- Grant is funny, warm, and inspiring. (I love to be around people who love what they do, so it was a wonderful afternoon.)
- Grant read the first few pages of my novel and said, "Lots of action and adventure!!!" (She had some more comments, too, specific points about lack of clarity and confusing orientation, the usual suspects when creating a fantasy story world. But overall, I feel like I've gotten a green light on my space adventure from someone who really has her fingers on the pulse of the marketplace.)
- Grant gave a talk on the revision process and the energy of her ideas has left me refreshed. (Since I'm knee deep in alligators in a couple of revisions, it's great to hear some new angles on the same old problems. I really need perspective right now.)
Some of her notes are specific to how to tackle those macro edits. I'll get into some of those in my next post. I want to test drive one of the techniques first. Hint: It includes lots of colored markers. And if a technique feels more like play than a dreaded rewrite, I might actually get some traction here. Let's see, pink for emotional arc, green for setting, blue for action . . .
Credits:
Sara Grant: Collaborative Creativity-- a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) event, hosted by Trish Batey, Regional Adviser of the Indiana SCBWI Chapter, held at the Simply Sweet Shoppe in Carmel, Indiana.
Sara Grant is here from London, representing her interests in children's fiction. And her interersts are both broad and deep. She's a successful author in her own right (currently revising a near future dystopian YA novel) and a commissioning editor with Working Partners, a company that packages several successful children's book series.
