Jean Reidy's Blog, page 42

Agent Appreciation Day: Erin Murphy

Top 10 reasons why I love my agent:

10. She represents picture book authors.
9. She's a hands-on, editorial agent. Nothing goes out until it's perfect.
8. She loves my projects - not all, but most.
7. She gently nudges me in the best direction for my career.
6. She responds to my e-mails by the end of the day.
5. She knows the business and targets submissions with expert precision.
4. She treats all my ideas with great respect.
3. She considers her clients one big family - we ha...

Michael Stearns on Picture Book Writing

Here's a great essay from agent Michael Stearns at Upstart Crow. Let it guide you as you prepare for our next Picture Book Peek Week coming up on December 14th.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Holiday Picture Book Peek - December 14th!

HO! HO! HO! Holiday Picture Book Peek Week
Free critiques of select PB manuscripts - including those wretched rhymers (Yup, 3 of my upcoming PBs are written in verse!

It begins December 14th, and I've changed up the format a bit. Here's how it will work:

Sign up for a critique by entering your PB WORKING TITLE in the comment section of this blog post anytime (midnight to midnight Mountain Time) on December 14th. Titles submitted before or after December 14th will not be considered.

I'll throw all...

Pay it Forward Friday - Bridget Zinn Auction

Bridget's friends have done it again. Please check out the online auction - Bridget Kicks Cancer - for my fellow author and librarian Bridget Zinn.

From the auction website:

"All proceeds from this auction will go to Bridget Zinn and Barrett Dowell. Bridget is a 32-year-old author and librarian who was diagnosed with colon cancer last February. She and Barrett, who have been together since they were teenagers, were married in the hospital just minutes before she went into surgery to remove a...

I'm Pickled Tink ...

... drunk with excitement, that is. I've got another cover.

Talking about Titles - More Links

A few more folks are talking about titles:

Jill Corcoran, Literary Agent - your title is your billboard.
Editorial Anonymous - a fabulous title can move you to the top of the slush.

See my original post for more discussion on the importance of titles.

Use Directed Freewriting to Flesh out Your Characters

I've found that my single most useful tool for fleshing out a character - better than any lists or profile sheets - is simply freewriting in the character's first person voice. But rather than sitting in front of a blank screen only to fill it with details of eye color, hair color and family history, I give my character a topic - usually a topic that ties to my book. Directed freewriting is like journaling but with a prompt.

So, for example, if my novel is about a tween named Sam coming of ag...

Shhhhh! I'm NaNoing.

Sorry it's been a little quiet around the "Romp" lately. I've been NaNoing.

I just hit 30K words and I must say, I think I've found my ideal daily word count - 2500/day. It keeps me in character for a few hours. It stretches me enough to feel hard but doable. It knocks off a couple of short chapters, giving me a solid sense of accomplishment. And it leaves me spent for the day. But I try to finish each session with some trailing thoughts for tomorrow, so I can pick up easily where I've left o...

Pay it Forward Friday - FRED

I just read about FRED, Fathers Ready Every Day, yesterday in my local paper. As a project designed by Texas A&M, FRED's goal is to encourage father-child involvement and daily rituals of bonding and learning between children and positive male role models. The website provides a reading log and other tools to get started. Pass it on.

John Green on NaNoWriMo

Whether you're writing a novel this month or not, you're gonna love this!