Here's this week's Teen Tuesday:

Creative Kids magazine is written entirely by students from 8 to 16 years old. Submissions must be mailed (no email.) According to the website, "Material may include cartoons, songs, stories between 500 and 1200 words, puzzles, photographs, artwork, games, editorials, poetry, and plays, as well as any other creative work that can fit in the pages of the magazine or on the website. As long as it's creative, we're interested!"  This is not a paying market.

See the Creative Kids website for complete details.

For this week's Friday Five, I'm happy to share the cover for Sign of the Green Dragon, a new middle grade novel written by one of my critique partners, C. Lee McKenzie. Read on for Lee's guest post about the cover and the story.
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​When I started working with the cover designer, I gave him my short synopsis and a quick description of the characters. The only thing we had to go back and forth on was the chest. It wasn’t right, but I finally sent him a picture of a chest that I own that was close. He extrapolated from that image and we had the right look.
 
Working with a talented cover designer is always exciting because you finally “see” what you’ve only pictured in your mind. 

Best of luck with the new release, Lee!

If you haven’t heard of it, the first Chapter One Young Writers Conference (Ch1Con) took place in Chicago in 2012 with six teenagers in attendance in person and countless others attending via an online live stream. It was an experiment limited to members of the Scholastic’s Write It community and their friends: could they, a group of teenagers from across North America, really get together and run their own conference? The answer soon became apparent: yes. So, wanting others to be able to enjoy the experience too, the team took the conference public.

Because the teen writing community is a particularly vibrant one, ​Chapter One Young Writers Conference (Ch1Con) is proud to say they are the only writing conference by young writers, for young writers. The team comprises a number of high school and college-age writers with different experience levels who work to create a unique, inclusive experience for writers their age. 

This year, Ch1Con will take place on Saturday, August 6th in St. Charles, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. Registration is currently open on the Ch1Con website for writers from a middle school to undergraduate level (approximately ages eleven to twenty-three) at an early bird discount price of $74.99. The full speaker lineup on the website.

Early bird registration is currently open at this link through June 1st.
So if you’re a writer from middle school to undergraduate age and you’re interested in this opportunity, consider registering. ​

For more information and to join the Ch1Con community online, check out these links:
Website: Chapter One Young Writers Conference
Twitter: @Ch1Con
YouTube: Chapter One Young Writers Conference
Facebook: Chapter One Young Writers Conference

Have you ever been to a writing conference? Any tips for conference-goers of all ages?

After blogging on a specific theme for all of April, I always have a bit of a blog identity crisis in May and feel like I need to reintroduce my regular blog features. 

In case you are new to my blog from the challenge, on "Teen Tuesdays" I often post something for teen writers -- a market, a conference, a contest. I also have a Resources for Teen Writers page on my website.

My Fridays usually have a "five" theme. For example, last Friday author Beth Fehlbaum guest blogged five things she learned about writing and publishing.

Today's Friday Five are five random things I wanted to share this week, as I recover from April's A to Z Challenge. ​

1. If you'd like to read my productivity themed posts from April, I've grouped them together on Pinterest.

2. One of my April posts was about Ivy Lee's "Six Things." For an easy way to track your six main goals for the day, consider making your own reusable to do list. I'm not that crafty, but basically you put pretty paper inside a glass frame, and get yourself a dry erase pen. Simple! If you need more info, there are detailed instructions and photos in this blog post.

3. I enjoy researching productivity, organization, and goal-setting. But I'm also a fiction writer with a love of books and a desire to help other writers, so warning: weekly blog contents may vary. I tend to share more of my personal book news through my newsletter, which comes out every month or so. I also do occasional giveaways there (in March it was a coloring book) as well as share some fun memes. If you already subscribe, thank you! If you'd like to give it a try, subscribe here. I'm working on my May newsletter this week with some news about my upcoming psychological thriller, Black Flowers, White Lies.

4. Everyone experiences rejection, especially writers. This article offers an interesting perspective on why rejection hurts and what we can do about it.

5. I recently came across this quote from Einstein, and it has me wondering... 

It's a tradition after the A to Z Challenge to reflect on the experience, and of course, blog about it.

This was my third year participating. What worked for me was to pick a theme I enjoyed researching, and to create my images and blog posts ahead of time. This left me more time to visit other blogs, one of the best parts of A to Z. Besides responding to people who commented on my blog, I left 500 other comments for various bloggers. At first my goal was to visit 20 blogs a day, but I had to reduce it to 15 because it was too time-consuming.

My theme was Productivity for Creative People. Besides the research, I also liked finding free images on Morguefile and adding text through Canva. Next year, I want to be sure to pick another theme that lends itself to visuals again.

In case you missed some of the posts, here are all of my links from A to Z. (I've also created an A to Z Pinterest board in case you prefer that format.)

​A is for the Anti-Muse
B is for Backing Up Your Work
C is for Clear Your Mind
D is for Daily Tasks
E is for Exercise at Your Desk
F is for First Things First
G is for Getting Creatively Unblocked
H is for How to Curate Social Media
I is for Ivy Lee's Six Things
J is for Journal
K is for Knowledge: How Are You Spending Your Time?
L is for Lessons Learned and Inspirational Quotes
M is for Marking Progress
N is for NaNoWriMo Principles
O is for OneTab
P is for Productivity Book Recommendations
Q is for Quit Something
R is for Routines to Encourage Creativity
S is for Set a Deadline to Improve Productivity
T is for Take Time to Fill the Well
U is for Unplug
V is for Victor Hugo
W is for Weekly Review
X is for Xebec
Y is for YA Writers Advise How to Get the Writing Done
Z is for Zig Ziglar

If you participated in A to Z, will you do it again? Include a link to your reflections post below. ​
​Here's to a productive year!

April was a whirlwind of A to Z posting about productivity for creative people. (Monday will feature a "reflection" post on the month.)
Today, I'm back to the Friday Five. Thank you to Beth Fehlbaum, author of The Patience Trilogy and Big Fat Disaster, for today's guest post about the writing process and the publishing business.

 

1. After completing a first draft, leave it alone for several days--or longer--before looking at it again. Seeing the manuscript with fresh eyes makes a huge difference in terms of noticing needed edits and revisions.
2. Be willing to listen to suggestions from trusted colleagues. Note that I said, “trusted colleagues.” Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet about hard and fast writing rules. For example, early on, I read advice: “Never use the word ‘that.’” Okay, I figured since this was on a writing site, it must be a widely held belief, so I immediately removed every occurrence of the word “that” from my manuscript. Consequently, I had a mess on my hands that took a LOT of work to repair. It was truly a foolish mistake.
3. Finding an agent is only the beginning, not the end. I think so many times writers become fixated on finding an agent that they think once an agent takes them on, their book will be published in short order. It’s not that simple, and it’s only the start of what will at times feel like a slog through the stickiest mud in the world to (what you think is) the finish line: selling the manuscript to a publisher.
4. Publishing moves glacially. Once you accept that your version of “reasonable wait time” is vastly different than people who work in publishing, your life will consist of more than checking your email 47,356,921 times per day to see if there’s news.
5. The publication of the book is not the finish line, either. After the initial support your publisher gives the launch of your book, i.e. submitting the book to trade journals or perhaps providing you with “swag” such as postcards or bookmarks, your publisher is going to move on to the newer (shiny) project, and you are an island unto yourself in terms of promoting your work. Simply put, NO ONE cares about your book as much as you do. NO ONE. It’s like expecting someone to love your child the way you do: there’s nothing like the love a parent feels for her child, and there’s nothing like the love an author has for her book. You have to be your book’s loudest advocate, because regardless of the size of your publisher’s marketing department, no one will cheerlead for your work like you will. That’s not to say that you should be obnoxious on social media about promoting your work 24/7. However, if you expect the marketing department to hold your hand every step of the way and invest the amount of time, energy, and money into your book that you believe your book deserves, you will be disappointed. Educate yourself on how to build an Internet presence, study what your successful writing colleagues do that seems to work for them, and ask for advice. Finally, accept that you will necessarily be spending money and time to promote your work.  

Thank you, Beth, for the guest post! 
For my fellow A to Zers, will you be posting a reflection on Monday?

I’ve really enjoyed researching the concept of productivity for this year’s A to Z Challenge. For the last two A to Z Challenges (2014, 2015), I’ve ended with a Zig Ziglar quote, so it's become my A to Z tradition. Here’s a quote from Zig to wrap up this year’s challenge:

The A to Z Challenge might be over, but I blog about creativity, books, and the writing life throughout the year. You can sign up to receive my blog posts automatically by email. For my author-related news (and fun memes), sign up for my monthly newsletter. I hope we can stay in touch until next April when the A to Z madness begins again!

Who better to offer advice on being a productive creative person than some productive creative young adult authors? Thanks to Gretchen McNeil, Katie Kennedy, Isabel Sterling, and Charlotte Bennardo for sharing their tips.

Gretchen McNeil: “I came up with this method in order to trick my brain into chipping away at my deadlines. I set an online timer for between 12 and 15 minutes, then I just dive into the writing. I don't think, I don't check email or Facebook or my phone. I just type until the alarm goes off. Then I rest. And check email and Facebook and my phone. And think a little about what comes next in the story. I'm not super strict on my down period - 20 minutes or so? Then I take a breath, set the timer, and dive back in. Rinse, repeat. I can knock out 300-400 words per sprint and suddenly, my goals seem manageable.”

Katie Kennedy: "I write on a computer with no internet. So no checking email, FB while I'm writing."

Isabel Sterling: "On weekends, I drop my girlfriend off at work and then write in the local Barnes and Noble for her 4-6 hour shift. While I definitely take breaks, I get way more done this way compared to when I'm home alone with Netflix staring at me from the living room."

Charlotte Bennardo: "Always be doing something every day--if not writing, then editing, outlining, researching, developing the next idea, booking signings, paying it forward, blogging, reviewing, reading... Not only will doing something almost every day help you get things done, it helps you set up a solid routine and puts you in the mindset of working on something even when a novel is finished, or when writer's block hits, or when you're waiting for edits or a response to your submission. Finally, it helps you think in multiple directions."

What tricks do you use if you *have* to get something creative done? Offer your own productivity advice in the comments. ​I provided mine last year for Y:
 Y is for Yours Truly: Productivity Advice from Yvonne.

X is one of my favorite letters during the A to Z challenge, because it forces me to be creative. Last year, I wrote about xeriscapes and productivity.

This year, I give you the XEBEC. According to the Oxford dictionary, a xebec is a “small three-masted Mediterranean sailing ship with lateen and sometimes square sails.” 

Wikipedia expands on this: “The term can also refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea.” 

I don’t know a lot about ships, but this one was speedy (and often used by pirates). Let’s stick with the speedy aspect for a moment. What can you do to be lighter, faster in your work? Can you try a quick story draft instead of laboring over a perfect paragraph? How about a series of rough sketches?
 
How about lightening your own expectations? If you listen to music, do mundane tasks go faster? Can you eliminate distractions to make work speedier? You can also try the Pomodoro technique--spurts of focused work for shorter time periods--as a way to be creative and productive.

Happy (Speedy) Sailing!

Share links to your own X posts or include your favorite X words below.

Today, April 27th, is Denim Day, which supports sexual assault survivors and sends the message that clothes are not consent. This Denim Day, students from City As School will walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to show their support. For more information, visit denimdayinfo.org or the Authors Supporting Denim Day Facebook Event throughout the day for virtual support from some of your favorite authors. 

Show your support by taking the pledge here.