Erik Weibel, the kid book reviewer and author of The Adventures of Tomato and Pea, has tagged me in a writing process blog tour! You can see Erik’s book and his entertaining blog “This Kid Reviews Books” by clicking on these pictures:
This is the first time I’ve been tagged in a blog tour, so it’s very exciting. At the bottom of these questions, you’ll find out about two grown-up authors who write about kids, Kari Luna and Carrie Wilson Link.
What am I working on?
I’m working on ideas for the second book in the series of The Crest. Some kids have asked me to include more boy characters in the next book, and I’m thinking about that. It’s true that most of the main characters in Magic The Crest are girls. One of my friends has a service dog and said I should make a service dog character in the book. I thought that was a good idea, because I don’t read a lot of books that have service animals as characters. Still, I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the next book.
This week, I’m also answering a lot of questions on the application for the Discovery Girls Magazine 2014 Leadership Summit in California. I love Discovery Girls Magazine – girls my age ask and answer questions about things we care about, like embarrassing moments! The girls who are chosen for the Summit get to help create issues of the magazine.
Also, Magic The Crest just got turned into an ebook. As soon as I finish proofreading it, you will find it here! It will have sketches from the cover illustrator of my book. One of the best parts of writing a book was getting to see the sketches from the illustrator. The dragon he drew is amazing. This is what it looked like at one point.
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
My book is in the adventure/fantasy genre. It’s different from other adventure and fantasy books because my characters are mostly tough girls who have to conquer mystical creatures in other realities, like other planets! They are funny, and nice, and sometimes sarcastic, like me 🙂
Why do I write what I do?
Fantasy writing gives me a chance to tell any story I want, literally. In fantasy, you can write random things or any adventures or characters you want. I like how my imagination can flow with this kind of writing.
How does my writing process work?
Well, for my book, I signed up for a program called NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it’s in November. For the Young Writers Program, kids set a word count goal to something reasonable and write until November 30, when they turn their project into the word count calculator on the website. If they meet their goal, they win!
I used to write by hand, but during this competition I starting writing in Microsoft Word on a desktop computer. I pretty much couldn’t do anything else that month except write and go to school and a little bit of playing so I could finish my goal. I also printed out some vocabulary word lists and story prompts for when I got stuck. I used plot bunnies and had a picture of a bunny on my desk. Sometimes I read writer pep talks or watched them on YouTube. My favorite pep talk is here.
Now, my book Magic the Crest has a Facebook page and an Amazon.com page.
Soon, two authors I have met who live here in Portland will answer these questions about their writing process on their blogs. Kari Luna wrote a book called The Theory of Everything that just won the Oregon Book Award for young adult literature. Kari’s Tumblr blog is here. Carrie Link wrote a book about her son, Wil, called Wil of God (I have met Wil, too, and he is very nice.) Carrie’s blog is here.
Rena Marthaler 