Wow, it must be “killer blog posts by literary agents day”!   Here’s a superb post from Nathan Bransford (who has one of the best publishing-related blogs in existence) about how he works with prospective clients to improve their manuscripts.  Really insightful stuff here:

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/08/unagented-revisions.html

Here’s a fascinating post by literary agent Rachelle Gardner on how many submissions she receives every week, how she processes them and what fills her busy, busy days.  If you’ve ever submitted to an agent and been frustrated by a long delay in hearing back, this should make you a bit more sympathetic.

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2008/08/agent-priorities.html

Always a good idea to keep tabs on what’s selling.  Here’s the most recent NY Times Bestseller list for a variety of children’s genres:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/books/bestseller/bestchildren.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

GALLOP!, written and illustrated by Rufus Butler Seder, is the top picture book, THE DANGEROUS DAYS OF DANIEL X, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, is atop the chapter book list and THE TWILIGHT SAGA, by Stephenie Meyer is the top series book.

From “Weekend Edition”, author Lauren Child talks about her latest book, Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now, her “Charlie and Lola” books and their television spinoff.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93906369&ft=1&f=1038

As we celebrated the recent 18th Anniversary of the Children’s Book Insider newsletter, we took the opportunity to look back at some of the many author interviews we’ve presented.  What caught our eye was some of the priceless advice these authors shared with our readers.

Here are two quick — but powerful — lessons from our archives:

Judy Blume on writing from the heart (August 1990):

What happened when I first started–as in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which is the first book that was really mine–is I was just telling the stories that I knew. I knew what it was like to be in sixth grade, and to be in Margaret’s body, because that was my body. Slow growing, slow to develop….So that’s what I wrote about, because it wasn’t there for me when I was young. I didn’t know if anyone would publish it, but it was from the heart. The only thing that works with writing is that you care so passionately about it yourself, that you make someone else care passionately about it. Books that are written to order are awful. It can’t work. Children will see through that and they won’t read it. Read more

Fun video….

http://100scopenotes.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/ye-olde-scope-notes-how-to-make-books/

If someone told you to “fade”, would you ignore them or guard your wallet? The answer depends not just on who is doing the talking, but when. Joe College in the early 1930′s use the term to mean “to leave”; a 1940′s zoot-suiter “faded” by covering a bet; it meant “to ignore” in the 1980′s hip-hip vernacular; and the youth of the 1990′s said something was “fade” when it crimped their style. Simple words–fade, sweet, lamp, dig and cut, to name just a few–change dramatically when incorporated into the slang of each generation. Usually the meanings have nothing to do with the literal definitions of the terms.

So how much of this colorful verbiage should you use in your writing? Slang immediately dates a book, but that’s not necessarily bad. Certain words are closely identified with different eras of American history, so slang can place the story quickly into a specific decade. The way a character talks provides a window for the reader into that character’s personality, as well as his age and social class. And since slang originates from the youth culture of the time, the words themselves help portray the prevailing attitudes of teens and young adults. Finally, slang can be fun and interesting to read.
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