Category: Writing Tips

Aug 15

That’s a Wrap! (My Wrap-Up of the SCBWI 2019 LA Summer Conference)

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Hey, everybody, I’m back! I’ll confess that my brain feels a bit like pudding after all the amazing things I learned at the summer SCBWI conference—I think I need to give it all a little time to set. But so much wisdom was shared, and I’m feeling reinvigorated when it comes to my writing, which is always a good thing. I thought I’d share some highlights from the conference. This is just a tiny taste of everything I learned and experienced there. Inspiring Keynote Speakers: M.T. Anderson – He talked a lot about taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar and vice versa, and reminded us that the strangeness we seek is all around us. In our writing, we should show the world the invisible, what only we see. Darcey Rosenblatt – She told us about her incredible learning journey through SCBWI and how it has affected her career. Christian… Read more »

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Feb 27

An Exciting Announcement…

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I know I’ve been killing you guys with the hints, but I can finally say it … I’m now represented by Deborah Warren at East/West Literary Agency!!! I am beyond excited to announce that I am now represented by the amazing Deborah Warren @EastWestLit!! 🥳🥳So honored to be on this publishing journey with her and the rest of the East/West Family! — Nicole Hewitt (@NicoleMHewitt) February 27, 2019 I can’t even begin to tell you guys how thrilled I am about this partnership. It almost seems surreal. In fact, those of you who’ve been around my blog for the past few weeks know that I was doubting myself there for a while. Impostor Syndrome works fast, trust me, and I kept thinking to myself that it couldn’t really be happening. It’s. Really. Happening. I met Deborah at an SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators) conference back in October, and I was… Read more »

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Oct 19

Things I Didn’t Know About Publishing (And Things I Know I Still Don’t Know) Let’s Discuss

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Let's Discuss, Writing Tips 41

When I started writing, I wasn’t really doing it with the hope or expectation of getting published. I honestly felt like I was starting too “late.” I mean, when I was younger, I had dreams of being a writer. I took novel writing classes and did workshops and tried (and failed) to be disciplined and actually write. Then life happened and kids happened, and the dream sort of got away from me… But I still wanted to write, so I signed up for NaNoWriMo and I did just that. I wrote a book. (Actually, to be clear, I first signed up for NaNo and wrote 50,000 words of a book that wasn’t going anywhere—someday I might plot that one out better and try again. THEN, the next year, I wrote a book.) For over a year, I did nothing with that book. I wrote it, but I had no idea how… Read more »

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Jul 13

The WIFYR Workshop Experience

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Illustration Credit: Ginny Tilby I’ve had a couple of people ask about how the WIFYR workshop worked, so I thought I’d explain the process. This is the first workshop I’ve done, but from what I’ve heard from others, it’s pretty typical of the way writing workshops are run. (Though sometimes they might have a more specific genre or age range focus. And I’m sure there are some that are handled differently.) Preparation: There were 12 writers in my workshop. All of the novels submitted were either YA or MG. They could be any genre. (We had two MG blends of fantasy and contemporary—like mine, one MG fantasy, two YA historicals, two YA paranormals, two YA fantasies, a YA dystopian, a YA contemporary, and a YA retelling—which was actually a short story.) For this particular workshop, we exchanged the first 6000 words of our books (approximately 20 pages) for critique. (There were… Read more »

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Jun 29

Top 10 Writing Tips I Learned at WIFYR

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I took in a lot of fantastic writing advice at the WIFYR conference. I thought I’d share my some of the lessons I learned with all of you. All of these came from the breakout sessions or keynotes. I tried to keep these specific to writing advice rather than publishing/querying advice, but I’ll probably do another post with some great points that were made when it comes to querying! Top 10 Writing Tips I Learned at WIFYR Books are made in revision, and you can’t revise nothing. So write! This is a quote from Trent Reedy’s revision class and it’s pretty simple, but also really profound. So often we want to get things right the first time around, and we can be so focused on perfection that we don’t end up really accomplishing anything at all. You can’t revise what you don’t write! Trent also talked about the importance of having… Read more »

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