Writer's tools: Ideas, passion, hard work, and a willingness to take and give critiques. {Grom babies (c) Denise Moynahan (used with permission)}

This is a quick shout out to the folks in my mother’s Writing for Children course.

I hope you found your way here ok.  It was great talking to you last night. There’s nothing more fun than teaching a class full of enthusiastic students. You’re all going to do great. You have ideas, passion, and a willingness to help each other. That’s what a writer needs.

I talked about  blogging and what that entails, so I thought I’d put here some links to a few writerly blogs that I’m especially fond of. Notice the types of things the bloggers write about, the frequency and length of their posts, and the comments.  As you can see, there’s lots of variation — what you do is up to you!

Erin Thomas is in my writing group, Critical Ms.  She has written a couple of young adult novels.  Erin admits some of her blog posts are longer than might be recommended, but they’re well-written and interesting to read.  Also notice what happens when you Google Erin. She’s built her online presence so you get links to her LinkedIn profile and her  twitter feed.

In fact, if you sign up for Twitter, I’d recommend starting by following Erin and then take a look at who she’s following and build your network from there. She’s well-connected in the children and young adult writing circles. Remember, in Twitter, you can just get started by following and reading other people. Then, when you get brave, you can start posting “tweets” and try to attract your own followers.

Jessica Lahey I “met” on Twitter. Am not even sure how. Either she started following me or I started following her, but now I read her blog regularly.

Cheryl Rainfield I also “met” on Twitter, through the members of my writing group.  Cheryl does an amazing job of connecting with people via Twitter. As you can see she has a huge following there and her news, updates, live twitter discussions with her readers, and enthusiastic support for causes and colleagues keeps her Twitter stream hopping. Cheryl blogs here.

So that should be enough to get you started. If you do find your way here, be sure to leave a comment so I know you’ve visited. (I’ll have to approve your first comment so it may take some time for it to appear.)  If you have any questions about what I said last night, I’d be happy to chat with any of you right here (or by email if you’d prefer).

Thanks for having me at your class .. it was really fun!