Lauri Meyers .

     Staying positive is a big challenge for writers.   Edit 20 times, feel nauseous licking the envelope, and then wait 4 months for a submission response.  A yes means a two year journey of editing, marketing, illustrating, and printing before your book is in your hands.  And then there are all the no's.          How do you stay positive in the face of so much negativity?  Enter the Energy Map*.  Picture a circle.  The circle is 100% of your time, energy, and potential.   Some amount of your time and energy is spent on the front of the circle (the positive side), and some amount is spent on the back (the negative side).      The front side of the circle is a beach.  The sun shines brightly on your hammock swinging between two palm trees.  Entertainment is provided by a lizard tasting the sea air with a flick of his tongue. The ocean is calm enough to wade up to your be...

Just like my kids don't see anything wrong with marshmallows for breakfast, I couldn't find anything wrong with my picture book manuscript.  Yet, it had been three months since my submission, and it was clearly time to pick up the ms for an edit. But I didn't know how to start. So I decided to try storyboarding.  A storyboard is simply the layout of all 32 pages of a picture book on one big diagram.  This isn't like an illustrator's storyboard which would be sent to an editor with pretty pictures.  This is my private tool, and no one gets to see it.  Well, no one except you.   My First Storyboard I decided to get crafty by cutting out rectangles of colored paper representing each spread.   I taped all the sheets together and hung them on a door.   On 3x5 cards I wrote the key action for that page.  Once everything was laid out, I took a step back to admire my work.   Hmm.  The 10 empty pages, um...

It may be a bad idea, but I like to listen to the sounds of the stools moving around upstairs for a few minutes before commencing investigation.  I hope letting the dirty girls practice their independence in somewhat controlled situations will prepare them for the future.  Or maybe this is how I get my thrills without hitting the casino.  Today I found this: People have always said books can take you places; why do my kids have to take everything so literally?   And you thought I was kidding about having dirty girls... As I opened my mouth to yell, I realized she was making a book spine poem!  How creative.  Unfortunately, mommy is far too lazy to type up such a lengthy poem.     Still I was inspired to write my own poem using some of her children's books- after removing her from the dangerous situation of course (well, taking a picture and then saving her).  This poem was inspired by a fun nakey run a...

I was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award  by Gerry Wilson (The Writerly Life) .   Thank you Gerry! Here are the Rules for the Versatile Blogger Award: Thank the person who gave you this award. Include a link to their blog. Nominate 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award Tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.   Aw, coconuts! There is always a catch, isn't there?   Sharing is totally not caring- it's daring and scaring and soul-baring!  I really prefer to stay hidden.  In fact, I usually pick hiding spots harder than my children's seeking ability just to catch a little "me time."  I also layer excessively during strip poker, but that's another story entirely.  So against my better judgment: Seven Things about Lauri Meyers Even Though She Doesn't Like to Share   I have been known to do a lively demonstration of the proper way to show a guinea pig reliving my reign as Cavy Showmanship Grand ...

I wished for a great picture for my blog for Mothers Day.  While we were fishing, I asked my 2 year old dirty girl if there were any more worms in the bucket.  Wish granted.  Unfortunately, I was too busy giggling hysterically to catch the one of her kissing a fish.  Probably just as well to avoid the fan mail from PETA and Good Clean Parents. The sacrificial worms were acquired as I dug up rocks in the yard- a daily activity due to a glacier pausing at our house to enjoy the view.  What do you find when you look under a rock?  Grubs.  Slugs.  Salamanders.  Millipedes.  And Worms.   The Dirty Girls love the worms.  They nurture the worms like baby dolls, wrapping them up in leaves and offering them milk. The situation caused me to create some rules.    I started with these three Rules for Worms:   No worms in the house.     Worms want to sleep in their moist, dar...

Yes, your words are beautiful, thoughtful, and mesmerizing, but people still like pretty pictures .  Pictures add interest to your blog post and pull in readers from search results.  Pictures help with SEO by letting search engines know you are a real person.  It works because robots do not like pretty things or something like that. So how do you get images (legally)?         Take a picture  of something beautiful or interesting or random, like these circus peanuts.   Once you start seeing all the opportunities to snap a pic, just store them until the right post comes along.       Draw a picture and snap a photo of it.  This one is easy to do while coloring with the kids. Robert Lee Brewer sometimes just writes something on a piece of paper; if not always artistic, it is always relevant.         Take a shot of your kids, but blur them out.   Your kids are super cute, but yo...

For creative writing exercise I thought I would try a little stand up comedy.  Then I remembered I am a really terrible joke teller, generally forgetting how the joke starts or ends or both.  I guess the only way to get my funny bone in shape is to work it out.  In sticking with the writerly blog theme, here are 10 jokes only a writer could love (or hate or both).  If you think these are bad, consider yourself lucky the other 20 got scrapped.  (#11- "Hey folks, I just flew in and boy are my tweeters tired!") 1.      Did you hear about the blue jay with the contract to write about nest building?  He was so busy tweeting, he forgot to write the book. 2.      How many tweets would a tweeter tweep tweet, if a twittertweep could tweet asleep? 3.  My literary agent asked me to add more nudity, but I told her I write romance novels - not teen lit. 4. Did you hear the one about the guy who walked into the bar...

     I sometimes quip about my corporate upbringing, complaining about being forced to boil down extremely complex projects into 1-page recommendations under the glare of fluorescent lights.   Every word was hand-picked.   Every point was succinct.  Every sentence had a vital role.  Some great thoughts were deleted; their lives cut short.      A picture book usually provides 32 pages for me to fill up.  I have the freedom to be creative and the space to use adjectives.  Wonderful, delightful, awe-inspiring adjectives!    To rewire creativity into my brain, I had to use the thesaurus to find words other than "impact" and "profit."  I aim for about 600 of these delicious words for a picture book draft.       As research I looked at a few of my old business recommendations:  1 page, single-spaced, 1 inch margins, about 600 words.  600 words?  What the coincid...