Yes, I'm an overachiever. This was a great assignment. The short version is that each author I analyzed showed what the character was thinking in different ways. Imagine that. So, in my writing I've got to stay true to my voice, my character's voice, and dig deeper. My paper can be viewed as a pdf. [...]

My next writing exercise from Finding Your Voice is to write a 10 page paper on my biggest writing weakness, identify authors whose writing is strong in that area, and analyze how they do it. My biggest writing weakness–not by biggest human weakness (we'll save that for another day)–is that I don't show what's going [...]

I'm learning to find my voice from Finding Your Voice by Les Edgerton and I'm going to put myself out there and post some of the writing exercises. I'm supposed to "create a line or three that gives a metaphor or image that could only "work" within the parameters of that environment and that environment [...]

This past Friday and Saturday, September 10 and 11, 2010, I attended a writing conference in Boise. And I made connections. Connections with other authors, an editor, and an agent, connections with my own writing, and connections with my past. Wow! That's a lot for one conference to accomplish. With his storytelling skills and emotional [...]

Three of my writing friends from the Treasure Valley will be speaking on a debut author panel at the "Writing With the Stars" conference this Saturday, September 11th at Boise State University. I first met Sarah Tregay during the Boise writing conference in 2006. She has faithfully attended a writing group and conferences since then. [...]

When I first started attending a writing group, one of the rules I learned was: Always have the child protagonist solve the problem. Why? Because children like to read about children solving their own problems. In order for a child to solve a problem in a book, the parents and adults must be absent from [...]

I'm looking forward to meeting Cheryl Klein from Scholastic. At the conference last year I met with Brian Farrey, the acquisitions editor for Flux. He said my book, A Kiss and a Curse, reminded him of A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizbeth C. Bunce. I read it and found out that the editor was [...]

I'm the conference coordinator for the annual SCBWI conference in Boise this fall. Join us for a great day. Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Writing With the Stars: A Conference for Readers, Writers, and Teachers of Children's Literature September 11, 2010, Saturday Boise State University 1910 University Dr Boise, ID 83725 Student Union [...]

There's an ongoing debate about e-books and self publishing and the growing number of ways to be published outside of traditional publishing. Part of me wants to dig in deep and resist these changes. Can't we go back to the old way? I write a pretty good book. I submit it to a few editors. [...]

One of the reasons I write and submit is to verify that I'm alive. Before e-mail submissions and queries, I'd check the mailbox every day for replies from editors. Of course, I wanted a positive letter of acceptance confirming my obvious writing talent and offering me loads of money. But even a rejection letter proved [...]