Hi, everyone! My name is Christie Wild and I'm happy to be visiting you today. Heather invited me to do a guest post on her blog about my experience with The Institute of Children's Literature (ICL). As many of you know, she is taking the ever-popular Intensive Picture Book Workshop by Anastasia Suen (pronounced 'soon'). I may take that class in the future, but today's post is based on a different writing program. I just signed up to take my second class through ICL. It may seem like I'm advertising for them, but I'm not. They are a for-real organization with professional instructors (editors and published authors). Lots of great freebies on their website, too. Kristi Holl is the blogger for Writer's First Aid, a Medicine Chest of Hope. Her blog has well over 30,000 RSS subscribers. She is a graduate of ICL (and is now an instructor there) and has gone on to publish over 35 books and hundreds of magazine articles and short stories. She says that ICL is the only formal writing instruction she ever had.I took the first course right out of high school and finished it during college, where I majored in Creative Writing. My instructor back then was Cindy Savage. The course was very comprehensive and informative. I wrote a lot of teen romance short stories back then. Cindy was very encouraging and gave great critiques. That was for the Writing for Children and Teenagers course.
The one I'm enrolled in right now is called Writing & Selling Children's Books, An Advanced Writing Program for Selected Students. ICL's promise is that they will help you develop a manuscript ready for submission. The course I'm in right now will help you complete one long book, or two to three short ones (picture books). So of course I'm going the picture book route. There are nine assignments and you have two years to complete the course. It costs $707. My current instructor is Clara Gillow Clark. The assignments go about like this:
- letter about goals plus three ideas
- book idea in summary form
- 1st book
- 2nd book
- revise 1st book
- revise 2nd book
- revise 1st book again and propose a 3rd
- revise 2nd book again and a draft of 3rd
- all revisions requested and cover/query letters, outlines, resumes, etc.
I'm excited-beyond-Santa excited! :D If any of you have specific questions, just ask. I'll be happy to try to answer them.
Oh, and over at WRITE WILD, my own personal blog, I'm having a GREAT giveaway contest to celebrate my taking this course AND to celebrate my 100 followers! I am giving away TWO copies of the market guide published by ICL. One 2011 issue, and one 2010 issue of Book Markets for Children's Writers. If you think you know your picture books, go comment on my blog post for 11-5-10. And come back on the 6th for an interview with Tara Lazar, the creator of PiBoIdMo!
Thanks for having me! See you around the blogosphere! And good luck in my contest...
