It’s valuable to attend a conference from time to time, but a writer’s time is best spent reading and writing. You have to keep learning and make your work better and better. In today’s world, everybody is selling something, but it’s great to do the work first.
Harold Augenbraum, esteemed editor of the Yale Review, told me today that my fiction “is very vivid and well-written,” and asked to see more of it. This is a good sign. I love “very vivid.”
Recently, Andrea Davis Pinkney vice president and editor-at-large at Scholastic Books told me, “You always have such intriguing submissions.” Intriguing submissions lead to intriguing published books. Thanks for the compliment, Andrea.
And today, Jeremy Davies, editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, one of the top literary publishers in the world, said that I write “well-constructed, no nonsense fiction.” Wow, thanks Jeremy!
I was at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator’s Writer’s Day 2019 yesterday, at the Skirball Cultural Center in LA. Lots of great speeches and gatherings. I brought THE MARTIN LUTHER KING MITZVAH along with me so I wouldn’t be lonely. It was nice meeting Frances Gilbert, Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday Books for Young Readers, who told us about her upcoming book Go, GIRLS, GO! and also participated on a panel discussion about how much information to present to children in your books.
