Children’s Writing Web Journal

As a writer, you’re expected to know enough about your subject to write authoritatively about it. That’s fine if you’ve spent your life as a firefighter and your story is set in a firehouse. But what if you’re writing a story in which the main character dreams of being an Olympic diver, and you don’t even know how to swim?

That’s the sort of pickle writers find themselves in all the time. There’s a setting, an occupation, a hobby that just feels right for your character, but the writer is utterly ignorant about the details and inner workings that would bring such an element to life.

That’s why eHow.com is such a cool site. Their slogan is Clear Instructions on How To Do (just about) Everything and it’s a fair boast. Pay them a visit and you’ll know how to do a Forward One-and-a-Half Flip From a Springboard in a matter of minutes!

http://eHow.com

For writing tips and more information about writing for children, visit The CBI Clubhouse - Home of the Fightin’ Bookworms!

Several years ago, Anastasia Suen sent us this note, which still appears on our web site: “Yesterday’s mail brought copies of Hodgepodge, with my poem on the back page, and an acceptance letter from Babybug for another poem! My poems in Shoofly will be out in April. ALL these leads came from Children’s Book Insider! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

If you go to Anastasia’s own web site today (www.asuen.com) you’ll see that she’s the author of over 100 books, she leads online writing workshops, speaks at numerous conferences, and gets $1250 per day for a full-day school visit ($1500 if she has to travel). We like to think of Anastasia as our own personal CBI-success story, but really we can’t take any of the credit. Anastasia did it because she’s got what it takes to be a prolific, published children’s book author. One thing Anastasia, and other writers like her, has is a certain stick-to-it mentality that says, “I want this, I can do this, and I absolutely won’t give up.”

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Just got this e-mail, so I’m passing it along:

“Rhyming Critters 2″ has ten membership slots, of which eight are currently filled.

Our members are generally consider themselves to be at the Intermediate level.  All have been writing for a number of years in different formats (poetry, prose, plays, music) and for different audience age levels.

In the group, we write and critique exclusively in rhyme.  That’s how we got started and we have retained that unique format.  Members can ask for critiques of other work but any critiques of prose or regular poetry are done off-line.  The time commitment to the group is usually around a couple hours per week at most.

For our critiques, we exchange rhymes via e-mail, usually about one or two rhymes monthly per person.  Critiques are also provided to the author via e-mail.   We have an open recruitment for our vacancies - I keep a waiting list of interested candidates who I contact as vacancies occur—we’ve been running one or two vacancies per year, usually resulting from pressing family priorities or the good fortune of extra work related to getting a book manuscript accepted for publication.

Interested? Contact the group’s moderator Bill Kirk at rnbkirk@aol.com

This is cool — now you can leave your comment to any blog post as a video!  Check out the comments section for my video comment, and then leave one of your own.

When I lived in New York, I always loved going to the Public Library.  The big one, with  the lions out front.

Often, I had nothing I particularly needed to research — I just liked spending some time in a space so historic, hushed and grand.  So I caught a thrill when I came across these spectacular photos of the world’s great libraries.  They’re from the book Libraries by photographer Candida Höfer and they represent a time when libraries weren’t just functional boxes, but where works of art in themselves.

Feast your eyes, book lovers.

Photos of the World’s Greatest Libraries

OK, I’ve finally bought into this whole Twitter thing and, I admit, it’s pretty cool. Come join me — I’ll post occasional links, news tidbits and thoughts about children’s writing. I’m not the obsessive sort, so it will be just a few each day.

My Twitter URL: http://twitter.com/jonbard

I’ll be tweeting you!

Back again with more terrific blog postings for you. There are clickable links to each of today’s featured posts below the video.

The Way We Were?

How to Break Through Mental Barriers

Five Favorite Fictional Rooms From Children’s Literature

The children’s literature blog world (or Kidlitosphere, as it’s come to be known) is filled with smart, clever and insightful folks.  So many, in fact, that it can be a bit overwhelming to keep up with all the genius being tossed around out there.  So, we’re doing our part, by highlighting the absolute best postings from the Kidlitosphere in this daily video series.

Have a look…and then pay the featured blogs a visit.  And tell ‘em Jon sent you!

Today’s posts:

Seven Questions Over Breakfast with Brian Lies

My Epitaph: Suh-weet TY Note

“LinkIn” To Opportunity!

Comment Challenge: Questions & Answers

Here’s a nice list of 100 useful search engines to help you find just about anything:

http://www.unixl.com/blog/2008/100-fun-useful-search-engines-for-writers/

Interested in writing stories and sending them to children’s book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

One of my great realizations from last weekend’s Kidlitosphere 2008 conference was that the future belongs to those who band together.  There’s simply too much clutter and background noise for individual authors to make a big splash on their own.  We need to collaborate.

Enter the group blog.

Writers, illustrators, agents, booksellers, librarians, readers — anyone with an interest in children’s literature — are working together to present multi-author blogs that are gathering plenty of attention.  These blogs work because they multiply the promotional power of having multiple authors, reduce the workload for each author and do better at attracting readers who are seeking a “big picture” approach about a particular topic.

You can group together with other bloggers to develop a group blog based around genre of books you write, where you live, where you went to school, common subject matter - or just about anything else.

Here are a few of the top group blogs in kidslit to get your creative juices flowing:

The Longstockings

Readergirlz

Class of 2k8

Disco Mermaids

Edge of the Forest

Guys LitWire

PS:  Wanna collaborate on a group blog?  We’re all ears.  Drop us an e-mail at mail@write4kids.com