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How to Write a Children’s Book Based on Your Personal Struggles

Laura Backes — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:40:33 +0000

Suppose you’ve just gone through a divorce and lost custody of your kids. Or a loved one has recently died of cancer. Or you struggled in school as a child because you have dyslexia.

Many writers turn difficult periods in their lives into books for children, hoping to help young readers through similar painful experiences. Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating and selling books based on real-life events:

Remember that you’re writing a children’s book, not a personal essay intended to purge your soul from a painful memory. Children want to read about how they feel. Many writers create a child character and tell the story through that character’s eyes. Don’t write in first person if the “I” is you, the adult author. Instead of explaining how bad you feel that your kids no longer live with you, show how a five-year-old character feels about only getting to see Daddy every other weekend.

Books for younger children (up to age eight) centering around a personal crisis are generally most effective if the author uses a fictional vehicle for imparting the information. If you want to stick closer to nonfiction, make sure the book focuses on the child in the center of the event, and is told in a narrative format with a beginning, middle and end. Older children can handle more traditional self-help books, with each chapter concentrating on a specific aspect of the problem. However, interspersing the advice with personal anecdotes from other children who have gone through the same thing will make the information more appealing and relevant to the readers.

Targeting appropriate publishers with these manuscripts is important. Look in subject index of Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market under “Self Help” and “Special Needs” for publishers. Peruse the children’s nonfiction section of a large bookstore, and read reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal and Horn Book (trade magazines found online and in most libraries) to see which publishers do similar types of books. Check out websites for editorial guidelines (if you can’t find them, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the children’s editorial department asking for guidelines before you write and submit your manuscript). You can also look at books written for parents to help their children cope with an illness, loss or divorce, and query the publisher asking if they’d like to publish a children’s book on the same topic.

Though many mainstream publishers are interested in books that deal with special issues, some topics have too narrow an audience for a large house to market the book successfully. In this case, many authors have elected to self-publish. If you get several personal rejection letters from editors who praise the book but say the audience isn’t broad enough, you might consider publishing it yourself. But self-publishing should be approached cautiously; color illustrations are essential for picture books, making them very expensive to produce. And you must be prepared to devote at least a year of your life to selling and distributing your book. Most self-published books are sold primarily through direct mail. Can you purchase mailing lists of parents with children who could benefit from your book? Stories on adoption, specific childhood illnesses, or those that might fit in a pediatrician’s waiting room or hospital gift shop are examples of books with a very targeted audience.

Laura Backes is the Publisher of Children’s Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Book Writers. Want to learn how to become a successful children’s book author? Come hang with the Fightin’ Bookworms at http://cbiclubhouse.com Whether is writing picture books, chapter books, young adult novels, finding children’s book publishers — or anything else — you’ll find all the answers at the CBI Clubhouse!

I Write the Perfect Novel – Why Can’t I Get it Published?

Robert L. Bacon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:24:25 +0000

There are abundant bear traps along the way that even writers who are old hands at accepting the vagaries of the publishing industry are having difficulty navigating in the current literary marketplace. Here are several issues–some old, some new–to consider.

Pitching a Book to the Wrong Agent or Publisher is Problem #1

Genre specificity plagues a lot of authors. It’s important to recognize that a hard-boiled detective mystery with a lot of torrid love scenes is not classified as Romance. If a writer is having difficulty pinning down the genre for a specific work, a friendly library staff member might be a wonderful resource (please don’t expect this person to read the entire draft). Only after the genre is identified can a writer adequately source the industry for suitable agents or publishers.

Agent or Publisher Bias can Knock a Work out of the Saddle

I recently presented material to a well-known independent publisher, only to be told that their firm did not handle anything dealing with Russians or the Mafia, something that was not mentioned in their already abundant submission guidelines. As luck would have it, a significant character in my narrative was a member of the Russian Mafia.

Of course this could be modified, but the point is that any writer can be blindsided by a bias against anything from Lithuanian folk dancers to fly fishermen from Montana. Keep in mind this is a quirky business, and it’s not always the writer. And it seems that once something is found to be deficient, the agent or publisher tends to turn up the power of the already very intense microscope.

A Manuscript can Suffer from the New Rock Band Syndrome

A manuscript can be deemed to be too close to other material. Or too far removed so that it doesn’t fit with anything else. Related to the way bands sound, I’m told these are standard rebukes in the recording industry. In the publishing business, either comment also follows with a rejection. My personal experience is that it would be easier to climb Mt. Everest than to persuade an agent or publisher to accept material for which they have a predisposition toward one or the other reasons for rejection that I just stated.

What if you Write the Perfect Manuscript, but It’s Really Not so Perfect After All?

This is the bitterest pill to swallow. If a partial or full manuscript is rejected numerous times, it is obviously necessary to take stock of the situation. Many writers contact a professional for assistance well after sourcing scores of agents and numerous publishers. There are only so many agents and publishers for any genre. And, unfortunately, agents and publishers inherently do not want to see work after they have previously rejected the material.

It is critical to have a manuscript polished to its highest sheen possible before submitting it. Quite often there are issues that are not apparent to the early-stage author which can be easily remedied, but when unchecked can send an otherwise solid body of work to the slush pile.

Robert L. Bacon, Founder

The Perfect Write®

FREE! ReceiveThe Perfect Write® NEWSLETTERS that feature articles on writing and editing, along with tips for having your manuscript published by a major royalty publisher. Visit the lower section of our Home Page at http://www.theperfectwrite.com for simple two-step sign-up instructions.

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Enjoy that? You can read more of Robert’s articles at The Cuckleburr Times right here.

Bring it to a Point – A Closure Technique

Thomas Ajava — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:01:42 +0000

Some people have a problem with starting a story. I don’t. I have a problem with finishing them. I know where I want to go, but getting there can be a problem. One technique that I’ve learned to use is called bringing it to a point. If you have closure issues, it might work for you as well.

I write like I paint. There is stuff everywhere. Okay, and maybe badly. Regardless, the storyline that starts out in detail quickly ranges to and fro like a ship on a storm filled sea form some great Viking yarn. I used to fight it, but now I just go along for the ride and hope I’ll find myself with some great story of value. Sometimes the boat finds the promised land. Sometimes it sinks! Regardless, it is an opened ended form of writing that can go as long as you can write. What if, however, you know the destination, but can’t see how to get there. You need a technique to develop this process in your mind.

The technique of writing to a point is admittedly a simple one. Perhaps it is even infantile. All I know is it has helped me with this issue. So, how does it work? The answer is in structure. Pick a predetermined length of text you are going to write. I usually go with five or 10 pages. Now nail down your ending in a short paragraph. Write it on the bottom of the last page. You know have your point.

The rest of the exercise is pretty simple. Start writing on the first page and practice bringing your story to the final paragraph. Will you will rarely, if ever, pull this off. You also do not need to worry excessively about grammar, punctuation or any such thing. None of these things is the point, pun intended, of the exercise.

To me, a story is an arc. It starts here and ends up there. The point of this exercise is to train yourself to deal with the last part of the arc. You’ve written to the highest part of the arc. Now, how do you bring it back to a defined finish…a point if you will? Frodo Baggins went underground, over water, through marshes and so on. From the word go of the story, however, he always had to complete an arc that found him in Mount Doom.

Many stories succeed or fail in how they close the arc of the story line. Getting from here to there is obviously important, but it is often the last 100 steps that make the journey a success or failure for the reader. Using the bring it to a point technique is one way to practice making those steps worthwhile in your story.

Thomas Ajava is with NomadJournals.com – makers of writing journals for writers and readers alike.

Writing Tip – Stopping Readers in Their Tracks

Laura Backes — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:01:25 +0000

If you love books, you can probably think of several occasions when you’ve been stopped in your tracks by a unique turn of phrase or a magical description. “How did the author do that?” you wonder. “It’s so simple, and yet so profound.”

Authors get involved in the big picture when creating a book, and rightly so. We need to think about aspects of character, plot, setting, conflict, development and resolution. We must view the overall structure to ensure that it’s sound. But once that story’s down on paper and we know it’s not going anywhere, we can start concentrating on the words. The forest is planted; now take a look at the trees.

Think again about those track-stopping experiences you’ve had when reading. What else do you remember about the book? If occasional groupings of words overshadowed the story, then the author was struggling to sound writerly at the expense of the plot. However, if individual words and phrases melded seamlessly together to create a satisfying experience from beginning to end, then the words and the story had equal weight.

As a children’s book writer, how do you entice readers with your words, the essential building blocks of any type of writing, without overshadowing the other elements that make up your book? The answer: Keep it simple.

Skilled authors use everyday language in new, exciting ways. One of my favorite picture book examples is from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Max is sailing across the ocean to meet the wild things for the first time. Instead of telling us the ocean is “very big” or Max travels for “a long time,” Sendak takes advantage of young children’s budding fascination with calendars:

...and he sailed off through night and day

and in and out of weeks

and almost over a year

to where the wild things are.

It’s a poetic description of time, and fits perfectly with the poetic tone of the rest of the text.

Memorable description happens when the writer pairs disparate images to create a new picture infused with emotion. The feelings make the place seem familiar to the reader. Here’s the opening paragraph from Paul Fleischman’s middle grade novel The Borning Room:

Four small walls, sheathed with pine, painted white. A window. A door onto the kitchen, for warmth. Two chairs. A bed, nearly filling up the room, like a bird held in cupped hands. Standing by the bed, squire beside his knight, a table bearing a Bible and a lamp. I’m certain you’ve stood in many such rooms.

Even if the reader has never stood in such a room, she can see it. The words Fleishman uses are accessible to every reader, and invite her in. The text is not complex–most second graders can read it easily–yet it is rich and interesting. The unadorned language reflects the straightforward nature of the narrator.

The Prologue of Natalie Babbitt’s novel Tuck Everlasting begins with a metaphor that sets the stage for the tale to follow. Babbitt likens the first week of August to the seat at the top of a Ferris wheel: …The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. She goes on to describe that time, her verbs building the tension: sunsets “smeared with too much color”; lightning that “quivers all alone.” And then the kicker: These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

Surprising the reader is good, and Babbitt jolts the reader out of his dog-days reverie with that last sentence. Joyful images of Ferris wheels and hot summer days are abruptly replaced by the promise of a story about bad decisions. This, then, is what you want your reader to notice about your writing. Not the individual words, not the fancy descriptions, but the overall feeling of being taken for a ride through the story. So here’s my writing tip – Pay attention to your words, but don’t let them take control. The only way to keep the words from overpowering the story is to always keep it simple.

Ready to take it to the next level? Come join the Fightin’ Bookworms at the new community for children’s book writers, the CBI Clubhouse. We’ve got audio, video, insider writing tips and much more! http://cbiclubhouse.com

Enjoy that? Read more from the pen of Laura right here at The Cuckleburr Times.

Your Writing Life – Are You Too Dependent on Input From Other People?

Lucia Zimmitti — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:27:50 +0000

If you’ve made it past your teens, you’ve learned that denial doesn’t work in relationships. Pretending to be someone you’re not will only catch up with you in a complicated, unpleasant way at some point. The same holds true for your relationship with your writing self. Telling yourself you have a different writing personality than you actually do will only slow you down and make you less efficient and more frustrated when you sit down at the desk. In this, the fifth and final installment of the writing temperament discussion, we look at the writer who is overly dependent on outside feedback.

The Tofu Artist (a.k.a. The Feedback-Dependent Writer)

Tofu takes on the flavor of whatever is in the skillet along with it. So, in a sense, tofu doesn’t have a strong flavor of its own; it only borrows the flavors of the ingredients around it.

That’s all well and good for tofu, but you, dear writer, are not tofu.

A polar opposite of the Island (the type of writer who decides s/he never, ever needs anyone’s help in getting published), the Tofu Artist is overly dependent on others. She doesn’t have a clear enough vision of her own work and waits for others to crystallize things for her. She is far too willing to drastically alter her work based on someone else’s feedback. She doesn’t even truly know what kinds of things she wants to write, but decides she’ll write whatever the market currently dictates.

(It obviously makes sense to have an awareness of the market so you’re not sending your book/proposal to completely irrelevant agents/editors, but if you try to write what is “hot” right now, you’ll write yourself into a corner, because it may be lukewarm or even cold by the time your draft is done and shopped around. Also, your lack of artistic conviction will show on the page. Write what moves and compels you first; figure out how it fits into the marketplace later.)

Don’t indiscriminately incorporate feedback into your work. Quiet outside advice until you can hear your own. Then make decisions about which pieces of advice resonate for you and which feel way off base. Don’t be afraid to toss the input that strikes you as unhelpful. Taste in writing is highly subjective, without concrete rights and wrongs. And if you don’t believe that you have the elusive answer or the magic key, then why would you grant that power to someone else?

One of your most valuable tools is your unique writing voice. If you only strive to take on the flavor that others suggest, you’ll never develop your own. And creating your own voice means incorporating suggestions that make sense to you and putting aside the ones that don’t (no matter who they come from).

Remember: you own your writing. Don’t reject your own instincts and write a certain way just to appease others. Develop and hold onto your artistic vision. Balance suggestions from others with what you believe is best for your work. (Yes, writing – like life – is often all about balance.) Reject advice that doesn’t complement your personal vision.

Benefit of this temperament: If you are a tofu artist, you are spared the grueling decisions (complete with hair-pulling and hand-wringing) you see so many other writers grappling with. Since other people will give you that direction you seek, you can zip through first drafts much more quickly than other writers and then just work on incorporating what your critique group tells you.

Cost of this temperament: If your critique group includes more than two people (and to be the most effective, it should), what do you do when three people have three very different opinions on your work? How can you defer to them all? You can’t, of course, and this is where learning how to rely on your own instincts (you have them, even if you haven’t been paying attention) comes in. Then you can sift through the feedback and organize it in your own hierarchy.

The good news is that, even if you’re the staunchest of Tofu Artists, you can reshape your mindset and your habits so that you can hop off the treadmill and join the actual race. Nurture your own sense of intuition (even though you need outside feedback, learn to value your intuition above others’). Start to trust that inner voice you’ve been squeezing to the margins. Writing is a string of thousands of executive decisions. Practice making those decisions on your own and living with the results for a while, before you hand the piece off for critique.

(The other four writing temperaments (discussed in separate articles) are:

~Sir Starts-a-lot

~The Perfectionist

~Fool for a Deadline

~The Island.)

To discover more ways to make your writing habit more efficient, satisfying and fun visit ManuscriptRx and sign up for “Write Through It,” a free, monthly e-newsletter newsletter that offers practical writing advice and anecdotal wisdom.

Lucia Zimmitti, a writing coach and independent editor, is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and the Editorial Freelancers Association. Her fiction and poetry have been published in various national literary journals, and she has taught writing at the high school and college levels.

How You Write – Are You a Deadline Junkie?

Lucia Zimmitti — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 04:10:37 +0000

Imagine that you’re being interviewed right before you give your Pulitzer acceptance speech (the National Book Award ceremony is next week). The reporter asks, “Oh Fabulous One, what kind of writer are you?” You think: dreamy, inquisitive, creative, esoteric, ephemeral… but it becomes painfully clear that you misunderstood the question.

The reporter wants to know about what shape your writing habit takes and how your habits impact your productivity. Wow, not nearly as glamorous as you thought. But finding out what kind of writer you naturally are can tell you a great deal about your relationship with writing and can reveal ways you can be more productive (and yes, you can always teach an old writer new tricks).

For today, let’s focus on one specific (quite common) temperament:

The Fool for a Deadline

(I use “fool” affectionately, since I am in this category.) The deadline junkie can’t get anything done unless someone else is expecting the work. Yes, writers need other writers. Although writing is usually done at your desk, alone (unless you’re collaborating with someone, and even then much of the work has to be done solo), you need to connect with other writers to ultimately be successful in achieving publication.

Support, feedback and networking are vital in today’s exceptionally competitive publishing market. However, if you can only work when those extrinsic motivators are in place, you’re lost when you don’t have someone to enforce those deadlines.

This type of writer acknowledges that he “works best under pressure.” But the truth is that he only works when under pressure. No pressure (i.e., deadline, outside expectations), no work. This writer looks back at every high school and college writing assignment and remembers how things “magically” fell into place two hours before the papers were due. A grueling two or four or six hours fraught with tension and anxiety, but hey, some great stuff was cranked out then.

No, fellow wordsmiths, this is no way to live the writing life. Take what you know about yourself, about the way you work, and reshape it into something that feels tolerable and even good.

You may have a winning idea floating around the eaves of your mind, but the world doesn’t know that. And the world won’t care if you don’t get it to them (they can’t miss what they don’t know about). So you have to find a way to motivate yourself, to manufacture that pressure you claim you work so well under. (Again, I’m guilty as charged.)

Benefit: The Fool for a Deadline can get work done. You know you can, you’ve done it. As long as someone needs it and is actively waiting for it and has handed down a date in ink, you are motivated to complete it. Good for you. You’ve proven you can work, and work well, and this is no small accomplishment with a task as difficult and lonely as writing.

Cost: At some point you might convince yourself that you can’t work unless you have that Other waiting for it. And if everyone in your life is too busy to help you enforce your deadlines (if you’re not under contract and have an editor already setting up deadlines for your work); if you don’t have the funds for a writing coach; if you haven’t found a critique group you like, then you will inevitably stumble upon times in your life when you have the will (though floundering) and the time to write, but you just don’t get it done. The future feels too amorphous and nebulous, and if no one’s really looking for what you’re working on, then what’s the point if there are so many other things that have to be done?

Other people apparently have their own lives and they don’t always care whether or not you finish your manuscript (gasp!). When you can’t rely on others, try to strike a deal with yourself: set up deadlines and enforce them on your own; offer yourself an incentive for finishing a milestone (a chapter, a draft, an outline, etc.). The incentive should be something you’d fully enjoy but something you typically wouldn’t indulge in: a movie matinee when you normally would have been working; a brick-sized brownie slathered with peanut butter and hot fudge and mounds of fresh whipped cream; a long, meandering walk in the woods (not immediately after the sundae, though). You get the idea.

The point is to honestly assess how you naturally work and then work within those parameters to be more efficient. If you decide to completely change your writing temperament (which would mean fighting against your natural inclinations), then you’ll end up being more frustrated than productive. Use the way you already work as a logical starting point, and shape your habits from there.

To discover more ways to improve your writing and have more fun in the process, visit ManuscriptRx and sign up for “Write Through It,” a free, monthly e-newsletter that offers tips on writing more creatively, clearly and effectively.

Your Writing Life – Are You a Perfectionist? The Pros and Cons

Lucia Zimmitti — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:58:05 +0000

You’ve probably thought about your general temperament and how it impacts your relationships. For instance, you have some idea about what kind of friend you are, what kind of parent or sibling or spouse or significant other. But have you ever thought about what kind of writer you are? Finding out can tell you a great deal about your relationship with writing and can reveal ways you can be more productive.

Honestly assessing your writing temperament and holding an awareness of it as you work can help you avoid time-wasting tendencies and reaffirm routines that are already working. And since so much of writing is putting yourself on the page (regardless of your genre or subject), if you have a clearer picture of your writing self, your finished product will be richer for it.

Here’s the complete list of the most common writing temperaments:

1) Sir Starts-a-lot

2) The Perfectionist

3) Fool for a Deadline

4) The Island (includes (a) The Over-confident Island and (b) The Fearful Island)

5) The Tofu Artist (a.k.a. The Feedback-Dependent Writer)

I’ll devote a separate article to each temperament.

(Note: to avoid s/he overload, I’ve decided to alternate pronouns from article to article. In no way do I mean to imply that certain genders are more likely to exhibit certain tendencies at the writing desk.)

2) The Perfectionist

Like Sir Starts-a-lot, the Perfectionist doesn’t get submissions in the mail either, but for very different reasons. The Perfectionist just never believes her manuscript is really, really ready. If her work-in-progress were a preschooler on the verge of Kindergarten, she would hold the little dude back until adolescence passed him by and he was shaving every day, still claiming she could do more to prepare her son for the rigors of school.

Okay, as hard as it is, at the right time we have to let them go: human offspring and creative offspring alike.

If you socialize with other writers, odds are you know someone who has been working (really working, not slacking) on the same piece for years and years. Your writer’s group encourages her to send it out (through clever e-cards, decorated cupcakes, even the chilled champagne you smuggled into the bookstore where you meet), but she insists it’s not ready and tweaks it yet again.

The right dose of perfectionism (in short, temporary bursts) can actually be a good thing, because it pushes you to insist that your work be the best it can, but too much perfectionism can lead you down the road toward obsession, prevent you from getting published, and ultimately keep you from ever starting anything new. Don’t fool yourself into believing that if you focus all your time and energy on finding the elusive “Perfect” in your work you’ll be rewarded with something flawless. Remember the words of Gustave Flaubert, “Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.”

If you’re a Perfectionist, odds are your manuscript will never feel 100% ready. But push yourself to take the plunge and submit it when it feels “good enough.” If your critique group is begging you to send it out (if they try to steal your flash drive so that they can do it themselves), you know you have to relax your unrealistically high standards so that you can add your words to the conversation known as the printed word.

Listen to the little voice inside that’s trying to remind you of how much time and effort you’ve spent on the work. Sure, you could always find more to do, but it’s time to wrap this one up and begin something new.

The BENEFIT of this temperament: Your piece is GOOD. Really good. You take pride in your work. You have high standards and insist on meeting them. That in and of itself sets you apart from many people who want to write for publication but think revision is optional.

The COST of this temperament: But if you keep your manuscript chained to a treadmill of never-ending revision, no one but your immediate family will ever get the chance to admire your high standards. Further, you’re not stretching and growing as a writer: unless your revisions include major overhauls, new chapters and a substantive amount of rethinking and rewriting, you’re only using one side of your brain when you edit (the logical, organizing side).

You can afford to hang around Sir Starts-a-lot’s table in order to remember what inventing new ideas feels like. Writers get better with each article, story, poem or book they finish. Don’t limit yourself to perfecting and polishing the same thing and thereby condemn yourself to editorial limbo.

(Rule of thumb: if you’re memorizing your novel – without trying — you’re spending too much time on it.)

And remember: If writing is important to you (second only to a select group of humans), you can succeed with the right attitude, no matter what writing temperament you are.

Check out the first article in the series, “Assess Your Writing Temperament and Be More Productive, Part 1.”

Coming soon: Watch for the next discussion of writing temperaments with number 3, “Fool for a Deadline.”