The holiday season is upon us. Hopefully, you’ll consider gifting the kid in your life with a book or two. But what to get? You can find guidelines online but they’re not the best. A clerk at a big box book store will be even less helpful. Why? Most recommendations are based on a lot of assumptions. They assume …
I’m slightly* obsessed with kidlit book recommendations. As a parent of two young bookworms, I’m always on the lookout for new books. As a bookworm myself, I love a good story. I don’t judge a book on the width of it’s spine. As a writer, it’s even more important. I need to read books in …
I put myself through college working in a weaving studio. True story. I mentioned this while chatting with the owner of my local yarn store. Turns out she was looking for a weaving instructor. Serendipity. So yesterday I taught my first weaving class. It turned out that one of my students went to the same small college as another …
This Saturday I attended my first children’s book writing conference. I learned a lot, saw some great talks, and even got excellent feedback on a piece. What stands out, though, was a small interaction with an editor. I prefaced a question by telling her that I am a new writer. She launched into her standard spiel …
My advisor and I did over 30 rounds of revisions on my first paper in grad school. 30. That’s when I lost all hope and stopped numbering the drafts. That’s more than 30 times he handed back my precious manuscript bleeding in ink. It wasn’t just red; it was a rainbow of criticism. Then he told …
What is good writing? There isn’t a single answer. For starters, it depends a lot on your audience. Good writing for adults differs a lot from good writing for kids. It also depends on your medium and purpose. An academic piece is different from a blog post. There’s one thing good writing isn’t: overly complicated. Only 50% …
