Author: Gary McLaren

This author has written 141 articles

5 Questions To Ask About Every Article Idea

This is a guest post by Mridu Khullar.

I know a good idea when I see one. So should you. Dump those time-tested ideas you’re sending off to editors every other day, and find ideas that will get you the assignment each time, every time.

How do you know whether your brilliant idea will strike a chord and get you the assignment or land your neatly crafted query in the slush pile? Use the following checklist to find out whether you have a winner or another stale idea that the editor’s been rejecting since she set foot in her editorial office.
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What Is A Ghostwriter?

Do you believe in ghosts? They are mostly unseen. Unnoticeable. And believe it or not they are moving behind the scenes in the publishing industry. If you’re lucky you might catch a fleeting glimpse. They are officially called ‘ghostwriters’.

A ghostwriter is a writer who writes on an assigned topic under someone else's name, with their consent. They often write books completely from scratch but sometimes their work involves rewriting or polishing an existing work. (more…)

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Writing Haiku

This is a guest post by Alistair Scott

Haiku are modest little poems. You are not going to make your reputation or fortune with them. But, don't dismiss them as something school kids write. They have other benefits. Composing haiku is excellent practice in close observation, clear thinking and tight writing - all essential skills for the good writer.

Traditionally haiku are three-line poems, the first and last lines containing 5 syllables, and the middle line with 7. There is no need for rhyme or punctuation, and some of the more minimalist 'haijin' (haiku writers) even consider a title superfluous. Furthermore, this traditional 5-7-5 form is no longer considered sacrosanct. So, what could be more easy than writing haiku?

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Learning from the Masters

This is a guest post by Laura Backes, Write4Kids.com - The Children's Writing SuperSite.

I love my job. I get to spend entire days in the children's section of the book store and call it research. I also get to celebrate birthdays of people I've never met. We recently marked Maurice Sendak's 75th birthday, and the 40th birthday of his most famous child, Max from Where the Wild Things Are. So I took the opportunity to reacquaint myself with some of Sendak's impressive body of work, and to meet Brundibar, his newest picture book, written by Tony Kushner and based on a Czech opera of the same name.

Whether illustrating someone else's words or his own texts, Sendak could never be accused of taking the easy route to publication. His books are complicated, deeply emotional stories, with subtexts that often illuminate the dark side of human nature. In an interview appearing in the November/ December 2003 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, Sendak says "...we can get away with things in children's books that nobody in the adult world ever can because the assumption is that the audience is too innocent to pick it up. And in truth they're the only audience that does pick it up."

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