Writer’s Block, Writing Partners, and “the Dread”
Back before I started my first novel, I asked my full-time writer friends how they did it, how they sat down at their desks every day without that feeling of dread, that feeling that their desk was repelling them like a magnet. None were very helpful, I must say. I got some blank stares, maybe a few, “Y…es, I remember that it was like that once…” but no definite answers as to how to combat that particular form of writer’s block that sometimes affects new writers: the inability to get started and keep the momentum going. When I was a young student just beginning to tell people (in a...
Read MoreMichael Hauge—A Different Way of Thinking about Character Development
Last month a number of other children’s authors and I attended the Screenwriters’ Summit in Toronto. I’ve already written about what I learned from speakers Linda Seger and John Truby, and now I’ve finally found a moment to write about my favourite speaker of the conference, Michael Hauge. Because all the speakers have books that they’d love you to buy, I haven’t summarized their entire talks; instead Ive chosen the one nugget of wisdom in each that struck me the most. Michael Hauge is well known for his Six Stage Plot Structure, and he writes very powerfully about how to create...
Read MoreWorking Through an Agent’s Critique Letter
Check out my guest post over at the Adventures in Children’s Publishing blog! http://childrenspublishing.blogspot.com/search/label/Lena%20Coakley
Read More6 Children’s Authors Infiltrate the Grown-up World of Screenwriting
Last weekend, Erin Thomas, Cheryl Rainfield, Urve Tamberg, Karen Krossing, Jennifer Gordon and I attended the two-day Screenwriters’ Summit in Toronto. I had one goal in mind: to find out what the **** a plot is. Yes, you’d think I’d know, with a novel coming out and all, and I do, don’t get me wrong, but I’d like to become more articulate about what I, and many writers, do intuitively. Many novel-writing books are thin on plot information, and many novelists are almost too superstitious talk about structure—they fear it will make their writing formulaic....
Read MoreMiss Hurka: The First Writer I Ever Knew
Is there anyone whose books you loved? Anyone whose diary prompted you to pick up a pen? Anyone in your family, maybe, or someone you knew growing up, who loved books and encouraged you to write? This was the question posed to me this week by the lovely writer Erin Thomas. Today on her blog, she’s posting an interview with Marthe Jocelyn about Marthe’s new book Scribbling Women, and as a lead-up, Erin wanted to include a few blurbs from authors she knew about the scribbling women who had inspired us. Immediately, I thought of Miss Hurka. Miss Hurka was a boarder who lived in the attic...
Read MoreMy Interview with CHIME author Franny Billingsley!
Isn’t here! But wait. It’s just a click away over at THE ENCHANTED INKPOT blog. Have a look!...
Read MoreAbout Me
Hi! I'm Lena, a young adult fantasy author from Toronto.