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Big Smoke Blog
Inspiration and Motivation
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Before You Hit Send: Advice For Children’s Writers
“I just want to know if it’s any good,” one writer types, while another says, “This is my first attempt at anything like this.” One goes “I’d love any feedback you have”; someone else writes back demanding to know why the book wasn’t taken on.
Cover Letters and Synopses: Advice For Children’s Writers
The first thing I want to say is this: I feel your pain. You have a wonderful idea for a book. You start working on it. You get stuck, and you keep going – because you’re persistent, and you know that if you don’t keep at it, you won’t finish your project. Then you set it aside for a bit before returning to it with a view to making it as good as it can be – polishing it up to the very best of your ability.
Why Take A Writing Class?
Why take a writing class? What do people get out of them? Can writing really be taught, anyway? (The writer Flannery O’Connor famously noted, when asked whether she felt the academy stifled writers, that they ‘don’t stifle enough of them’!)