Dear Writer Friends,
Here we are again, and nearly the end of February already! Hope you are enjoying your writing. 🙂 And your reading!
Once again I am going to enthuse about the necessity (and enjoyment!) of reading.
All reading is good, but the best thing you can do, if you want to be a good writer is read what your target readers are reading. Nothing else will take its place. Every so often I take a trip to our local charity shops and buy myself a new bundle of books – I love it! Some are better than others, of course… but you can learn something from every book you read, even if it’s how not to do something. Most you can learn a lot from – I certainly do. Here are the latest additions to my bookshelf:
Two UK writers I would highly recommend are Jacqueline Wilson, who is hugely popular with good reason, and Sir Michael Morpurgo, who is brilliant. Get yourself a handful, see what you can learn about characters, plots, setting and dialogue.
And let me know what you have learnt!
If you live in a different part of the world, are there children’s/YA writers you would recommend? Love to hear from you!
Janet
P.S. Have you registered for the ‘Meet Up’ course? If you live in London or SE England, you might like this opportunity to get together with other Christian writers-for-a-reason. 🙂 You can read more about it here. But don’t leave it too late – places are going fast!