Writing 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 MoreTell Me Your Author Visit Stories
AASL National Conference
Dear Fellow Authors and Illustrators,
Later this fall, I am going to be speaking at the AAASL (American Association of Awesome School Librarians)–oops, I might have slipped an extra “A” in there. I’ll be telling the cool librarians how they can work with authors, illustrators, teachers, staff, students, and families to get the most out of an author or illustrator visit.
If you’re a veteran of school visits, you probably know that subtle but real feeling of excitement when you walk into a school that’s READY. Maybe there’s a cool display up on a wall; maybe a kid does a double-take and gasps, “Are you the author?” (or as it often comes out, “Are you the Arthur?”). Or maybe there’s just a feeling in the air, and you know it’s going to be a good visit. The kids will be excited and engaged; the teachers will be interested; each presentation will seem too short.
Do you have any stories about schools that have done a great job creating this kind of energy and excitement? What have librarians or teachers done to get their students to the point where they are revved up about what you have to share and ready to put it use in their own creative work? What, to you, makes a GREAT school visit different from a ho-hum one? Please share in the comment section, and let me know if it’s okay to use your story in my talk.
Thank you!
Read MoreDoing Something
A moment in the library at Ferguson, Missouri.
If you’re like me, you’ve been deeply sad and angry about the things that have been and are happening in Ferguson, and all the things in our country that we now refer to just by saying the name of a neighborhood. And you feel frustrated and helpless, too, and wish here was something you could do.
I can think of four things.
1) Take a deep breath and admit that racial bias is real, and that it hurts people daily.
2) If someone of color says that he or she has experienced racial bias, believe it. They are the experts. They know.
3) Try to read, write and publish more books that feature children of color. If we are going to see each other as real people, and not caricatures built of fear, we need to start young.
4) Donate some money to the Ferguson Library. This small library has stayed open when schools and other public services shut down. They are trying to buy “healing kits” for the kids in the community, to help them deal with the traumatic events all around them. If there is every a community that needs a safe, calm place where minds and hearts can meet (is there ever a community that doesn’t?), Ferguson is it.
More about the library here.
Read MoreHistory Lessons
Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher by Jon Meacham, adapted for young readers by Sarah L. Thomson
Exciting to receive in the mail recently an advance reader’s copy of Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher. I got to adapt this young reader’s version of Jon Meacham’s amazing bio of Thomas Jefferson, and it will be out in September.
Lovely to see all the art in place–portraits of all the major figures, political cartoons from the day, photos from Monticello. It’s going to be a gorgeous book as well as instructive.
Writing and adapting books is how I get my history, these days, and it’s as good a method as any, although a little haphazard at times. (I know a lot about the Elizabethan theater, for example, but only up till 1593, when my book The Secret of the Rose was set. At the moment I’m busy getting a grasp on feudal Japan.) One of the great results of adapting Meacham’s work is that I have a new understanding not just of Thomas Jefferson, but of the American Revolution as a whole, and the way our history fits into the struggle between France and England for dominance of the New World.
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Sarah 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