Tag: writers groups

Publish Don’t Perish Tip #11 – Be Accountable

Last week, I republished the article, An Inspiring Rare Friendship in anticipation of Publish Don’t Perish Tip #11 – Be Accountable. It’s so easy to be pulled away from your writing when “life” interferes. Sometimes you need a break, as I discussed in Tip #10 , however, sometimes while the break is helpful, it may extend longer than intended, and you can move farther and farther away from your goals. This slippery slope is especially easy for the writer, an often lonely profession. However, when you set yourself up to be accountable, important goals are likely reached. Today’s article will share ways in which you can make yourself accountable.

Accountability Partner

The Best Partner — Joni & Karen

Find yourself an accountability partner. This is someone you can share your daily or weekly writing goals with and who will check in with you to see if you’ve met them. This doesn’t necessarily have to be another writer, it can be anyone willing to see you succeed.

Writers’ Group

.Join a writers’ group. I have been blessed by one of the most incredible, supportive groups imaginable. We meet monthly, although during these times of social distancing, we missed a few until we found our rhythm with a new venue — Google Meet. It’s not quite the same as being together in person, but it’s almost as good and still provides motivation to write. These amazing people have the ability to fill my soul.

At the start of each meeting we pray together and provide a 90 second update on where we are with our writing. It’s amazing what that 90 seconds can inspire us to accomplish during the month.

Writing Retreat – Donna Wichelman, L.A. Sartor, Sandi Rog, Karen Fischer, Audra Harders, Candi Fick

Critique Group

Join a critique group where like minded writers set writing goals and provide regular drafts to other members for critique. Each group will have its own set of “rules” and “guidelines” the members need to follow. But each member is held accountable to participate and write.

Go Public

When you go public with your readership, family, and friends, you don’t want to let them down. Search Beyond Lies is a very important project for me, and by going public with An Inspiring Rare Friendship, I want you to hold me accountable. My goal is to have Search Beyond Lies ready for my professional content editor (Candee Fick) by December 1, and ready for my copy editor (Elizabeth Fenton) by Christmas. I will check in with you regularly.

An Inspiring Rare Friendship

What suggestions do you have to help us be accountable?

© 2020 Karen Van Den Heuvel Fischer

Why Storyboards Are Great Tools for Picture Book Writers with C.A. Henderson

children’s books, authors, writers, writers groups, tools
Christine Henderson
Why Storyboards Are Great Tools for Picture Book Writers

I’d like to welcome Christine Henderson to Thyme for Writers. Christine enjoys writing about family life. Her writings have been featured in numerous anthologies including Chicken Soup for the Soul and Heaven Touching Earth as well as The Secret Place Devotional guide.

Why Storyboards Are Great Tools for Picture Book Writers

by Christine A. Henderson

children’s books, authors, writers, writers groups, tools, storyboards, Thyme for Writers, Christine Henderson
Why Storyboards Are Great Tools for Picture Book Writers

I brought a new picture book story to my children’s writers’ group meeting and asked for their assistance in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the story. They all liked the unique plot and the characters but they thought the story was too long. For those of you who write novels, it’s probably hard to imagine that 900 words is too long to tell a story. However, these days 800 words tends to be the max length that publishers want to see.

Being inquisitive and stubborn, I really didn’t think I needed to shorten my story. Surely, new books had at least that many words or more. To test my theory, I went to my local Barnes & Nobles and picked up an assortment of new books that I thought fit my story idea concepts. Sad to say, that word count rang true. Most pages had an average of two to five lines of text with an upper end of nine words per line. The books were 24 or 32 pages with at least two of those pages either being blank or showing the publishing details and acknowledgements.

So it was back to the drawing board – literally. I had imagined a storyboard in my head with the images previously, but now I wanted to put it on paper. Not being a great artist, I drew my stick figures with a bracketed scene description below each drawing. Now I started adding the text. Once I did that, I could see what words weren’t needed because the picture showed that part of the story. It was easy to chop 100 or more words. The story hasn’t lost its plotline, but now it flows better with the images.

Another reason to do a storyboard for a picture book is to see if you have a short story, rather than a picture book. If your storyline takes place in just one or two scenes, it may not be a picture book because there aren’t enough options for illustrations. If that is the case, perhaps you could incorporate that story in a book of stories or submit it to one of the many children’s magazines who accept short stories.

You may contact Christine at:

www.ChristineLHenderson.com