Heather L. Montgomery | Cathy C. Hall Writes

1-IMG_5349 Gosh, I’ve been busy bidding (and losing and then having to bid again) and writing and reading and revising ever since I returned from Springmingle, our SCBWI Southern Breeze region’s spring conference. But that’s fine with me. I’m always so energized by a conference–I can’t wait to get to work. And I can’t wait to put all my new learnin’ to work!

I’ll try to get around to sharing a few great tips from a couple speakers but for now, you can check out the learnin’ I grabbed at a PAL Panel. (PAL stands for Published and Listed in SCBWI so these are members with serious experience under their writing belts.) Heather Montgomery and Sara Lynn Cramb packed a lot of information into a panel discussion on alternate streams of income for kidlit writers and illustrators, and so I pulled a few of their ideas and shared them over at the Muffin in “Learning Something New.”

Honestly, they could’ve written a book on the subject. And come to think of it, maybe they will!

Have you ever noticed that the writing process includes a ton of road metaphors?

While writing my last post for The Muffin, I literally came up with a dozen phrases I could’ve used. It was a good reminder for me, that writing is a journey. Sometimes, yes, it can be a short little trip from idea to words on a page to publication. But more often, it takes time to produce, to polish, to sell.

Lots of time. Lots of words. And in this world of hurry-up and multi-tasking, time is something of a premium. Still, if you want premium publication, I think you have to be prepared to put in the time, and to give yourself time. It can take a while, The Publication Path, First to Last Draft, as my friend and author, Heather Montgomery shared at a recent writer’s workshop.

Maybe this holiday season, you can give yourself the gift of time: time to think, time to write, and time to appreciate the journey. Because as the song goes, “the road is long, with many a winding turn, that leads us to who knows where. Who knows where?”

But when you get there, oh, boy. It’s worth it. (Just ask any writer.)