No matter how successful you get, writing a book is a humbling experience. Even Stephen King starts with a blank page. So when I read articles from published authors that talk about what they've learned along the way, I'm reminded of how small the gap from "aspiring" to "published" can be. The experienced are a little wiser, but they're still sweating it along with the rest of us.

In 7 Things I've Learned So Far, bestselling young adult author Carrie Vaughn offers two pieces of advice that I especially agree with: plot and character are the same thing (if you've been a CBI subscriber for very long or attended one of my Children's Authors' Bootcamp workshops, you know this is my mantra), and go big or go home. I love the latter — with thousands of new books published each year, why wouldn't you focus your energies on your most original, wacky, weird or provocative idea? Writing's hard work; spend your time with something that will get noticed. Discover your own genius and break new ground. Life's too short to play it safe, and kids will appreciate that quirky book that makes them see the world in a new way.

Here's yet another innovative way authors are using the Internet to explore their writing and connect with their readers. Dear Teen Me is a blog featuring published and unpublished young adult authors writing letters to their former teenage selves. The posts — some funny, some poignant — show how the details of teen life may have changed, but the angst remains the same. The blog is dedicated to modern teen readers, but it's also a treasure trove for aspiring authors wanting to reconnect with their adolescent voices. Check it out.

Very often, finding an agent to represent your work feels like a cross between luck, fate, and flipping a coin. But first-time author Allan Woodrow decided to use with a slightly more scientific method. Beginning with a strong manuscript (that's really the most important thing, after all), a stand-out query, and a system for researching, ranking and submitting to agents, he landed an agent within a month and sold his first middle grade novel, The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless, to HarperCollins two months later.

Read all about his secret here, and then put it to work for yourself.

Publishing can be a dog-eat-dog world (or, as one editor once said, bunny-eat-bunny). It's not a place for the fainthearted–if you want a spot on a publisher's list, you have to be willing to stand up and fight.

I'm exaggerating, of course (just a bit, anyway). But young adult writer Frankie Diane Mallis took this attitude to heart when she went after landing her dream agent. She outlines her attack in four stages (Training, Weapons, Battle Plan, Winning the War) in her article on the Guide to Literary Agents blog. No, she's not dangerous, just very determined. And her plan worked, so maybe it will work for you too.

Editor's note: Audrey is a 13-year-old student from California who is currently working on her own novel between school, sports and choir. She's also a Contributing Editor to Write4Kids, focusing on middle grade and young adult literature. If you have writing-related questions for Audrey, or want to suggest a topic for a future column, please contact Laura at Laura@write4kids.com.

Visit Audrey's blog, Audrey Reads and Reviews, for more of her insights into YA lit.

Hello, people! I have two topics that I’d like to address today.

First off, something that I don’t like.

I’ve been reading lots lately, more than usual (which is saying something). I’ve also been reading different genres—I’ve picked up some paranormal, high fantasy, and lots of literary contemporary.

Throughout a bunch of the paranormal and high fantasy that I read, there was a recurring theme (not so much in the literary-contemporary):

Those perfect little people who talk like they’re from the Victorian Age (i.e. very smart and formal) and always look super pretty! even after some intense battle scene. In fantasy/paranormal, they usually have powers that are super epic! or they’re the Chosen One. In realistic fiction they’re always super popular! or super misunderstood!

OK, so they annoy me for two reasons:

One, on a more technical level: relate-ability. I mean, who looks completely gorgeous and/or devilishly handsome (a common description of the male characters of this persuasion) all the time? And sorry, authors, but everyone uses contractions. You shouldn’t, can’t, and hopefully won’t have a character who says “should not” “cannot” and “will not” all the time.*

Also, am I the only one who thinks the Chosen One is a little…you know…cliché? I mean, there are a lot of books out there about someone who is the special-est…

Also, if your character is popular, that’s okay. If your character is misunderstood, that’s okay too. But if your character is misunderstood because she is so beautiful, it’s a complete curse, like, you know?! we might have a little problem, and I suggest you read My Immortal by Tara (Google it).

Two, on a completely personal level: they. are. everywhere. It’s the attack of the clones, people!

I recently read a series of books, paranormal mystery-romance. These weren’t little books, they were like 600-700 pages each. I liked some parts of it a lot—the action/battle scenes were well written, and the world nicely developed. But every single character in it was super perfect, beautiful, either a sweetheart or sexyevil. Very Mary-Sue like. So I stopped reading about halfway through the second book.

I mean, even the character who is supposedly is so evil, you guys! is oh-so-sexy and devilishly handsome.

It really bugged me. You know, a friend of mine said that you should kill off a character that gets WAY too much physical description compared to the other characters.

Well, if this extremely popular series killed off the overly-described characters, there would be no story. **

Just a tip: describe your character once. You can reinforce it, if you like, with “she flicked her pink hair” or something like that, but you do not need to remind us that Elaina has luscious blonde hair or Damien has devilishly handsome black eyes every single page.

Be creative. Your character should have a great personality, not just a beautiful exterior, because… shallow, much?

Now the good:

I just finished reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and I absolutely loved it! I strongly encourage you read it.

I liked it because it was bubbly. One of the Wills was a normal teen; the other one was severely depressed. But, somehow, the two authors (John Green and David Levithan) managed to make it…light. It dealt with heavy subject matter at times (self-identity, self-harm, depression, lying, revenge), but it retained a nonchalant tone throughout.

That’s not to say that you should write a novel with a suicidal main character, and have her sound all breezy and offhand. But it’s a nice juxtaposition that the two authors did well.

Another thing I liked about Will Grayson, Will Grayson was that it was smart. The narrators were both intelligent, and I am sick of reading books with narrators who sound dumb or have no interesting insights. You don’t have to write a SAT Vocabulary book to make your main characters sound smart, however. Just have them talk like normal intelligent human beings—witty retorts, irony, and sarcasm are always a plus.

I also read Marcelo in the Real World, and I absolutely loved it!

The main character, Marcelo, had Asperger’s Syndrome. However, he was a very real, engaging, interesting character to read about. His struggles weren’t ones that teens would face every day, but I grew to relate and care about Marcelo.

Also, the voice (written by Francisco X. Stork) was amazing! It had interesting wordplay, humor, and was really touching. During most of the novel, I could feel Marcelo’s passion for his cause.

I really enjoyed the cast of characters, too. I liked how the main characters were so different from each other, and disliked each other from the start, but grew to be friends. I liked how everything didn’t work out perfectly. And I especially liked how, in the end, you could see exactly how the characters grew as people and as friends.

Audrey

*unless they’re geniuses, or something like it.

** no, I did not read Twilight. What kind of person do you think I am?

****disclaimer: I have no problem reading about characters with exceptional looks. Just don’t make their looks the only exceptional thing about them, and give them at least one physical flaw. Just 'cos nobody’s perfect. ****

We spend so much time talking about the grown-ups involved in publishing for children — the authors, the editors and agents, the reviews and bloggers and book buyers — that we sometimes forget about the most important people of all: the kids who read the books. Linda Arms White, Laura's cohort for the Children's Authors' Bootcamp writing workshops, was pleasantly reminded of this last week. When Linda returned home from the Austin Bootcamp, she found a letter from a mom whose daughter was inspired by Linda's picture book, I Could Do That! Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote. Six-year-old Cora Musser, who lives in Mifflin, PA, was motivated by Esther Morris' can-do attitude to write Pennsylvania governor Tim Corbett and ask him to rethink his plans for cutting funding for full-day kindergarten. "Because of kindergarten, I can write this letter…..I am ready for first grade," Cora wrote. See the Lewistown Sentinel article here.

"Such is the power of books!" said Linda. And smart girls, and parents who support them. And the authors who hang in there for moments like these.

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When published authors offer advice gained from their own hard-earned experienced, it's wise to listen. And good writing is good writing, regardless of the age or genre for which you write. So when adult horror writer Stephen Graham Jones wrote "7 Things I've Learned So Far" on the Guide to Literary Agents blog, I was struck by how much of his advice could be applied to children's book writing. Here's his post, with my comments in italics:

1. Characters are most interesting when they lie. It’s when they’re the most naked, the most vulnerable, the most perplexing—the most like us. Stories need stupid decisions that, at the time, seem absolutely rational and necessary. Without stupid decisions, the world isn’t thrown out of balance, and so there’s no need for a "rest of the story" to balance it back.

Flawed heroes are one of the most difficult things for children's writers to create, because they feel their characters must always model perfect behavior for the readers. But it's much more interesting — and entertaining — to see a character get himself into trouble, and then figure how to get himself out. And isn't that really how the most important lessons are learned?

2. If you keep having to dip into the story’s past to explain the present, then there’s a good chance your real story’s in the past, and you’re just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there. However, we cue into that charade extremely fast, and move on to another story, another book.

If a character's backstory is really so compelling that it needs to be constantly spotlighted in the present, maybe you're not starting your book in the right place. This is true for novels for all ages.

3. Don’t run down every single rabbit hole. Yes, your twenty-five-year old character has endless Kool-Aid stands and dances and family reunions behind her, all of which add texture to who she is. But, please, we don’t need to know about each and every one of them. If it doesn’t contribute directly to the end, then it doesn’t belong.

Well said. Like adults, kids want to read about the unusual details of your character, those things that impact why she's in her present situation and how she reacts to it. Anything else can be jettisoned.

4. If the main character’s not in jeopardy—physical, psychological, emotional, whatever—then you don’t have any tension, and you don’t have a story. There’s no reason for us to turn the page, as what you’re delivering us is simply a recounting of these events that happened, none of which matter, as nothing’s at stake at the character level. The story is the ups and downs, though, the near misses, the impossible obstacles, the unlikely saves, the sacrifices, the victories, the accidents.

Ditto. Conflict and tension are essential, even for picture books. Just remember that "conflict" for a four-year-old might be losing his favorite toy, whereas conflict for a teen is much more complex.

5. If you haven’t manipulated us such that we’re invested in either one outcome or another, then we’re not engaged with what’s happening on the page—again, you don’t have a story. At the end of any piece of fiction, we need to have that feeling of satisfaction—not so much that this was the outcome we were rooting for, or the outcome we suspected (one of the most basic pleasures of reading is to have our expectations subverted), but that this was the inevitable thing that finally had to happen to make the rest of the story true.

It's that conflict, and that flawed character, that gets the reader invested in the story. This is just as true for kids as for adults. And the ending needs to be inevitable — not because it's predictable, but because it makes sense that the protagonist would end up there after living through and being changed by the events of the plot.

6. The only question you need to be able to answer about your story is: Why today? Why this day out of your character’s life rather than all the other days? And the answer, it’s always Because this is the day that’s breaking the rhythm, the day that’s an aberrance, the day everything can change, if the character can just walk that tightrope to the last page.

Thank you for this one, Stephen! Too many children's book manuscripts (especially picture books) feature ordinary days in the lives of the characters. We know ordinary days. What we want authors to do is show us extraordinary days, days that take the protagonist to unexpected places. That's what children want to read, and that's what book buyers pay for.

7. Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy, in comparison—happy endings aren’t at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them. But the truly great fictions, they trick you into thinking we’re heading for something dour, some big final downer, but then, at the last moment, there’s a flower in this expanse of tundra, and the main character sees it, and just leaves it there for the next person coming along, and you’ve done your job.

Yes. Humor always wins in children's books (look at The Diary of a Wimpy Kid phenomenon), but happy endings don't have to be slapstick to feel good. They can be joyful, or life-affirming, or hopeful. It's fine to take readers to dark places, but show them some light at the end so they're glad they read your book.

Lauren Myracle is being called this generation's Judy Blume, and since she's a fellow resident of Fort Collins, I just had to link to her interview in Publishers Weekly. Lauren's got that gift for speaking directly to teens and pre-teens, and especially captures the sensibility of girls wrestling with issues that their parents might not want to talk about. And even though her books routinely make the challenged and banned lists, she's not all dark and emo-ish. Check out her website to see her sunny, sensitive side that readers so love.

Editor's note: Audrey is a 13-year-old student from California who is currently working on her own novel between school, sports and choir. She's also a Contributing Editor to Write4Kids, focusing on middle grade and YA literature. If you have writing-related questions for Audrey, or want to suggest a topic for a future column, please contact Laura at Laura@write4kids.com.

Visit Audrey's new blog, Audrey Reads and Reviews, for more of her insights into YA lit.

For this blog post, I’ve interviewed Alma Alexander. Ms. Alexander has published the YA fantasy series Worldweavers from HarperTeen. Her side project is a very interesting one—she wrote a novel as a 14 year old, and she has been editing it and revising it on a website: http://heritageofclan.wordpress.com/. Visit her online at: http://www.almaalexander.com/.

Audrey: I really like the social structure of the story (with the clans and guilds etc). But, more than that, I like the world you’ve created. Do you have any advice for creating a world so thoroughly? When I read your work, I feel like there’s a bigger world out there than just the parts that you’ve written about. Any advice?

Alma: Actually there is a whole file that I created about that world (and yes, I still have that too) which delves into ALL SORTS of detail about it – most of which never ever makes it into the book/story itself. It’s what I call the Iceberg Theory of Writing – what the reader sees is only the top 5% of what there is to know, the stuff that’s above the waterline and looks pretty and spectacular. But it RESTS on all that invisible 95% that is under water, never seen. That is what provides the stability and familiarity for that 5% which appears to be floating effortlessly in mid-air.

In our own everyday mundane world that 95% can be as visible as the rest – simply because we LIVE in this world 24/7, live it breathe it hold it touch it smell it every day, and it’s deeply and utterly familiar and transparent to us. We take a huge amount of stuff for granted, simply because we KNOW that it is there. Creating a fantasy world from scratch means that you lack this built-in scaffolding, and you have to build your own. The advice you are asking for boils down to one simple thing – ALWAYS know more about your world than you let on, and then the reader will instinctively pick up on the fact that there is more to know, and therefore the world has a depth and a reality which is then comparable to our own “real” world.

Audrey: You have a lot of characters. They all seem to have totally different personalities. How do you do this? I love ensemble casts (I usually write them, but mine are mainly all teenagers), and you seem to be writing about all different social castes and ages. How do/did you figure everything out about the characters? How do/did you keep everything straight about them? When I try to do a lot of characters, I mix them up.

Alma: Hi, my name is Alma and I HEAR VOICES…

Well, that’s a simplistic way of putting it, but that’s what it boils down to, for me. I don’t so much create characters as allow them in, simply let them wander by and tell me a story, and I simply take dictation. The fact that they all have different voices stands to reason – they are all different people. I contain many many people, I contain worlds. But it isn’t something I do on a conscious level. I simply listen.

Part of the ability to write across the boundaries of class and race and age comes from the fact that I am a voracious reader. I devour books – and every book I read teaches me something which gets filed away for future reference for if and when a character who might be so VERY different from myself might need such knowledge or identity markers. If I am writing about somebody from a culture with which I am less than adequately familiar, I will immerse myself in reading about that culture until I “internalize” some of its basic ideas and beliefs – and with those, comes the voice.

A character’s voice is rooted in that character’s context and culture. These are creatures who all exist in a complex mix of relationships to the people and places in their lives, to their set of beliefs, to their faith, to their worldview, to their morality, to their physical and metaphysical address in the world in which they live. All of these things inform the way they respond to that world.

In the Clans book, for instance, I am setting up a conflict between two people who love and respect each other – who are foster-brothers – who have both grown up aristocrats in a world where aristocrats have a certain social position – but their minds and the thoughts and feelings therein are very different, and when their positions in their world are rocked by new revelations they respond in ways that will set them up as enemies in what amounts to a civil war. It is important to realize that even people who on the face of it look almost identical to one another might react very differently to the same stimulus – and once you keep this in mind, the different inner voices of these people will make themselves known to you if you listen closely. Read more

In the latest chapter of big publishers' efforts to capitalize on e-book profits, HarperCollins started a new policy this week of limiting libraries' ability to loan out their e-books to 26 loans per title. At that point, libraries will have to re-license the Harper e-books for the next 26 loans. Librarians are outraged, saying the new policy will strain budgets and stifle the promotion of literacy. Two librarians have organized a Boycott HarperCollins website. Read all about the controversy here.

My initial reactions to the announcement, in no particular order, were:

• I understand Harper's desire to make money (it is a business, after all), and their rationale that hard copy library books wear out and need to be replaced — whereas e-books don't — could, I suppose, be argued. So why not a compromise? Why not let libraries license the e-book for 7 or 10 years, and then renew? When the license expires, librarians gauge how popular the e-book has been, and renew if there's still a demand for the title. Just like hardcover books.
• If I were a Harper author, I'd be incensed that my publisher was making it more difficult for libraries to carry a version of my book. (And if I were a Macmillan or Simon & Schuster author, I'd be really peeved, because according to the Publishers Weekly article, they don't license e-books to libraries at all.)
• Libraries are already forced to loan each e-book to only one patron at a time, just like hard copy books, and those e-books automatically expire after one set period. I learned this the hard way when I went to renew an e-book I was halfway through reading, and it had disappeared from my e-reader. I never got around to finishing the book.
• Isn't the goal of every publisher to build an audience for each book? Doesn't limiting access to certain editions of books limit the audience for all the books by that author? In other words, if I can easily check out the e-book version of Book One in a series and I like it, I'm more likely to check out (or buy!!) the hard copy version of Book 2 when it comes out.
• On a closely-related point, isn't the goal of every publisher to spread literacy and promote the written word? Shouldn't libraries be free to offer access to the written word to all their patrons, even those who are housebound and need to borrow books online? How about college students, who prefer to carry their research books on an e-reader instead of in a 50-pound backpack? Or the mother with three young children who just can't make it to the library on a snowy day, but wants new books to read to her kids?
• And finally, remember that libraries aren't asking for the e-books for free. They're paying for the license. And I'm willing to bet that they don't license an e-book unless they also have the hard copy of the same title on the shelves. So the author still gets royalties, and the publisher still makes money.

Publishing is changing, and the old way of doing business needs to change as well. As big publishers become less relevant in today's market, and authors are finding it easier to self-publish, I think it's unwise for publishers to limit the public's access to their authors' books. But that's my opinion. I'd like to know what you think.