I won a writing award! Okay–to be more accurate, I received a “Letter of Merit” (sort of like honorable mention) from the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for their annual Work-In-Progress grant. I am really excited about this! I feel like I won the grand prize! This was actually my third time applying for the grant and my second time applying with this novel (Necklace of Tears), so I almost didn’t bother this year. But I guess third time’s a charm! Funny

Now that you’ve planned out your group, what’s next? Step #2: Finding Members If you are already part of a large writing group, it may not be too hard to find people to join your group. The now fairly well known Write Sisters actually were a spin off from a larger community group (a monthly meeting for all writers in a specific town). But if you are a complete beginner, you may need to do some advertising. Here are some ideas: –E-mail writers lists that you are already a par

As I’ve said before, I’m not a huge YA chick lit fan, but I really enjoyed Monsoon Summer by Mitali Perkins (another author I met at SCBWI!). This novel is about a teenage girl from California named Jazz (short for Jasmine–she is half Indian) and her summer vacation at an orphanage in India. Jazz’s mother was adopted at a very young age from the orphanage by American parents and wants to go back to find out more about her roots. Jazz is initially reluctant to travel to India

I met a writer at the SCBWI NY conference and almost every week since March we have been meeting up and writing together at Diesel Cafe. Finally this week, after many weeks of fighting students for tables near plug points, we decided to change locations. Today we moved to Bloc 11, Diesel’s sister restaurant in Union Square. There were plenty of tables and new sandwiches to try. The ambience is definitely more laid back and less “cool” than Diesel, whose “coolness” always did

Can it be true? I don’t know. I still read and look forward to reading, and I’m someone who spends way too much time browsing the web. Even when I was in high school and everyone was starting to go online, I still read books and loved most of the books I was required to read for English class. I just went to the NESCBWI conference and the SCBWI NY conference before that and at both conferences, there were record numbers of attendees. So how can there be more aspiring kid’s b

The conference is tomorrow! I’m very excited. I attended the NY SCBWI conference this February and found it very inspiring and educational. I hope this one is just as good but smaller. #nescbwi #scbwi

Today I started working on a website. I want to put some of my material on the web and have looked around at other author’s websites for some ideas. I’m a little worried about plagiarism, but someone has to WANT to plagiarize my novel first, I guess. I am really excited to get back to writing as soon as I get home from NYC. The SCBWI writer’s conference was really inspiring. They had many great speakers and I met a ton of wonderful people. #scbwi

So I went to the SCBWI writer’s conference in NY today and was inspired to start a new blog. What to write in it is a separate issue. #blogs #scbwi