My picture book is on submission! What does that mean? Well, this is the phase when you’ve signed with a super duper agent (see previous post), you’ve made any edits to your manuscript that the agent suggests and then the agent submits your book to a list of editors at various publishing houses who he […]
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How I Got My Agent
This is the post I’ve been wanting to write for nearly a decade, the post where I tell you I am officially represented. Sounds very serious, doesn’t it? It is very serious. I have signed with literary agent Steven Malk at Writers House, and though it’s been a couple weeks now, I still wake up […]
Sparking Joy, in The Closet
There’s been a lot of organizing talk on the old Internet lately, both fawning and less-so, regarding the bestselling book, “Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. I have not read it. I’ve never picked up a book on organizing because I feel like I […]
Filling the Well
“Filling the Well” is a phrase I first encountered many years ago in Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way.” It’s a concept for writers that’s quite simple to grasp, harder to accomplish. It simply refers to having new experiences, getting out into the world, seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting new things so that you can […]
Agent Querying in 12 Easy Steps
So, the agent querying process…it’s not fun. It’s full of both maniacally happy peaks and soul crushing valleys, often on the same day. I would rather do anything else. I would certainly much rather be writing. This is the main reason writers work so hard to get an agent. So they can focus on the […]
Word Girl
Marking the entrance to my closet office: Now, if only I had a monkey sidekick…
Not the Party I Was Planning
Dear readers, I must confess something: I’ve been moonlighting, stepping out of my writing closet to work on something much bigger than my novel, bigger than any of my writing projects. I’m building a playground. Let me take a step back. My two kids attend a public elementary school with a woefully inadequate playground. I’m […]
Starting Early…on a Love of Books
There was a minor Book Club kerfuffle in our house this morning, not with my book club of 12 years, but with my kid’s. It seems their elementary school has instituted an after-school book club, divided by grade, meeting once per week (an awesome idea!). My 1st grade son got an “invitation” to join the […]