I’m teaching a short class –
Saskatoon Writers’ Coop Winter Class: Write a Children’s Picture Book

You’ve got a great idea for a picture book and you can imagine it as a gloriously illustrated and engaging piece of work– but how do you go about getting your story on the page? Join bestselling author Alice Kuipers for a course structured to help you write a draft of your picture book over the space of eight weeks.

Even if you’re not currently focusing on writing for children, this course will greatly help with structure for any longer piece of writing you may be working on.

The course structure is unique (for the Coop, anyway)—a face-to-face class at the beginning and another at the end, with the intervening weeks being conducted online. Week by week, you’ll focus on the key elements of a good picture book – characterization, story and language. The course will start with a two hour in-person seminar at the Refinery, then you will work on seven weekly online assignments as you complete your manuscript with online feedback from Alice. After seven weeks, there is a final in-person class to talk about what to do to try getting your finished picture book published.

Alice Kuipers is the award winning author of Life on the Refrigerator Door, and the young adult novels The Worst Thing She Ever Did and Forty Things I Want To Tell You (March, 2012). Her first two picture books are being published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Alice was the 2010-2011 Writer in Residence at Saskatoon Public Library.

First session Saturday January 28, 2012; final session Saturday March 17, 2012

2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

Jessie Miller Room, St. James Church basement (next door to The Refinery, 607 Dufferin Avenue)

Registration deadline is Saturday January 21, 2012. Coop members $120, non-members $130. Please confirm your interest, or ask for more information, by emailing winterclass@writerscoop.org as soon as possible. Then follow up with a mailed registration, following the instructions at http://www.writerscoop.org/coop-registration-policy.html

Thriller Writer Gayle Lynds Shares Advice for Tackling Writer’s Block with GOTHAM Writer’s Workshop
Gayle Lynds, author of The New York Times bestseller Masquerade, shares her thoughts on writer’s block.  If you want to read more of the interview, then read it here on Gotham’s website.

(I’ve highlighted in bold italics the line that jumped out at me, see if helps you next time you’re stuck…)

Q: What is your method for overcoming writers block?
I wish there were a pill for this.  I find time is critical. Often a writer is simply creatively tired, or ones unconscious is working on character, plot, or somesuch, and that has brought ones writing to a painful halt. To remedy that, time is needed. On other other hand, I always ask myself, What is the villain doing? The villain drives the plot, whether its a minimalist literary piece or a grandiose potboiler. If you know what your villain is doing, whether it is man, beast, or god, generally you will be able to uncover where the book or story needs to go next.

Here’s a description from the Manchester Art Gallery of one of their objects, a glove:

Single glove in mid-brown leather, embroidered with gold metal thread and sequins.
elongated fingers with squared ends, edged in metal braid with trefoil designs at the knuckles, the braid and the stitching is extended c.1.5 beyond the end of the finger to the knuckle, the fourchettes on the inside of the 2 fingers have lost their stitching, separate thumb section, gauntlets embroidered in gold metal thread in chain stitch, feather stitch and raised pearl stitch, trailing floral motifs with a scattering of gold metal sequins, edged in a gold metal fringe which has come unstitched, gauntlet interlined with linen canvas with the yellow and beige stitching showing, original black silk lining to mask the stitching has largely disappeared although traces remain at the edges

Can you use these words, rearranged, to create a found poem?