Serendipity, Soothing and Other Lovely Things

It's been a lovely week - Catherine and I have been recording our first podcasts in Oxford and London with some very interesting people - all very exciting. If you scour Twitter you can find out who they are but I'm going to hold back and leave a small element of mystery here on W&P.

We've also been experimenting with 'guest blogs'. As you can see by the picture of the lovely oops-I've-won-another-award Teri Terry on the right here. Candy has sucked Notes From the Slush Pile into W&P with an excellent PULSE (especially for published authors and illustrators) post on how to handle your publicity tour. Thank you Candy and Teri!

This is also a good opportunity to highlight our SCBWI Blog Network (which includes Notes From the Slush Pile) from where Nick draws his blog break each week. If you blog with particular relevance for published authors and illustrators or regularly about creating children's books do get in touch. You'll need to be a SCBWI member, though - another excellent reason to join!


This week's two top picks from wordsandpics.org's first year are:

Fresh From the Chalkface from July

Ok, I know I wrote this one but do go and have another look because the real contributors are Celia Anderson who amazingly finds time to write features for W&P as well as write her own books and teach fabulous classes of children like those featured in this post.  At the time, I said there'd be another challenge in the Autumn well that was a lie but all the ducks are lining up for a shot at one to be announced in May. Fingers crossed!

Social Sheila on HootSuite from January

I've learned something new from every one of Sheila Averbuch's social media how to's and this one on Hoot Suite particularly so but to be honest, I love these posts because Sheila's voice is so soothing and she makes me feel I can do anything, even sort out the web of social media accounts around which I lurk. Sheila is really busy with the SCBWI SE Scotland Network but I'm so pleased she'll be bringing her World Book Day experience to W&P the week after next.

With gadding about and intermittent 3G, I've only just caught up with last week on W&P but  I loved the marriage of illustration and inspiration on Monday, Plurals  reminded me again how much I love words and Photoshop Brushes made me want to have a go myself.

Don't forget UV Honorary Mentions. If you're ready to show off your UV excerpts/ illustrations, we'd love to shout about them and I'd be delighted to add links to yesterday's Honorary Mention Hooray. Plus I'm going to have to start a campaign to bring Maureen Lynas and some of her North Eastern wisdom South - I want to do her plotting workshop too!

And next week…

Especially for St Patrick's day, (and through a bit of serendipitous rearranging of the writing features planner) we have another Folklore post from Ken Lymer  - not leprechauns that would have been too serendipitous and corny, but Griffins! We also have a great post on creativity and daring - right up my street - from Andrew Weale and some more pop-up magic from Trish Phillips.

My catch-up on E. Nesbit having been curtailed by the demise of my first generation Kindle ( Is this why ebooks are plateauing?), I'm being creative with fabric. Yes, I should be writing but, hey ho, it's not so much rejection city here as pre-Bologna all quiet on the the submission front and sewing, like Sheila's voice, soothes my soul.

Hope you're all soothed too.
Have a great week,

Jan Carr

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Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is all over the place, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta. You can contact her at editor@britishscbwi.org.