Ten-Minute Blog Break - 22nd July

Following Sarah McIntyre's celeb-heavy contribution last week, a couple of other SCBWI bloggers are giving us their perspective on YALC (the first YA Literary Convention) in London.


Liz Flanagan clearly had a whale of a time at YALC and left feeling a whole new sense of community. Lucy Coats, on the other hand, celebrates a community she already knows well - the tireless book bloggers who do so much to promote YA books by UK authors.

Candy Gourlay can often be found celebrating writing by children, but this week she makes a joyful leap into the world of children's art. On a visit to Grafton Primary School near Holloway, she finds a wonderful variety of artworks which she had never known were right on her doorstep.

Sarah Broadley is dealing with the knotty problem of regional dialect in rhyming picture books, after a crit group couldn't get their mouths around her rhymes. It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

It's great to welcome a couple of new faces to the SCBWI Blog Network this week. Vanessa Harbour is a frequent blogger who has escaped the Blog Break to date, which is something I must rectify forthwith. Much like Seinfeld (the show about nothing), Vanessa's written a blog post about not writing! Is procrastination a bad thing, or just something else for us to feel guilty about?

Marie Basting is also new to the Blog Network, and I enjoyed her thoughtful post about the ramifications of discovering her six-year-old son had written a story all about a murdered koala. Was it Marie's fault for exposing him to crime stories, or were there other social and environmental factors at work?

Nick.

---

A SCBWI member since 2009, Nick Cross is a former Undiscovered Voices winner who currently writes children's short fiction for Stew Magazine.

Nick's latest blog post is a guide to writing flash fiction, to celebrate the July issue of Stew!