Writing Tips & the 69th Kid Lit Blog Hop

Carpinello's Writing Pages is back this Hop with more tips from the Children's, Middle Grade, and Young Adult writers I've interviewed. These are from December 2014 and January 2015. Feel free to leave a tip of your own in the comments.

Write what you know, what you love, and what intrigues you—Heather Fraser Brainerd, author of the MG novel Shadows of New York

Get to know the business before you get too far into your writing career. Know what agents can and can’t do for you. Know the difference between large and small presses. Never sign a contract without knowing what every paragraph means. Be aware that there are good reasons and bad reasons to self-publish. It’s a slow business, so there’s no excuse for being ill-prepared for the journey. Oh, and never forget that writers are the most important links in the publishing chain—R. M. Clark, author of the MG novel The Secret at Haney Field: A Baseball Mystery

It’s a long road, especially writing a first book, but you never finish unless you start. I know everyone says that, but it is so, so true. Pirates & Winged Horses took four years from initiation to publishing!

And then once you start, set yourself goals, but make them realistic. I started with the plan of writing a chapter a week, and that soon fell apart. Once you’ve missed a goal, it's tough to find the motivation continue. So what I did was to set up goals that I knew I could realistically hit, but were strong enough that those kept me moving along.

Also, write for the genre that you most enjoy—you are writing the book for yourself as much as anyone else—and what you like is what you’ll have had the most exposure to and what you’ll be best at—J. B. Pelts, author of the MG novel Robin Pembroke: Pirates & Winged Horses

Read as much as you can, go to conferences and workshops, and get into critique groups. I’d also suggest not just taking a creative writing class, but a literature class as well to see how great novels come together. I think my most helpful writing classes were the many lit classes I took in college—Krysten Lindsay Hager, author of the Tween/Teen novel True Colors

And Now,

Welcome to the 69th Kid Lit Blog Hop. This exciting Hop, now monthly, is where we develop an engaged group of people who love everything that has to do with children's literature.
 

On this Hop, Carpinello's Writing Pages interviews

Children's author Gail Truax

and

YA author Pat McDermott

Remember, you are always more than welcome to join us by popping in a post and hopping around to meet some of your fellow Kid Lit bloggers and authors!

 

Simply make a post and add it to the linky. (Please make sure to add your direct post only) 
Once you are done, then hop around to visit others. Please visit at least the two people above your link. Please leave a comment when you do visit, we all like those.
Also, it would be appreciated if you grab the Kid Lit Blog Hop Badge and display it on your blog and/or your post.

The hostesses will be around to see you. It would be nice if you followed all of them.

Happy Hopping!

Hostesses:

Reading Authors

Cheryl Carpinello, Author / Blogger

BeachBoundBooks

Pragmatic Mom

The Logonauts

Spark and Pook

BLOG HOP: