Up A Tree, With A Book: inspiration for writing and keeping books in print!

Want inspiration for your next YA novel? Do you measure success by your book's ability to secure passion and commitment in your audience?

Think of your young readers this way: up a tree, with a good book and worried that the fifth book in the series marks the end, because then they're hollering, "Now what will I read!?!"

Some kids today have everything at their finger tips so we tend to believe only in the stats that say books are competing with other games and technologies, including books of the e-kind; Kindle etc.

BUT - no one ever wanted to smell their flat-as-glass screen when a new text was being down loaded. Even when we're laying down with the digital box, who really snuggles technology the way we do when we have the texture and weight of our latest literary conquest in print, and in our hands, propped on our chests or leaned on our thighs? There is flesh and bone, blood and heartbeat in holding an actual tome.

I've personally never seen technology inspire kids to climb trees, to find Nature's nooks so as to selfishly savour that which is totally wholesome.

And that, my friends, is why I am a die hard. I believe books in print will always be kewl, awesome sauce and wicked bad.

Above All,

Happy Writing, JJ

Comments

Mari Popova reviews: Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Living to Tell the Tale"

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ Read all: http://www.brainpickings.org "If you're going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones…After all, there are better ways to starve to death." Gabriel García Márquez (March 6, 1927–April 17, 2014) is one of the greatest authors of all time , and yet he had an unlikely path to greatness. His life-story is an emboldening antidote to the tyrannical myth that the crib is the crucible of creative genius...

Looking Up...

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ I am convinced we are all on a spectrum from "Wounded" to "Recovering" Creatives. Being creative and wounded seem to coexist as a part of our human condition. Observation reveals that even as functional Creatives, we collude, propagate and inflict wounding on ourselves and other creatives. Putting malice aside, (or perhaps even including it), if ignorance can be simplified to the individual "ignoring what is within", then who really can be 100% beyond its dark, sticky reach 100% of the time. With this in mind, it is a life-saving effort for sincere 'working' creatives to expect, even anticipate resistance. And at least, to include the work of having to transcend it. The more insistent we are at our creative endeavours, no end of obstacles will arise both from within our own complex unconscious and outside; from others in our range of influence, and beyond. SO, what to do with all these voices? Nay-sa

UP A Tree, With a Good Book...

Think of your young readers this way: up a tree, with a good book and worried that the sixth book in the series marks the end, because then what will he do! All 6 Island Fiction titles are available as e-books at: https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/ or jump to Time Swimmer by Gerald Haussman, one of my all time favorite teen titles: https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/timeswimmer.html Or why not kick start August reading with: Night of the Indigo by Michael Holgate which won a Silver Moonbeam Medal for "Teen Spirituality" https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/night-of-the-indigo.html Pictured: Battle of the Labyrinth, Percy Jackson Photo credit and copyright: J. Johnson What to read when Percy Jackson comes to an end? Now young Caribbean readers have a series rich in speculative fiction sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism. Check out all 6 titles of the Caribbean's first-ever teen series with cinematic writing that even reluctant readers will

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