Tag Archives: children’s literature
O Revision!
Ever since the SCBWI Big Five-Oh summer conference, I have been the Madwoman of Revision. Lots of adhering to red ink exclamation points. Filtering critique. On not just my manuscripts, but synopses, loglines…You, too? Whenever I’m convinced my writing is … Continue reading
Member: Mini-Get-Away Club
How odd to be out in the world. We aren’t venturing drastically far, but enough for a first substantial get-away since—-at least 3 years. The teen has been across the GG bridge, but he was just a boy then, shorter … Continue reading
21 Days Later
I notice myself doing little things I haven’t in 3 weeks. Moving my hips to my Echo Show playlist, “PB’s Groove”, as I transfer dishes from the dishwasher to their homes. Throwing cat toys for the 3 beasts, up and … Continue reading
SCBWI Winter 2021
I’m going. Are you?
Festival Weekend (creativity-obsessed edition)
Saturday morning, my husband and my middle-grade son zoomed to the Los Angeles Convention Center for its uber-serving of Minefaire. Minecraft. All. Day. While up the street at USC I attended the Los Angeles Festival Of Books. Mostly I hung … Continue reading
Retreat!
Faced with views custom-made to inspire writers, I didn’t. Write. Or edit the 50 pages I’d brought with me. Instead, I continued reading Michelle Obama’s Becoming. Occasionally I glanced up from the book and gaped at the storm–then I’d consciously … Continue reading
The Sequel Begins
My novel is completed (as previously blog-blurted) and sent to the interested party. And now I wait. Sort of. I’m halfway through writing chapter two of the sequel. My husband read chapter one aloud to our son at bedtime the … Continue reading
REVISION
I finished my novel. All the writing, beach walks, and kitten-breaks seem to have paid off. I’m finished. Let the revising begin. Actually I’ve been revising all along. I adopted a habit of backing up a few chapters, reading/revising them … Continue reading
THIS HAPPENED
I won runner-up (there were only two of us who won in the Middle Grade category). SCBWI-LA Writer’s Day, Skirball Cultural Center . I pitched an agent, connected with a dream agent, dashed around assisting the totally-on-it RA’s, made new … Continue reading
Writer’s Retreat: What Was It Like?
SCBWI Working Writer’s Retreat, September, 2017 The “working” aspect in Working Writer’s Retreat (for me)=the retreat provided printers, so there was no excuse (for me) for not sprinting to my sparse (sweetly existential) weekend bedroom after a workshop, whipping open … Continue reading
SCBWI
Have you registered for the (Los Angeles chapter) SCBWI Writers & Illustrators Day 2017? It’s happening February 25th at the Skirball Cultural Center, a venue I once frequented in order to exercise my former toddler in the intriguingly lit Noah’s Ark … Continue reading
Fres-yes? (Wild Kratts Edition)
The Wild Kratts are based in Canada. In addition to their TV shows, which are broadcast all over the world, they occasionally venture over the border–mostly into eastern states and the mid-west–to entertain select child-filled crowds with their live show. The energetic brothers have … Continue reading
Remember the Bunnies
WRITER’S RETREAT! Oh, that’s long over now. ‘Tis a distant dream. T’was 2 1/4-ish days of nothing-but-revising, surrounded by foliage, sculpture/fountains and wild bunnies with super white tails. Sequestered in a simple room of my own with a nun’s bed, I … Continue reading
Breaks
What I love about Spring Break? For a week I am Fun Mama–instead of: get dressed, brush your teeth, grab your Spidey hoodie, let’s go, go, go, homework, karate, shower time!, etc. It’s nice to be all: Ooooh—let’s scooter around … Continue reading
Screens
Staring at my writing, I heard what I thought was our younger cat pulverizing the bedroom window’s screen, as he does when he’d like to be let inside, despite the little Hobbiton upside-down-U’s we had cut in pertinent doors, just for … Continue reading
Never Fails
Text conversation with my writing mentor as I attempted to send her crucial re-written novel pages before her plane took off, pages I was anxious for her input on so that I could meet a writing deadline ASAP, pages she … Continue reading
Mornings Become Them (Birds Edition)
615am–I get out of bed to let the dog outside and get back in bed forgetting to let the dog back in and he barks and I shoot out of bed not wanting the dog to wake the first grader … Continue reading
All Schedules Thrown
And, suddenly, for a week, until summer camp started, the newly ex-Kindergartner and I were face to face over our morning pancakes, not an elementary school deadline in sight. “Let’s go to the beach!” he suggested. We did. “Museums!” We went there, … Continue reading
I-5 Pretty
In a previous post I regaled our drive from Los Angeles to parts further Northeast known as Tracy, Stockton and Sacramento. Namely, that interminable length from the end of the grapevine to whatever that KABOOM exit is that has Corral in … Continue reading
Spring Break Snoozing (Wide Awake Edition)
During this luscious week of no school for the Kindergartner, we snooze well. Except when we are awakened from chasm-sleep somewhere between 2a.m. and maybe 4:30a.m.—after the bars have closed, but before the rooster across the alley busts its lungs—after we’ve … Continue reading
Spring Spirit 2014
We’d hoped to leave our valley by 10am. 430pm we were finally on the road. The little boy erupted in sneezes and coughing fits at the top of the Grapevine. When we stopped somewhere on the other side of the mountains … Continue reading
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