1. Web Sites for Writers

Copyright 2005 Red Cedar Publishing

The internet is a great tool that can be used to verify or refute a person’s claims to talent and success. You can easily learn to use it to your best advantage. For writers the three main ways the Internet can further careers and reputations involve: (a) networking with other writers, (b) getting work published on-line, and (c) setting up a web site.

To decide where to begin, first do a search on your name using your favorite search engine. You might need to put your name in quotes to weed out extraneous responses: “Jane Doe.” If you find a few on-line publications that include your articles, stories, or poems it is time to build a home page. If not, first concentrate on getting some on-line publication credits.

Pursuing on-line publication credits is an on-going task. The postings will expire in time; you need up-to-date working links for your web-site. These links verify that other people value your writing; you are not just blowing your own horn. We will be posting an article on “Getting Published On-Line” in the future.

In the mean time you might visit our Resources page for a list of sites that offer Native writers support. Networking with other writers may bring you many tips for getting your writing published on-line. Also keep an eye on our Opportunities page as well as our News / Zines page. We often have calls for submissions from on-line publications that may be pleased to feature your writing.

Once you have a few on-line publication credits, it’s time to start working on your web site. There are many free services that - not only host web sites; they also offer free on-line software. This software is usually designed to be used by folks with no previous web building experience. If you can read, copy and paste, choose and click - you too can have a professional web site. Allow yourself an hour or two a day and within a week or so you will have a site to impress friends and editors alike.

Check our Resources page for information on building your own web site. We have information and links to everything you need. (Quick tip – your internet service and / or your e-mail provider may provide free web space and software.) Before you begin you might want to get some information and photos rounded up and think about the impression you want to make.

Here is a list of the most important information you should include:

1. A recent photo. This establishes that you are a real and separate person - not just an alter ego of some other writer or company. You are unique. Let it show. You can place the photo on your home page, bio page, or a special page just for photos.

2. A bio. Publishers and editors often want to use a bio with your work. Place a bio or two or even three where they can find them. The bio also helps to establish your unique identity.

3. Publication Credits. This doesn’t have to be a complete list, but should include at least five different publications. They can be recent or selected, or even both if you have lots. Keep making submissions so you will continue to have recent credits.

4. Links to your on-line work. This helps to establish your credibility. If you have lots, choose the best 3 or 4 if you like. Keep making submissions, web-sites don’t keep your work up forever.

5. Samples of your work. This can be on the home page or other pages you set up for your writing. This gives editors and publishers a taste of what you can do. If you rotate some of the writing from time to time people will come back to see what you have up. This will help to create fans for your up-coming work and the added traffic helps your rankings with the search engines.

6. A home page with descriptive links to all your other pages. Home pages are labeled “index” in your web browser and are expected to contain an index of all the pages in the site. If your home page doesn’t have an index the search engines are unlikely to list your site. Also, research shows that if people can’t find the information they are looking for within 30 seconds of your home page loading, they will hit the back button.

7. Reviews or positive comments on your writing. These can be posted on your home page or a special page just for the purpose. You can seek comments from friends and associates, as well as from publishers and editors. The more famous the person the better. But comments from plain ordinary folks are acceptable too. If you have many available, just post a selection.

You will find links to tips on building web sites from six different professionals below. We don’t agree with all the information in all these articles. However, four main points we do agree with are: (a) easy to use navigation systems, (b) some form of uniformity from page to page, (c) headings and titles for each page, and - last but not least, (d) pages that load quickly.

We also recommend being creative and breaking a few rules. Just know what the rules are before you break them . . .

Designing and Building Your Small Business Web site

7 Quick Tips For an Effective Web site

Nine Effective Tips for Improving Your Web site’s Usability

20 Successful Tips for creating a Powerful Web Site

Elements of a Well-Designed Web site

8 Tips for Designing a Great Web site

We hope to compile a list of links to well designed home pages for a number of different writers. If you would like us to consider including yours or those of someone you know please send links to: red_cedar_publishing@earthlink.net

Copyright 2005 Red Cedar Publishing. All rights reserved. This article, or excerpts, may be posted on web sites and in E-zines with permission, as long as a by-line and link to http://www.RedCedarPublishing.com is included. Contact us to inquire about permission with a link to your site: red_cedar_publishing@earthlink.net

2. Getting Started - Jump!

By Corina Roberts

"Jump!" The woman's voice shatters the mountain silence. A young boy hesitates.

"Jump!" Her second scream launches him forward, off the roadway and onto the soft gravel shoulder below. The boy's knees buckle as he lands, sending him tumbling to the ground. In the next instant, the roaring engine of the tour bus obliterates the quiet morning again, gravel flying from its massive tires as it careens around the corner, hugging the edge of the pavement where a moment earlier the boy stood.

What's the hardest thing about writing? Getting started. With poetry, we tend to spend more time thinking than scribbling on napkins. With stories, we tend to dabble over long descriptions, setting up scenes, introducing characters, and developing a story line. We will procrastinate in writing our opening because we want it to be fabulous, riveting, and engaging. That's a big job for our first few words.

For a moment, try to forget all of that. Assume your audience is intelligent enough to connect to a story or poem that begins with an encounter, a dialogue, a situation that is already taking place. Jump in. Start writing. You can always go back and add the opening paragraph if your headlong plunge into your story, poem, or screenplay doesn't please you.

Another great stumbling block is the very thought of an audience. Suddenly our creative energy turns to liquid nitrogen. Imagining how others might react to our work can be paralyzing. What if no one likes it? What if no one reads it? What if, heaven forbid, they try to change or improve it? What if there is no audience for our work at all? And finally, what if our deepest, most sincere emotions were never meant for strangers? Why be your own worst critic? Your most genuine and potentially brilliant literary works my never come to you until you free yourself from debilitating notions, when you dance like no one is watching.

Consider the gift you have to offer. Writing is not a skill shared equally among the masses. It is in fact an ability that exists among a relatively small portion of the human population. When we look at civilizations over the ages, it is the art and literature that we examine to form our opinions about the enlightenment or evolution of their society. It is the paintings, the plays, the sculpture and the poetry that live on, to be recited and revisited again and again. Literature is stronger and more enduring than the powerful rulers or the religious doctrines. Art alone transcends the boundaries of space and time.

If you have this gift, this ability, this burning desire to create - let it flow. Honor it. Cherish it. Let nothing stand in its way. Keep paper and pen with you. Keep a tape recorder in your vehicle. Keep your thoughts, visions, and nightmares close. Give them the justice of your focused attention. Think of them as beings of their own, beings we must nurture, protect, and birth. Raise them from the depths of your consciousness into the light, into reality, and into the world, however unforgiving and brutal that world may seem.

Write about what you know. The wisdom of age enriches our creative palette, but even a small child knows the wonder of a sunrise, the beauty of spring flowers, the warm excitement of a summer's day and the peculiar smell of puppy breath. Your topics need not be monumental. Most of us lead ordinary lives. It is these ordinary experiences that make us common to each other, that lend us the empathy to understand and feel a poet's passion in describing a falling leaf, a dying bird, an infant's laugh, or a golden sunset. It is the commonality of the human experience that makes it so profound. On some level, no matter our station in life, we are essentially the same. We dream, we hurt, we laugh, we cry.

Let's face it. The challenges we face in getting the ideas from our heads to the keyboard can be enormous. One of the big creativity killers is that we have jobs, jobs that often don't fulfill our needs on any level, except for a paycheck. We may have demanding children, needy spouses, and dependent animals. We have houses to clean, yards to mow, meetings to attend. We feel guilty if we lock ourselves in the library (or bedroom, or tool shed) for several hours to focus our attention on something that isn't real to anyone but ourselves. Perhaps the greatest challenge of all is believing that we are real, that our work is real, that it has value and that for us. Writing is more important than doing the dishes or watching television.

We may face real opposition to our creativity. We may be told quite directly that we will never be a great poet or author. We may face the wrath of those who purchased our attention and devotion with a wedding ring. In standing up for our right to create, we may be standing up for ourselves for the very first time, defending something that is intangible to everyone but ourselves; our right to be who we are.

Perhaps the first challenge will be the one we meet within ourselves. We must make a commitment in a fashion we are likely not accustomed to, a commitment to ourselves and to our right to live this fleeting life as genuine, authentic human beings. It will take nothing less than courage to confront the overwhelming opposition you may face when you decide to take back your own life, your own soul, your own sense of truth. You may become unpopular. People may be accustomed to imposing on your time and energy with little regard for your true desires; your desire to write.

Be fierce. Be real. Dispense with the demons in your head. You didn't put them there. They are the product of mainstream society pressuring you to conform, to work your forty hour a week job and come home to care for everyone else. Refuse to be a mindless consumer moving from one fashion handbag to the next. Pass on having a drink when what you really want to do is create. Keep the objects that inspire you in a place where you can see them, where they can remind you of what it is that you desire. Create a nurturing space for yourself, in your heart, in your head, and in your home. Begin your creative process. Jump!

Copyright 6/05 Corina Roberts

We discovered Corina by her query regarding a children’s book she is working on. (We do hope to publish this book in the future.) She has a novel soon to be in print through Lulu Publishing, a poem accepted for the next issue of Autumn Leaves, as well as a poem currently published in the 2005 International Poetry Society Anthology. Most of Corina’s writing has revolved around Redbird as well as other non-profit community enterprises. Corina is also an accomplished artist, having won awards for her hand painted model horses. You may contact her regarding Redbird or her writing at the following e-mail address: redbirds_vision@hotmail.com

3. Writing Children’s Books: Special Considerations

Copyright 2005 Red Cedar Publishing

If you have a great idea for a children’s book, before you read any further, get a rough draft on paper. If you are not sure where or how to begin, please see the article, Jump, by Corina Roberts.

There are a few special considerations for children’s books, but it is best not to let your creative process get bogged down with the details in the beginning. First, attend to your rough draft. After you get it on paper (or disc) the work of revising it to meet the following special considerations can begin:

Target Audience: Knowing your target audience is important for all writing. It is even more important, and more complicated when writing for children. Who your target audience is and how you expect them to access the information needs to be comprehensibly expressed to parents, educators, and children.
1. Read Aloud, or Read to Me? Is this book meant for children to read aloud, or do you intend it to be read to them? Perhaps you see it as being used in both ways for different ages. This needs to be defined and expressed. It also needs to be reflected in the vocabulary and sentence structure of your story.
2. Age Range: You need to define the age range(s) the book is directed towards. This can be reflected by age, grade, or reading level for a specific reading or phonics program. Both the “Read Aloud” and the “Read to Me” levels, if applicable, should be expressed. IE: Read to Me: Birth – First Grade, Read Aloud: First - Second Grade.

Literacy Goals: You need to understand the literacy needs of both the “Read Aloud” age range and the “Read to Me” age range and have reasonable stated literacy goals for each. For instance, you may have contacted your niece’s first grade phonics tutor and learned that they are studying certain sounds. So you make an effort in your text to utilize these sounds as often as possible. Or, perhaps you have contacted a speech or reading teacher and have found out the children are working on variable meanings of words . . . There are an infinite number of possible literacy goals. A little research ought to turn up a few that will work well with your ideas. (We will explore a plethora of possible literacy goals in a future article.)

Vocabulary: Make sure the vocabulary utilized in your book is reasonable to your age range or reading level. Children’s books should be built on familiar words, used in ways that are familiar to the children’s home cultures. However, a few fun, new, rare words, or familiar words used in new ways help keep the reading experience rich and engaging. Familiarity with children of your targeted age range, culture, and best practices in literacy acquisition* will help the processes of fine tuning the vocabulary used in your story.

Fact Checking: Unless your story is purely fun, silly, and make believe - you need to fact check until you are blue in the face. Young children are apt to have absorbed a vast array of facts from cable television, as well as other sources. They often know an enormous amount of data about subjects that interest them. If you casually misstate a fact, they will never forgive you. They will also broadcast your mistake to teachers, classmates, and parents. Be careful with facts, or anything that children could mistakenly take as representing a fact.

Object: While children’s books don’t necessarily need to have a moral or other lesson, if yours does it needs to be well developed and clearly communicated. This can be enhanced after the text with exercises the teacher can use in class to reinforce the object lesson. However, it is perfectly acceptable for a children’s book to be fun, silly, and phonics oriented with no other object but to entertain and explore the sounds of language.

Character Development: This is necessary to all writing. The implications are slightly different for children's books. Characters in children’s books often rely on cultural archetypes and illustrations to convey meaning to children. This, again, requires familiarity with the culture and children. Characters for which there are no clear cultural archetype, or who are behaving outside the archetype’s norm will need an adequate introduction. This may entail a few pages of text and illustrations, or even a whole story all its own. Study how novels introduce characters with whole chapters to themselves, and stream line the process down to the children’s level.

Educators review: When writing for children it is very important to get feed-back from people who work with children of the target age ranges your book is geared towards. Take what they say to heart and use it to revise and strengthen your work.

Most important, make it fun! The process of writing and reading your book should be fun for you, parents, educators, and of course - the children. When you have your story all polished up, please check out our submission guidelines. Who knows, maybe we can explore some possibilities in the not too distant future.

*Best practices in literacy acquisition: This phrase uses ‘buzz words’ from the Early Childhood Development Profession. ‘Best Practices’ refers to curriculum and teaching methods that research has proven are most likely to have positive results for most children. There are established ‘best practices’ for general, gifted, and special needs children. Literacy acquisition is another set of professional ‘buzz words’ that refers to all the experiences a person accumulates from pre-natal through young adulthood that research has shown contributes to learning to read and write. Understanding and utilizing the professional thinking on ‘best practices in literacy acquisition’ will help determine if your young children’s book will be accepted and recommended by professionals in the field.

Copyright 2005 Red Cedar Publishing. All rights reserved. This article, or excerpts, may be posted on web sites and in E-zines with permission, as long as a by-line and link to http://www.RedCedarPublishing.com is included. Contact us to inquire about permission with a link to your site: red_cedar_publishing@earthlink.net