Bea Donaldson
Celebrate with our published grad Bea Donaldson and her recent published book PARABULUM.
4 Tips for Deciding What You Want in an Agent
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Certain things are true of all professional literary agents. If they are good at their job, they function as matchmakers between publishable manuscripts and the publishers who need them. Beyond that, they handle details of contracts and manage…
The First Steps in Contacting Agents
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Let’s suppose you’ve written a book, and you’d like to get an agent. You want access to the kinds of publishers you simply cannot reach without an agent. Plus, you want the contract skills that agents tend to bring…
4 Book Proposal Pitfalls
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Creating a book proposal can seem daunting. After all, it feels like a high stakes creation. It draws on skills we aren’t always comfortable with. Skills like talking about yourself and talking about your book can make even…
Pitching Your Picture Book
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > In the publishing world, pitching used to mean trying to talk an agent or editor into taking on your picture book, sight unseen. When pitching your picture book there were elevator pitches, which were short bursts of descriptions…
Writing Nonfiction for Very Young Readers
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Writing nonfiction for very young children, whether you’re writing for children’s magazines, or writing picture books or board books, requires specific things from the writer. You must be able to focus, you must be able to say much…
The Big 3 of Nonfiction
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Many newer writers don’t consider nonfiction when deciding what they would enjoy writing. They see it as less creative or less interesting. And they associate it with homework, which many of us don’t remember fondly. And yet, nonfiction…
Sensing It: Bringing Show Don’t Tell to Your Nonfiction
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > If there is one mantra fiction writers hear all the time, it’s “show don’t tell,” which means writing in the moment and digging into sensory detail rather than information dumping on readers. Actually, it means more than that,…
4 Steps to Improve Readability in Children’s Books
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > For kids, back to school means back to books. As writers, we are often part of the process of bringing books to these kids. And schools buy books based on how well they will work in a school…
Back to School: Writing for the Classroom
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Schools are crammed full of reading material. If a school has its own library (and it certainly should), that library will be full of popular fiction, along with a smattering of classics. It will also have lots and…
