VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

I’ve noticed lately a few of my blogging friends have been taking some time off from posting to their blogs. A few of them have taken months off with no mention of when they plan to return. It started me thinking about something…blogger burnout. The first thing you need to consider are the warning signs you’re experiencing blogger burnout. Some of the signs are hard to recognize due to the nature of blogging. To help you identify if you have blogger burnout or on your way to experiencing it, ask yourself these questions. Count up how many you answered ‘yes’ to and then read on. Are you putting up blog posts the day they are due to show up on your blog? Do you have more reviews than you can finish each day, week and/or month? Are you having a hard time finding things to blog about? Do you forget to announce winners of giveaways only a few days after it ends? Are you staying up late or getting up early to get posts up and feel tired because of it? Do you have more than 5

  There are many reasons why people choose to start blogging. My reason was simple…I wanted contact with liked minded people and those who could say more than a few words. Yes, I started blogging when I still had little ones in diapers at home like many mommy bloggers. However, I found that after a few weeks blogging was a bit more challenging with a baby in the house than writing a book or managing my online magazine for kids. Unlike writing on assignment or even when a new idea pops into your head, blogging requires daily, weekly and even monthly postings. As a writer I thought, It won’t be hard to start a blog. Wrong! Hard it was as I found I didn’t have the weeks or months to fine-tune my blog posts. I had hours or days at most with a baby demanding my time and a preschooler turning my house into an juggle gym. Then there was the constant “what should I write about today or this week” muse nagging at my

I was asked by a long time friend and writer to share a bit about my past and how I started out as a writer, editor and founder of Stories for Children Publishing. I welcome you to stop by and leave a comment. “SPECIAL GUEST POST”: Virginia Grenier – From Buyer to Writer I am so excited to be finally welcoming a very special guest whom I have known,  oh gosh!, for a few years now, since she critiqued a draft of my novel (still a work in progress), after I found her on the internet.  Very green and not knowing anything about how to approach editors or agents, or about writing in general,  I remember my email asking if she would take a look and tell me whether it was worth my while continuing or should we just bin my story.   Her warm and surprising email was the catalyst to my writing life today, and I still have that email.  She is also the angel who came to my rescue with a copy of the critiqued novel, on hearing my copy had been stolen from my car the other week along

Writer, write with passion. The kind of writing you produce shall oftentimes reflect the current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing will be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch the words dance across your page. Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it. Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. Writer, write with purpose. Be goal-oriented. Do you write everyday with the purpose of getting published tomorrow? Writer, write with awareness. Be alert. Be observant. Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. Your job as a writer is to capture as many of these things and write them down, weave stories, and create characters that jump out of the pages of your notebook. Don't let anything escape your writer's eye, not even the way the old man tries to subtly pick his nose or the way an old lady fluffs her hair in a diner. What you can't use today, you can use tomorrow so it is good to store these in

As writers, we write to be understood. To get our message across without any hitches. To express what we really mean in clear and un-vague terms. That's why we have to use precise words. And this is achieved by using accurate and expressive words. When someone asks you, "How are you?" What's your normal reply? You probably say, "I'm OK." OK, well, most of us tend to give a reply along that line. But the thing is, with that kind of reply, do you think the person who asked you will have a clear idea of how you really are? I mean, if someone sincerely wanted to know how you are, she would expect a clear answer. Let's face it, "OK" is a vague term. How OK are you exactly? OK as in really great? OK as in, "I'm getting by..."? OK as in "Gosh, I'm dying here!" Well, you get the picture. People tend to be lazy to express exactly what they mean. Words like, "OK," "Nice," "Fine,&

Writer, write with passion. The kind of writing you produce shall oftentimes reflect the current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing will be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch the words dance across your page. Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it. Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. Writer, write with purpose. Be goal-oriented. Do you write everyday with the purpose of getting published tomorrow? Writer, write with awareness. Be alert. Be observant. Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. Your job as a writer is to capture as many of these things and write them down, weave stories, and create characters that jump out of the pages of your notebook. Don't let anything escape your writer's eye, not even the way the old man tries to subtly pick his nose or the way an old lady fluffs her hair in a diner. What you can't use today, you can use tomorrow so it is good to store these in

It’s always interesting how writers find ideas for their stories. Some may simply come up with an idea, others may see something that triggers a story, and sometimes a story is handed to a writer. I had never thought of rewriting a folktale until I received a rough outline of an ancient Chinese tale, Taoist Master of the Lao Mountain . I belonged to a writing critique group and a Chinese nonfiction writer had a basic outline that he wanted to pass along to a children’s writer. This was in June of 2008. After reading the outline, I loved the lessons it could bring to children. Folktales come from all over the world and usually provide morale messages geared toward doing right, rather than wrong. These tales are a wonderful way to teach children through an engaging and entertaining story. Since the tale, as with many ancient tales, involved an adult as the protagonist the first thing I needed to do was rewrite it for today’s children’s market, meaning it needed a child protagonist. Wa

Picking the Right Words for a Picture Book by VS Grenier First, let me say there are four types of picture books. Story Books: Most of us grew up on this traditional picture book. This type of picture book is by far the most popular and is usually fiction based. You will have a series of events with strong character development. Story books tend to have more text on each page vs. other types of picture books. Concept Books: This type of picture book helps to promote a child’s understanding. You see this type of picture book for toddlers or as a “My First” book series. These books can be fiction or nonfiction and have very few words. The illustrations tend to be the focus. Novelty Books: A great example of this type of book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. This picture book relies on some short of gimmick to tell the book’s story. Modern Picture Books: This type of picture book is a lot like the story picture book, but uses both the illustrations and