Oh, it’s mine! Sweet. Yes, this is a bit of brag, but it’s my first piece in print (and paid!) so I’ll beg your indulgence.

I think of this as a “writer’s poem” because it’s something we all feel at one time or another. Those blank pages hold nightmares, friends, and the only way to banish them is with our words. Good, bad or indifferent. Once they’re on the page we can rework and polish them. Until we write them down all we have is the unblinking eye of blankness staring us down. So, you know, write, write, write. And then revise, revise, revise (like I should have done with this paragraph).

Also, kind of psyched that I’m very likely the first person to have a poem in SCBWI Bulletin that has the words “crappy” and “corpus callosum”. That’s some serious mojo, right?

Sound familiar?

My new promo cards arrived. Very happy with how they turned out (process shots are over in this post if you’re curious). Now to get folding 250 cards so I can hand them out in LA!

New cards are here!

I feel like Navin R. Johnson when the new phonebooks arrive.

Since the Reluctant Dragon wound down I’ve been busy prepping for my first national SCBWI conference in Los Angeles. Mostly that’s meant working on manuscripts, trying to lose weight (fail), shopping for presentable grown man fashions and readying a new self-promotional business card. Oh, there was a bit of homework for the Monday Writer Intensives with Bonnie Bader and Lisa Yee too.

Here’s a quick peek at the card design. (I’ll update this post tomorrow when FedEx hands them over). FedEx came through like a champ – check’em out.

I chose to make a fold over business card with contact info and “flavor” on the outside with a complete illustration on the inside. I worked up a version of one of my characters, Roz Wellington; Girl Believer. This version is actually a little older and farther along in her saga which is why she’s joined by a pirate space-monkey and Robot Number 5 (ah, backstory…. maybe someday this whole thing see the light of day).

Here’s the process between pencils and beginning painting.

process from pencils to painting, but not finished...

Here’s the finished piece.

Roz Wellington & Co.

And here’s the outside, front and back, of the card. I have a history of loving monkeys and a home-made catchphrase, “Put the monkey on it!”, so I couldn’t resist putting the monkey on the front right next to my name.

Put the monkey on it!

Last week I entered a fun contest over at the Adventure’s in Children’s Publishing blog. They drafted an agent and a handful of writers to review fifty queries, help polish them up, and then take the query down to a log line. Here are the details:

Our new contest/workshop started on Thursday 8/19. We accepted the first 50 short synopsis (pitch) entries up to 175-words. Starting 8/26, those entries will be open for critiques from our panel of fantastic mentoring authors and you, our generous visitors. We hope you will participate. Next stop after that? On 9/2, we’ll get the loglines from our contestants, critique those for two weeks, then the writers will put everything they’ve learned together into a query letter. The query letter competition will be judged by Sarah LaPolla of Curtis Brown.

It’s a great contest idea and has a lot people involved giving good critiques of the queries. Here’s mine in case you want to comment.

Last week, as part of the Cape Cod Writers Conference, I had the chance to read from that story, The Case Against My Sister: Sixth Grade, and was blown away by the positive comments. People seem to love the voice, relate to the hero and worship the villain. I smell a sequel.

I’ll keep you posted as this contest continues.

Click to see a slideshow of the process. Then come back and comment, right?

Here’s my entry for the poster showcase for NESCBWI 2010. The theme for the conference is “Moments of Change” and I bounced through several serious approaches before deciding to go with my silly, silly gut. I’m chagrined I didn’t start earlier, but happy I can do this in one busy frantic day of focused activity.

Really looking forward to seeing all the posters on display. I’m usually blown away and rocked with feelings of inadequacy, but it’s great to see how other poeple interpret a theme.

I’m often asked how to get started with children’s book writing and what resources are available. Here’s the list I send out. It covers the basics and will guide you to more resources.

I find my status as “expert” pretty laughable, but expertise is relative. I might not be Jon Sciekza, but I have picked up a few things. I’m also very clear that I’m just starting out, and I know what I don’t know. Best of all, I’m not afraid to ask.

Groups

1. Join the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and…
2. Lean on your regional chapter for writing groups, local events and conferences. Here’s mine, New England SCBWI

Books

I picked up several books to help me learn the ropes and understand the basics of the business and the craft.

1. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books, 3rd Edition by Harold D. Underdown
2. Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books by Uri Shulevitz
3. The Encyclopedia of Writing and Illustrating Children’s Books by Desdemona McCannon, Sue Thornton, Yadzia Williams
4. 2009 Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market by Alice Pope

There’s Always More

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are a good start. I’ll be back with more, especially online resources, soon.