reinart, Sherri Jones Rivers, Patricia Toht, Leslie Colin Tribble, Pam Vaughan and
Jackie Wellington.
Thanks, Todd! And good luck to you all!
So please go visit these fine folks at Groggorg.blogspot.com.
They will be giving away a boatload of prizes in the beginning of April, including a signed copy of THE MONSTORE by yours truly. You can also like their Facebook page and follow them on Twitter.
Kermit will thank you.
by author Chieu Urban
Thank you Tara, for inviting me to spread awareness of Books and Smiles for Haiti to this talented group of authors, illustrators, agents, editors, and children’s book enthusiasts.
For the past few summers, I have shared my books with the children of Haiti, and the pictures and smiles and thankful notes I’ve received remind me of why I enjoy creating books for kids. I think that it would be fantastic if they were to receive even more books from our community.
Please join me in sharing your wonderful books for the sweet children of Haiti. Although their needs are much bigger, these gifts will bring smiles to their faces and joy to their day.
I am thankful to President Steven Mooser of The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for kindly donating two boxes of books and jump starting the campaign! The amazing people of Life Connection Mission are dedicated to getting the books to the children. They are a non-profit organization serving the poorest children in the Western Hemisphere. A special thank you to the generous authors, illustrators, and children’s book community who have already contributed to this project.
Photo courtesy of Life Connection Mission
We are collecting board books, picture books, beginning readers, and information books with pictures of animals, science, space, and more.
Our goal is to have a really great collection of books by the end of the school year, when they will be crated up and transported to Haiti. I am very excited about this project and look forward to partnering with our talented children’s book community.
Photo courtesy of Life Connection Mission
If you would like to participate in Books and Smiles for Haiti, please email me at chieuurbanstudio (at) gmail (dot) com for the mailing address. Together, we will see our efforts grow. Please join our Facebook group page for updates.
Thank you, Chieu!
And now for the giveaway…
If you pledge to donate to Books and Smiles for Haiti, I will enter you into a drawing for a picture book critique from me, Tara Lazar. I will keep the comment thread open through the month of March. Just leave a comment stating you’ve donated in order to be eligible for the critique. And thank you for supporting this wonderful cause!
Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) 