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Writing is HARD. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. Just like in a relationship, you go through several phases within your novel relationship (because see, you spend so much time with this thing that it seems to take on a life of its own). Phase 1 - OVER THE MOON You are in love with your idea. Your characters are amazing. You think about your novel day and night. You see a bright, shining future. It's love. Phase 2 - THE HONEYMOON IS OVER That little thing there - it

This week, I worked on the illustrations for my first children's book, This Book Needs A Laugh. It took several hours to draw all the expressions and the other little characters. I wanted to go minimalist and simple for this concept, so I knew I could do these myself. It was really rewarding, too, to see the concept I had in my mind’s eye put on the actual page. I bet it is only a fraction of the excitement I’ll feel once all of this is an actual book in my hands! I'm current

Part of being a writer is looking at books that you read with a different perspective. Writers read for pleasure or knowledge, sure, but we also look at books as market research, as examples of the genre we like to write in, and so on. Over the summer, I got in a sweet little book from BookCrash that the publisher provided as a complimentary copy. It was a signed copy of It’s a Jungle in Here by Kristie Wilde. First off, the artwork is adorable. If you have kids, you know how

Twitter hosts pitch parties for writers, and I participated in my first one this past week. A pitch party is where you pitch your work to potential agents, and they read through the pitches to see if they're interested in any of them. If they like on your pitch, that means that they want you to query them about your manuscript. Getting the right concept to the person who wants to read that kind of work is a big part of the battle of trying to find an agent. You might query th

Since last posting, I have entered a few poetry contests and have written a few other poems that I've submitted to various literary magazines. I also wrote another children's picture book, but I haven't sent it out to anyone yet. I like to write one, step away from it for a week, and then come back to it with fresh eyes to see if it needs further editing. Meanwhile, I stalk Submittable way too much, waste too much time on Twitter with my writing tribe, and cautiously check my