An artist in Paris: it could be you!

A residence is on offer! Check it out!

The City of Paris and the Institut français, France’s international agency for cultural policy affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, offer a programme of residences dedicated to established writers and artists in the fields of visual and performing arts who have already achieved international recognition. The residences take place at the Recollets International Exchange and Accommodation Centre, a magnificent building in the centre of Paris, opened in 2003.

More info over here. Deadline for applications: 17th of June.

Henry Miller's 11 commandments: to carve on every writer's desk

The wonderful blog Lists of Note published these today. Meditate and enjoy. (Or vice versa)

COMMANDMENTS

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."
3. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can't create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book youare writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

The Sword of the Awesome Manuscript

Agent Mary Kole over at kidlit.com has found a nice and neat way of describing what she's looking for in a novel. Well worth a read, here.
"If fiction is a balance of action and information, the axis of the scale, the part that holds everything else together, is emotion. Without emotion to lord over the work and to keep everything else in check, your whole manuscript falls apart."

Library of the Early Mind

It's a documentary film, it's got Mo Willems and Lois Lowry in it, and it looks wow!
Check out the blog for trailer, screening dates and stuff!

Library of the Early Mind is a feature-length documentary film exploring children's literature, directed and co-produced by Edward J. Delaney and co-produced by Steven Withrow.

Plot Outline: An exploration of the art and impact of children’s literature on our kids, our culture, and ourselves. From the first stories we hear told to us to those childhood heroes who stay with us a lifetime, the impact on our culture runs deeper than what we might expect. Featuring nearly 40 prominent authors, artists, and critics.

Literary Resolutions

I finally decided that I was both too lazy and too busy to bother about coming up with new year resolutions this time round, but I found on Ann's blog this ready-made list from The Loft. Here goes:

This year, instead of making huge year-long goals that start to taunt you in late October, how about making one goal per month? Break it down, and give yourself permission to start fresh every four weeks or so.


January: Read a classic that has always been on your list. I’ve never read Virginia Woolf— embarrassing, yes. January is the time to conquer this hole in my education.

February: Write for at least 15 minutes every day. Take away the pressure and swear you’ll never show anyone this new work. You’ve heard it before, I’ll tell you again. Just get it flowing. Conquer the blank page. This is a short month. You can do it. If fifteen minutes turns into an hour, send yourself a valentine.

March: Go to at least two author readings at your local book store, library, or literary center. If your community does not have authors passing through, you can watch a reading online. After hearing from the author, read the book.

April: Celebrate the foolish. Find some of the best humor writing and see what makes you laugh out loud. “Right ho!” You can never go wrong with P.G. Wodehouse. Then, give yourself a humor writing assignment. After you make someone laugh from a quip or joke, try to write it down. Can you capture spoken humor in the written form?

May: Spend the month rereading your old work. I have a half-written novel waiting patiently for me on my computer. Why does this scare me so much to go back and read it? Read fragments, half-finished essays, and rejected work. Invite one piece back into your life for revisions, and a second chance.

June: Get an anthology of poetry and read the same poem twice every day—once in the morning, and once at night. Does coming back to it in the evening change it? Take June to think about language—what draws you in, what bores you?

July: Spend two hours a week working on one long piece. This could be a rescued piece discovered in May or something new. Take off the pressure: tell yourself just one month.

August: Reread your favorite book from childhood. Why did that book make such an impression on you? I often wonder if it is a coincidence that I fell madly in love with Robin Hood at the age of 11 and as an adult became a professional fundraiser.

September: Submit. Submit to your dream of being a writer. Submit your work to a contest, a local newspaper, a literary journal.

October: Read a best-selling mystery. What can you learn from a well-paced page turner?

November: Jump on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon and try to write a novel in a month. NaNoWriMo offers plenty of online resources and many communities have meet-ups. The Loft offers a weekend novel writing conference to offer inspiration in early November.

December: Buy books, give books, talk about books, and spread your love of literature throughout the holidays.

In one painless year, you’ve become an active participant in the literary community. You’ve read a classic, you’ve created new work, and you’ve heard new work, you’ve supported authors and not once were you encouraged to get more exercise or cut back on sweets and alcohol.

Publish Your Children's, Tween, or Teen Fiction in Today's Market : A live webinar

Mary Kole, US agent of kidlit.com fame will be giving a webinar on the 23rd of September for the Reader's Digest.



For $79 you will learn:

The essential elements of books written for younger children, tweens, and teens
How your kid reader thinks about fiction and what they want
What agents and editors look for in terms of pitch, writing, and book premise
How to make your hook absolutely irresistible
What separates an aspiring writer from a contracted author in this field

AND you will get the first 500 words of your novel or 300 words of your picture book critiqued by Mary.
Those who register (=pay) will have free access to the webinar for a year.
More info on the Reader's Digest website.

A heap of events...

Taking a stroll in your local supermarket or bookshop and slaloming between their Back To School isles, you would be forgiven for having gloomy thoughts involving lunch boxes, new pencil cases and itchy school uniforms. But fear not, September hasn't come yet and when it does, here are a few things to liven it up no end...

The Mountain to Sea dlr Book Festival will take place between Sept 7-12. The line-up for the kids' events is very exciting, and includes the likes of Cathy Cassidy, Kevin Waldron, Celine Kiernan, Sarah Webb and lots more. And yes, there's a host of interesting 'adult' stuff too: Jonathan Coe will be around! For more, the programme is here.

On Saturday 11 September, Children's Books Ireland and SCBWI Ireland organise an information seminar on writing and illustrating for children in Tallaght. Between the Lines is a chance for the aspiring writer or illustrator (or multi-tasking genius) to hear authors and artists (Jane Yolen, Adrienne Geoghegan, Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick, Keith Gray), commissioning editors and agents (Clodagh Feehan, Paddy O'Doherty, Mary Webb, Julia Churchill, Faith O'Grady). And to top it all, there is the possibility of getting your stuff critiqued by some of these people! What more do you want?? Details of time-table, fees and all can be found here.

I Write Like...

I write like
Stephenie Meyer

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Have you heard of this new website yet? Type or paste a sample of your prose, close your eyes, hold your breath... and discover if you write like James Joyce or Haruki Murakami. Here's how it works:

Check what famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them to those of the famous writers.

Now, I tried it with a few paragraphs of Mad Cap and, apparently, well, you've seen the pic at the top of this post... I suppose a great carrier awaits me. Even if the page announcing my result also included an ad that went:

Become a better writer!
Subscribe to our awesome newsletter to learn how to become a better writer and receive monthly tips on writing.

You'll be impressed to know that this blog was composed in the style of HP Lovecraft!

Learning with the best

Fancy a bit of escape and a lot of writing? The Dingle Writing Courses are running again this year and the cast of tutors is as impressive as ever. If writing for children is your thing, you'll be in for a treat as Kevin Crossley-Holland (of the Arthur trilogy fame, among other excellent books) will be looking after you. Here's his description of his own course:

Children's fiction can be affectionate, social, mythic or simply playful. This course will focus on breaking new ground rather than work in progress. It will be a shared experience of rapid exercises which celebrate language and the imagination. It will also examine how to tell, retell and use motifs from traditional tale.



Kevin's course will take place from the 8th to the 10th of October. All the details on this and other classes (starting to write, poetry and fiction) can be found here.

Inspiring

I suppose you've never heard of Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignod. He's French and has written a heap of children's books and some adult ones, too. His thing is mainly humour and detective stories, one often going with the other, of course. His only works published in English so far are the Rita and Whatsit series, about a little girl and her dog, who doesn't have a name, but who has plenty of attitude to compensate. Arrou-Vignod also wrote a series of novels for 9+ about his own family life in the late 1960s, which is in the league of Nicholas for humour and quirkiness and which reminded me somewhat of Eoin Colfer's Legends series. I was reading an interview Arrou-Vignod did for a non-fiction book about the power of story in children's literature and I found myself very much taken by his philosophy. Here's what he has to say:
"I like the 8-12 age group. It's the end of early childhood, but at the same time the children are not autonomous yet and they haven't entered the complex world of love relationships. They are too young, I think, to be given a realistic and worrying image of our world... As a children's writer, I believe I have a responsibility: to give young people books that make them want to live life, books that give them energy."
"Joy" and even "euphoria" also come up in this interview. "Reading makes you want to live" Arrou-Vignod concludes. "Living makes you want to write". Let's get our pens and books, then!