WWYWWQ #12

Today's questions come from Ms. Jurkowski's third class. These are the last two left as next week is a guest author posting and then school will be out shortly. I hope to gather some questions over the summer to start back in September after Labor Day for the WWYWWQ blogs again.

D.G. asks: How do you come up with so many books?

Answer: (I think I've addressed this before) The ideas are all around us. For me, it was winning second place on my first ever contest submitted piece of writing. That one story spurned on the idea of a state series, which obviously will be a 50-book series. All my short stories have come about from contests and have placed first, second, third, runner up or have been selected for an anthology. Finally Home came about from a vision and then after writing the original story, I did a complete rewrite. I'm in the process of writing a novel that was inspired by several pictures from an interactive creative writing prompt site; the trick will be tying all the pictures that spoke to me originally together in one story. The story won't be illustrated but I think I can describe the pictures well enough when they appear in the story. It's an illusion basically.

The object is to write something everyday and before you know it you too will have several or many books. Thanks for the question, D.G. and keep on writing.

The second question comes from D.J. D.J. asks: How do you plan your writing?

Answer: This goes to outlining or not outlining in my case. Writers are either planners or pantsers. By this, you can take an idea and storyboard or outline until you think you can write it or you can take the idea and just write what comes to mind. Having written several stories by the seat of my pants, the problem you tend to come up against is not developing the story or knowing your characters well enough to really write their story. On the other side of the coin, there are definite times you have to be a pantser such as when writing short stories for contests or anthologies. Most of these type of stories aren't afforded time to get to know your characters or the plot of the story. Since all of my short stories were written for contests, except the one that was selected to appear in an anthology, I basically was on the contest's deadlines and themes.

The story I'm working on now, Imogene: Innocence Lost, I've done a tentative outline from the pictures to help guide me from the pictures through the story. I also sent the sequence of events (which is what your outline basically is) to my editor so she knows how the story is supposed to progress.

For my state stories, I don't really outline but I don't really write them by the seat of my pants per se. The process for these stories is a little different. The whole idea behind the stories is to present facts in the form of clues for my readers and the characters to guess the state. So, the process goes like this: 1) Research - this is completed for all the state stories; 2) Clue picking - since I have my research completed, I have to go through all the factoids or trivia information and decide which 25 will be the most fun to read about and to write around; 3) Once clues are placed, I send to my editor and illustrator for a title to the story. Since the title is also a clue to the state, I tend to write the story around the clues and the title. This also gives my illustrator a heads up of what I want on the cover and helps her start working on the interior illustrations; 4) Place clues in an order that allows a bit of a challenge to the readers but aren't too difficult for those who are familiar with the state. Since the characters playing the game in the stories hardly go back to previous clues and all their "interactions" are based on the current given clue from the game, I don't want the clues to come across as too difficult or too easy right up front. I do try to progress from more difficult clues down to easy clues, so that the readers have a chance of guessing the state early on, somewhere in the middle or even as late as the last clue. The 25th clue will be something the state is known for, usually something everyone would think of that state immediately. The 26th clue is the state flower and geographic center of the state. The 27th clue is the state bird and state capital. 5) Write story - this can be the tricky part sometimes but for the most part, I just start off with some dialogue, which places my characters either at school, the park, the library, at home, or somewhere in their town, which is basically an Anywhere, USA. This is my jumping off point and once I've decided who is playing the game, sometimes I'll have them make small wagers to see who can guess the state first and sometimes they will just play the game. They discuss each clue as it is presented and move on. 6) Edit/revise - once the story is written, I go through it the first time to make sure it makes sense and then I send to my editor for her feedback so I can then revise and send back to her for all the final edits. 7) Publish story - once I've finished all my edits, I send the completed story to my illustrator who then places all the illustrations in the proper place and then she formats the book so that it is in the correct format for the printing process. Once I have those files back, I upload them on createspace.com and do my interior review and then wait to see if the book meets their specifications and then order a proof copy. Sometimes, if there are noticeable problems on the interior review, I let my illustrator know so she can fix them before I get to order the proof copy. Once I have the proof copy in hand and I've gone through it to make sure everything is as it is supposed to be, I then release the book so that it is available everywhere.

So, D.J., as you can see there are several ways to "plan" your writing, and the only advice I can give you is that you need to use the method that works for the story at hand as each story will be different for you. Some will require that you outline or write the key plot elements out, timelines, character maps, et cetera while others will be written to someone else's specifications and may not allow you the time to outline so you would basically have to write by the seat of your pants. Others still will mean you have to research first before taking a direction for the story to go. Keep writing and try different methods for different types of stories.

I would like to thank Mr. Hughes' sixth grade class and Ms. Jurkowski's third grade class for participating in my Wednesdays Weekly Young Writers Writing Questions. You all have provided some interesting questions along the way. Good luck in all your writing projects. Mrs. E :)

WWYWWQ #11

Today's question comes from J.H. in Ms. Jurkowski's third class. J.H. asks: How many pages are you allowed in a chapter book? How can you write a chapter book?

A: Well, J.H., when talking about lengths of books, we usually don't worry about how many chapters a book has, we base it more on the word count. If you are targeting early readers, 1st and 2nd grade, you want to keep your word count pretty low. Once the book has gone through layout, even if your book is only 500 words long (this is about 2 double-spaced, typed pages), you will see that for the proper amount of pages, there can be fewer words per page. We try to stay within our guidelines. Here is a breakdown of word lengths for various books and another one specifically for children's books

You will find that each source varies and that most of the time, the story length is determined by the type of story. My state stories could be considered chapter books for the most part, word count wise, as they are all about 4,000 to 10,000 words. Since I don't divide the story in chapters, they are basically short stories that are illustrated.

You may want to consider this eHow article on writing chapter books for more on deciding if you are going to write a chapter book or not.


As for your second question, how does one write a chapter book, same as other books you are writing. Making chapters in a book is really how the author feels about that book. I covered breaking your book into chapters on an earlier post here which was a question posed by a sixth grader in Utah.

It is very hard to take one aspect of writing any book and say this is the only way to do something. There are many elements involved in writing process that need to be taken into consideration. The main thing is to brainstorm what type of book you want to write, then get the basic story written and worry about chapters and word length during the editing and revising process. Remember that you should always have someone else edit your story (professional, not family or friends) before submitting for publication.

Hope this helps you in deciding if you want to write a chapter book or not. Thanks for the interesting question and allowing me to do what I enjoy best - research. Mrs. E :)

WWYWWQ #10

Today's question comes from F.H. from Ms. Jurkowski's third grade class. F.H. asks: Why do you like to blog? How do you get your ideas? How many pages do you write?

Answer: Well, F.H., there is no right way to answer this question. I started blogging while my kids were in marching band as a way to keep my friends and family entertained and informed about what was going on with my life and the kids. Once I started entering contests and writing short stories, I needed to keep everyone apprised of what was happening with my writing, so I continued blogging. I originally attempted to post about once a month or randomly whenever I could or needed to blog. I started writing stories for publication and started blogging a little more often. Now that I've moved from a traditional publisher and am having to do all my own marketing, my own publishing and everything in between, I need to blog more often. This year I decided to move to scheduled blog postings on Mondays and Thursdays except the fourth week of the month when I would have guest bloggers on the blog, either via an interview or via an article. I added the WWYWWQ late in January to try to connect with the school side of things since I feel my books needed to be in the schools.

So to answer your question, I enjoy blogging as long as I have something to blog about. I'm starting to run out of ideas and have put several requests out there for ideas but no one has responded. I try to keep to my 2 actual blog postings and the WWYWWQ each week. I do random postings on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and try to do blog repostings of articles I like or think will benefit my readers to those days as well. Sundasy is reserved for my week in review week - keeping up with my sales and other happenings during the week and also as a way to let folks know what is coming up during the week.

Thanks for asking your question, F.H. Keep writing and keep the questions coming. Mrs. E :)

WWYWWQ #9

Today's question is from S.S. from Ms. Jurkowski's third grade class. S.S. asks: Is it hard being an author?

Answer: It is hard some days and easy others. The reason I say this is that being an author is more than just writing the books, which is the easy part. Once the story is written, the hard part starts, which includes editing, revising, rewriting and then getting your story cover and illustrations if it is an illustrated story, then publishing and marketing. Marketing is the hardest part of being an author because you have to really put yourself out there for the world to see. You have to do a lot of events whether it be a book festival, a conference or even getting into a bookstore and doing a book signing, and do a lot of online promotion.

My philosophy on this is if you really want something you will really work hard for it. I enjoy writing my books and therefore will continue putting in the time and hard work to maintain my status as an author.

Thanks for the great question, S.S. Keep writing, keep working hard and keep the questions coming. Mrs. E :)

WWYWWQ #1

This question is from R., a student in Ms. Jurkowski's writing club: We need to know what a writer does when you are writing a story and your train of thought just stops.

MY ANSWER: Usually walk away for a few minutes - go for a walk, or write another scene or something unrelated - give him a random word and have him incorporate into what he's writing now or have him just write something totally unrelated to what he is working on - for like 5 minutes - maybe that will spark his thinking back to what he's working on now.

Teacher's reply: Thank you so much for answering R. right away! He was near tears and ready to quit Writer's Club because he was stuck in that story. He had written a page and a half already and I hated the thought of him quitting. Your advice was great and he tried it. He was just wandering around the room but at least he didn't quit. He was so excited that you responded right away and I left him with the phone so that as soon as you answered he would be the one to read it. He thought that was wonderful!

My reply to teacher about quitting: Cool. Glad he is sticking with it. Sometimes we do start stories that we just have to put away for a long time and just move on to something else. Please tell him not to quit (although every author has been there), but to keep plugging away. The stories will come as they need to come, like the story I'm working on right now - it is really speaking to me and causing me not to work on my state stories.


I'm sure every writer at some point in time has come upon that proverbial brick wall and felt like quitting, but if you quit, you leave so many what ifs out there, that you may feel lost for a while. Quitting isn't the answer, but sometimes a story may fizzle and will have served its purpose of only getting you started on something major. Thanks for the great question, R., and I hope you keep up the writing. Mrs. E :)