advice

Try this wacky avatar hack!

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As part of a course I’m taking through Carol Tice’s amazing website Make a Living Writing, I received the following homework assignment: put an avatar up on Gravatar to pop up whenever I comment on blogs, etc. Now, I could use a photo, but that would just be no fun, so I decided to create my own Gravatar.

avatar

Me, in black and white and nothing on my head to cover my hair. For shame!

I started off by googling “free avatar tools” and discovered a lot of nifty links to different programs to help you make your avatar. The best site I found was Digibody. The results of a picture created with their Avatar-Maker tools look much nicer and more professional than those created with other programs, I found.

However, that left me with a small problem. Or rather three:

  1. The pic was black and white. I thought color might be more eye-catching and engaging.
  2. I don’t leave my house without a hat or headscarf on my head. There was no way to put a hat or headscarf on the picture using Digibody’s tools.
  3. I don’t leave my bed without my glasses. (2 a.m. trips to the bathroom don’t count.) No one would recognize me without some glasses on my face.

Here’s what I did:

becca avatar with color

Thanks to Microsoft Paint, I added my headscarf, glasses, and a touch of color.

  1. I saved the image to as a jpeg onto my computer.
  2. Then I pulled it up in Microsoft Paint (how I wish I had Adobe InDesign or something fancier, but alas, no) and started sprucing up my avatar.

This is my DIY avatar. It’s recognizably me.

What do you think of the end product? I’d love some reviews in the comments.

Coming clean: sometimes you’re supposed to do housework instead of writing

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G-d wanted me to do the dishes this morning.

I finished a large-ish writing project yesterday, then pulled open another document to begin the next assignment. I got the first paragraph written, and then every ounce of creativity in my brain dried up. Okay, I had a couple ideas, but they weren’t RIPE. More like literary fetal tissue than the next baby ready to be birthed.

Those who know me or who regularly read my blog know that I rarely get writer’s block. I usually have more ideas in my mind than really is good for me. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night, because my mind is so busy that the ideas are dripping out my ears.

kitchen photo

See this immaculate kitchen? Clearly not mine.

I spent the rest of yesterday taking care of my kids, feeding them and hubby (not to mention myself), and finishing Bird by Bird. (More on that later this week.) Then I had a Tiferes meeting, but before I left, I checked my email. A girlfriend would be dropping by Tuesday morning.

Oh, no.

You see, my back had been out, and then there had been Shabbos, and then I was writing on a “finish ASAP–please!” type deadline. Result–my house was a wreck. Continue reading →

Why you should do what you love to do, even if you’re no expert (and never will be)

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I am no Picasso.

I am no Michelangelo or deVinci.

And I’m never going to be.

My girlfriend at MoiMeMoi posted last week about doing things we love even when we are less than expert at them. Her words struck a chord, because recently, I’ve started drawing again after years and years of avoiding it.

For my entire grade school career, I was considered “artsy.” I drew and painted better than my peers, mostly out of a smidgen of natural talent, but also because I applied myself in art classes and loved to read art books. It was a hobby that I hoped might turn into something more.

Then I hit 12th grade and had the sudden realization that I was good, but I wasn’t great and might very well never be great. That smidgen of talent was just a smidgen. So I threw my hands up in the air and gave up drawing and painting and pottery–the whole shebang.

Occasionally, I’d startle my husband when I had to draw something to show my kids how, or my students would respond to a diagram I’d drawn with admiration. At such moments, I felt like my past was leaking out. My family knew about my “artistic” past, and even suggested I illustrate my books, but I’ve always felt like I’m not good enough to do it and never will be.

Maybe that’s true. However, lately, I’ve gone back to drawing. At times, I sketch still lives, other times, I draw my kids while they sleep, or from a photo (because they are rarely still). I’ve also drawn a couple cartoons. I mourn years of no practice–my skills could have grown, but they didn’t. Sometimes, I get very frustrated. But it’s fun. It’s a hobby, and it’ll probably stay that way.

G-d-willing, I’ll share some more about my renewed hobby soon, with the help of my handy-dandy scanner.

What skills and hobbies have you neglected over the years?  Would you ever go back to them?

Who’s talking? POV, Voice, and Narrator as explained in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

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book cover

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

There are few books that come up with my writer friends more often than Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. In the same way that I feel like I’m not quite smart enough because I’ve never taken Calculus, I’ve felt like a slacker because I never got around to reading it.

And I should have felt guilty–because it’s great.

Okay, so it has a lot of rather vulgar language, but Lamott’s writing is so funny, and yet so useful, that I’m pretty much in love with the book.

One of the interesting bits of advice that Lamott gives writers is a gem she attributes to the author Ethan Canin. The most important way to improve your writing, he says, is to employ a likeable narrator.

Here’s the thing that struck me about this advice: for many, many years, I always wrote in third person. Continue reading →

2 Major differences between writing a picture book and writing short stories

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So the folktale project turned out to be an eye-opening experience for me.

scissors

Am I a writer, or a barber?

When I first started writing for kids, I didn’t really understand the difference between short stories and picture books. I’d submit short stories to book publishers, and picture books to magazines who published short stories. Selling Raizy and being guided through revisions by Devorah Leah Rosenfeld, the editor at Hachai, schooled me in the differences between the two media. After a couple years, I started writing regularly for children’s magazines, and her lessons allowed me to jump between the two formats.

2 Major differences between picture books and short stories:

 

1) The length differs significantly in the two formats. Oddly, an entire picture book has about half the words (sometimes less) as a short story for a kids’ magazine.

2) The illustrations in a picture book replace almost all the description. And the only words that could appear in a picture book text are ones that drive the narrative forward. When I learned this lesson, my picture book writing attained a sharpness that it had previously lacked.

Continue reading →

But what about my Voice!?! What a writer should do when an editor asks for “a few changes.”

beccakinla advice, book, books, editing, editors, frustration, good news, publishing, revision, stories, submissions, words, writer, writing, writing process Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
parakeet

Hey, buddy! What about my voice?

Last week, I got an email from an editor (she’ll be the heroine of this story, but will remain nameless nonetheless). She asked me to make one change–one very small change–to the story that I had submitted.

Because I trust this editor–she’s very good at what she does and has built a friendly relationship with me–I said I’d make the teeny-tiny change she’d requested.

And then I panicked.  Continue reading →