Writing Resources

Interview – Michael Hanrahan on self-publishing

December 4, 2015 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

Have you ever thought about writing a non-fiction book about your area of expertise? Perhaps you have built up knowledge in your career? Perhaps you are an expert in teaching kids to play soccer, after coaching for years on weekends? Maybe you run seminars for colleagues on health issues or people management or interior design? Maybe you already have notes and notes and notes on how to run a not-for-profit organisation or how to encourage children to eat their greens?

Let me introduce you to Michael Hanrahan, who is the director of Michael Hanrahan Publishing. I met Michael when we both worked for John Wiley and Sons – Michael was the managing editor for Wrightbooks. Now Michael helps many, many authors publish their own books, and takes them through the process from initial idea to tangible product. He is knowledgeable, scrupulously detailed and a great communicator. His own book, Stand out, outlines the ‘7 steps to self-publishing a book that will build your profile, promote your business and make you stand out from the crowd’. Michael has kindly answered my questions about self-publishing. If you know someone who has always wanted to write a non-fiction book, please pass on Michael’s details!

KC: What sort of books do you publish?

MH: We work predominantly with authors who are self-publishing a book to help promote themselves and their business. We’ve helped these authors publish books on investment, business management, real estate, share trading, health and fitness, marketing – all sorts of subjects.

KC: What is a typical day for you?

MH: My primary role is project management. I spend a lot of time on the phone to authors, editors, printers and designers. It’s my job to coordinate between everybody and keep the project on track. I check everything that comes in, and then send it where it needs to go. So, when a manuscript comes in from an author, I check it and then send it to the editor. When a cover comes in from a designer, I check it and send it to the author. I also do some editing and layout and a little bit of everything else when needed.

KC: Are your authors people who have always dreamt of writing a book?

MH: Some of them are and some not. For some it’s mostly a business decision. For others it’s a business decision but also something they have wanted to do for years.

KC: What are your three top tips for people who would like to self-publish their book?

MH:

Always use experienced people to help you with your book. Every month or two we receive a call from an author whose book has run aground and they need help. It’s almost always because they used inexperienced people. Your web person might do great websites, but that doesn’t mean she can design a good book cover. The person who edits your school newsletter does not automatically know how to edit a book. These people always have good intentions but they quickly get in over their heads.
Produce a high-quality book. A few years ago, calling a book ‘self-published’ implied that it was poorly produced. That’s not the case these days. There are all sorts of people who can help you produce a top-quality book that will be just as good as a book published by Penguin. Yes, it will cost a little more, but you won’t regret it when you hold your printed book in your hand.
Plan your project. Publishing a book is complicated, so make sure you plan the project start to finish.

KC: In your book, you discuss the seven steps to self-publishing. Can you tell us briefly about these seven steps?

MH: Step 1: planning

DIY self-publishing

If you’re going to manage your publishing project yourself, you’ll usually require:

an editor
a proofreader
a designer: for your cover and your interior layout
a printer: obviously!
a bookshop and ebook distributor
an ebook converter (or your designer might be able to help with this).

Self-publishing companies

The other option, rather than finding the members of your self-publishing team yourself, is using a self-publishing company to help you. This means that, rather than having to locate and manage five or six people to help on your book, you’ll have (usually) just one person coordinating the whole project for you. You’ll still be involved in all the decisions, but the job of managing all of these service providers will be taken off your hands.

At the planning stage you’ll also need to consider:

the schedule for your book
the budget for your book.

Step 2: Editing

It’s a good idea to talk to at least two or three editors or self-publishing providers about your book before selecting somebody, and even meet with them if you can.

A good editor will be very involved with both you and your book, and will be just as enthusiastic about it as you are. Far from just ‘correcting’ your work, an editor will improve it in many ways small and large, while working with you to ensure you are producing the book that you want. Your editor will fix up spelling mistakes, inconsistencies, incorrect grammar and other errors, but a good editor will do much more than this. A good editor will:

suggest additions where more information is required
suggest deletions where you’ve included something unnecessary or repeated something
assist you with any possible copyright concerns
discuss with you changes that will improve your writing.

Step 3: Design

Designers have websites with portfolios on them, so these are a great place to start looking for a designer if you’re handling the publishing process yourself. Look around a number of sites and browse through a number of portfolios. Once you’ve found, say, three portfolios you like, get in touch with the designers and have a chat. Another way to find a good designer is to find a book cover you like – the name of the designer will be inside the book.

If you’re using a self-publishing company to help you with your book, cover design will usually be part of the package.

Step 4: Proofreading and indexing

Proofreading is the final quality-control step in the production of your book. One or two minor errors in your book aren’t the end of the world, but if you don’t have it proofread there will probably be more than that. Even the best editors won’t pick up every single problem and error in your book, so proofreading is important. And by the end of the editing process, you’re the last person who will find any mistakes. You may have spent three to six months writing it, and another month or two – or three – on the editing, layout and cover. By this point you (and your editor) will be so close to your book that some of the pages could be upside down and you might not notice. You need fresh eyes.

An index is a useful tool to help readers find what they want in your book. An index goes at the very back of your book, and lists all the major topics in your book in considerable detail. Not all books include an index. You can discuss with your editor whether you think your book needs one.

Step 5: Printing

Ask printers or self-publishing companies you are considering to send you a sample copy of a book they have recently printed – make sure it’s a book, not a brochure, poster or anything else. Any quality company will do this without hesitation. If the company is reluctant to do so, they’ve made your decision easy: don’t use them.

If you’re using a self-publishing company, you won’t be as involved in the details of the print management.

Step 6: The ebook

The most common ebook format is EPUB, and you’ll also need a MOBI file for Amazon. ‘EPUB’ – not surprisingly – stands for ‘electronic publication’. Most ebook conversion services will supply you with an EPUB file and a MOBI file as part of their standard service.

If you’re going to do it yourself, you can set up accounts on each individual ebook store you wish to sell on and upload your files yourself. Setting up the accounts can be a bit fiddly, but isn’t difficult. You provide the information you’d expect, such as price, an author bio and ISBN, and then upload your files.

Keep in mind one major drawback of doing it all yourself is that for some US-based sites you will need a US tax ID to receive your payments.

The other DIY option is to use what’s known as an ‘ebook aggregator’. This is where you upload to just one site and they upload your book to a large range of ebook stores – for a fee, of course.

If you are using a self-publishing company, the ebook conversion and upload will most likely be included in your package.

Step 7: Distribution

You may consider trying to get your book into bookstores. This can be tough as a self-published author. Understandably, bookshops are often reluctant to deal with individual self-publishers who have only published one book and are managing the distribution themselves.

There are two methods of distribution: DIY and using a distributor. The DIY route involves contacting bookshops yourself (or advertising to them) and asking them to stock your book, then supplying the books ordered, invoicing for them and taking any returns.

A number of excellent book distributors are available in Australia, both small and large, and this may be the better option. The distributor will take the whole thing off your hands, dealing with bookshops, invoicing and sending out books. The cost of using a distributor is usually around 60 to 70 per cent of the RRP, but most of this actually goes to the bookshop.

Some self-publishing providers offer bookshop distribution, some don’t. If you use one that doesn’t, this is something you will have to arrange yourself.

KC: How long is the process of self-publishing from beginning to end?

MH: It usually takes about three months for a book of about 40,000 words. It’s about a month for editing, a month for layout, a few weeks for proofreading and wrapping up, and then a couple of weeks for printing.

KC: Do any of your authors ever regret the decision to self-publish their book?

MH: Never. Sometimes half-way through it weighs them down a bit, because even with a company like us helping them there’s still a lot of effort involved. But, when the book is printed and they have been able to produce it exactly as they wanted, they are always happy with their choice.

Michael, thank you so much for your knowledge. I know December is probably not the time to be thinking of a new project – but January certainly is!

Bec Mackey, Brightside Creatives – interview

November 6, 2015 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

If you are a creative person interested in applying for grants or mentorship programs, or want to set up a crowd-funding campaign or you know a friend who might be interested in this, you really need to meet the talented Bec Mackey from Brightside Creatives. Bec and I connected through Big Hearted Business at a conference last year, and it is my pleasure today to interview her.

KC: As one of those talented multi-passionate creatives we all admire, can you tell us, what is it – exactly – that you do?

BM: The million-dollar question! I still don’t have a short answer to this, and in a lot of ways I resist the expectation that is put on all of us to define our professional role (and therefore ourselves) very simply. A blog post I wrote about what to do when you’re a multi-passionate person was republished on ArtsHub recently and it had an unexpectedly big response on social media. I think it shows how many people struggle with the fact that they do, in fact, want to do many things!

To attempt to answer your question succinctly, I am a writer, educator and coach. My background is in the ‘business’ of media and the arts. I worked as a producer, then in management, administration and financing at various major organisations such as ABC and Screen Australia (the federal funding body for screen). That led me to one of the things I do now, which is assisting artists and creatives with financing their project-based work. That either takes the shape of writing and editing grants, partnering to run crowd-funding campaigns, or broader coaching to help with clarity, confidence and practical elements like project management, and – of course – financing.

The coaching part emerged when I realised there were many early or emerging career creatives who were overwhelmed and confused about how to go about making a key project happen. Business coaches exist, but it’s hard to find a ‘project coach’. So that’s one of the things I do. Besides that work, I am currently focusing on doing more freelance feature writing (as well as writing for the blog of course!). I also work part-time in arts education, and am looking at more ways to connect my media/arts industry experience with education. I am a qualified teacher and love everything about education and teaching. I still occasionally do producing work as well.

KC: What does a typical day look like for you?

BM: It varies depending on whether I’m working at my part-time job or not. No matter what I’m doing that day, I begin the morning at my laptop while eating breakfast. I check all my email accounts: work, business, personal, as well as Facebook and Instagram. I might read some interesting articles or watch some vlogs that I follow. I will usually do 5-10 minutes of meditation at some point in the morning, either before breakfast or post internet-binge, which I know is not exactly conducive to being Zen.

If I’m working from home I’ll either be working on my website or writing (for the blog or an article to pitch to publication). I stopped working with clients for a little while so I could focus on developing the website and writing, but I’m looking forward to getting back into the client-based work now.

There is no typical day for me really, they’re all different which is exactly the way I like it. I thrive on variety. Sometimes I’ll spend an entire day writing, or, seeing as my website is relatively new, I might spend an entire day doing and planning bits and pieces for the website – sourcing images, thinking about building traffic, planning social media, updating or installing things etc. When I’m working at home I try to get to a yoga class at some point during the day, which makes all the difference mentally and physically. I also spend a bit of time in the kitchen throughout the day preparing food. My husband does 50-60% of the cooking though, so I can’t complain!

KC: What is your favourite part of your job?

BM: My favourite part of all my different roles is that I have different roles! The variety keeps me inspired and interested. In terms of my Brightside Creatives work, I love talking with interesting and passionate clients, but hands down the best feeling in the world is when I’ve had clients convey that I’ve managed to help them feel less daunted, overwhelmed and alone, which are such common feelings in any given creative field, and ones I can relate to. I love to write and have wanted to take my writing more seriously for quite some time so it’s a delight to be spending a lot more time writing nowadays.

KC: You have a few blog posts on crowd-funding and asking for money. Do you have three top tips when it comes to asking for money or grants?

BM:

Control what you can control. A lot of the panic and confusion around raising funds comes from all the uncontrollable factors. You can’t control exactly how others are going to react to you when you’re applying for, pitching for or sourcing funding. What you can control is the amount of work and care you put in, and the way in which you convey your strengths, abilities and passion. Ultimately, that’s all anyone can do.

Pay attention. This is something people miss – a lot. If you’re applying for a grant or mentorship, READ THE GUIDELINES properly! It’s so important. You need to understand what the grant or mentorship has been set up to support, and if you and/or your project fit into that. You need to understand what is being asked of you. Usually it will be quite clear what they are looking for once you’ve taken the time to read through. If it’s crowd-funding you’re going for, then pay attention to what is happening in that space. Hint: videos, photos, stories, connection. Those that succeed at crowd-funding are doing all of this. And they’re also putting in a lot of work.

Remember why you’re doing it. It’s so easy to get caught up in the pitch, telling others what you think they want to hear so that they’ll jump on board. But you won’t get where you want to go by trying to mould yourself into something you’re not for the sake of funding your work. Remember why you decided to do this in the first place. How will it feel if this project comes to fruition? Why is it important to you? Allow your true intentions to come through in your proposal — people find passion, enthusiasm and uniqueness attractive. Note: this does NOT get you out of doing the work, or being professional. Passion and enthusiasm without hard work and professionalism can create a part-time hobby, but not a project worth funding.

KC: You wrote a beautiful post on vulnerability – how important it is to tell your story with vulnerability in order for people to connect with you. Do you have three top tips for sharing stories in order to apply for grants, crowd-fund or pitch ideas to clients?

BM: This one is very difficult, and I don’t like to gloss over it because if you tell someone to be vulnerable and share their story they can be left sitting there confused thinking ‘but how?’ and ‘I don’t have anything interesting to tell’. What I meant when I was writing that post is that creative people tend to pull back once they’re in the position of ‘selling’ or any situation that involves money – but in fact this is the time that you really need to reveal your passion. And not in the salesy kind of way that people might think.

So essentially:

Believe in yourself first – understand that you are unique and brilliant.
Take the brave step of finding the most appropriate, genuine way to tell your story and express your passion, knowing that it won’t always work. In fact, being truthful does not protect you from being rejected, because you will repel those that are not aligned with you. But if you want to succeed, you’re unlikely to get there without some vulnerability — and you’ll make it a whole lot easier for the person on the other side to recognise your talent and unique qualities if you own, and are committed to, telling your story.
Combine the first two with focus and hard work and you’ll be much more likely to stand out.

KC: What is your vision for Brightside Creatives?

BM: My vision for BC reaches a lot further than the blog and project coaching as they stand now. I intend to take my writing a lot more seriously from now on, and so my writing both on the blog and elsewhere will form a large part of it.

Something I’ve only touched on so far is the element of career, business and entrepreneurship. These are areas I’m intensely passionate about and I’m particularly interested in those who are navigating these parts of life as multi-passionate people. I know through my own experience building a career (and now business) that it is not tied to one specific role or even industry, and it’s a path that can be fraught with confusion. Multi-passionate people are usually creative and want to have a meaningful career, but can come up against that feeling over and over again that they should just ‘commit to one path’, or feel ashamed that they haven’t built up years of experience in the one role. In the near future I’m hoping to explore career and business in a lot more depth, through the prism of being multi-passionate. That will form part of the blog, some resources I’ve got in development, and career coaching for multi-passionate types specifically. I really, really, enjoy coaching and so want to pursue that in a broader sense.

Ultimately I genuinely want Brightside Creatives to be of use to creative people. To distill areas that feel confusing and daunting into easy to understand and interesting information, and most importantly, to help people feel better and more confident in themselves— whether that be in relation to seeking funding, promoting their work, being creative, managing their career, or simply being human.

KC: Thank you so much, Bec! Bec’s website is here and you can sign up for her newsletter here.

Allison Tait – author interview

October 2, 2015 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

Today I am excited to bring you my first author interview – with Allison Tait! Allison is a freelance writer, one half of the Australian Writers Centre podcast with Valerie Khoo, and the writer of The Mapmaker Chronicles – a trilogy for children. Her third book in this series, Breath of the Dragon, was released this week. You can read my review of the first Mapmaker book, Race to the end of the world, and you can have a look at the Mapmakers Chronicle website here – lots of information about maps for kids awe well as teachers’ notes.

The Mapmaker Chronicles: Race To The End Of The World was named by Readings as one of the top 10 Best Middle Fiction Books of 2014 and was a Notable book in the 2015 CBCA Children’s Book Of The Year Awards.

The Mapmaker Chronicles website tells us, ‘The king is determined to discover what lies beyond the known world, and has promised a handsome prize to the ship’s captain who can bring him a map. To do that, they’ll need mapmakers – and 14-year-old Quinn is shocked to be one of the chosen. While his older brothers long for adventure, Quinn is content with a quiet life on the farm, but when word of his special talent gets out, he has no choice but to pack his bags and join the mismatched crew of slaves and stowaways on board the Libertas.’

Thank you for joining us, Allison!

KC: I know you’re more of a pantser than a plotter – writing the first draft to see where you end up rather than planning everything in the beginning. Did you have a rough idea of what you wanted each of the books in The Mapmaker Chronicles to cover or did you work on one book at a time? After you finished the third book, did you have a chance to change anything in the first book if you needed to emphasise or delete anything?

AT: When I wrote the first draft of the first book, I started with an idea – a race to map the world and a boy who didn’t want to go – and started writing. I wrote 48,000 words during NaNoWriMo in 2012, and then wrote another 5000 words during the following week. Once I had that first draft, I did a short – one paragraph – outline for the following books.

What I discovered as I wrote books two and three was that things changed. I also discovered that things I’d put into book one really came into their own by the time I wrote book three, particularly Quinn’s family history. I hadn’t had a clear picture of a lot of that in the beginning, but my subconscious was working for me and it all came together beautifully in the end.

The books came out six months apart, so there wasn’t a lot of room for making big changes as I went. I wrote the drafts of books two and three as quickly, and as close together, as the editing process would allow because it did give me an opportunity to seed things in to book two that I knew I would need for book three.

It’s not the most scientific process for writing a series, but the organic nature of it worked for me.

KC: How many drafts did you write and what did you change or refine in each draft?

AT: I did two drafts of each book before I sent them through to my publisher, Suzanne O’Sullivan at Hachette Australia. The first was the ‘get it all down’ draft. Then I read the draft aloud to my son (now 11), which helped me to see what was working and what wasn’t. Once I’d redrafted (which was more a sense of adding bits and deleting bits rather than an entire rewrite), they went to a structural edit. So that’s another draft – and, with one book in particular, that required some hefty additions. The books then went to copy edit – so I went through them again, and this is not just moving apostrophes but also answering a lot of questions that come up when a new person reads the story – and then to proofreading.

So I guess we’re looking at five drafts for each book.

KC: The Mapmaker Chronicles has a great pace – enough details to paint the scene but not enough to slow down the story. How did you balance the details with the action?

I’m not sure I thought about it that much. It was more a question of writing the kind of story that my sons and I both like to read – none of us are fans of long passages of description… They like things to move along and I’m the same.

Perhaps my journalism training comes into play here as well because I’m used to getting a message across in a limited word count – you want to let the reader know exactly where they are and exactly who they’re dealing with without wasting too many words.

KC: Quinn, Ash and Zain are well-developed, memorable characters with strengths and quirks and particular ways of speaking, thinking and acting. Did you spend a lot of time developing them before writing or did you get to know them as you wrote?

AT: Very much the latter. Quinn appeared to me as a fully-formed person even as I was having the idea for the series. Zain developed for me even as he developed for Quinn. At first, he was this large, taciturn Deslonder and I was thinking, ‘what am I going to do with you?’, but he slowly revealed all his different facets over time. As for Ash, well, as soon as she popped up in that garden, complaining about the fact that girls weren’t even allowed to apply for Mapmaking school, I knew we were going to get along beautifully.

KC: Did you ever get stuck while you were writing your trilogy? If so, what did you do to work your way out?

AT: I did get stuck, of course. I remember sending out a tweet during the writing of Prisoner of The Black Hawk saying ‘I’ve put my character down a hole and have no idea how to get him out…’

But I find when I get stuck that the best solution is to walk away and do something else for a while. I walk for miles with my dog. I weed the garden. I wash dishes. And while I’m doing active, repetitive things, my mind quietly goes about its business.

Having said that, the biggest problem I had actually came up during the writing of Breath Of The Dragon, and it was my good friend Anna Spargo-Ryan who reminded me, during one desperate phone call, that every character is the hero of his or her own story. Even the villains.

KC: Are you planning any more adventures for Quinn and Ash? We hope so!

AT: Unusually for me, I do have plans. They’re plans that change daily, depending on where my thoughts wander, but I’m hoping we’ll see them again. They’re both telling me that there’s more to the story, so fingers crossed!

KC: Are you working on any fiction now?

AT: I’m working on a new kids’ novel, this time a contemporary story with a most delightful heroine. I’m not sure what will happen with it just yet, but I’m really enjoying getting to know her.

KC: What advice do you have for young and adult writers?

AT: Much like my plans, my advice changes on a daily basis. Today, I have three tips:

Write a lot. It takes a long time to develop your voice and to discover how you write a book (which is probably very different to the way I write a book). Don’t just talk about writing, do the writing.
Read a lot. I know this comes up all the time, but, really, read widely. Not just things that you know you like, but things you’ve never tried. When you write a novel, you bring every single book you’ve ever read to the page in a funny way, so make sure you’re drawing on a wide library.
Finish what you start. I know a lot of aspiring authors who have drawers full of half-finished novels. They get halfway through writing a manuscript and become distracted by a shiny new idea. The thing is, the middle of ANY manuscript is hard. ANY other idea looks better than what you are writing when the writing is hard. Finish what you start so that you know that you can.

Thank you so much, Allison!

Writing workshops – Danielle Wood

September 22, 2015 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

I went to two fabulous workshops through Writers Victoria with Danielle Wood last weekend. Danielle is a Tasmanian writer – she has written a couple of collections of short stories for adults – Mothers Grimm and Rosie Little’s cautionary tales for girls – as well as an adult novel, The alphabet of light and dark and a biography, Housewife superstar, the very best of Marjorie Bligh. She has also written a trilogy for children with Heather Rose, under the pen name Angelica Banks. Finding Serendipity and A week without Tuesday are the first two books in this series for 8-12 year-olds – the third book is coming out next year.

Friday’s workshop in the Wheeler’s Centre in Little Lonsdale Street was called the Goldilocks Zone – trying to achieve the fine balance between showing and telling. Like many writers, I have heard numerous times the advice to show, not tell. As Anton Chekov said, ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.’

BUT, Danielle taught us that there is a wide spectrum for showing (image-based, indirect writing) and telling (factual, direct writing) and neither one is good nor bad. It is the balance between the two, even if you err on one side or the other.

I am definitely a teller – I overwrite and in subsequent drafts, often delete that second sentence, because it says exactly what the first sentence did, just in a slightly different way. For me, it’s like trying out a few different ways to express the same thing and I need to do it in the first draft so I don’t forget it.

Danielle gave us a few writing exercises to focus separately on telling or showing, using one of our own short stories. Telling a story usually means a flat, boring sort of work while showing can leave the reader with no framework, no understanding of what the characters are actually doing. The last exercise focused on blending all the exercises together, using the best of telling and showing techniques. I was so happy with the piece I wrote around my Alice in Wonderland short story – definitely more telling but with considered, specific images to show the reader the scene. It seemed like a magic formula to me – I can still be a teller but with more evocative imagery! I also started to write a new short story – a good beginning to something worth working on. And I came up with a killer dark sentence for the beginning of another short story … no doubt I’ll be writing this one during the school holidays at the skate park …

For Sunday’s workshop, I drove down to the Mornington Pensinsula for a workshop on fairy tales. I am working on a collection of short stories for adults, loosely using motifs and symbols and stories from fairy tales as a starting point. I love the imagery of dark woods, three attempt quests, spinning wheels, straw and gold, red capes … the list goes on and on, and the ways to incorporate it into modern fiction is endless too.

I have written a short story based on Rumplestiltskin, and used that fairy tale for the writing exercises in Danielle’s class. Danielle taught us how to use our memories to write an emotional piece of work, create a mindmap to generate ideas for writing and use the architecture of fairy tales to create a structure for our writing. The strong imagery for me from Rumplestiltskin is the chaos of the straw surrounding the miller’s daughter, the impossibility of her task, and the order of the gold, spun neatly onto bobbins in the morning. My first Rumplestiltskin story was based on the idea of names but I’m planning to write at least another one now, using the idea of impossible tasks and turning chaos to order. There’s also the big theme of anxiety, of the miller’s daughter not being able to please the king … again, something to be explored these holidays while supervising kids at a park!

At the end of the class, Danielle asked us to fill in a survey about what we had written that day. She then gave each of us a personal assignment, based on the answers from our survey. I have been to many writing classes and I have never seen a presenter give individual assignments. It felt like a gift.

And then Danielle signed books for Miss 9 and me, as well as for a friend.

I drove home with fairy tale imagery floating through my head, to my own small castle with tired, happy children and a prince who had cooked roast lamb! Wonderful literary weekend!

Tips for writing picture books part 2

August 22, 2015 by Karen Comer Leave a Comment

Last week, I posted some general tips for writing picture books. Today’s post focuses on specific writing tips.

What does your character want? How does he or she get it? Maybe they don’t get what they want? How do they deal with it?
Think of the story arc. It should slowly rise up to meet the climax, then drop down gently for the resolution. Often the protagonist in a picture book tries to solve the problem unsuccessfully twice, before solving the problem at the third attempt.
What is the problem IN your story? What is your character going to do to solve that problem? How many attempts will they make?
What is the problem WITH your story? Why doesn’t it sing? Is it the pacing? Is there too much in there? Is it too prosaic and bland? Does the language have rhythm? Does every word count and contribute to the story? Remember, you only have 500 words!
Put it aside. Leave it and write something else. Then look at it with fresh eyes a week later, a month later or even a year later.

[Read more…]

Tips for writing picture books part 1

August 18, 2015 by Karen Comer Leave a Comment

I met a friend for coffee today to talk about writing. She told me she has lots of ideas for picture books and wasn’t sure where to start. When I walked home, I thought of all the things I wished I knew when I started to write picture books. So here’s a list for my friend – and for myself five years ago. Today’s blog post focuses on general tips for writing picture books. Part 2 – to follow soon – covers manuscript specifics. [Read more…]