Reading and Writing--Another form of Mentorship

Good readers make good writers--when they practice.  Award winning writers can become mentors for people looking to improve their craft in writing. Krashen makes some good points about strategies for reading and writing.

I began working with books for youth when I began teaching K-12 students.  I started focusing on authors for middle school students when I began teaching in middle schools in 2006.  To date I have probably read between 400 and 600 books, many by Newberry award winners.  My goal was to begin to get the feel for how the books "sound" and their "readability."

My goal is to begin to write some youth fiction soon.  In the course of reading all of these books, I have found some favorite authors and others whose books I enjoy less.  Rarely I have discontinued reading with I found the topic or how the book read incompatible with my personal preferences.

Recently I was working with Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson books.  Rick Riordan was picked by Scholastic to be the first author in the Thirty-nine Clues series of books--Maze of Bones.  I listened to the six books in his series for adults involving Tres Navarre, private detective.  My goal was to explore the differences in the author's style when he changes from books for adults to books for youth.  There is a significant different in vocabulary, among other things.

I have some favorite authors and themes.  One of my Wikispaces websites focused on much of this youth reading. 

I need to begin practicing my writing skills in this genre.  Some of my favorite authors are Tamora Pierce (in the youth market) and Anne McCaffrey (her dragon series of books).  My mother and I both enjoy the "Cat Who" series by Lillian Jackson Braun.  I need to learn from each of these mentor-authors and to use their influence to create my own cast of characters and worlds.








Krashen, S.D.  (2003).  Free voluntary reading:  still a very good idea. In S.D. Krashen Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use  (pp. 15-29).  Portsmith, NH:  Heinemann.  Preview retrieved on March 21, 2009, from http://books.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/E00554/chapter2.pdf.

Why Would Someone Want to Read This Blog as a Book?

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously was a successful blog published as a book and then as a movie.  Julie Powell focused on working with Julia Child's recipes.

Readers of this blog know that the posts may vary from day to day, based on what is "top of mind" for that day.  With this post I have 240 separate entries ready to edit and am now visiting public libraries and book stores to see how I can organize these entries in a way that will be both interesting and marketable.  (If anyone reading this has suggestions, they will be welcome.)

I have created categories (for chapters), though I am not fully happy with those categories yet.  I will probably edit the posts a little for publication.

I am also checking out a book on the stories of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) for inspiration.  My goal is to have this ready for the publisher this week.

I reviewed my earlier draft books (from 2001) and don't feel compelled to rework them at this point.  Publishing this blog as a book is something new.

What does it take to write and publish a book?

In 2001, a public relations firm in Chicago advised me that they could promote me easily if I published a book.  I've been working on ideas for one or more books since 2001 and still haven't put everything together.  Perhaps I am being too much of a perfectionist--waiting for "just the right" book.