Growing an Idea

Sometimes the books I write go through their own journeys. My baseball novel started out as a story about a camping trip. It was based on a trip I took when I was eight. Here's a picture diagram I made for my students about how the story changed:

The original idea, first written as a boy mc and then changed to a girl, was a quiet story that my parents and sister still enjoy. After all, they lived it. As I nurtured this idea and watched it grow, rewrites and critique changed it into something completely different. The story the seed became is about a character who only exists in the world I created for her. But her world is as interesting, exciting, and full of drama as I could write it. Hers is a story to share. 

Have you ever started out with one idea and ended up with something completely different?

New Authors: Great Books

I hope you will join me in congratulating some of my writer friends on publishing their first book. I can't wait to see them in stores!

Susan Hood recently published not one but THREE first picture books, The Tooth Mouse, Spike the Mixed Up Monster, and Just Say Boo!

 

Mike Jung's middle grade novel, Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities, releases on October 1.

Tiffany Schmidt's young adult novel, Send Me a Sign, releases on October 2 

Kimberly Sabatini's young adult novel, Touching the Surface, releases on October 30.

Visit these author's websites to find out all of the exciting release date and publication events. Have you read any of them yet? Pre-ordered? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Who's With Me?

NaNoWriMo has opened a summer camp and I am an enthusiastic registered participant.

If you are not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is held every year during the month of November. But I'll be honest, even though I participate, November is not the best time for a teacher to focus on being a writer. I find time to write during the school year (I really can't stop myself from writing down the voices in my head), but trying to get to the goal of 50,000 words in a month... that's a lot to ask for.

But August, now this is my writing month. When I learned the NaNoWriMo has opened a summer camp I signed up right away. I just hope they get more camp t-shirts in soon.

50,000 words here I come!

Will you join me at camp? Go to Camp NaNoWriMo for more details. If you do sign up, please come back and leave a comment with your username so I can find you there.

(A shout out and thank you to Hazel Mitchell for posting details about this camp on Facebook.)