Episode 07 | KidLit Journeys with Author Cindy L. Rodriguez
Join Sharon and Christy as they welcome their first guest, KidLit author Cindy L. Rodriguez, to talk about her journey to KidLit through journalism and teaching middle school. Cindy's debut picture book, Three Pockets Full, illustrated by Begoña Fernández Corbalán, comes out September 1 from Cardinal Rule Press.
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From Cindy:
I took an advanced composition course in my graduate work. And I had one professor who, even though we were expected to write in the end, you know, 10-page papers, he started our advanced composition course by giving us 250 words.
And he said, I'm going to give you a topic. We were reading a book or something and he said, you need to respond in no more than 250 words. And you know, when you, when you share it with me, I will check it. If it's 251, I'm giving it back to you. He explained why he was doing this. He said, when you have written me 250 words and I feel like they're perfect, then I'll give you 250 more. And then I want you to write 500. He didn't do this all the way to the five or 10 page paper mark, but after a certain point, then he said, okay, now you can write long. And he said he was a writer as well as a professor. And he said, it's been my experience that when we start by saying, you have 20 pages, you know, it's very easy to go on and on and on and on and on. And, and when you tell somebody you have just 250 words or 500 words, you're forced to consider every single word that you use. You're forced to consider, Did I use the right verb? You know did I get to the heart of what I really wanted to say within the space that I have?
And clearly that is the essence of a picture book. So I would say even this would be a great exercise for any writer, middle grade, YA, because I do think that, you know, when I sit down to write a longer book and they're like, okay, you have 55,000 words that you must create. It can be overwhelming. So think about it in terms of those 500 word chunks. Can you write this scene in 500? Just do it for yourself. Even if it's longer than that, can you condense it down? Think about every single word. Does it work? You know, are you getting to some emotional component?
And of course, as a picture book writer, then those 500 words are going to be revised and changed and whatever. But I think it's a great writing exercise for the longer people who write longer. Because it really just brings you back to basics of the idea that every word matters.
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