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Happy International Book Giving Day!
I first discovered this wonderful day about five years ago. I immediately headed to a book shop to buy books to give to my sons and my nephews.
Last weekend, I had a lovely time in the bookshop choosing books for my kids as well as my five nephews. The books I chose are in the photo. Their ages are between 16 months and 16 years with a variety of interests and reading levels.
I have so many partly written stories it’s not funny. I know that in order to reach my dreams, I need to get them written! Once they’re written, I need to get them edited and published! Every book I release, and every book I sell, will bring me a little bit closer to my goal of being a full time author.
I’ve decided to set myself a challenge. It’s a simple one – to write or edit a chapter every day.
Now that the kids are back at school, I can turn my mind to my dreams.
A couple of weeks ago, I had an amazing chat with Michelle Worthington, a fellow author and the brains behind Share Your Story. One of the things she suggested was to look at other workshops I could teach, other than just writing ones. This wasn’t something I had considered.
Include a blurb
Including a blurb on the back or inside cover of your book may seem like something really obvious, however it’s not something that everyone does!
Last week, we were in Paynesville, in Eastern Victoria, and I wandered into a shop. My eye caught the cover of some books that looked interesting. The titles were enticing, however, when I turned them over to see what the books were about, all that greeted me was a profile of the author and illustrator! I couldn’t find a blurb anywhere!
Dreams!
One of the tasks in Julie Hedlund’s 12 Days of Christmas for Writers was to come up with a word or inspirational quote for the year.
I thought about this long and hard before choosing my word:
Dreams
This word is not about dreaming dreams. It’s more about making my dreams come true.
12 Days of Christmas
One of the challenges for Julie Hedlund’s 12 Days of Christmas for Writers is to write a list of things we are grateful for in our writing life during 2017. It’s so easy to focus on the negative’s, but this exercise made me focus on something positive, and not just the successes.
I thought I’d put some of those things here on my blog.
Happy New Year to all my readers. If you’ve been a follower for a while, you would have seen that my blog posts here slowed down quite a bit during 2017. To find out more about what was happening, visit my blog at Diary of a Chronic Mum.
I am hoping to do more on the writing front in 2018, including keeping up with my blogging.
I hope you’re all having a lovely break and I wish you a wonderful 2018.
Successes for 2017
Children’s author Julie Hedlund, challenged participants of her 12 Days of Christmas for Writers series to post SUCCESSES (rather than resolutions) on our blogs this year. She believes the way New Year’s resolutions are traditionally made come from a place of negativity – what DIDN’T get done or achieved in the previous year. Instead, she suggests we set goals for the New Year that BUILD on our achievements from the previous one. I decided to participate in this Anti-Resolution Revolution! Here is my list for 2017.
When I started this post, I had a quick look at the posts for the last few years. I started 2016 saying that it had been a crazy year… it was nothing compared with 2017! [Read more…]
Using GoodReads
A little while ago, someone in one of the online writer’s groups I’m in asked whether or not it was worth being on GoodReads.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, GoodReads is a place where readers hang out. You can keep track of books you have read, books you want to read, and discuss all things books with fellow readers and authors.
Never say never…
When I first started writing chapter books, I settled into a niche. I was mostly writing stories about kids in the real world doing things that kids do and dealing with issues that kids deal with – bullying, playing football, worrying about their siblings, going to school, and so on. Realistic fiction was what I wrote.
I would see competitions and publishing opportunities for stories in different genre, such as fantasy, horror, super hero, and more, and I would dismiss them as I didn’t write stories in those categories, I wrote realistic fiction…
Lately I’ve learned to never say never.
Last year I was talking with a family friend who was looking for middle grade fantasy stories. Initially I thought: “I don’t write fantasy, I write realistic fiction”. After a while I thought, “Why not… I’ll give it a try.”
I'm an author of picture books, chapter books, short stories and more.
Come and share my writing journey.
