Category Archives: SCBWI
YA Author Dee White, Writing Classes For Kids & A Writing Competition
Today, I am thrilled to have Dee White, an amazing young adult novelist. She’s a gifted storyteller and I was fortunate enough to meet Dee at SCBWI LA last August. She is passionate about writing classes for kids and adults. I’m so happy that she’s here on Laurasmagicday to tell us a little bit about her writing journey and her online writing school. So, I introduce you to my friend Dee, from OZ….
It’s great to be visiting your blog. There are so many fabulous things about being a writer. Of course I love the writing part, but it’s also fun meeting other writers like you. I’ve been writing since I was seven, but when I was a kid there was no internet, no writing networks, no writing teachers. There was nobody to help me, or teach me how to write. Then I had kids of my own and my son was turned off writing when he was ten because he was never allowed to write what he wanted, or given the time to finish anything. (Here’s a great poem he wrote when he was eight.)
That’s why I started Writing Classes For Kids, an online school where writers of all ages can get great tips and find out how other people write. I want kids to be able to explore their creativity and feel good about their work. My site is still fairly new but there are regular writing tips, author visits and fun writing activities. Soon I’ll start downloading lesson plans. Continue reading
Teaser Tuesday: The Plot Whisperer
I had the great good fortune to receive an email from my local San Francisco South SCBWI chapter to let me know that Martha Alderson, author of among many other books her latest The Plot Whisperer : Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master, would be speaking free for members of SCBWI in Palo Alto last Saturday. I Facebooked my friend Edna Cabcabin Moran and we met up there. Little did I know I’d run into so many other writer friends I made down in Los Angeles this past August at SCBWI LA. The wine and cheese event afterward was a wonderful way to catch up and share our latest news and projects.
Are you there Judy? It’s me, Laura. My Judy Blume Moment
Cover of Forever
I’ve dreamed of what I’d say to Judy Blume if ever our paths crossed. She is after all the woman who I most look up to when it comes to writing YA fiction. She is the author of FOREVER. A book that let me know it was OK to have the kind of feelings I did at seventeen. A book that explored my world in a way that no other book had before.
Fast-forward nearly thirty years to a few weeks ago. The SCBWI [Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators] LA Conference, to be exact. I was dying to hear John Greene speak. I loved LOOKING FOR ALASKA and AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES. I heard John speak at The LA Times Festival of Books and at SCBWI LA before. But then there came word that John needed emergency gall bladder surgery and couldn’t attend. And while I was very sorry to hear about his condition I was also thrilled. Because rumor had it that Judy Blume would speak in his place.
And she did. Judy spoke a la Oprah, with Lin Oliver playing Oprah. And Judy was amazing. Continue reading
SCBWILA : HEY LA — A PINK TACO MOON & JACKIE BROWN
Dee, Edna and I outside of Pink Taco
