Nancy I. Sanders's Blog, page 75

Welcome to My World: Interview on Brock Eastman’s Site

Hey writing friends! Hop on over to author Brock Eastman’s site and visit an interview he posted there about me and my books.

And while you’re there, check out some of Brock’s books. He’s an amazing Christian author. He’s in the middle of writing some exciting books for teens. My husband Jeff has been reading the first two books in Brock’s trilogy, The Quest for Truth.

After Jeff finished the second book, he said he was going to get started on the third. Come to find out, Brock is still in the middle of writing that one! So now Jeff has to wait until it’s published to find out what happens in the next episode of this exciting adventure!!!

I wish these books had been around when my boys had been teens…good clean adventure with a Star Wars feel and a Christian message to boot!!!! It doesn’t get much better than that, in my opinion.

Transplanting Flowers, Transplanting Sentences

I have calla lilies blooming in my backyard next to my small garden path that meanders between two birch trees and a Japanese Maple.

The calla lilies used to bloom in my front yard!

But last year I decided to transplant them from the front to the back. I thought they’d do better in the shade of the birch trees than in the spot they first were in.

I transplant things all the time in my garden as I redesign it from time to time. It’s just a fun part of gardening. Perhaps something isn’t growing as well as it should in one spot, so I dig it up and move it to another.

It’s the same with manuscripts.

When you write a sentence or a paragraph or even a chapter, don’t be afraid to move it to a better place as you’re going through and editing your manuscript. Learn to cut and chop and rearrange until information flows better or characters develop better or the plot moves forward better.

Writing Exercise: Let Your Characters Speak

In real life, each person is unique.

In a well-written story, each character is unique, too. Each one has his own fingerprint. Each one has her own voice.

I don’t know about how it is for you, but I tend to make all my characters sound the same. If you fall into that trap easily, too, here’s a writing exercise to try:

1. Pretend all your characters in your story are flowers. Each one is a different flower.

2. Pick a different flower for each one of your characters to be.

3. Write a short bio of each character based on the flower you’ve picked for it to be. For example, if Grandma (in your story) is a rose, she can be very wealthy and regal. She can be famous. She can smell wonderful with some mysterious perfume she wears. Everyone smells it as soon as she enters a room. People adore and revere her. But to her granddaughter, she’s all thorns.

4. After each character has their own unique bio based on which flower he or she is, ask each one to answer this question in his or her own unique voice:

There’s a knock on the door…who might it be?

Characters are Like Flowers

I just talked with my sister who’s visiting her son in Montana. They were driving into a severe snowstorm with 6-12 inches of snow.

But here in my garden in southern CA, flowers are blooming everywhere. Spring has officially arrived!

There are calla lilies in the shade of the birch trees. Tall. Majestic. Regal. They speak of Easter and the risen Lord in hushed and reverent tones.

There are flowers that look like daisies. They love the full sun. When shade hits them, they close their petals up. Tight. But in the bright noonday sun, their vibrant yellows and deep oranges shine for all to see. It’s like they’re singing happy songs.

Bright orange poppies wave in the gentle breeze. Footloose and carefree, they popped up in unexpected places. Next year, I know I’ll find them blooming in different spots altogether.

A profuse mound of purple petunias brighten the little path that meanders through my garden. But something is eating their blossoms. Snails? The grasshopper I saw? I don’t know, but one by one, big chunks are being enjoyed for breakfast by somebody. Soon they’ll be gone.

Pink begonias have woken up from being dormant all winter and are blooming under the apricot tree. What were they thinking all those silent months? What are they thinking now?

Did you know the characters we write about in our stories are a lot like flowers? Each one of our characters has his or her own distinctive personality. Each one of them speaks in their own unique voice.

Think about a story you’re working on right now. If you had to pick a different flower for each one, which flower would your main character be? (Like the roses along our wall? Or the perky pansies lining the garden path?)

Which flower would the bad guy/gal be? (Like the dandelion in our lawn? Or the Australian lilac…sweet but quietly invading the other flowers’ territory?)

The Triple Crown of Success

I’ve developed a strategy that helps me accumulate publishing credits and helps me grow as a writer even during winter seasons when all I get is rejections for the book manuscripts I submit. I call it the Triple Crown of Success.

I explain how this works in detail in my book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career.

(Just a note on my book…if you don’t have it yet, please be patient. It’s pulled off the shelf right now as I’m working to give it a new cover and update it with current info such as the Common Core State Standards. The updated version will be available to purchase again hopefully by this summer. But if you just can’t wait, the book is still available at online used bookstores.)

I’ll give a quick overview of how the Triple Crown of Success works:

Basically, each week I try to work on 3 different manuscripts to meet 3 different goals.

Project #1:

For the goal of writing for personal fulfillment, I work on whichever manuscript I’m passionate about. I devote a certain amount of time each week working on this to keep my writer’s passion alive.

Project #2:

For the goal of writing to get published, I write for the no-pay/low-pay market. I still do this today! For example, right now I’m writing a how-to article once a month that gets published in an online column at Working Writer’s Club. (Check out the club…it’s free to join and you’ll find sooooo many resources for writers there!) Plus, I’ve had several deadlines these past few months for other periodicals and online venues. Do I get paid for these? No. But I build up my publishing credits. And I work with editors. And I keep honing my writing skills. And I build my author’s platform by getting my website and blog and name out there. These benefits are my “paycheck.”

Project #3:

For the goal of writing to earn income, I send out queries and proposals and try to land book contracts or high-paying magazine contracts so I get paid to write something. To do this I study different publishers product lines and the books or magazine articles they’re putting out right now. I look for holes in their market. Then I submit queries and proposals for potential books to write that would fit into their product line. This is how I earn most of my income each year.

So what can you do if you feel like you’re in the middle of winter as a writer? Don’t lose all your leaves like a deciduous tree or shut down and give up on writing.

Be like an evergreen. Start working on three different strategies and manuscript projects to meet the three basic goals most writers have. Take control of your writing by using the Triple Crown of Success and shine like an evergreen all year long.

Take Control of Your Writing Life

The life of a writer has many unpredictable elements to it.

One unpredictable element is the seasons a writer goes through.

You just never know when you’ll get a string of rejections and nothing seems to be happening to your writing career. It feels like winter.

And then suddenly a bunch of editors are interested in your manuscripts and the joys of summer are yours.

We may not be able to control the seasons we’ll go through as a writer, but we CAN control what we do during these different seasons. We can choose to be like a deciduous tree and shut down and wait until something miraculous happens…

Or we can choose to be like an evergreen tree and keep on keeping on through the winter until spring comes again.

Over the years I’ve had various times of winter as a writer. Writing has been my part-time career (I’ve been a full-time Mom as my main career). I’ve earned a part-time income for the past 20 years of $20,000 or more per year. Many years it’s been significantly higher than that. How have I maintained this income even during winter seasons?

I’ve followed the strategy of what I call the Triple Crown of Success. I’ll tell more about that in the next post.

Trees in Winter

I live in southern CA. We have a small backyard. But in our yard, we have two different types of trees: deciduous and evergreen. We have 2 birch trees and 2 Japanese maples. We have a Blue Spruce pine tree in a big pot. And several tall palm trees are in our neighbor’s yard next door but we get to enjoy them because they stand right next to our wall.

Even though our winters are mild, these two types of trees react differently to winter. At the first sign of winter, the deciduous trees drop their leaves. They lie dormant. They shut down.

The evergreen trees, however, just keep on keeping on. Yes it’s cold. Yes it’s winter. Yes everything around them seems dead and empty. But they persevere.

What kind of writer are you when you hit a winter season? Are you like a deciduous tree? If you get rejections and nobody seems interested in your manuscripts, do you shut down? Do you give up on writing for awhile and just wait until next year’s conference rolls around to motivate you to write again?

Or are you evergreen? Do you keep writing, keep learning new writing skills, keep pumping out manuscripts and sending out queries? Do you keep on keeping on until springtime comes again?

Even if you’ve been like a deciduous tree in winter, don’t despair! In my next post I’ll show you some ways you can be like an evergreen.

Seasons

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you know that we were holding a discussion on plot for several weeks.

I had planned on continuing that discussion again, but decided to postpone it for a little bit.

Why?

Because here in sunny Southern California, spring has sprung! The leaves are coming out on my birch trees. Brilliant red leaves are bursting forth on my little Japanese Maple tree. Great big bumbledy bees are buzzing with delight among my purple sweet peas. Seedlings are sprouting and the mockingbirds are building their nests.

I know that spring hasn’t arrived everywhere yet, however. That’s because my favorite winter visitor, the yellow-rumped warbler, is still hopping around in my yard looking for bugs. Chilly nights tell him it’s still too early to fly away north to Canada where he spends his summer days.

Right now I’m under some pretty intense book deadlines. But every break I can take to give my eyes and wrists and back and brain a short break, you can guess where you’ll find me…outside in my garden.

So I wanted to take a few upcoming posts to share some joys and some thoughts about writing and gardening and seasons.

For starters…I know it’s spring here but not for other writers who are e-mailing to say it’s snowing in their corner of the world.

Seasons are different for each of us depending on where we’re at.

And it’s like that as writers, too. We don’t all go through the same seasons at the same time.

So hey…wanna share what the season’s like at your house? Is it snowing and wintry…or is it starting to look like spring?

And what kind of season are you going through as a writer right now? I’d love to hear!

Writer’s Workshop Transcript

If you’d like to catch the workshop I just did for the Institute of Children’s Literature, the transcript is now available online.

Click here to read it!

And if you have any questions about the beginning readers and chapter books market, I’d be happy to chat about them here. Just post a comment and let me know.

And of course, if you want to really learn more about this market, you can purchase my newest book for writers, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Beginning Readers and Chapter Books.

Click here to see the Table of Contents.

Welcome to My World

I hope you had fun celebrating St. Patrick’s Day!

My newest book, Challenge on the Hill of Fire, is a great book to read with kids to celebrate this fun holiday. And if you have a second grader or older, they can read it all by themselves!

The journey to publication has been a lot of fun. And now the publicity and marketing is buzzing along.

Pioneer Woman just reviewed it on their awesome site.

Here’s what my marketing guy posted in an e-mail he circulated around the publishing house about Pioneer Woman:

Forbes named Pioneer Woman website one of the top 10 Lifestyle Websites for Women and top 10 Parenting and Homemaking sites for Women of 2012.

They got over 1000 comments posted on their site in response to my book review. Talk about amazing exposure for the book!!!!!

I’m telling you all this, not to boast, but to share this great marketing opportunity for great exposure. If you have a published children’s book, contact Heather Sanders, the gal who does these reviews, to see if she might be interested in reviewing your book on her site. (Or ask your publisher to contact her.) She’s super nice and super sweet and great to work with…and literally TONS of women and homeschooling moms read that site.

Check it out and best wishes with your book, too!

(Oh, and if you want to hear an interview on my book, you can listen to this podcast at the Adventures in Odyssey site!)