Community Corner with Author Ann Whitford Paul: Socializing with a Purpose

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critique groups, SCBWI community, SCBWI members, writing tips

By Ann Whitford Paul

*Editor’s Note: After a successful SCBWI Los Angeles Writers Day, whether you attended or not, we thought you might be looking for more ways to “level up” your writing, no matter the stage of your career, so we asked author Ann Whitford Paul, who belongs to a lot of groups, to share some community-building, group-oriented ways you can do just that for this quarter’s “Community Corner.” Read on for her fabulous insights!

You’re a writer. You prefer to be alone in the peace and quiet of your home, creating ideas, developing and revising them. Still you know you should (and you want to) make time to be with others, just not so much that it interferes with your writing. What about joining or creating groups that may take you away from your computer, but also enhance your career?

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SCBWI Community Corner with Patrice Karst: Learning About Kid Lit After Becoming a Best-Seller

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Patrice Karst, SCBWI community, SCBWI members, The Invisible String

By Patrice Karst

I fell into the children’s publishing world by accident.

Doing well with my first two adult books, God Made Easy and The Single Mother’s Survival Guide, I had sold 70K copies combined and was a popular speaker in the self-help, spiritual, New Age world. But I was also a single mom to my special needs son.

Elijah was so sad when I had to leave him in the mornings, I began telling him about an “invisible string” that connected us all day long. It so comforted him that we told his other friends. When I saw the calming effect, I thought, why not “put story to paper?”

Volunteer as a STAR Reader, Keep Kids Reading

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literacy, reading to kids, volunteering

Most folks in kid lit were big readers, and writers, as soon as they could string together sentences, myself included. But literacy among children isn’t a given. Kids’ book sales have been rising, which is great news, but there are still huge populations of kids who are underserved and overlooked when it comes to literacy. And that isn’t just bad for kid lit sales, it’s bad for society at large. According to the NEA, “…poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement…And deficient readers are less likely to become active in civic and cultural life, most notably in volunteerism and voting.” Nobody wants that! So I decided to do something about it, and there’s an easy, fun way that you can too:

Community Corner: What SCBWI Community Means to Us

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illustrators, SCBWI events, SCBWI members, writers

We asked attendees at Los Angeles Writers & Illustrators Day 2017 what the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators community means to them. From critique groups and partners on the journey to publishing to new lunch-friends and small-world connections, the day was full of smiles, introductions, and proof that a gaggle of introverts can build a thriving, dynamic community. As it turns out, we’re all just a big bunch of super supportive people who can’t get enough of each other! Here are just some of the things we heard:

SCBWI Community Corner with Maria D. Laso and Dawne Knobbe

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author, community, published, SCBWI members

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is a dynamic community of professionals and aspirings. Read on for Dawne Knobbe’s story, in memory of her friend Mari Lou, celebrating her publishing success and her life well-lived.

Don’t ever give up your book dreams. In the publishing world, anything is possible. Imagine signing your first contract with Scholastic. Impossible, you think? Here’s how it happened for my friend, Mari Lou.

SCBWI Community Corner with Stephanie Olivieri

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community, conferences, SCBWI events, SCBWI members

SCBWI Summer Conference 2015

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is a dynamic community of professionals and aspirings. Read on for a member’s story about how SCBWI has influenced their work and connected them to publishing professionals, life-long friends, and the tools they need to share their stories with children of all ages.

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators has changed my life for the better in many ways. It’s hard to explain how a group of book writers and illustrators can do that, but they have. I’m not sure where to start, so I’ll start at the beginning: I’m a writer, who also draws. I worked in animation for many years and have recently worked in children’s books both as a writer and an illustrator.

SCBWI Community Corner with Deborah Fletcher Blum

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authors, community, SCBWI members, volunteers, writing tips

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is a dynamic community of professionals and aspirings. Read on for a member’s story about how SCBWI has influenced their work and connected them to publishing professionals, life-long friends, and the tools they need to share their stories with children of all ages. Read on for former Hollywood LitMingle Coordinator Deborah Fletcher Blum’s story!

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators launched my career as a filmmaker. It may sound odd to credit a children’s writers and illustrators group with this, but writing and filmmaking are integrally connected artistic disciplines. As an artist and English teacher, who wrote poetry and non-fiction, I embarked on a middle grade novel in the Summer of 2010 and joined SCBWI soon after.

SCBWI Community Corner with Annie Ruygt

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authors, community, illustrator tips, SCBWI members, tribe, writing tips

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is a dynamic community of professionals and aspirings. Read on for a member’s story about how SCBWI has influenced their work and connected them to publishing professionals, life-long friends, and the tools they need to share their stories with children of all ages.

I’ve been hearing the term “tribe” quite a bit these days. At a music festival I attended last year, everyone referred to their small communities as tribes. The festival even built a small village of Teepees and wooden shelters for people to hang out in. Then I noticed the term surfacing in magazines, online, and among the social groups I attended in San Francisco. “Find your tribe!” they said. What is this phenomenon, I thought? Have I been blind to it all along, or is it actually trending?

SCBWI Community Corner with Colleen Paeff

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book clubs, picture books, published, publishing, SCBWI members, tools, writing tips

Top row: Colleen Paeff, Joseph Taylor, Phephe Rose, Frank Acosta, Anne-Marie Campbell; Bottom row: Eloise Freeman, Susan Burritt, Jill Tuckman, Jennifer O.

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is a dynamic community of professionals and aspirings. Read on for a member’s story about how SCBWI has influenced their work and connected them to publishing professionals, life-long friends, and the tools they need to share their stories with children of all ages.

I’d been an on-again off-again SCBWI member for more than fifteen years when I decided to get serious about writing picture books. My son had recently moved out and I chose to fill my empty nest by digging into the world of children’s publishing. Naturally, I turned to the SCBWI.

Coloring Outside the Lines with Drew Daywalt

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best seller, crayons, Drew Daywalt, local, parent, writer

We all love a success story. By success, I mean Drew Daywalt’s book, The Day the Crayons Quit, with over 1.1 million copies in print in 17 languages. TIME magazine named this book one of “100 Best Children’s Books of All Time.” It was on the New York Times best-seller list for 100+ weeks (No. 1 in its category for more than half that span) until recently, when bumped from this spot by its sequel, The Day the Crayons Came Home.

It gets better! This talented, amazing author is an SCBWI member who writes, lives, and raises his kids here in Los Angeles. You may have seen him on the cover of this month’s Writer’s Digest magazine.