Posted in creativity, How to write, Inspiration, Stories, Teen Fiction, Writing, writing inspiration, writing life, tagged fiction writing, NaNoWriMo, novel writing, Writing inspiration on November 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »
At school this week one of my students told me she was up to 35,000 words of her NaNoWriMo project…do the rest of us have any excuse if a fourteen year old can achieve such a result on top of school work, assessment and end of year co-curricula activities?
My student is aiming for 50,000 words and beyond. This is her first novel. And my excuse for not writing? I’m too busy…
What’s your excuse?
Posted in books and creativity, Fiction, How to write, Teen Fiction, tagged Reading like a writer, Thinking like a writer on November 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Sedgwick has written a story in four parts that can be read in any order, so the author says…one section written in verse, one about witch hunts, another set in a mental asylum in the nineteen hundreds and one set in the future. How does it pull together as a cohesive whole, is the question. And the answer?
Posted in Fiction, How to write, Teen Fiction, teens and creativity, teens and writing, Writing, tagged how to write books, Writing books, writing fiction, writing instructions on November 3, 2014| 2 Comments »
Okay, I admit I don’t write fantasy…but I defy you not to love this book!!!
And the reason I set this challenge??? Well, I’m trying to write a how-to-write book. I even have a title, ‘a (non) writing instruction book for young writers’….
Stay tuned for my first chapter…but how I compete with ‘Wonderbook’ I’ve no idea…
Posted in Books, creativity, Illustrating, imagination, Inspiration, Teen Fiction, tagged Books and illustrations, books and inspiration, illustrating books, mentoring young writers and illustrators, teen illustrators on September 15, 2014| 3 Comments »
Part of my role as teacher is to mentor young writers and illustrators. My young friends, Therese and Brianna, share their work with us. The question: who gets the chocolate frog for best illustration? Let the voting begin….
Posted in Fiction, Inspiration, middle grade fiction, Teen Fiction, Writing, writing inspiration, tagged fiction writing, Writing stories on September 6, 2014| 1 Comment »
The teacher begins:
Today, class, you’re going to write a story. Not just any story. A good story. And in order to write a good story you must follow the rules of story writing:
A story?
1. You must be disciplined.
…I’m not…
2. You must work hard.
…I don’t…
3. You must be organised.
…I never have been…
4. You have twenty minutes to write your stories, starting now.
…and so I stare out the window…
I’m a writer…I live in my head…I dream…I think of somewhere else, anywhere else, where the world makes a kind of sense that it never does in this room…this room with its four walls and it rows of desks and a clock that ticks so slowly that it has to gather its energy to to continue its tedious journey around and around in ever meaningless circles…and I wonder who came up with such a punishing existence and called it…learning…in this classroom where we all stare out the window……dreaming…I close my eyes and begin to write.
Chapter One
…once upon a time…
Posted in Fiction, Illustrating, Inspiration, middle grade fiction, Teen Fiction, voice, writing inspiration, tagged fiction writing, inspiration, inspiration for writers, middle grade fiction on August 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »
I dare you not to be inspired by my young friend, Briana’s, story…what do her illustrations suggest…
My mind is racing….who is the girl…what are her motivations…what is her journey….
Give her some friends and a setting…and suddenly I have a plot for a story…
I didn’t expect it and I didn’t ask for it…but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, inspiration comes when I least expect it.
Who is the girl and how will her story unfold…
Posted in collaboration, ebooks, indie publishing, Inspiration, marketing books, middle grade fiction, platform, Teen Fiction, voice, Writing, writingReading writing fiction, tagged book marketing, fiction writing, inspiration for writers, middle grade fiction on August 2, 2014| 1 Comment »
Ideas for stories are all around us. In my local newspaper today is a story about a little known role of Australian soldiers in WW1.
It made me think about our recently released middle grade novel, Dirt Busters, and where our inspiration came from – although my co-author and I disagree about whose idea it actually was – to save fights I’ll use the words ‘we’ and ‘ours’ – but the more I think about it the more I realise our idea grew – as ideas do – like topsy.
We found an article and we liked the idea of an old medal and we already had the setting – a development site – and an old professor turned up and we found him a shack to live in and we started to ask questions like what was the professor doing down the coast in an old shack and – boys being boys – our characters, Cracker, Trann and Bone had to follow him to see what he was up to…and our girl character, Gilly, being Gilly, had to have plans of her own and so a billy cart race was born with the race taking place – yep, you guessed it – at the development site.
As ideas go, it’s turned out to be a good one as so far the response to our novel has been great and we keep getting asked when is our next book being released.
And here’s the article that inspired it:
Moruya Examiner, 23 August, 1919:
On Friday night last Pte, Frank Stewart was the recipient of the usual Shire address and a presentation from the Bay to honor him as a returned Australian soldier. The occasion was rather unique, in as much as the ceremony too place during the interval of a picture show. To this entertainment about 50 of Private Stewart’s friends and relatives from the Aboriginal Reserve had been invited. The presentation was made y Mr D F Mackay and was received by much acclamation and to the accompaniment of the indispensable leaf strains of music…
(Please note, the aborigine pictured in this blog post is not Frank Stewart…)
Posted in book publishing, book tours, ebooks, Fiction, indie publishing, marketing books, middle grade fiction, platform, print books, social media, Teen Fiction, traditional book publishing, virtual book tours, Writing, tagged authors and amazon, Ebooks, indie publishing, marketing, middle grade fiction, virtual book tours, writing and publishing on June 15, 2014| 1 Comment »
three middle grade novels ready to launch, market and sell
almost
to find out how
stay tuned
…let the countdown begin…
Posted in book tours, collaboration, Fiction, indie publishing, marketing books, middle grade fiction, platform, social media, Teen Fiction, virtual book tours, Writing, tagged book distribution, book marketing, book tours, fiction writing, social media, Teen fiction, virtual book tours on February 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Your book is finished and it’s time for the fun part, right? Time to hit the road and do the big tour. And, of course, if you’re anything like me, thinking big is the easy part. It’s what we writers do, isn’t it?
I was ready to hook up the Kimberly Kamper and head around Oz, stopping in at schools and libraries, selling books with gay abandon…I was a tad worried about being locked in a moving vehicle with my co-author for the several months this tour was going to take but, hey, I could always sit him in the back with the child locks on if he misbehaved.
But then I had to go and get this email from The Book Designer (www.thebookdesigner.com) with the title, 7 Top eBook Blog Tour Sites, written by Greg Strandberg at http://www.bigskywords.com.
Researching the marketing game has seen me write and discard several marketing plans in the last months as I’ve talked to editors, publishers, distributors, bookshops, school librarians and book fair co-ordinators. And I was ready to hit the road, even with my brother, actually he’d come in handy for flat tyres and such…
I mean, let’s face it, we writers spend all our lives cooped up in attics tapping away at our keyboards so can we be blamed for dreaming of a few champagne celebratory drinks after the hard work is done, followed by a road trip to make us if not rich then at least famous…
But it’s not how it’s done anymore…well, at least not exclusively…marketing nowadays means more time at the keyboard, blogging, tweeting and…err…touring virtually. Strandberg lists his top seven virtual tour sites in his blog but he’s written a book that lists fifty sites, Tour Your Book, 50 eBook Blog Tour Sites That Increase Amazon Sales, and it’s those last couple of words that has me unpacking the trailer before I’ve even begun…because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my marketing research it’s that ebook sales are what drive sales nowadays and, according to the gurus who run sites like http://www.thebookdesigner.com and http://www.digitalbookworld.com there’s only one way forward for we wanna be marketers of our words…and it doesn’t involve sunsets on deserted beaches with fishing rods and celebratory drinks…
Cheers…
Posted in collaboration, Fiction, middle grade fiction, non fiction, Teen Fiction, voice, Writing, tagged collaborative writing on January 14, 2014| 1 Comment »
On finding your voice…
There’s a fair bit of information out there nowadays about collaborative writing…the good, the bad and the downright ugly…and one of the biggies is finding an authentic voice for your story. Not only did we combat that particular problem early on (because we were so naive we didn’t know there was supposed to be a problem in the first place) it has actually turned out to be one of the biggest strengths for our series of middle grade mystery novels.
Our boy/girl approach is quite a hit with kids and ‘boys against girls’ competitiveness is something that happens naturally around the ages of 9-12…luckily for us, it seems, my brother and I never grew out of it. What follows is an excerpt from our upcoming ‘Growing Up Writing’ non-fiction book that’s taking on a life of its own as the focus leans more and more towards collaborative writing and the pure joy of sharing the writing process with another person…and the boost to your creativity this sharing of ideas encourages.
I asked Richard what he felt about co-authoring having written three books together…yeh, it was a brave question and I had a faint worry that what he said would be unprintable and that there may never be a fourth mystery novel to fight over…but being the blogger of our duo, I could always delete the bits I didn’t like…for my part how much more fun can a middle aged woman have than beating up on her brother and making money out of it?
Out of the mouths of boys…
I have written three novels, collaboratively, with my younger sister, Lindy.
These novels started with Lindy sending me the first chapter of the first novel with the instruction, ‘your turn.’ The story commenced on a cliff top with a rather dangerous track running down it that my sister(s) and brother and I raced up and down as children. We knew the place extremely well. Set at Malua Bay, near Batemans Bay, the South Coast of NSW we had grown up there, and this area is the setting for the three novels.
There are a number of positives inherent in writing collaboratively, the first being, in my view, I am at last getting a glimpse of situations from a female perspective. A glimpse that seems, at times, cluttered and meandering and at other times cold and clinical. The female interpretation on a given occurrence or ‘happening’, when written, is surprising and certainly adds a fullness to my own stumbling efforts. Things that seem clear and exciting to me are rushed over while other things are seized upon and embellished.
Sharing with a female, a sister, as strong willed and as intelligent as mine is daunting, demanding and educational. I am sometimes amazed at the clarity and descriptiveness which my sister brings to each task. Secondly, it is good for me to have someone with talent and education who can bring sense to my childish dabbling’s, someone who has the ability to construct sentences correctly and speak in the correct idiom although the novels are set in a ‘years gone by’ era and I am allowed speak in an ‘Australianism’ that perhaps is sadly, fading away to be replaced by Americanisms.
There are of course negatives to collaborative writing. Heated discussions about who is responsible for progressing the story line, what direction the plot should head, down to the paragraph settings on the computers we both use. She in Far North Queensland and me in Southern NSW. Conflicting ideas on who should edit the stories are something I have great difficulty with, when I have written something it’s finished with – maybe that’s a male thing, I just cannot go back and change things. Hats off to Lindy, she is a great editor. Secondly, I think sometimes females fly off on an unimportant tangent that does not follow a logic, not one that I can see. Maybe I’m just dumb (happily so).
The three novels, to me, are gentle tales from not so long ago, when we made our own fun by having adventures. The stories are warm and familiar, are an attempt, at least on my part, to encourage readers, no matter where they live, or what age they are, to look on the bright side, to take what’s at hand and go with it, to never give up and never settle for anything other than giving one hundred present to everything.
growing up writing 