It’s here!!! Recently, I pulled out a big envelope from my Winterville post office box. Inside, were my two author’s copies of the October 2011 issue of The Writer magazine. The magazine smelled of fresh ink as I flipped through and found my Breakthrough column, “Conference feedback and an authentic voice led the way to…
I’m getting excited about the upcoming Harriette Austin Writers Conference, July 22 – 23, 2011, at the Georgia Center on the University of Georgia campus. My session there, “Finding Fiction in Your Own Backyard,” will be on Saturday, July 23, 10 – 11 am. I’ve presented this same workshop many times. Most recently, I taught…
Ask any successful creative person you know about failure and chances are they will tell you about rooms papered with rejection slips, countless paintings they painted over, or songs that went nowhere. For most of us, a long road of failure is the path we must take to reach the published novel, the award-winning watercolor,…
“Wanna go to a movie?” My grandmother Myrt asked one hot summer day of my childhood. Our Athens movie theaters, The Palace (a parking garage is there now), and the Georgia Theater (newly rebuilt after a devastating fire) were the only air conditioned places I knew back in the late 1950s, when Myrt issued her…
I’m delighted to tell you this fantastic news: the popular Harriette Austin Writers Conference is back! The 2011 HAC will be held July 22 – 23, 2011, at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education on the University of Georgia campus. This year’s conference has a great line up of speakers and critiquers and the deadline…
Now that my debut children’s middle grade novel is published (Gone From These Woods/August 25, 2009, Random House/Delacorte Press), I’m often asked, “Are you writing another book?” I usually answer yes. And then they ask what it’s about. And I usually say, “Two kids and a spelling bee.” Next, they want to know when they…
I’ve discovered something during endless days of rewriting children’s middle grade novels. Most of my stories start out backwards. Maybe the beginning is near the ending, sort of like that great movie I saw recently, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” In that memorable flick, Ben started out as an elderly man who aged backwards…
