When people learn what I do for a living, they often tell me about half-finished novels and wonderful picture-book ideas they plan to complete. So how can they put their plans into action? Check out my six tips for aspiring creators:

Get to Work
“Put your bottom in the chair and pick up your pencil.” That’s what my mother, who taught grade 1 for twenty-five years, would say to her students. She has a theory that adults are just six-year-olds in big bodies, so perhaps her simple directive can apply to us, too. How many people do you know who plan to write or illustrate a book – one day? My mother’s idea is if you “pick up your pencil” you’re more apt to do something productive with it.

Everyone needs to find his or her own creative groove, but I try to write every day, and I know illustrators who try to sketch daily – like Debbie Ohi who aims for a daily drawing, which she posts online at DebbieOhi.com. Even during a busy day, I usually have time to jot down 200 words – the minimum daily output I aim for when writing a first draft. The words don’t need to be well-written – a first-draft always needs revision. But it’s a start. And daily writing or illustrating helps to keep the creativity flowing.

Make Connections in Person
Since I most often write in the quiet of my home office, I have to make a conscious effort to commit to events that will connect me with others in the industry. But whenever I do hoist myself out of my chair and get out there, I’m inevitably glad that I did.

I’ve found that other creative people can offer invaluable support, encouragement and even mentorship. It’s also helpful to share knowledge, techniques and experiences. Even better, I set up mutual critique exchanges with other creators to determine how to revise a work-in-progress.

Publishing professionals can provide valuable insights into how the industry operates as well as trends and current issues. Ideally, these connections can lead to that first publishing contract – and many more.

Obviously, formal events like CANSCAIP meetings and conferences are a great place to make connections, as well as informal one-on-ones over coffee or at critique groups.

Make Connections Online
Social networking is your friend. YouTube is a forum to showcase your work. A website or blog is a valuable promotional tool, whether you’re published or not.

Online connections are as important as in-person ones, and they can provide numerous opportunities to connect with other creators and even publishing professionals. It’s also an opportunity to connect with your audience – the kids or teens you’re targeting as well as librarians, booksellers and others who make decisions about books for kids. In addition, publishers like authors and illustrators to have a strong online presence, even before you’re published.

My advice for making online connections is to find a balance between sharing personal experiences and professional ones. We need to market ourselves and our work, yet show a personal side, too. Avoid over-sharing, and respond to others’ posts to help make connections.

Perfect Your Craft
Mastering the craft of writing or illustrating can take a lifetime. Part of the challenge of a creative life is that every project brings new obstacles to overcome.

I periodically ask myself: What can I do to improve my craft? Maybe a course would help refine a particular technique. Maybe a conference would give insights into a particular genre. Maybe a critique group would help polish a work-in-progress.

Another option for getting feedback is CANSCAIP’s Blue Pencil Mentorship Program. It puts you in touch with a professional children’s author or illustrator (for a fee) to receive a personal critique of your work.

Go Deep
First thoughts are only a starting point. Every creative idea can be taken further, explored in more depth, mined for gems.

A common mistake of aspiring creators is to submit work to publishers before it’s ready. Considering that you typically get one shot with a publisher, make sure it’s your best work.

With that in mind, I suggest you revise, revise, revise. Here’s how you can do that:

1. Put the work away for a few days or weeks. Then try to view it with fresh eyes. What works and what doesn’t? How can it be improved?
2. Get constructive feedback from people whose opinions you trust. Evaluate their feedback to determine how you want to revise your work.
3. Revise.
4. Repeat this process until you can’t possible make any further improvements. Then repeat it one more time.

Keep at It
Once, when I was an unpublished writer, I sent an impulsive email to an author I admire – Karleen Bradford (KarleenBradford.com). Since I was feeling discouraged at the time, I was looking at her website because she had useful information for emerging writers. In my email, I asked her for advice on how to get motivated to continue writing after a rejection letter from a publisher. I never really expected an answer, but I got one quickly. Karleen wrote something like, “A writer’s greatest talent is sheer pig-headed stubbornness.” Her words helped me pick up my pencil and return to my story once again. I’ve found Karleen’s words to be true over and over again.

Sarah Raymond‘s YA novel, Signs of Martha, is a fast-paced read with a quirky cast of unique characters. In it, 16-year-old Martha Becker is a daydreaming pickle-grower with an artistic bent. When a zealous sign painter lands in Martha’s agriculturally-inclined world, she finds a dream, a mentor, and a whole lot of trouble.

I guarantee that this book will have you laughing out loud as well as worrying for Martha as she gets herself in trouble by painting opinionated signs about her neighbours and friends in her rural community. Sarah has created a stellar cast of characters with dialogue that suits them perfectly.

What I learned from Sarah is how to revise. Sarah can wonderfully re-envision a scene over and over until she finds the ideal mix of ingredients to create a masterful story. I think of Sarah when I need to ditch a troublesome scene and find the insight to completely re-imagine it in a new and exciting way.

Pat Bourke‘s novel for children ages 9 to 14, Yesterday’s Dead, is a perfectly paced historical fiction with finely crafted, likable characters. It’s about 13-year-old Meredith Hollings, who travels from small-town Port Stuart to Toronto to work as kitchen help in a doctor’s home to help support her family. She hopes to train as a teacher one day, but when Spanish Influenza invades Toronto, Meredith may have to give up that dream forever.

This compelling novel brings history alive, with realistic dialogue, believable characters, and insightful historic details about the harsh realities of the Spanish Flu epidemic in1918 Toronto. A detailed teacher’s guide is also available for Yesterday’s Dead.

What I learned from Pat is how to meticulously craft every word. While I’m busy imagining the full breadth and scope of my work-in-progress, Pat is reminding me to pay attention to details. I think of Pat when I dive into the nitty-gritty of how each sentence is constructed.

When any member of my group achieves a success – from a well-written scene to a published book – we all celebrate. Yet I’m also grateful for the behind-the-scenes look I get into how they craft their words.

I can’t wait to see what my writing group will produce next.

Zombies and other horror stories were popular with this group, as we wrote stories and poems based on the eerie photography of Gregory Crewdson. We also wrote from objects – my collection of old keys – and using my word box, as well as writing from a given sentence.

My word box

There is nothing better than an afternoon of writing games, unless it’s reading what these fine writers can produce in the Toronto Public Library’s annual magazine of teen writing and art – the Young Voices magazine.

Teens between the ages of 12 and 19 who live in Toronto are invited to submit poems, stories, rants, reviews, illustrations, and photography to this quality magazine. The submission deadline is March 31, 2012. For guidelines and how to submit, click here. To read the Young Voices 2011 Magazine, click here.

To register, contact Ken Sparling at 416-397-5970, or ksparling@torontopubliclibrary.ca.

After the workshop, don’t forget to submit your writing to Young Voices – the Toronto Public Library’s annual magazine of teen writing and art. Poems, stories, rants, reviews, illustrations, and photography are all accepted. The submission deadline is March 31, 2012.

For guidelines and how to submit, click here. To read the Young Voices 2011 Magazine, click here.

Interested in more workshops? Check out the upcoming Young Voices Art Workshop with illustrator and teacher Michael Brown and the Young Voices Poetry Workshop with Matthew Tierney.

Because of this trend, one of my goals when I wrote my latest novel, The Yo-Yo Prophet, was to write a book that young male readers would want to read. When I received this message from a mother of a 12-year-old, I was thrilled:

“My son LOVED The Yo-Yo Prophet and read it in record time. He even started playing with his yo-yo again and then recently made one. He highly recommends this book to his friends. It has initiated him reading every night at bedtime again and I am truly grateful for that.”
Lynn E.

I’m so glad that The Yo-Yo Prophet inspired Lynn’s son to read again, and that it encouraged him to get his friends’ hooked, too. I hope that well-written books can repeat this pattern over and over again.

Finding literature to interest young male readers can be difficult, and some of us are guilty of picking books for boys that we think they ought to read, rather than books that reflect their interests.

James Moloney says in Boys and Books: “A good book for a boy is one he wants to read.”

If you’re looking for books for a young male reader, my suggestion is to take him to a bookstore and/or library regularly so he can pick books for himself. You can also encourage him to check out www.guysread.com, a website developed by author Jon Scieszka to connect boys with books.

Happy reading!

Volunteer work like this can be draining at times, and I must admit to getting volunteer fatigue as the conference approached. But the joy at connecting with so many people who share a love of creating for children quickly reminds me why I volunteer.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this day. It was a pleasure to share it with you.

Books collected for the Red Door Family Shelter

One of my summer projects this year was collecting donations of books for the Red Door Family Shelter in Toronto, where I volunteer once a week with school-aged kids. I was happy to collect books from Rachel Seigel of S&B Books, author and reading program coordinator Sheilah Currie, and Barb Pepin of Chapters Indigo. These books are being used in the shelter’s summer reading program, which I help with once a week. I received novels, picture books, learning-to-read books, graphic novels, and non-fiction books by fabulous Canadian and international writers and illustrators – a total of five boxes of books. The kids and the shelter staff were thrilled when I brought them in! Thanks to Rachel, Sheilah, and Barb for making it happen.

This week, I also completed the judging of submissions for the Toronto Public Library’s Young Voices Magazine of art, poetry, and prose. I met with a team of enthusiastic teen judges on Thursday night to argue passionately for our favourites in the category of prose written by teens aged 17 to 19. The winners will be announced soon, and the launch for the 2011 magazine will be held in October. I can’t wait to see the finished product.

I also ran a memoir-writing workshop this week for fellow writer and instructor Karen Rankin, who was unable to attend her class. I was so impressed with the fascinating stories I heard and the quality of the writing. These dedicated writers are faithfully developing their craft and sharing their sometimes hilarious and sometimes harrowing real-life tales. It made me remember two things: First, everyone has interesting stories to share, if only we take the time to listen. Second, real life is often stranger than fiction, but perhaps fiction can be equally strange, if it’s told well enough to make unusual events believable.

• start the day with a Welcome Address by Governor-General’s Award winner Sarah Ellis.
• choose three Workshops in your special area of interest. Workshops include master-level sessions intended for established writers and illustrators — as well as a session for beginners. All others sessions are at the intermediate level. Topics range from how to craft a picture book to creating graphic novels to how to pitch your work.
• join with the whole group for a Keynote Address from renowned author/illustrator Loris Lesynski.
• end the day with a Pitch Perfect manuscript/portfolio critiquing session. Get a one-paragraph pitch plus 1000 words critiqued by agent Ali McDonald or editor Gail Winskill in a ten-minute private session. Or get five portfolio pieces critiqued by art director Andrea Casault. Space is limited, and spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Register early to get your first choice in workshops and one of the limited number of Pitch Perfect critiquing sessions.

Need another reason to register early? This year, the first 75 registrants will be automatically entered in a draw to win a Blue Pencil mentorship in any genre with keynote speaker Loris Lesynski.

For more information, go to Packaging Your Imagination 2011.

I was delighted to receive workshop reviews from some of the teens who attended. With their permission, I’ve included excerpts here:

“The workshop in my opinion was freaking awesome. I enjoyed it a lot. I love to write. It is one of my favourite pastimes. It helps you figure yourself out as well as clear your head. The only thing about the workshop that I did not like was the fact that it was rather short, and in my opinion, it would have been more effective and entertaining if we were able to have you come back for a full day! The one aspect of the workshop that I really enjoyed is that the creativity level of each participant was phenomenal. Everyone was really creative, motivated, and descriptive in their short stories.”
Thomas

“I loved it so much. It made me so interested in writing. The reason was how she made us be interested in what we wrote. In my opinion, I found the workshop very valuable because it got me focussed with the writing that I’m trying to accomplish. I also loved the games that she made us do; it made me find another strategy to keep me writing.”
Anonymous

“The presenter was very encouraging and put a few twists into the workshop with the photographs and the word box, which gave it a feel of originality. It’s interesting to see that the writing runs in the family, and I would hope to perhaps explore the book titles left behind. The speaker was extremely pleasant and I believe she put everyone at ease.”
Anonymous

“I really enjoyed Karen’s workshop. She gave everyone the opportunity to express themselves creatively in a non-judgmental environment. The activities we took part in were interactive and interesting. I would encourage any high school student to take part in these workshops, as writing creatively can be used in so many different ways, and be a lot of fun too.”
Anonymous

This outreach workshop was facilitated by the Toronto Public Library as part of their Young Voices Magazine of teen writing and art. Teens between the ages of 12 and 19 years who live or go to school in the City of Toronto are invited to submit poetry, prose, rants, art, and photography for the 2011 Young Voices Magazine by April 2. You can submit online or drop your work off at any library branch. Submissions will be evaluated in the spring and the finished product launches in October. Good luck to all who submit!

If you know any teen writers or illustrators in Toronto, please let them know about the magazine. The deadline for submissions is every April. Here’s a link.

This Saturday, I conducted a series of writing games for nine-year-old Saskia and 19 of her friends. As the guests entered Saskia’s home, they were greeted by the words “Creativity World” written in 12 different languages. Together, we played games with words – creating evil villains, writing using masks, and using “story dice” to tell stories as a group. I enjoyed getting a glimpse into the creative worlds of these girls. Saskia and her friends are fine writers.

It was an intriguing idea for a birthday party – one that I would have enjoyed when I was a kid. Heck, I’d even enjoy it now!

This is my fourth year as an editor of this magazine of teen writing and art, published by the Toronto Public Library, and I’ve loved every minute of it. It excites me to think that the influential authors and illustrators of tomorrow may be first published within the pages of this magazine. Even more exciting is simply enjoying what teens are thinking, feeling and creating.

You can pick up your copy of the magazine at any branch of the Toronto Public Library. Check out next year’s submission guidelines at RAMP for Youth.