It’s PiBoIdMo time!

Novem­ber is here, and that means it’s time for Pic­ture Book Idea Month. So far, I’m two for two: woohoo!
PiBoIdMo 2014 banner
Remem­ber the Howdy Doo­dy theme song? Did you ever notice how PiBoId­Mo has the same num­ber of syl­la­bles as “Howdy Doo­dy?” Now that I’ve noticed, I can’t get it out of my head. So, I thought I’d share my lit­tle ear­worm with you here:

It’s PiBoId­Mo time.
It’s PiBoId­Mo time.
Tara and her great crew
Wish PiBoIds to you.
Let’s give a rous­ing cheer,
Cause PiBoId­Mo’s here,
It’s time for books to grow,
So here we go!

I love PiBoId­Mo. Some­times it’s a strug­gle to come up with ideas (okay, most times), oth­er times they seem to flow faster than I can write them down (okay, rarely, but when it does it’s awe­some!). Either way, it feels good to have those ideas tucked safe­ly inside my note­book, ready to blos­som when giv­en a chance.
And yes, even non­fic­tion writ­ers (like me!) can par­tic­i­pate in PiBoId­Mo! Christy Peter­son has a great blog post on how to do that. I rec­om­mend read­ing it here (even if you write fic­tion!). I usu­al­ly come up with about half non­fic­tion ideas and half fic­tion ideas, and I use all of the meth­ods Christy men­tions in her post.

sample Fiction Magic card
sam­ple Fic­tion Mag­ic card

This year I’ll also be using a new tool that just arrived (per­fect tim­ing!). My friend Deb Lund is a tal­ent­ed author, teacher, and cre­ativ­i­ty coach. She’s made a deck of cards, called Fic­tion Mag­ic, which fea­tures prompts to inspire writ­ers as well as a handy guide­book on how to use them. I drew one card today, played around with it for a while, and voila… I had two new ideas! You can get your own set of Fic­tion Mag­ic cards here.
I prob­a­bly should­n’t be doing PiBoId­Mo at all this year. I have too many projects call­ing to me at the moment, and the last thing I need right now is more ideas! But, PiBoId­Mo is about so much more than the ideas for me. It’s about cre­ativ­i­ty, play­ful­ness, free­dom, and fun, and every year I end up redis­cov­er­ing why I decid­ed to write for chil­dren in the first place. In those ways, it’s good for my career. PiBoId­Mo also reminds me to look at the world through a lens of dis­cov­ery and curios­i­ty, won­der, grat­i­tude, and empa­thy. In those ways, it’s good for my soul.
I may not love all of the ideas I come up with dur­ing PiBoId­Mo, but I love what PiBoId­Mo does for me. If you want to write pic­ture books, I hope you’ll give it a try, too! You can reg­is­ter through Novem­ber 7th at this link.

Tales from my first book launch party

decorations

Two of the worst pos­si­ble things that could hap­pen to a book event in Seat­tle hap­pened on the day of the Be a Change­mak­er launch par­ty: one of our major bridges was closed for con­struc­tion, and the sun was shin­ing! Still, an amaz­ing num­ber of ultra-ded­i­cat­ed friends and intre­pid fans braved the traf­fic night­mare and will­ing­ly (or per­haps begrudg­ing­ly) sac­ri­ficed one of the last sun­ny Sun­days we are like­ly to have for months. And I am oh-so-grate­ful to each and every one of them for it!

decorations
Look at the pret­ty decorations!
I start­ed with a brief thank you. I could have gone on for hours thank­ing every­one who played a part in this book, but I decid­ed to spare those in atten­dance and kept the list as short as possible.
presentation
Here I am giv­ing my presentation.
Then I gave a short read­ing from one of the In My Expe­ri­ence side­bars in the book. I start­ed get­ting choked up and did­n’t want to break down into ugly cry in front of all those peo­ple, so I cut it short­er than I had intend­ed. Run away!
Josie Gillett for YUP
One of the inspir­ing teens pre­sent­ing her organization.
My favorite part was when four local teens, whose orga­ni­za­tions are among those fea­tured in the book, pre­sent­ed a bit about what they do and where their groups are head­ed. They were all great speak­ers and held the audi­ence in rapt attention.
signing closeup
I signed some books.
Then, it was time to sign books! I was so afraid I would spell some­one’s name wrong, I even asked on the easy ones that I knew for sure I knew how to spell.
signing line zoomed out
I signed a lot of books!
By the end, though, my eyes were start­ing to cross. I had­n’t made any mis­takes, so I let my guard down. One of the very last peo­ple in line is one of my dear­est friends, whose name hap­pens to be EXACTLY THE SAME AS MINE. Yes, you guessed it: I spelled it wrong. For­tu­nate­ly, she has a good sense of humor, so we’ll prob­a­bly be laugh­ing about it for years to come.
Many heart­felt thanks to every­one who came and to Secret Gar­den Book Shop for host­ing. I’m gen­er­al­ly not much of a par­ty per­son, and I real­ly dis­like being the cen­ter of atten­tion. (Those giant posters of my face were a sur­prise from my hub­by… eek!) But every moment of that launch event was a treat, and the expe­ri­ence is some­thing I’ll trea­sure for the rest of my life. 

The Emu’s Debuts launch party for Be a Changemaker

Emu's Debuts bannerOne of the most reward­ing expe­ri­ences of being a debut author has been par­tic­i­pat­ing on the Emu’s Debuts group blog (for clients of Erin Murphy Lit­er­ary Agency who are in between deal and pub­li­ca­tion). Last week, my fab­u­lous friends and fel­low Emus threw me THE BEST LAUNCH PARTY EVER to cel­e­brate the upcom­ing release of BE A CHANGEMAKER! (They went a week ear­ly, since Lind­sey Lane’s EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN is releas­ing at the same time. I’ll be help­ing them cel­e­brate that launch next week!)
They were all so gen­er­ous, authen­tic, and hard-work­ing in bring­ing the dai­ly posts to life (as they are with every­thing they do!), and I was thrilled anew every morn­ing to see what they had put togeth­er. In case you missed them, please go check out their posts. They’re fun, infor­ma­tive, and inspiring!
Here’s the roundup:
On Mon­day, Lind­sey Lane (with some back­up sup­port from Tara Dair­man), post­ed Wel­come to the World: BE A CHANGEMAKER by Lau­rie Ann Thomp­son!, which includ­ed sto­ries of and inter­views with five oth­er Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency authors who are chang­ing the world in their own mean­ing­ful ways:

Tues­day fea­tured sev­er­al videos com­piled by Megan Mor­ri­sonBE A CHANGEMAKER: Words of Wis­dom. The clips con­tain con­tri­bu­tions from fel­low Emu Debuts blog­gers offer­ing their own words of wis­dom, shar­ing quotes that moti­vate and inspire them, and giv­ing advice they wish they’d got­ten at the begin­ning of their jour­ney. Great stuff, and so per­son­al! It’s a great way to get to know these won­der­ful peo­ple a lit­tle better.
For the Wednes­day post, BE A CHANGEMAKER: Cel­e­brat­ing with Quotes!Jen­nifer Cham­b­liss Bert­man com­piled and cre­at­ed a col­lec­tion of gor­geous images fea­tur­ing quotes that inspire and moti­vate the mem­bers of the Emu’s Debuts blog team. If you want to spice up your Face­book or Pin­ter­est feeds (or your office walls!), there are some fan­tas­tic finds here. Plus, they includ­ed the expla­na­tions behind why the quotes are so mean­ing­ful for them, mak­ing them even more special.
For Thurs­day’s post, Pen­ny Park­er Kloster­mann, gave read­ers a sneak pre­view of Be a Change­mak­er with excerpts of the first 25 pages as well as the event plan­ning chap­ter. Her post, BE A CHANGEMAKER: A Tool for Change, gives a sense of how the book can be used as a tool by indi­vid­u­als, teams, and classrooms.
On Fri­dayTama­ra Ellis Smith closed out the par­ty with Music to Be A Change­mak­er By, an inspi­ra­tional and moti­vat­ing Spo­ti­fy playlist of songs rec­om­mend­ed by the Emu’s Debuts blog­gers, along with the expla­na­tions of why they includ­ed them. Span­ning gen­res and emo­tions, you’re sure to find some­thing of inter­est here–I know I did!
I’m so grate­ful to the awe­some authors at Emu’s Debuts! Thanks to them, the Be a Change­mak­er pre-launch week was bet­ter than I ever could have imag­ined. I’m look­ing for­ward to each and of every one of their debuts–coming soon!

On overnight success (Surprise! It’s a lot like failure.)

I post­ed over on the Emu’s Debuts blog yes­ter­day about what makes an “overnight suc­cess.” If you missed it, here’s a lit­tle excerpt:

Both of last week’s posts here were about fail­ure, or at least the con­stant per­ceived threat of fail­ure that so often makes it hard for us to move for­ward. I’m going to con­tin­ue the theme, but on a slight­ly dif­fer­ent note. Our own Emu Empress, Erin MUrphy, once said some­thing along the lines of, “For every suc­cess, there is a wait­ing peri­od that feels like fail­ure.” And in a post on this very blog almost three years ago, she fol­lowed that up with, “But it’s NOT! It’s just waiting!”
Roosevelt quote about failure and successWhen she wrote that post back in 2011, I’d only been with the agency for a few months. One year from now, I’ll have three books pub­lished. That doesn’t seem like very much wait­ing, espe­cial­ly to those famil­iar with the pace of the pub­lish­ing indus­try. Many of my writer friends have walked up to me and said some­thing to the effect of, “Wow, you’re on FIRE!” Some say things like, “I guess you’ve been busy late­ly!” Oth­ers ask, “So, what’s your secret?” as if I’m hold­ing out on them. A few say, “Boy, did you get lucky!” nev­er think­ing that some authors might be a lit­tle bit offend­ed by that. (I nev­er am: Yes, indeed, I have got­ten very, very lucky!)
So, in the inter­ests of dis­pelling myths and keep­ing things real, I thought it might be help­ful to break down my “overnight success:”

You can read the rest of that post here.

The writing process blog tour is here!

You may have seen this meme going around on var­i­ous author and/or illus­tra­tor blogs where peo­ple answer ques­tions about their writ­ing process. I’ve been enjoy­ing read­ing oth­er peo­ple’s answers and learn­ing from their thoughts about process, so when I was tagged by my tal­ent­ed author/illustrator friend, Jen­nifer K. Mann, I decid­ed to add a post about my process here. Enjoy!

Jennifer K. Mann
Jenn and some feath­ered friends

Jenn has been on a roll late­ly! Her first illus­trat­ed book, TURKEY TOT, writ­ten by George Shan­non, just came out last Octo­ber. TWO SPECKLED EGGS, her first author/illustrator debut, just came out in April. And she’s just fin­ish­ing up the final art for I DEFINITELY WILL NEVER GET A STAR ON MRS BENSON’S BLACKBOARD, which will come out next year. You can read about Jen­n’s writ­ing and illus­trat­ing process here. Thanks for tag­ging me, Jenn! Let the Q&A begin…
 

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I am not my book… Or am I?

Emu's Debuts headerEar­li­er this month over on Emu’s Debuts, I blogged about the impor­tance, and dif­fi­cul­ties, of sep­a­rat­ing the cre­ator (our­selves) from the works cre­at­ed. Since some of you may not fol­low that blog, I thought I should post it here, too. Here’s an excerpt…

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Cycles, balance, and making plans

[Note: This was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Emu’s Debuts, but it seemed to res­onate with peo­ple, so I decid­ed to reblog it here in case you missed it. Sor­ry if you’re see­ing it twice!]
Late­ly, I’ve become some­what obsessed with the idea of cycles in our lives. Cycles in nature—life cycles, the water cycle, sea­sons, etc.—keep our phys­i­cal world in bal­ance. Man-made cycles keep the gov­ern­ment run­ning (usu­al­ly), pre­vent mechan­i­cal fail­ures and med­ical mis­takes (hope­ful­ly), even wash our clothes and dish­es for us. If you’re an author, you’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with the cre­ativ­i­ty cycle (see below). And as I’ve men­tioned before, one of my all-time favorite Emu’s Debuts post was Melanie Crowder’s The Run/Rest Cycle, about sus­tain­ing bal­ance as a writer. As cre­ative types, we often have some lee­way about how we choose to spend our time each day, so hav­ing a cycle in mind can help us man­age our activ­i­ties and main­tain bal­ance in our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives.

The Creativity Cycle
The Cre­ativ­i­ty Cycle

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2013: What a year!

EMLA Client Retreat group photo

I haven’t post­ed here for way too long, but 2013 turned out to be quite a year. I did man­age to squeeze in a few posts over at Emu’s Debuts, so I thought I’d share them here as a sort of roundup (and to par­tial­ly explain where I’ve been since the last post)…
In July, I had the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence of attend­ing my sec­ond Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency client retreat, this time in Big Sky Mon­tana. Words can’t real­ly describe how won­der­ful these retreats are, but I post­ed a bit about it here.

EMLA Client Retreat group photo
The whole EMLA retreat gang (except me!)

Aside from that trip, I spent the sum­mer writ­ing, research­ing, writ­ing, inter­view­ing, writ­ing, revis­ing, writ­ing, revis­ing, revis­ing, and revis­ing to deliv­er the final man­u­script for BE A CHANGEMAKER. I wrote a bit about the process here.
A screen shot of the developmental edit
Tracked changes in the devel­op­men­tal edit stage

Despite the mad race to the fin­ish line, I feel real­ly good about how it all came togeth­er. And here’s a post about how it felt to get to THE END.
Done!
Then there was the dread­ed author pho­to, which actu­al­ly turned out to be sort of fun (and decent enough to share with the world, thank goodness!).

Laurie Thompson head shot

 
Oth­er news and high­lights from the year?

  • I got to see an ear­ly study for a scene from the pic­ture-book biog­ra­phy of Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah, illus­trat­ed by Sean Qualls.
  • The above book also FINALLY has a title, EMMANUEL’S DREAM!
  • I also got to see pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es for MY DOG IS THE BEST (sor­ry, I can’t share them here, but Paul Schmid’s illus­tra­tions are ADORABLE!).
  • I fin­ished anoth­er fic­tion pic­ture book man­u­script and it will soon be going out on sub­mis­sion (fin­gers crossed!).
  • I par­tic­i­pat­ed in and fin­ished PiBoId­Mo 2013.

Stay tuned for my next post on how I plan to tack­le 2014. 🙂

Email subscription changes afoot

As most of you know, I’m under a press­ing dead­line to deliv­er the com­plet­ed man­u­script for CHANGEMAKERS by August 1st. I have three chap­ters left to write, plus a pletho­ra of bits and pieces scat­tered about and piles of notes to myself about things I still want to go back and fix… and only three weeks left to wrap every­thing up. So, what did I spend my day doing today? Mak­ing a new email sub­scrip­tion cam­paign, of course. (Gah! What?)
My brain seems to like hav­ing a burst of writ­ing activ­i­ty one day, fol­lowed by a burst of something–anything–else the next. I had an extreme­ly pro­duc­tive day yes­ter­day, so I pret­ty much accept­ed that today was going to be spent revis­ing, tight­en­ing, expand­ing, twid­dling, etc. Since I was­n’t in “flow” today, there was time for doing the dish­es, putting away laun­dry, and catch­ing up on some web browsing.
I hap­pened to come across this arti­cle about the 10 biggest Inter­net mar­ket­ing mis­takes made by artists and cre­atives. I’ve been want­i­ng to set up more of a newslet­ter for my email sub­scribers for a while now, so I’d already done some research on it and was plan­ning on switch­ing to using MailChimp instead of Feed­burn­er… some­day. Well, Mark’s arti­cle spurred me into action today. After all, I’m a tech savvy gal… how hard could it be, right?
Well, it took longer than I thought it would to get all the pieces to fit togeth­er (a few hours), but I think I have every­thing all con­vert­ed now. I think it looks more pro­fes­sion­al and it cer­tain­ly gives me more options, so although my tim­ing might not have been ide­al, I think it was worth it. If you were sub­scribed to my old Feed­burn­er feed, I’ve moved you to the new MailChimp one. I hope you’ll like it bet­ter, but you can always unsub­scribe if you’re not hap­py with it (MailChimp makes it easy for you!). From now on, any new sub­scrip­tions will go straight to the MailChimp list.  (If you’d like to sub­scribe, just look for the MailChimp sub­scrip­tion form on the right-hand col­umn just below my bio.)
Please let me know what you think! And, of course, let me know if you see any prob­lems. Note that I might not fix them until August, though. After all, that dead­line is still looming!

Just keep writing, just keep writing…

Wow, have I neglect­ed this blog in recent weeks (okay, months), or what? I’ve been fever­ish­ly focus­ing on knock­ing out the CHANGEMAKERS book, which also meant I was fever­ish­ly focus­ing on find­ing a method to the mad­ness of knock­ing out the CHANGEMAKERS book. I wrote a bit about my strug­gles over on the Emu’s Debuts blog.
Lindt A Touch of Sea Salt dark chocolate barThanks to the sup­port of my fel­low EMu’s fol­low­ing that post, I’ve since hit a pret­ty good stride and am feel­ing much more com­fort­able about my abil­i­ty to fin­ish the book with­out let­ting it kill me. I’ve got a dandy col­lec­tion of spread­sheets to track my progress by word count, by chap­ter, and by research. I’ve got some reward sys­tems in place (i.e. Lindt’s A Touch of Sea Salt bars).
So, things are flow­ing much more smooth­ly now with the writ­ing part, and I am thrilled that the inter­views are rolling in as well. I can’t wait to share what some of the sto­ries about what these ven­ture teams are doing! I’ve known I want­ed to write this book for years, but now that I am actu­al­ly doing it, I’m hav­ing even more fun than I thought I would. Hear­ing these teenagers talk about their ideas, their goals, their suc­cess sto­ries: WOW! It is so inspir­ing, and on so many dif­fer­ent lev­els. When­ev­er I start to think maybe I can’t do this, that this book is too ambi­tious or the dead­line is too short, I just think about what some of them have done. If they are chang­ing the world at the age of 18, or 15, or 10, sure­ly I can write one lit­tle book, right? And if my lit­tle book can help just one more teen pull off even a tiny frac­tion of what these kids are already accom­plish­ing, then I know all of my efforts will have been worth it.
After the book is done, I hope I will be able to share with you here some snip­pets of the inter­views and out­takes from the pro­files I’m work­ing on, because these young peo­ple will blow you away, and in the best pos­si­ble kind of way. I hope my read­ers will be as affect­ed by learn­ing about these teens’ ven­tures as I have been.
When we watch the TV news or read the news­pa­per head­lines, it’s easy to get dis­cour­aged about the state of the world. But writ­ing this book is the com­plete oppo­site expe­ri­ence. It’s hard to get dis­cour­aged about where the world is head­ing when there are so many young peo­ple like the ones I am writ­ing about out there.
And now, back to work! Please for­give me if I’m a lit­tle qui­et for the next few months. 😉

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