5 Steps to Making Your Minor Characters Exciting
Keep your characters from blending into the background. (This is the second part of a two-part post. Click to read 5 Steps to Making Minor Historical Figures Exciting.) I’ve known … Continue reading
Why I Wrote Pete Seeger, The People’s Singer
The importance of making your own hero relevant to a new audience. When you write biographies, you get used to the question, “So, why did you write about so-and-so?” For … Continue reading
5 Steps to Making Minor Historical Figures Exciting
(This is the first of two parts. The second focuses on fiction – Five Steps to Making Your Minor Characters Exciting) Everybody has a story to tell, but some stories … Continue reading
What’s Your Motivation to Write?
Psychologists say there are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsically motivated people do it for the satisfaction; extrinsically motivated people do it for the reward. Both approaches work, … Continue reading
Keep Your New Year’s Writing Resolution
Is it really all about commitment to the craft of writing or is there another way? There’s this image of the writer slaving away at the computer for endless hours … Continue reading
Making a Book Safe for Children When the Subject Matter Isn’t
Making a sordid adult tale safe for young readers. You should have seen the looks on my friends’ faces when I told them I’d been hired to write a children’s … Continue reading
What to Do with That One-Star Review
I’ve seen one-star reviews on Amazon and elsewhere that make no sense. One reviewer complained that she didn’t know it was a children’s book when she bought it, even though … Continue reading
Why So Many of the Books We Love Are Children’s Books
A few weeks ago, another Facebook list made the rounds: List 10 Books that Stayed with You. I participated when I saw it on a friend’s post, and so did … Continue reading
Why I Wrote Mary Dyer, Friend of Freedom
“My life not availeth me in comparison to the liberty of the truth.” “Why did you write about Mary Dyer?” is a question I often get. It usually comes right … Continue reading
What Five Years as a Children’s Writer Means
I realized upon logging in to my Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators account the other day that I have been with SCBWI for five years. That raises the … Continue reading
John Briggs Books 