sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Best of the Blogs

by

I’ve been catching up on my blog reading (much neglected of late in the midst of a very busy couple of months) and have found some real gems to share with you.

On Submitting Your Work:

Jane Friedman talks about the dos and don’ts of writing a bio to go with your query, while Nicola Morgan makes an excellent point about obsessing (or not) about cover letters. Well said, Nicola.

On/For Inspiration

Laura Salas shares a quote which really resonates with me, as it did with her, about the internet and its effect on us, and, if you are looking for inspiration, Kathy Temean’s writing prompts are a good starting point.

Writing Advice

13 year old Angus tells us 6 and 1/2 things he’d like all authors to know. How cool is this kid -a nd how spot-on is his advice?

Kathy Temean talks about the decision whether or not  to use a prologue, and Nicola Morgan has a brilliant – and long – list of resources for writiers.

Author interviews

Megan Blanford at Kids Book Review interviews wonderful Aussie author Nette Hilton and, though technically not an interview, Michael Pryor guest blogs, also at Kids Book Review. Top bloke is Michael.

You’re still here? Get clicking on the above links and see if they do for you what they do for me. More soon.

Best of the Blogs

by

 Lots of goodies around the blogosphere again this week. here are some of my favourites. Enjoy!

Writing Advice
Nicola Morgan blogs about the process of self-editing.

Dee White has wodnerfula dvice ona tricky issue – fixing issues with plot.

And one I love – Laura Salas shares Ron Koetrge’s poem: Do You Have Any Advice for Those of Us Just Starting Out?  Writing advice and a poem!

The Writing Life
Kate Gordon discusses the challenges of balancing day jobs with writing in I’d Rather Be Writing

Lenny Pelling blogs (hilariously) on writing four books in one year.

Promotion
The Publishing Guru discusses the Top 10 Mistakes Authors Make on Facebook.

Interviews
Janeen Brian interviews Lorraine Marwood  as part of a blog tour. Lorraine will be dropping here in a couple of days. Keep an eye out for her!

Reviews
Ana at The Book Smugglers blog reviews The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a book I’ve heard so many good things  about and yet still haven’t read for myself.

At The Kids Book Blog they’ve not only reviewed Deborah Abela’s newest book, Grimsdon, tub some of her backlist as well, and  a bibliography of her works to date. Good stuff.

If you have a favourite recent blog post about children’s books or writing for children, leave a comment.

Write for Kids 101 – Lesson 2: Write

by

This is the second lesson in my series on how to write for children. In Lesson One I told you that the first thing you needed to do if you want to be a children’s writer is to read. At the risk of becoming painfully obvious, I’m going to tell you now that the second thing you need to is to write.
If you are serious about being published you need to develop your writing skills, and the best thing you can do to develop your writing skills is to write. Write often. And write a lot. Preferably, write something every day. Something new.

You see, no matter how obvious this advice might sound, many aspiring writers never make it to publication because their focus is wrong. Instead of writing, they spend too much time worrying about what they are going to write, or when they are going to get published, or how they are going to get published.

True, these things are important, but your starting point should be just to get writing. Develop a writing habit. Make writing a priority rather than something at the bottom of your list for when you have spare time.

If you are a busy person, you may, right now, be frowning at your computer screen or even muttering at me that I don’t understand. You are busy. You have a job. Perhaps you have kids. And sporting commitments. And meals to cook. And floors to sweep. If that’s you, then you might be thinking it’s unfair of me to tell you to make more time for writing.

But I’ll let you in on a secret. Authors are busy people. Many still have day jobs. Many have families. And all have houses, and need to be fed, and all those other things. And, once they’ve been published, those extraneous commitments increase, because they need to spend time promoting their book(s), which takes away from writing time. But still, they write. They don’t find time – they make it.

And if you want to be a writer – you’ll make that time, too.

And, if you do make time to write, you’ll soon see that your writing will improve. Hockey players get better at hockey by training. Performers get better at performing by rehearsing. Crafts people hone their crafts by repetition. And writers get better at writing by writing.

One final piece of advice: if you are just starting out, be wary of using your writing time to endlessly refine your first sentence/first page/first chapter. This is not writing – this is revising. And whilst revising is important (and we’ll get that in future lessons), it is better in the beginning to have a hundred pages of okay writing than to have half a page of heavily revised writing.

What are you waiting for? You’ve read what I’ve got to say – now go write something!

Write for Kids 101 – Lesson 1: Read

by

For all that this blog is called ‘Sally Murphy’s Writing for Children Blog’, it has been a while since I said much about how to actually write for children. So, I figure it’s time to remedy that and, today, I am starting a new very casual feature called ‘Write for Kids 101’. This will a series of hopefully brief lessons aimed at beginning writers about the art and business of writing for children.

So, on to Lesson 1.

You would like to write for children. Maybe you can imagine your name on the front cover of a beautiful, full colour picture book. Or you’d like to be the next J. K Rowling, Jackie French or Enid Blyton. You might have less lofty aims and be happy just to see one of your children’s poems in a magazine one day. Whatever your desired end point, the starting point is the same. If you would like to write for children: read.

That’s right. Read. Far more important than writing every day is reading every day. Every day. Did I say every day? I cannot emphasise enough the importance of reading. Every day.

If you want to write for children and write well, you must read children’s books, and the majority of them should be new release children’s books. Sure, you can revisit the favourite books of your childhood, or of your children’s childhood, but is vital that you read what is being published right now.

Reading new release books gives you a wonderful insight into what does and doesn’t work in children’s books. Reading a good book can inspire you, and show you how a good story is structured, how the language is woven, how characters are developed, how the text and the illustration interplay. Reading a not-so-good book can also help – showing you what doesn’t work, and leading you to ponder why it doesn’t work.

Reading can also give you an insight into what kinds of books are being published, and by whom, so that when you are eventually ready to submit your own manuscripts, you have a good idea of which publishers may be interested in your work.

But, new writers say to me, I haven’t got time to read books. I’m a busy person.

Tough. If you haven’t got time to be a reader, then you don’t have time to be a writer. Read on the train to work. Read to your children or grandchildren. Give up the tired old soap opera/current affairs program/sportscast you watch every Wednesday night. You must make time to read.

Others tell me they don’t read because they are scared of absorbing the style or ideas of other writers. Don’t panic. Reading good writing will influence the way you write. But the more you read and the more you write the less of a problem that will be – your own style will begin to emerge.

In every profession, those who reach the top have had, at some point along the way, to observe how others practice their craft. Aspiring sportspeople watch and study the techniques of champions in their sport. Aspiring lawyers study notable examples of legal cases. Doctors watch fellow surgeons operate in order to see how it is done. Trainee teachers spend time in the classroom watching experienced teachers. So, if you want to be a writer, you need to watch how other writers do it, and the best way to do this is to read their books.

If you don’t have a children’s book on the go right now, you need to head off to your local library or bookstore NOW and get one.

Have fun.

Reasons Not to Write: Number 3

by

I’ve got nothing to write about.

‘I want to be a writer,” I hear, “but I’ve got nothing to write about.”

This is a difficult one. Difficult not because there IS nothing to write, but difficult because to me this excuse expresses one of two quite different problems.

Problem one is that some people are very much taken by the idea of wanting to be an author with their name in big letters on the front of a book, touring the country doing author signings and besieged by fans wanting autographs. But, in spite of that dream, the person is not really inspired to write anything. That’s too much hard work.

If this is you, stop reading now. Go on. Find something else to do. Because if you want to BE a writer, but don’t really want to write, I can’t help you. And if you’re after fame and fortune, then turn your back on writing and go and sign up for Big Brother, or Australia’s Got Talent, or do a nudie run at the tennis or… You get the picture. Your problem here isn’t that you’ve got nothing to write about, it’s that you don’t care enough about the writing to actually sit down and write something. And there are much easier ways of getting famous.

But problem two is something different. You want to write, maybe even need to write (and by need, I don’t mean need to do it to get rich and famous, but rather need to because you have this inner voice that insists you express yourself through writing) but when you sit down to do it, you find you can’t. Sometimes called writer’s block (which comes in different shapes and forms, in my experience) the answer here is more complex, but very often that feeling of having nothing to write about is self imposed. “I could write a story about…nah, no one would like that.” “I’ll write a novel about…nah, been done before.” So instead of having nothing to write about, you are telling yourself you have nothing important, or funny enough, or publishable enough to write about.

If this is you, there is one solution. Stop second guessing yourself. Just sit down and write. Often. preferably every day. Start something and finish it. Start something else and finish that. Read a writing book or browse the web for good writing exercises and try them. Once you’re in the writing habit you can start thinking about publication, or sharing your work. But for now, just write. About anything and everything. If you really want to write, you’ll find things to write about.

So what are you waiting for? You want to be a writer – write.

Reasons Not to Write: Number 1

by

I don’t have time to write.

This is probably the most common reason I hear from people why they don’t write, in spite of their professed desire to be a writer and/or to get published.


“I am going to write a book one day,” they’ll say. “But I just don’t have the time right now.”


Tosh! If you are reading this blog post, you have the time to write. In the couple of minutes it has taken you to click on a link, open this post and read it, you could have written a paragraph. In the ten minutes you took on Facebook/Twitter/whatever other social networking site last hour, you could have written two paragraphs. In the hour you sat in front of the tv last night, two pages. And so on.


Now before you throw rotten tomatoes at me, I am not for one moment suggesting any one of those things is a waste of time (I surf blogs, facebook, twitter and watch TV every day). What I am saying is that if you really want to write, you will find some time to devote to it.


It might not be the uninterrupted days of writing you dream of – but even five minutes snatched here and there can add up.


I don’t know a single writer who has as much time to write as they would like. Many published authors (including myself) still need to work day jobs to survive financially, or have family responsibilities. Even those who do not have other commitments generally have writing related commitments which take them away from their writing – speaking engagements, promotions and so on. But they make time to write.

So, what are you waiting for? You want to be a writer? Write.

sallymurphy.com.au