Awards... Lets Amplify...OK?

Awards...who needs ‘em....

Um, well lots of us do... so we know what to read...or who to envy...who to celebrate with....

As I have said before, we need to do more celebrating of our amazing children’s writers in this country. Yesterday, the shortlist for the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards 2010 came out.

Once again I wish there was a longer short list...because I know many great Kiwi writers who published great books last year and deserved to be on it and were not. Sigh.(drowning sorrows with wine...)

I was also interested to see the make up of the Young Adult Short List...how would you choose from that stellar bunch? I’ve said it before, but we have amazing Children’s and Young Adult writers living in this country... (and Lia was born here.)

The other thing that caught my eye was the Aussie publishers who made sure that their Kiwi born writers books were submitted to the awards...coz they should be, as Elizabeth Knox pointed out last year when her Aussie published book wasn’t submitted. (They won’t make that mistake again...)

I note that the mistake I saw yesterday, on the booksellers website, that had Cowshed Christmas written by Gavin Bishop and illustrated by Joy Cowley has been fixed up...and that all the illustrators have equal billing with the author on the website today.

In the Picture Book category, another strong showing which has TVNZ slavering...Novice up against heavyweight authors...yes but what about Kyle I think...is he up against himself or Katerina Mataira’s translation of his words and if it wins who gets the award...the translator or the author? (and what does it all mean then...)

The Non fiction section has the usual spread of very different ages and stages of information. What a job to try to compare such a wide ranging group with each other. (In the ring today we have Willie against Ben and Mark...)

Oh plenty to ponder and discuss and gossip about...

Congratulations to everyone. A special wave out to all my friends who are spread out across the list, I bask in your reflected glory and wine drinking has commenced to toast you all...(like I needed an excuse. I foresee a tipsy weekend is ahead of me what with commiserations, congratulations and a birthday.)

In my continuing exploration of Social Media as it applies to marketing I have been thinking about this cool site that Jon Bard of CBI mentioned. Amplify is the place you always wanted to store those blog clippings, interesting news etc etc that you keep to yourself, because it would just be too hard to post the links to the six different social media sites you belong to....

Aha...Amplify does it for you. Clip once...click the social media links and you are done!

Best of all you can add your take on what you clip...so all your many followers can see and engage in conversation about it or not...so many possibilities...

And finally a very very good article on the future in Digital Publishing...we don’t know where we are going but we are going somewhere...

Unlike the author in this video....Did any one of our finalists have this conversation with their editors???

enjoy

maureen

RIP Jo Nobel

Battling time....

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me....

This week it’s all about time and the battle for creative space.

Either bloggers and friends (and blogger friends ) are moaning about time suck or they are being held up as super people, for being super busy and still managing to write their novel, thereby showing the rest of us up.

So how do you set a realistic achievable goal of carving out space to be creative..? What has to give?

This question is one of the tough ones... right up there with global peace, renewable energy targets and finding the missing puzzle piece in my child’s room.

First, think seriously about what activities you are doing in your life? Can you drop something and devote that time to writing? If so great.

If not...Is there down time that you can mine....waiting in the car for children to finish activities... (I try to scribble plot points and scenes down in my writing pad...when stuck with this activity.)

Can you get up earlier... go to bed later....? (heck no... family will complain as monster from hell needs 8 hours at least.)

Unplug the phone...disconnect the internet....shut the door on the world...gag the preschooler...

When you do find the time then you have to have the dedicated space...it helps if you have a regular writing corner... (move the washing from it...) now sit down and WRITE.

AND STILL THOSE LITTLE DISTRACTIONS KEEP INTERFERING....

What to do...

Well Dr Wicked has the answer.

Shelftalker recently profiled the WRITE OR DIE programme from Dr Wicked.

You can use Write or Die for free online, or pay $10 and download the program. The download version has some perks: customizable font and font color, a fullscreen mode, the ability to keep the window on top of all other windows. You can also choose to disable certain functions on your computer—like the backspace button—to further motivate you to keep writing. No backspacing! Ack! That’s great for those endless line-by-line polishers who never seem to make it to the second chapter, or the ends of their novels; not that I personally have any experience with that. Ahem.You can also alter the consequences. Oh, okay, I’ll spill a little here. Let’s say you stop typing for more than five seconds. You can either stick with the violin skreeks or crying babies Dr. Wicked has programmed into Write or Die to annoy you back into writing, or you can set up something even worse: for example, an mp3 of a song you hate..

Shelftalker also profiles another programme that freezes up your computer only allowing you to do certain applications...available for Apple users called Freedom.

If you are being honest with yourself and you find that writing is giving way to social media exploration here are a few tips from Social Media Examiner that can help you deal with social media to stop it being a time suck...basically decide what you want and why. They also have a nifty post on finding the time to take part in social media....

It is a great day when I get an hour to write but I do feel happier... the unfolded laundry, and dusty surfaces are justified because I was WRITING.

and ten points on the oneupmanship scale if you recognise the first words of this post.....

maureen

P.S. Philipa Werry has joined the New Zealand author website community with her very cool website...so thats what you were doing over summer...nice....