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True Story Blog

10 Tips for Writing Picture Books

1. Victoria Sherrow: "I had set a goal of writing and submitting at least one new story each month, including stories with holiday themes."

2. Miriam Glassman: "Write the story that is yours to tell. Don’t try to redo something already out there.".

3. Maryann Cocca-Lefler: "Stay focused, have thick skin and be willing to revise. Rejection letters are part of the process, learn from them and move forward."

4. Tara Lazar: "My stories always include a hidden chunk of my childhood."

5. Shennen Bersani: "Have a young child read it out loud."

6. Cheryl Lawton Malone: "Write while your kids are at the dentist. Write when your spouse goes to sleep. And when you’re not writing, read and think about picture books."

7. Deborah Sosin: "Go for it! Make the time. But ask for help. It’s too hard to do in isolation."

8. Audrey Vernick: "We were so stuck on one point and I had been reading some craft books and one suggestion was instead of trying to come up with one solution, shoot for five. . . . That proved to be a technique I’d return to."

9. Susan Montanari: "I had a dream [and] when I woke up I wrote it down."

10: Jean Taft: "I make a book dummy out of index cards for all my stories and work on the pagination from that. Sometimes I don’t fully understand how a story is (or isn’t) flowing until I make a book dummy."
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DARIO AND THE WHALE

Today we are chatting with writing instructor Cheryl Lawton Malone about her debut picture book,
DARIO AND THE WHALE—a "delightful story . . . based on the author’s actual experience on Cape Cod" (Kirkus Reviews). Read More 
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