Newsletter round-up for children’s book writers: August

• Siobhan O'Brien Holmes
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A round-up of the best advice, resources and links for middle grade and YA authors from all the (many, many) writing newsletters in my inbox each month. Find somebody’s tips or links useful or interesting? Sign up to their newsletter!

StoryGodmother Newsletter by Amy Sparkes

Read the StoryGodmother newsletter here.

I love Amy’s thoughts on improving an ‘okay’ chapter that’s functional but not incredible. Sometimes we write a chapter or scene that needs to be there but it’s not gonna win any awards, simply acting as a bridge from one chapter to the next and filling in some important details but lacking that oomph the rest of the book has. Amy talks us through how she addressed this in her own edits recently and it’s super helpful.

I looked at a way of making the chapter more engaging. It was a little bit this-happened-and-then-that-happened-then-that-happened, and it just lacked energy. The previous draft was written in quite a hurry due to time pressures – I had to whizz through getting the main points across. So now I went back to the character whose point of view it was (this story has multiple POVs) and reconnected a little bit. What are they experiencing emotionally during this chapter as well as physically? It’s not just about what’s happening in a chapter, it’s about what people are feeling. And yes, the emotion was there, but it was hurried. I needed to linger and let the character really feel all they had to feel. I probed a little deeper, slowed down a little, and connected emotions with events more carefully. I chose more explorative and more character-specific phrases which created more authenticity. Instantly more satisfying.

There’s loads more so I really do recommend you check it out yourself. I’ll definitely be returning to this advice when I’m editing my own manuscript!

The Kids are All Right by BookRiot

Read The Kids are All Right newsletter here.

Margaret Kingsbury at BookRiot recommends fantasy middle grade novels The Crossbow of Destiny, Moko Magic: Carnival Chaos, Jupiter Nettle and the Seven Schools of Magic (great title), The Girl Who Kept the Castle and Paper Dragons: The Fight for the Hidden Realm. 

Letters from the Labyrinth by Brian Keene

Read Letters from the Labyrinth here.

Brian Keene’s newsletter this month featured next to nothing about writing or his books (aside from the fact that his teenage son wants to be a writer) but is a masterclass in storytelling. I’d read the whole thing, about a local stray dog he fed, before realising it wasn’t writing related at all. I had to share it here anyway because it’s a great lesson in how to tell a story that hooks the reader, even if it’s not what they initially came for.

WordTips by Allen

Read WordTips here.

If you want a walkthrough on how to print a Word doc in outline mode, check out Allen’s newsletter this week.

Outline view allows you to easily see the heading levels that you’ve used in your document. (You switch to Outline view by using the Outline tool on the View tab of the ribbon.) If you do a lot of work in Outline view, you may want to print just the outline at some time.

Editors Corner by ACES: The Society for Editing

Read Editors Corner here.

This week links to an ACES article about the importance of sleep and how it can impact on writers’ block and memory.

Medical science is catching up to the advice your wise grandma gave you (and the mantra of those goofy Holiday Inn Express commercials) — that a good night’s sleep makes it easier to think clearly. Newsweek.com and several other outlets recently posted stories about the value of rest and how it can help improve your memory. Newsweek cited a study, published in Cortex, a scientific journal, that found that a “period of sleep could double the chances of someone remembering previously unrecalled information, when compared to a similar period of being awake.”

Fangoria by Fangoria Magazine

Read Fangoria here.

The newsletter includes links to the Stephen King podcast, The Kingcast, and this month it’s all about 1408. I confess I haven’t read the book but did see the film years ago and… I didn’t love it. But check this out if you’re a King fan and want some insight into this story! There’s also a 90-minute YouTube episode of Colors in the Dark which gives ’15 Amazingly Scary Horror Book Recommendations’.

The Conscious Language Newsletter by the Conscious Style Guide

Read the Conscious Language Newsletter here.

There are some really interesting articles shared this month, including:

• The Hidden Racism of Book Cover Design (fascinating and upsetting but not surprising, sadly)
• How Being Intentional With Your Language Can Shift Your Thinking
• Modernize Your Writing: The Case for Updating Your Style Guide

What’s Up in YA by BookRiot

Read What’s Up in YA here.

Kelly at BookRiot talks YA books by women in translation, highlighting Aya: Claws Come Out by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie, The Curse of Madame Petrova by Marjolihn Hof, Fire From Sky by Moa Backe Åstot and Tilted Sky by Yao Emei, among others.

There’s also book news, like Lee Croucher winning the UK’s YA Book Prize, and Millie Bobby Brown adapting her YA novel for the screen.

Agents + Books by Kate McKean

Read Agents + Books here.

Agent Kate talks about the joy of being ‘done’ with her book but also the knowledge that she isn’t really done at all.

Can you feel the but coming? But of course I’m not done with the book. I’m not done with the book in the sense that it’s going to (likely) go to copyediting next and it’ll come back to me at least one if not two more times and I’ll have to go through it and double, triple check that everything is where it’s supposed to be. I’m not done in the sense that there’s a mountain of marketing and promotion ahead of me and that is part of the whole writing a book thing, too.

Every Day is Halloween by Lisa Morton

Read Every Day is Halloween.

Lisa Morton talks all about Summerween, the act of celebrating Halloween in the summer!

First off, summerween should not be confused with halfoween, which is celebrated on April 30^th, exactly six months before Halloween. So, what does a fun summerween look like? Well, according to my friend Miranda Enzor, who runs the fabulous website and Instagram account Spooky Little Halloween, it might involve more pink than orange! Jack-o’-lanterns can be carved out of watermelons, or hey, how about the hot neon colors that you can find in the “Hippie Hallow” Halloween decorations featured at the Michael’s stores this year?

She finishes with some inspiring advice about playing the long game and not giving up on your writing, however long it takes.

It’s easy to get discouraged and drop out along the way. If you want a sobering experience, pick up a horror anthology from fifty years ago and see how many names you recognize in the table of contents. I know the horror genre pretty well, so when I don’t recognize a name I assume they didn’t have a major career; they probably went off to do something else.

But if you really love what you do – if you’ve got the writing urge buried so deep in your DNA you can’t deny it – you’ll stay in the game, and you’ll build your credit list. And at some point – with some talent and some luck – you, too, will be able to look back and be at ease with how it all went.

BookTrust

Read the BookTrust newsletter here.

There are some great articles this month, including 5 books that will help the transition to secondary school and why it’s important to read retold myths (spoiler: they’re deeply embedded in our culture and remind us of our shared humanity).