Oh, Give it a Go.

Pop Up Princess

Great news: Pop Up Princess book illustrations are now underway by the talented Tom Mead in Edinburgh! I'll be sure to post a preview when they're done :-)

The best advice for query letter writing: "Don't be weird"

I do so much of my research online and was at it again, this time for info on query letters, when I came across this article about writing QLs to literary agents. The recommended structure is very much like film pitch and treatment documents that I'm used to but with a writer's bio attached. Here's a link to the article:
How to Write a Query


It's got great advice for new writers and I laughed out loud when I read this line:

Don't be weird. Phhhhlease.

Very funny. You've been warned!

London Screenwriters' Festival

A Festivus for the Restivus.

An article on writing in the Wall Street Journal?

Believe it or not, here are a few excerpts from a WSJ article on how several famous authors tackle the task:

Most agree on common hurdles: procrastination, writer's block, the terror of failure that looms over a new project and the attention-sucking power of the Internet.
"Put your left hand on the table. Put your right hand in the air. If you stay that way long enough, you'll get a plot," Margaret Atwood says when asked where her ideas come from. When questioned about whether she's ever used that approach, she adds, "No, I don't have to." Ms. Atwood, who has written 13 novels, as well as poetry, short stories and nonfiction works, rarely gets writer's block. When ideas hit her, she scribbles phrases and notes on napkins, restaurant menus, in the margins of newspapers.

Kate Christensen was two years and 150 pages into her first novel, "In the Drink," about a boozy ghostwriter, before she discovered what the book was really about—so she dismantled the draft, threw out a bunch of pages and started over.

When she was working on her first novel, "Interview With a Vampire," in the early 1970s, Anne Rice revised each typed page before moving on to the next. These days, she writes on a computer rather than a typewriter, and revisions are constant and more fluid. She writes a chapter a day to make sure each section is consistent in its tone and style, and often works for eight or nine hours straight when she's in the middle of a novel.
Mystery writer Laura Lippman, who writes a popular series featuring detective Tess Monaghan, creates elaborate, color-coded plot charts, using index cards, sketchbook pages, colored ribbon and magic markers.

OMG Kirsten!!

I'm knocked out by this...
Almost makes me sorry I made her cry over War funding.

Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Conference

From the SCBWI website:

The 11th Annual SCBWI International Winter Conference begins with a day of optional per-conference intensives for writers & illustrators on January 29th, followed by 2 days chock-full of agents, editors, publishers, workshps and networking designed to rocket your writing and illustration to the next level.

Published or pre-published, you can't afford to miss this opportunity! Get the latest information on the market from the industry leaders in publishing for young people, and be inspired by some of the most well-known authors and illustrators working in children's literature today.