Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 243

Twitter Pitch

I’ve written short pitches for my book ideas — three sentences, one sentence — but I hadn’t considered limiting myself to 140 characters until I heard two writers discussing twitter pitches.  I suspect this was at the Missouri SCBWI retreat but don’t actually remember who or where.  Yeah, when it’s overloaded my brain is just […]

Research and Writing: The Joy of Not Understanding a Source

Now that I’m back from the retreat, I’m doing a hard copy edit of the NASA book.  Hint:  I don’t care how often you read something on a screen, you will miss several mistakes.  Missing commas, singulars that should be plural and overused words (word, words, words) all hide themselves when reading on a screen. […]

Finding Your Voice

I’ve long suspected that at least in terms of nonfiction I have found my voice.  That was confirmed by the critique I got from Chronicle’s Taylor Norman at the Missouri SCBWI Advanced Writer’s Retreat.  I submitted the picture book version of What’s Up, Chuck?  which is basically a scientific take on vomit.  Yes, there is actually […]

Voice: The Many Faces of One Piece of Writing

When a new writer asks about voice, I always feel myself hesitate before I respond.  What does she want to know?  Is the talking about character voice?  Author voice?  The tone of an individual piece of writing?  Because voice is all of this and much, much more. This past weekend at the Missouri SCBWI Advanced […]

How do you identify as a writer?

As we were coming home from the Missouri SCBWI Advanced Writers retreat Sunday, my friend Shannon asked me a question that surprised me.  “When we were asked to introduce ourselves, you said that you were a nonfiction author.  Did you leave fiction off on purpose?” I admit that I had to think about it a […]

I am on the road today with my writing buddy Stephanie Be...

I am on the road today with my writing buddy Stephanie Bearce.  We are journeying over the river (I think there’s a river) and to the land of wide open fields and windmills to the Missouri SCBWI Advanced Writers Retreat. That means that my boys have to hold down the fort without me.  Poor boys! […]

One Manuscript, Two Attempts

Have you ever had a manuscript that seemed to morph from one form to another?  That’s been the case with “What’s Up Chuck?” As I did the research for a  book about why animals vomit, it became obvious that there was a lot of information.  In fact, there was probably too much for a picture […]

Finding Classes that Feed My Writing Bug

One of the things that I like to do is take online courses about topics that feature in my books. I’ve taken classes about evolution and dinosaurs, astro-biology and teaching through art and even the historiography of Thomas Jefferson.  Several months ago, I looked for a class on the history of JFK. Nope. Couldn’t find a […]

Picture Books: A Wedding Between Text and Illustration

Picture books are strange hybrid beasts.  They are part text and part illustration and both elements need to carry part of the story.  This means that unless you are an author/illustrator, you only do half the job. For an author this means that you write a brief text that leaves room for illustration.  You’re encouraged […]

Conducting an Interview

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview author/illustrator Wendy Martin about her work on The Story Circle.  I used to do a lot more interviews than I do now but, for a variety of reasons, interviewing is an important skill for a writer. First of all, you might need to interview an expert source for […]