Sometimes in the Grocery Store
Almost exactly four ounces. But I went with a lime in the end.
When you’re a writer of children’s books, sometimes it happens that you go to the grocery store and start weighing various pieces of fruit. You do this because you are searching for one that weighs between four and five ounces, which happens to be the weight of an adult pygmy marmoset.
You need to know the weight of an adult pygmy marmoset because there is one in your book, Quick, Little Monkey. And you’re going to a library to do a book presentation, and you want to give the children something they can actually hold so they can really get how tiny these primates are.
So you weigh all the fruit, and you take a picture because this is kind of funny and maybe you’ll write about it in your blog. And you discover that a lime is precisely the weight that you need. And that’s about when you notice the couple next to you eying you and edging discreetly away.
You consider explaining that you are photographing and weighing fruit because you’re looking for something that is the same weight as an adult pygmy marmoset, but you decide that won’t help.
So you go and pay for your lime. And you get some chocolate too. Because.
#writingisweird
Read MorePlanning an Author Visit?
Islandport Press (who published my vampire novel, Mercy) has some great tips and suggestions if you’re a teacher or librarian hoping to bring an author or illustrator to your school or library.
Read MoreGet Your Author Out of the Library
I recently visited the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) at their National Convention in Columbus Ohio, which is a far hipper town than you think. For one thing, they have this car driving around downtown! Look closely and you’ll see that, yes, those are Babie doll legs sticking up from the top.
At the AASL, I regaled the librarians with advice gleaned from 10 years of coming to schools as a visiting author. Would you like to hear some of the gems?
1) Convey enthusiasm. Talk about your author visit as if it is going to be a blast, with everybody from students to principal to teachers to custodian. The excitement spreads out from you.
2) Share information. From early on, tell your staff, your teachers, and your students who will be coming, why you chose her, and why she’s cool.
3) Get the books. Buy them, borrow them, steal them if you have to, but make sure each kid reads at least one book.
4) Make your students into hosts. Rather than telling them, “We’re going to do something amazing for you,” tell them, “Something amazing is happening at our school and we need your help.” Recruit them to make displays, greet the author, guide her to the library, write an article about her for the school newsletter–anything that turns them into active participants.
5) Tell your author where to park. Please. I can’t be the only author in the world who finds the layout of schools and their associated parking lots bewildering.
More tips to come later….
Read MoreWriting Tips
I am putting together a list of writing tips to use with schools when I do author visits. Perhaps you’d like to hear them?
Sarah L. Thomson’s Eight Best Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
First drafts MUST be MESSY.
Leave space in a first draft (skip lines) so there is room to revise.
For a second draft—don’t try to write it better. Write it different.
Stuck for something to write about? Take a story or an idea everybody knows (Cinderella and her stepsisters? Witches on broomsticks?) and CHANGE it.
Want to be a writer? Do these two things. Read A LOT. And try to finish whatever you write. Getting to the end gets easier with practice.
Alliteration (using words with the same letter sounds) is fun.
Plot outlines can solve the dreaded “I’m stuck in the middle of the story and I can’t finish it” problem.
I’ve done twenty drafts of some books. Two or three should be no problem.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews