Thursday, November 08, 2012

See You Tonight, SCBWI!

A teaser slide from my PowerPoint file.
Event alert!

I'm gearing up to present at tonight's SCBWI Western Washington Professional Series meeting. The venue is Seattle Pacific University's Demaray Hall, Room 150, and the program starts at 7:00 p.m.

My topic is "Exploring Your Voice As a Children's Writer" — which, in short, is about connecting with that voice in your head (you know you have one) and using it for good. In other words, letting it guide you in developing your only-one-like-it-on-Earth personal writing style.

This will be an informal and interactive talk with the best type of audience out there: Fellow children's writers.

After my bit, author-illustrator Ben Clanton will discuss "Hands-On Picture Books: Making a Great Reread-Aloud."

Looking forward to it, and cutting off my coffee consumption NOW. So any jitters people detect tonight will be all me.



Monday, November 05, 2012

What's News?

Yes, I did take back my blog, as I so bloggily declared I would in July. Sometimes, though, no blog news is good news. Other times — as is the case here — no blog news is really just no news in particular. That I felt like sharing. On the blog.

Oh, I was working, always working (a freelancer's gotta eat) — and writing, always writing (my YA WIP or whatever else I wrote to avoid it). But here's the thing about the writing: The process and my response to it turned downright rocky over the long Seattle summer. So I believe I did readers a favor by not blogging my way through it all. Seriously, no one but the dog needed to see that.

Now I've come back to the blog to share a merry milestone moment on my path to finishing my current novel-in-progress:

I have begun to revise the dang thing. (Psst. That means there is a dang thing to work with.)

I'll admit that I share this news with some trepidation. One feels that doing so could possibly cause one's manuscript, computers, external hard drive, and online backup accounts to burst into flames.

But by the time you see this, I will have trusted Blogger's "Publish" button, and you, to handle my news with care.