Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 252
March 21, 2016
Quit or Write
When you are struggling to write and things just aren’t coming together, do you take a break or push through? I tend to push on through but based on what happened last week I still can’t decide if that’s good or bad. I’ve been working on an article for several weeks now. The subject […]
March 20, 2016
What kids are reading…
On March 2, 2016, An American Book Sellers Association Panel discussed books that resonate with young readers. You can read the entire Publisher’s Weekly article here but I’ve listed some of the highlights below. Hannah Lambert at Little Simon (books up to age 8) reports that they have good luck with nonfiction that tells a story. […]
March 17, 2016
Summer Reading List: AKA Watch Me Try to Make Up My Mind
Breaking News for PAL* Members: SCBWI is creating PAL Summer Reading Lists! Fifteen regional lists (the same regions used for Crystal Kites) will be created and divided by grades and within the grades, genres. These lists will be beautifully designed, then marketed and publicized to schools, libraries, bloggers, and more. Look for a special invitation […]
March 16, 2016
Research: Why We Need to be Careful Using Fiction as a Source
As I prepare to write my first piece of historical fiction, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Not only am I reading about The Cold War and the 1970s, I’m also reading about how to write historical fiction in general and historical mysteries in particular. Again and again, I see the recommendation that movies […]
March 15, 2016
Writing a Proposal vs Writing the Whole Book
One of the topics at last Saturday’s Missouri SCBWI workshop was the book proposal. I have to admit that although I know what goes into a proposal, I’ve never written one. The purpose of a proposal is to get a contract, and quite possibly an advance, without having to write the entire book first. The […]
March 14, 2016
Rewriting with an Editor or Agent
Last weekend, I attended a writing workshop about using Skype and writing nonfiction proposals. Part of the Skype session included Skyping with an Lori Kilkelly, an agent at Rodeen Literary Management. She answered a series of questions including how a writer should respond when an editor asks for an impossible change in a rewrite. Lori […]
March 13, 2016
Guess what came in the mail?
Friday, I got a package in the mail from Abdo — yay me! Black Lives Matter came out in November of 2015. I’m not sure why this one took so long to arrive since Abdo has always been pretty prompt before now. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is […]
March 10, 2016
Cooking as Research
I’m still doing the research for my Cold War novel and I realized that Frankie is going to have to eat. But what should she eat? Fortunately, I grew up in the 1970s and I have a copy of my mother’s notebook, each recipe hand written. But I come to the question, was it hand […]
March 9, 2016
Don’t Dumb Down Your Characters
Recently, I caved in and joined twitter. Since I’m trying to find an agent, I’ve been following the site #MSWL. If you’re unfamiliar, that stands for “Manuscript Wish List,” and they catalogue #MSWL posts from twitter. Unfortunately, they’ve been going through a site re-design so no new posts for quite some time. I finally had […]
March 8, 2016
Character Emotions: Can You Describe Them?
How do you behave when you are uncomfortable vs when you are mulling over a difficult problem? The facial expressions look a lot alike so how do you distinguish between the two? What about anger and concern? Or surprise and wonder? You can always tell the reader what your character is feeling but it works […]
