Freelance Writing Tip #29: Write Children’s Books

One of the hardest things to do to boost your creativity–regardless of what project you’re working on–is to write for kids. While some may claim it’s easy, try stripping out all the prepositional phrases, verb clauses, pronouns, punctuation and still have a story.

Writing engaging children’s material–whether or not your goal is to get published–can be really hard work. There are a few, hidden benefits to writing children’s books. First, if done right, they may excellent family gifts. What better way to personalize your family’s memories than to have your son, niece, or granddaughter as the subject of a fairy tale? Second, it forces you to think more about the story and less about how you are writing it.

Whether you’re writing children’s books with the goal of being published in mind or not, it would also be a good idea to research some articles about writing children’s books. In this How To Write Children’s Books article, the author talks about what a gold mine is.

While writing children’s books is one thing–proceed with caution when you do have a book. Remember when I posted about how money flows to the writer? The same is true for children’s books only, when you do any online research you’ll find that there are more publishers and authors “claiming” to have that magical ticket to help you get rich. On the other hand this site, entitled The Purple Crayon, has a lot of content rich material and *bonus* it’s also a non-profit site.

The point here, is that writing children’s books may be an excellent way to streamline your plot regardless of whether or not you get published. If you’re writing a children’s book with the goal of getting “in print”–then I highly recommend you research what is selling and who you’ll sell your work to.

Freelance Writing Tip #28: Change Your Setting

Writing can be very boring work; especially if it becomes very mechanical when you’re not interested in the subject matter. One of the ways around this is to physically change your writing setting; take a pen, paper and notebook if you’re a cyber-nut, move to a coffee shop with free internet access or a bookstore if you want a different atmosphere. Switching where you write (or what tools you use to write with) can add something a little different to help you get your assignment done.

Many coffee shops and restaurants now offer free Wi-Fi as well–you might have to be a little creative about where these places are, especially since many of the bigger chains do not offer free Wi-Fi. I’ve found that smaller coffee shops are the best bet for saving money and better prices.

Regardless, if you’re feeling stuck, changing where you’re working can help.

Writing Exercises #2: Using your Online Journal

Online communities, blogs, and journals are one of the most popular ways for people to reach out to one another across the web. In this online community toolkit, you can read more articles about how to take advantage of this social networking opportunity for this list of social networking sites.

The nice thing about building an online blog, is that it’s a way to utilize journal writing exercises.

Here are some ideas to utilize your online journal as a way to write more prolifically.

  • Metered Poetry: The cool thing about poetry, is that you have the opportunity to work within tight constraints. Reconstructing sonnets, haikus, or even limericks can provide you with some ideas. Another thing that this exercise can do is to give you other structures to use and integrate within your fiction writing. Choose from several different types of poetry to write what you’re the most comfortable with, and then pick any theme.
  • Meme: Whether someone tags you to write a meme or you pick one from The Daily Meme, you’ll have the opportunity to write about yourself and socially connect. The nice thing about memes is that you’re writing without even thinking about it.
  • Write in Character: If you’re writing a story or novel, sometimes you need to go a little deeper and get in your character’s mindset. Why not write a post from your character’s point-of-view? The easiest way to do that is to pick an emotion, one that you haven’t explored before, to see how your character might react. The hidden benefit of doing this also allows you to subtly promote your work.
  • Promote yourself: Whether you talk about the process of your work or something that you had published, blogs are a great way to promote yourself. Keep in mind, though, that self-promotion needs to happen elsewhere, offline, as well. A good way to talk about self-promotion is to keep the facts short and sweet; talking about he process could take a little longer.

Whatever (or however) you decide to use your blog, keep in mind that it shouldn’t be a burden–it should be fun. If you spend more time blogging and posting than you do writing, then I suggest revisiting your schedule to see why you’re writing less and socializing more. If you’re working a day job, chances are you won’t have much time or energy left over to write. Online communities are a great way to reconnect, but don’t let it stop or prevent you from writing.

Essays: Writers and Depression Part One

According to the mental health statistics found through the National Institute of Mental Health, “Major Depressive Disorder is the leading cause of disability in the United States for ages 15-44.” The site points out that Depression is not something that is just in your head, it’s a “serious medical illness.”

What does this have to do with writing?

The link between creativity, depression and mental illness is one that has claimed the lives of countless painters, poets, philosophers and writers throughout the ages from every culture imaginable. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Jean Améry, Hubert Aquin, Reinaldo Arenas, Thomas Chatterton, Sadeq Hedayat, Ernest Hemingway, Gérard de Nerval, Socrates, Virginia Woolf, and many others are just a few of the authors who took their own lives, affected by depression. After reading a CBS interview about creativity and depression, it seems as if we should pay attention, not only to historical figures who have already committed suicide, but to today’s creative people to support and understand why so many seem to take their lives into their own hands.

After performing extensive research, I have not been able to find any resources offering hard data as to why this may be so. As a writer myself, I can only speculate why that is–it could be that many writers are depressed and don’t even realize it, or maybe they don’t know the difference between “clinical” depression and shrug off their bad moods as a passing “mood swing.”

Whatever the reason, I think that as writers it’s important to understand what mental illness is because, in my opinion, it might be possible that we are more susceptible to poor health simply because of the fact that writing is a very lonely, solitary activity.

My opinion is, in part, supported by this clinical trial about female writers and depression. Their conclusions indicated that, The high rates of certain emotional disorders in female writers suggested a direct relationship between creativity and psychopathology. But the relationship was not necessarily a simple one. As the results of the predictive analysis indicated, familial and environmental factors also appeared to play an important role.

In this case, “familial and environmental factors” seems to mean the life you have outside of writing. As all of our lives are different, trying to analyze writers for hard data is like trying to barcode human beings.

In Part Two of my article on Writers and Depression, I will share some of the factors that cause depression and talk about some of the things we can look for to catch ourselves from falling. If you have feedback or wish to contribute to the next article for this series, please contact: Monica Valentinelli

Previous Posts




Looking for Monica’s books and games that are still in print? Visit Monica Valentinelli on Amazon’s Author Central or a bookstore near you.

Archives

Back to Top