Tales from the Rushmore Kid

A Nugget from Caroline Hatton - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the collected notes of Barbara Jean Hicks

On Balance in the Writer’s Life

Author Caroline Hatton posted a great comment on the SCBWI listserve for the California Central Coast chapter last month that I think deserves wider circulation. It’s about balancing a professional non-writing life and a professional writing life, and was written in response to another writer’s concern that a new employer might discover her online writing presence and worry that she was not fully committed to her “day job.” I particularly like the third point Caroline makes; it made me stop to think about my own reasons both for writing and for teaching. What is the common thread that underlies the work I choose to do?

Caroline's post:

I have three suggestions:

1. Be proud of everything you do because it will move others to respect you 
for it and to respect everything you do.

A Poem for Valentine's Day - Barbara Jean Hicks

A POEM FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

In honor of Valentine’s Day next week, here’s my favorite love poem ever. It’s a character sketch, beautifully rendered in twenty-four short lines, leaving such clear impressions both of the loved one and the lover/narrator that we feel as if we know them intimately by the end of the poem.

I think Nims’ skill at using the particular to make an observation about the human condition—in this case, about the nature of love—is something every writer can learn from and apply to his or her own writing. And oh, the images and language of his particulars! Great stuff.

LOVE POEM

My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Reviving Your Out-of-Print Novel as an E-book part 2 - Barbara Jean Hicks

 from the files of Barbara Jean Hicks www.barbarajeanhicks.com

As promised last week, here are the short version instructions for converting your out-of-print novel to e-book format for the Kindle and Nook. Also, just in time for Valentine's Day, I've provided a link to my second e-book, a Valentine's romance called Cupid's Chase, for an example of marketing copy and keyword suggestions.

Because Amazon and Barnes and Noble provide free e-reader apps for the iPad, iPhone and Android powered devices, these instructions can be used to make your out-of-print novel available as an e-book on pretty much any electronic reading device, including PC’s and Macs. I’ve published two of my out of print novellas as e-books using these instructions. I recognize this was a year ago, however; if anyone has updated instructions, please comment below!

Reviving Your Out-of-Print Novel as an E-book part 1-Barbara Jean Hicks

from the files of Barbara Jean Hicks

In early December 2010, I started thinking about what I wanted to give as a Christmas gift to my friends and fans.

Before I started writing children’s books, I wrote romance novels and novellas. (I know, what a switch!) The rights to one of those novellas, a Christmas romance called "Tea for Two," had reverted to me. What if I could figure out how to format it as an e-book and offer it for free to anyone who wanted to download it to their computer or reading device?

I’m always up for the challenge of learning something new, so the idea was just my cup of tea--so to speak.

Funding for School Visits - Part Two - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the files of Barbara Jean Hicks 

Providing information to schools and PTA/PTO’s about companies and organizations that provide grant funding for “extras” like author visits (see Focus on Funding) is a great start to helping schools be able to afford your expenses and speaking fees. But writing grant proposals is an art that many people don’t feel comfortable with. How can an author help?

As promised last week, here’s a place to start:

TEN TIPS FOR WRITING WINNING GRANT PROPOSALS

Funding for School Visits - Part One - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the files of Barbara Jean Hicks

Authors who do school visits hear it over and over again: “I’m sorry, we just can’t afford you.” “We’re on a limited budget.” “Maybe next year…”

But we all know that “next year” there will be even less money for “extras” like school visits. In the education world, budget constraints are a reality. But visiting authors deserve to be paid as professionals, and programs that help students reach state educational standards are hardly “extras.”

Many schools (and authors!) don’t realize how much help is available to fund educational presentations that focus on literacy and the arts and support school curriculum.

Panning for Gold with Barbara Jean Hicks - Kathryn Erskine

from the collected notes of
Barbara Jean Hicks

I loved meeting and comparing notes with author Kathryn Erskine, a warm and wonderful human being whose moving children’s novel, Mockingbird, won the 2010 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Kathryn’s other books include Quaking and The Absolute Value of Mike.

In one of the keynote addresses at the Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua last summer, Kathryn talked about critiques, a word that can make even the most confident of us cringe. After all, the word comes from the same root as “criticize,” and who likes being criticized?

A Poem for the New Year - Barbara Jean Hicks

I love this poem about the aftermath of the holidays. Maybe we make resolutions at New Year’s in response to our Christmas regrets? (Oh, the breathless hope of new beginnings!)

WELL, SO THAT IS THAT

Well, so that is that.
Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back
into their cardboard boxes—
Some have got broken—
and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school.
There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed up, for the rest of the week—

Word-Pictures for Christmas - Barbara Jean Hicks

On this day before Christmas Eve, I give you some beautiful lines to ponder—not a poem, but the most poetic of prose. For the wonderful text in its entirety, click here. 

from A Child’s Christmas in Wales

by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.

A Poem for Thanksgiving - Barbara Jean Hicks

A POEM FOR THANKSGIVING

On this weekend of thanks-giving, I leave you a favorite poem to ponder. What wonderful gifts we have been given!

Pied Beauty
 
Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—

fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899)

The photo of the “couple-coulored skies” is from Ann Wilson’s blog, One Pilgrim’s Journey, and was taken in Strasburg, Colorado. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

A School Visit Nugget: Meeting Visual Arts Standards - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the teaching files of
Barbara Jean Hicks

I admit it, I’m envious of both the talent and the opportunities available for picture book illustrators and author/illustrators. What fun it would be to create something visual, in the moment, for a group of spell-bound students-- and inspire them to create artwork of their own!

In these days of budget cuts for schools, the arts often get short shrift. But most states have academic standards in the arts that educators must address. What better person to help them do so than a real live illustrator?!

A School Visit Nugget: Meeting Writing Standards - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the teaching files of
Barbara Jean Hicks

In these days of standards-based education and accountability, the pressure is on administrators and teachers to make sure everything they do helps their students reach academic benchmarks. Sometimes it must feel as if the creative spirit that led educators to the profession in the first place is struggling to survive.

Anything we can do as authors to refresh the creative spirit of both teachers and students will be doubly welcome if we address those all-important academic standards along the way. And who better to talk to kids about writing than a published author?

A Nugget from The Artist’s Way - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the bookshelf of
Barbara Jean Hicks

I remember a minister friend once asking me what I wanted out of life. I answered without hesitation. “I want to be a co-creator with God of something beautiful.” I didn’t make the connection at the time, but several years earlier I had read The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron (Putnam 1992), in which the creative process is described as “forging a creative alliance, artist-to-artist, with the Great Creator.”

A School Visit Nugget: Meeting Speaking & Listening Standards - Barbara Jean Hicks

 from the teaching files of
Barbara Jean Hicks

One of the ways I’ve addressed state standards for speaking and listening in my school visits, especially with upper elementary and middle school kids, is to have student volunteers do a Readers’ Theatre presentation of one of my books. I have the required number of scripts available with the readers’ parts printed in different colors, making it easy for each reader to know when it’s his or her turn.

Panning for Gold with Barbara Jean Hicks - Peter P. Jacobi

 from the collected notes of
Barbara Jean Hicks

Peter P. Jacobi is professor emeritus of journalism at Indiana University. His guidebooks on writing magazine articles, news stories and feature articles are standard reference sources for journalists. If you’ve never heard Peter speak, it’s worth the price of admission just to hear his resonant baritone fill a room.

In his keynote address at the Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua last summer, Peter dipped into The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for inspiration.

A School Visit Nugget: Content & Theme - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the teaching files of Barbara Jean Hicks

For nonfiction authors, focusing on content that relates to subjects such as science or social studies is a no-brainer. But many picture books and children's/YA novels, too, can have science and social studies curriculum tie-ins.

In addition, picture books and novels are likely to have themes appropriate to the emotional and social development of children and teens. Social/emotional growth is as much a part of the educational process as intellectual growth, and teachers and administrators welcome assemblies that address important issues in this area.

Think about your book as a pick for a children's or teen's book club, for example. What questions do you raise that you want your readers to think about and discuss?

A Nugget from One Writer’s Beginnings - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the bookshelf of
Barbara Jean Hicks

The marvelous writing memoir of southern novelist and short story author Eudora Welty (1909-2001), published in 1984 by Harvard University Press, is a treasure trove for a working writer.

One Writer’s Beginnings is based on a set of lectures Welty delivered at Harvard in 1983, ten years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter. Here’s one passage I especially resonated with:

A School Visit Nugget: Meeting Reading Standards - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the teaching files of
Barbara Jean Hicks

It's the end of September. School is in full swing. It seems a good time to talk about school visits--something every children's author should think about doing. It's good for your books, it's good for you, it's good for the kids--and it's fun!

Authors who understand and address state educational standards in their presentations and workshops are a step ahead in the school visit game. Administrators and teachers are under pressure to justify everything they do based on the standards. Addressing state academic standards in your programs not only enhances your professionalism, it warms the cockles of an educator’s heart!

Panning for Gold with Barbara Jean Hicks

I am thrilled to announce the addition of a  regular Friday column for Tales From the Rushmore Kid, "Panning for Gold with Barbara Jean Hicks." Barbara Jean has been my friend and writing partner for many years. She has years of experience in writing, editing, teaching and marketing, and I look forward to her contribution to the blog. Please help me welcome her!

Panning for Gold

Like many of you, I’ve read lots of books about writing and been to lots of conferences and writing workshops. And, like you, I’ve taken lots of notes. Once in a while I take them out to see what I can use in classes, presentations and workshops of my own, but too often the books sit unopened on my shelves and the notes stay buried in my files. (Does anyone relate?)