The stinky fish guide to choosing and using big words in your children’s story.

What’s your favourite condiment?  What do you love to squirt onto your burgers, your dogs, your sandwiches?

(I’ll tell you what America’s current favourite is in a minute – and why it’s important to you as a writer.)

Know what condiment the ancient Romans loved best?  It’s called garum, a putrid blend made of stinky rotten fish.  The Roman writer Seneca called it an “expensive bloody mass of decayed fish [which] consumes the stomach with its salted putrefaction.”

Yum, right?  (OMG, no.)

Know why the Romans loved the stuff?  Because their food was so, so stinky that they needed a condiment strong enough to cover it up.  Ew.

The perfect condiment for stinky writing

Some people’s writing is like this, too.  Stinky stuff.  Their writing isn’t clear, their ideas are shallow – but they use big, fancy words, splashing them around like garum to cover up the stench.  They hope you won’t notice.

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Having trouble choosing a children’s-book writing course? I don’t blame you!

When I decided to take an online children’s picture book writing course, I had no idea where to start (I’ll tell you where I ended up later on, and offer a few more good suggestions as well.).

Googling “children’s picture-book writing course” turns up a dizzying range of courses, from universities (expensive!) to individual authors’ homemade courses (sketchy?).  Some claim to have been around for 30-some-odd years, while many others have popped up overnight.

All these courses claim to be the BEST.  How can you tell them apart? 

The good news is that you can find decent courses at a few different price levels.  As for which ones will actually help you get ahead… I’m convinced that has more to do with your attitude than with the teacher (as long as he/she is reasonably competent).

I’ve taken a bunch of creative writing classes, both online and in person.  Some were good, a couple were great… one (in-person at a major university) was pretty bad:  we spent much of the time looking at the professor’s own (mediocre) writing.

Here are three questions to help you narrow down what you’re looking for:

1.  What is my goal for the course?

Do you want to get your story down on paper?  Are you struggling with stilted language?  Or are you at the stage of figuring out how to get it in front of as many publishers as possible? 

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Three ways to add real science to a picture book without putting kids to sleep

Guest post by an anonymous mom who just happens to be a neuroscientist.

Kids have a short attention span, and when it comes to factual stuff like science, it can sometimes be a challenge to truly engage their busy brains without inducing boredom. In order to keep a child’s attention, authors of children’s books must incorporate interesting and colorful content, and it always helps if humor is involved. Presenting the facts does not limit a writer’s creativity, nor should it ever prevent them from being silly – oftentimes a key characteristic for attracting and fascinating children.

Here’s How #1:  Color

Applying color does not necessarily need to be interpreted literally,

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Three timeless lessons from “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”

Some books never get tired.  I’m reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing with my kids right now as one of our chapter books, and it’s incredible how modern it is, considering it was first published in 1972.  Imagine – a book for kids in which:

• there are no internet, cellphones, or mobile devices of any kind
• the dad in the book isn’t used to looking after children, and hands off the kids to his secretary
• the main character has an elevator man
• the shoe store carries two styles in its children’s section – loafers or saddle shoes

Yet my kids are fascinated, and ask eagerly for this book every single night.  They’ve also been “sneaking” reads on their own during the more suspenseful bits.  Wow.

Here are three lessons we could all learn from Judy Blume, one of the masters.

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Making space for… nothing. 5 books, 5 experts on white space.

It’s called “white space,” but it doesn’t have to be white.  Are you using enough of it in your kids’ books?  I’m going to show you five books that do a GREAT job with white space – in a couple of cases, becoming classics along the way.

And then, because (gasp!) creating white space is one of my weak points… I’m going to share with you not my own wisdom, but that of five experts who have Things to Say and manage to say them far better than I could.

To get us in the mood, here are five kids’ picture books that make GREAT use of white space:

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The worst advice about writing: “a writer writes.”

In the movie Throw Momma from the Train, Billy Crystal’s memorable character, a frustrated writing teacher, used to intone wisely, “a writer writes… always.”

Probably the most common advice given to writers:  “writers write.”  It’s also balderdash.

Which you realize if you consider the flip side of the equation:  if you have written anything – an email, an excuse note for your kid’s teacher, a “Lost Kitten” poster – you’re automatically a writer.

Sometimes, even the best advice is wrong.  Like when you have a baby and everybody says, “sleep when the baby sleeps.”  Of course, it’s great advice in a universe where you have nothing else to do but look after the baby.

Better advice:  a writer writes… sometimes.

When I first saw the title of this QuickSprout blog post, A Simple Plan for Writing a Powerful Blog Post in Less Than 2 Hours (yeah, I read blogs about blogging, and QuickSprout is among the best!), I was horrified. 

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Two kinds of authors.

There are two kinds of people who want to write kids’ books.  Which one are you?

I know, I know, I didn’t tell you what the two types are yet.

But I want you to think about it before I answer. 

Ask yourself:

• Why do you want to write kids’ books?
• What are my strengths as a children’s author?
• What are my weaknesses?
• Who do I want to write books for?

Okay, so what are the two types?  I’ll give them nicknames, but remember – these categories are very broad and these titles are just generalizations.

“The Mom Writer”

Not just for moms, this category includes grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles or friends - anyone who wants to share good stories with their own kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews and any other children in their lives.  These folks generally aren’t in it for the money, fame and adulation (which is good, because there isn’t much here).

A writer in this category usually has two huge things going for her:

• Story – you know what they want to write.  Whether it’s based on truth (“the time grandpa ran away from home as a boy”) or fiction (“the penguin who wanted to live in Hawaii”), this is an incredible strength.
• Audience – you know who you want to write for.  Believe it or not, authors often take a long time figuring out exactly who the story is for.  If you know that Mackenzie, who’s a 5-year-old girl, will really enjoy your penguin story, then you have a leg up already.

One big downside for those in this group is taking your story and making it more general – making sure that other 5-year-olds will also enjoy your book.  Another may be that you don’t have all the skills to take your words and make them absolutely perfect.  We’ll talk about both of these things more in a later post.

“The Pro Writer”

Okay, in truth there are very few actual, “professional” children’s writers, but that’s okay.  In this group, writers are probably hoping to make a little money while telling stories that are either important or fun.  This group may include teachers, librarians and others who enjoy sharing good books with children.

If you’re a writer in this category, you probably also have a few things that make you special:

• Literature – generally, you love kids’ literature.  If you raised kids, you loved telling them stories.  You may have strong opinions about what makes a book great, good, or simply awful.
• Writing skills – you may have a lot of writing experience, from your career or in your personal life.  Perhaps you’ve also written stories or articles for adults to enjoy, and you probably have a love of language that you’d like to incorporate into your kids’ stories.

In this group, the big downside may be a lack of specific direction – you know what you want to do but don’t know exactly HOW to get started.  You may not have a story fully-formed in your heart, just bursting to get out.  This is the group that’s most likely to suffer the dreaded Writers’ Block, but that’s okay… we can fix that, too!

If you don’t see yourself fitting into one or the other of these categories neatly, that’s okay.  There’s always going to be some overlap – moms who are natural wordsmiths, librarians with a story to tell.  That’s okay.

There is one more group… but this blog probably isn’t for them.

“The Gimme Big Bucks”

These are the people who are in it for the money – only for the money.  Or maybe the fame and fortune (perhaps they’ve never read a kids’ book to discover that the authors usually aren’t rich and famous?).  There are ways to self-publish children’s books (make that “books”) and try to get money quickly. 

One thing I’ve seen a lot lately is people who republish public-domain books.  They download the text free on Project Gutenberg, auto-design a spiffy cover, then “print” their own brand-new edition of Anne of Green Gables, Little Women or the Wizard of Oz.  They sell it for cheap to hook Amazon.com book buyers who don’t realize that their edition is full of typos (thanks to bad OCR when the original book was scanned) or formatted amateurishly so it’s almost unreadable.

(Formatting is another one of those things we’ll talk more about in a later post!).

Worse is when people like this swipe stuff (“swiper, no swiping!”) and put together a collection of items that aren’t public-domain:  illustrations, quotations, even story excerpts.  The self-publishing cops may catch up to them eventually, but generally, copyright holders need to pursue their own claims against these guys – there’s no organized effort to stop copyright violators in the print-on-demand world.

Another thing this type of person will do is put out a “series” of books, written quickly and badly, in an effort to become the next J.K. Rowling or Eoin Colfer.

Enough said about this type of person.  Let’s ignore ‘em and move on!

I hope those of us in the “good guy” categories can use this blog to come together to learn and share ideas to create and publish great kids’ stories together.  Deal?  Good!

Which type are you?  Do you fit neatly into one or the other of these categories, or do you belong in a special group all your own?

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