Blogging Workshop in Seattle THIS Saturday!

I'd like to extend a not-quite-but-almost-last-minute invitation for any Seattle-area folks to register for a blogging workshop I'm hosting for the Editorial Freelancers Association this Saturday, March 20.

Here's the description from EFA's Spring 2010 course catalog:

Blogging Basics

Saturday, March 20, from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Seattle Public Library, 1000 4th Ave, Level 4 - PACCAR Room 6

Is your creative spark threatening to go out? Is your freelance business slow? A blog can help you revive them both. Blogging is a free, fun way to get your name out there to a potential audience of millions, and in this 4-hour class you’ll learn everything you need to know to start your own blog in 5 minutes or less. First we’ll look at the “big picture” of blogging, including how it fits into the context of other social networking media like Facebook and Twitter. Then we’ll proceed to the nuts and bolts of how to set one up, how to promote it, and yes — even how to make a little money from it. Laptops are welcome but not required.

Instructor Rebecca Agiewich is the author of BreakupBabe: A Novel (Ballantine Books, 2006), which sprang from her dating blog “Breakup Babe” and was a finalist for the 2007 Lulu Blooker prize — a literary prize for books based on blogs. She is also a writing coach, freelance editor, and journalist, whose travel writing can be found in places like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Alaska Airlines Magazine. You can find out more about Rebecca at RebeccaAgiewich.com.

Advance registration is required. The fee for EFA members is $99, and it's $124 for nonmembers. Feel free to pass along this notice — and let me know if you have any questions.

Hope to see you there. I'll be the one with the cookies!

Deadline to Act on Google Book Settlement Is 1/28/10

Authors, publishers, and organizations:

A reminder that Thursday, January 28, is the deadline for you to act regarding the Google Books Settlement. The court needs to have your individual position on the record TOMORROW (a 1/28 postmark works) so it can be represented in the February 18 fairness hearing on the whole deal.

Your options are to (1) opt in and make a claim, possibly getting some money; (2) opt out of the settlement (of course that means no settlement money) in an effort to preserve your rights; or (3) do nothing, which will result in your receiving no settlement money and implicitly giving Google irrevocable rights to use your works in certain ways.

I hope you find this resources roundup helpful:

• Official settlement page.
• Recent webcast/workshop on the settlement, featuring a moderated panel representing various entities and viewpoints.
• Authors Guild resources page.
• National Writers Union FAQs on the issue.
• Statement opposing the settlement from Richard Wright's estate.
• Support for the settlement from the families of John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.
• Open Book Alliance's third-party analysis of the settlement. (OBA is calling for the settlement to be scrapped.)
• U.S. Copyright Office opposition to the settlement, as presented to Congress.
• Ursula K. Le Guin's call to exempt the United States from the settlement.
• Informative article in New York Review of Books.
  

This is a complicated issue, and I know people that are opting in, opting out (my choice), formally objecting, and doing nothing.

What are you doing? Care to share?

Tomorrow may be your last chance to act on your opinion.

Want Book Covers to Accurately Reflect Content?

A quickie post to point you toward a petition created by Multiculturalism Rocks blogger Natalie Mvondo, in which supporters let publishers know they want a book cover to accurately depict the actual main character featured in the story.

I recommend cruising to Natalie's January 19 post and following her embedded links to get a good sense of the issue and recent happenings.

Deleting = Revising, Right?

I've been working on a nonfiction book revision all day. So far, all I've really done is delete text. Extra words, sentences, and paragraphs must go.

I'll know more tomorrow (and then even more over the weekend when I read the thing fresh and do another pass to make sure I've covered everything I need to cover). But I'm actually thinking that in this case, the paring of the manuscript may in fact be the revision.

I say deleting counts.

A Thanksgiving Meme

Saw this meme today on Market My Words and decided to play.

(I know, this doesn't really count as a blog post in the traditional sense of blogging about the topic your blog supposedly features. Of course I mention this because I'm feeling a tad guilty about ignoring the blogosphere lately. Then again, as guilt is such THE timelessly classic holiday-time emotion — not to mention very common among writers — I think the meme fits right in! Besides, I will get back to blogging about children's writing and freelancing and freelancing and children's writing soon enough for my two readers.)

1. How will you spend Thanksgiving this year?
I'll be home with my (not-so-)fresh-from-a-biz-trip husband and happy-to-be-in-the-three-pack greyhound. No traveling, no guests. It will be low key and involve little else besides food prep, background jazz, a long neighborhood walk, some quiet conversation, family phone calls, and eating.

2. Will you be cooking, or are you just an eater?
Cooking, always cooking. Then eating.

3. Do you watch the parade or football?
We try to watch some of the parade.

4. What's your favorite float?
I can't think of one that I need to see, but I can do without any floats featuring singing Disney kids. (Is that Scroogey?)

5. Dark meat or white meat?
Yes.

6. What is your favorite dish besides the turkey?
Everything else, and I'm not kidding.

7. Homemade cranberry sauce or sauce from the can?
Homemade. I make either a jalapeno cranberry sauce, a chipotle cranberry sauce, or a citrusy cranberry sauce.

8. Do you decorate for Christmas on Thanksgiving Day?
We do celebrate Christmas at our house, and it's the only holiday for which we decorate. After Thanksgiving dinner (and during cleanup), we begin the process of trying to power through our out-of-control collection of holiday music. Sometimes we'll have enough time to start fetching decorations from the basement closet. If not, though, we'll haul them to the living room on Friday and attempt to distribute all during the coming weekend(s). We regularly fail to carry out the original plan.

9. What are some special holiday traditions?
The whole day I've described is traditional, and special, to us.

10. Pumpkin pie or pecan?
Pumpkin or sweet potato if I'm making it (although this year I'm doing a pumpkin-banana mousse tart); I'll always choose pecan if my mom's hosting.

11. What's your favorite thing to do with the leftovers?
If we've cooked for just us, we'll have two more full dinners (my favorite thing) before using the remaining fixins (my other favorite thing) in sandwiches, "bubble and squeak," soups, and so on.

12. How long do you spend eating your Thanksgiving meal?
A long time. We'll eat and then linger over the wine to stall on the cleanup. Coffee and dessert are served after everything has been put away.

13. Are you worried about putting on weight this Thanksgiving?
No.

14. What do you normally eat at Thanksgiving?
A light, healthy, breakfast. Easy appetizers (antipasto-type stuff) and a cocktail at 2 o'clock or so. The main meal, which we serve in the early evening, includes turkey, gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, a sweet-and-savory sweet potato dish (no marshmallows here), cranberry sauce, roasted brussels sprouts w/garlic and capers, sausage stuffing, dinner rolls, ice water w/lemon, and wine. Pie and coffee a few hours later. Too much?

15. What will you be thankful for this Thanksgiving?
Health and hope.

16. What is your favorite Thanksgiving memory?
I fondly remember our extended family gatherings on both sides of the family. On my dad's side, we celebrated Christmas on Thanksgiving because his parents fled Iowa for their Florida digs as soon as possible after turkey sandwiches. My favorite memory — as it relates to an experience I can draw upon when creating child characters (see how I'm making this "count" just a little?) — is the Thanksgiving-Christmas gift exchange circa 1976. My dearly loved grandmother gave me a Quick Curl Barbie . . . and it took ALL my concentration to both offer a sincere-sounding thank-you during the family show-and-tell and to keep myself from bursting into tears. You see, I fancied myself All Grown Up (I was E.LEV.IN, for cryin' out loud!), and I just about couldn't bear thinking that anyone saw me as childish enough to play with Barbie. It's one of those long-ago scenes I can recall with exacting, slow-mo detail. And I love it!

17 & 18. Will you be waking up early to hit the sales?/Are you planning on going shopping the day after Thanksgiving?
No way. No shopping that day.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Ah, Hemingway Always Has Something to Say

"It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write.
Let them think you were born that way."
—Ernest Hemingway

I have mixed feelings about this one.

On the one hand, I think I was born to write. (Not that I was born a great writer, mind you, just that writing is something I was born needing to do.) Then again, I feel like I'm always fighting that perception that writing doesn't take practice . . . or continued study . . . or work.

Can't argue with Hemingway's sentiment, though. Makes me laugh.

Any thoughts out there?

Writer, Write for Yourself. Or, Trick for Treat?

I'm never not writing, you know. Even when I breeze past this blog every day for weeks without giving it so much as a sidelong glance. Even when I let my pet-project manuscripts languish on my desktop — or worse, in the depths of my iMac's complicated e-filing system.

I'm always writing lists, notes, business emails, personal emails, personal blogs, journal entries, Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn updates, rough story ideas, and — of course — large word collections (aka articles, texts, and books) commissioned by outside entities (aka paying clients).

The whole writing various things for those outside entities is a good thing. In fact, it's THE thing, isn't it? I can say quite definitively that I do not wish to go without that.

But. I struggle with wanting to make more real time for the writing I want to do just because I want to do it. So today I did something I haven't in a very long time: I signed up for a writing class. A 12-weeker, besides! (Basically, it's an instructor-led critique group, so I'll get to really move on one of my YA novels.) I decided it's worth the investment because it sets me up to succeed in something done purely for myself. Because you'd better believe I will meet goals I've paid to declare.

And that, dear blog readers, is both trick AND treat for me.

Cybils Nominations Are Open

The nomination period is under way for the 2009 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. Now through October 15, you can visit the main Cybils blog to learn about the awards and nominate your favorite titles in a number of categories (you can vote for one title per category).

As nominations keep rolling in, Round I judges are busy gathering initial selections, and they'll narrow the field over the next couple of months. This year I'm serving as a Round II judge for the Middle Grade/YA Nonfiction category — so later this year I'll help evaluate the Round I panel's "cream of the crop" short list of MG/YA nonfiction books published since October 16, 2008.

So . . . read any good kids' books lately? Of course you have. Now go add them to the list — we want to know which books you L-O-V-E LOVE!

EFA Fall Classes Start Soon!

I recently rejoined the EFA board as education chair, and I am pleased to share news of our Fall 2009 Education Program. We have an exciting season of targeted professional-development opportunities planned and hope you'll join us for some of our online offerings and/or live events in Seattle and NYC.

ONLINE CLASSES

How to Get Freelance Writing Work (starts 10/13)

Editing Memoir and Narrative Nonfiction (starts 10/15)

Dealing with Nightmare Clients (starts 10/21)

Proofreading (starts 11/2)

Turning Journal Entries into Polished Pieces (starts 11/30)

Writing from Healthy Starts (starts 12/1)

SEATTLE EVENTS

Getting Started in Editorial Freelancing (10/17)

Blogging Basics (12/5)

NYC SEMINAR

Supplementing Your Income with PR Work (11/14)

For full course descriptions, pricing information, and a link to EFA's online registration system, see EFA's main catalog page. Be sure to act now and SIGN UP for any classes you're eyeing, especially those starting just around the corner in October. Class size is limited, and some courses do sell out early.

Hope to see some of you in class! And please share this notice with any interested friends and colleagues.

Can't Be Said Enough: "RIP, Reading Rainbow"

To ease the pain of losing Reading Rainbow to the ages, the Onion has published this exclusive opinion piece by LeVar Burton. Click on over for a good chuckle followed by a moment of silence for what's been removed from the cultural landscape:

"My Living Nightmare of Encouraging Kids to Read Is Over"

And, please enjoy this clip of the Reading Rainbow theme: