Blowin' In The Wind: Writing for a craft magazine

Posted by Judy Press

When the weather shows signs of spring, my motivation to write wanes along with the dark, dreary days of winter. It’s then that I start to think about crafting. Maybe my inspiration comes from the colorful tulips about to bloom in my garden, or perhaps it’s the stack of construction paper sitting in my supply closet waiting for me to do something clever with it. So now that my creative juices are flowing again, I’m anxious to grab my scissors and get back to work (check out the May, 2011 issue of FamilyFun Magazine to see a re-issue of my greeting card.)  For those of you who are interested writing for craft magazines keep these things in mind:

1) Right now (spring), magazines are looking for fall crafts. Magazines are always working several months ahead of the current season.

2. Lots of crafts are online so make sure that your crafts are original or a unique slant on an existing craft.

3. Make and photograph the actual craft.

4. Keep instructions straightforward and easy to understand. The less complicated and wordy the better.

5. Have a child make the craft so that you have an understanding of how age-appropriate it will be.

6. With young children certain supplies could present a danger, such as sharp scissors or small objects. Recommend child-safety scissors and adult supervision if necessary.

Below are instructions to make a basic pinwheel. If I submitted this idea to a magazine I would have to make changes to give it an original slant, such as using recycled papers like patterned wrapping paper in place of the construction paper or attaching it to plastic straw instead of a pencil. So in celebration of spring here's a fun pinwheel to craft. 

A Perfect Pinwheel

Here’s what you need

• Construction paper
• Pencil with eraser (preferably without a point)
• Pushpin or tack
• Small-hole puncher
• Scissors
• Ruler

Here’s what you do

1. Cut a six-inch square from the construction paper. Starting at each corner, use the ruler to draw a diagonal line from the edge towards the center (it’ll look like a big X).

2. Cut along the diagonal lines, stopping about half way to the center. Punch four holes, one at each corner of the square and in the center of the square (if you don’t own a hole puncher use a scissor to poke small holes.)

3. Gently fold over each punched corner to line up all the holes with the center hole, making sure not to crease the paper.

4. Loosely attach the pinwheel to the eraser end of the pencil by inserting the pointy end of the pushpin through the punched holes then sticking it into the pencil eraser.

Then go outside and try blowing in the wind!

The Magic of Christmas

Last weekend my family and I traveled about an hour north of Pittsburgh to cut down our Christmas tree. We’ve been going with my brother and his family for the last several years to cut down our trees together. The first few years were rough. Trudging through the snow carrying one son wrapped in blankets in the snugli baby carrier, while balancing the other on my hip because he was too tired or cold to find the perfect tree. One year I thought my husband would have a heart attack after he used a dulled handsaw to cut down the ten foot tree, then drag it by himself from the valley all the way up the snowy hillside to our car. I nearly caved several times and picked the tree already wrapped and ready to go. Almost. But that was seven years ago. My kids are four and eight now, and we’ve all become seasoned tree hunters. We use a chainsaw, a handheld GPS (marking the perfect location of our favorite trees), walkie talkies (in case we get separated), a digital camera to take photos to compare our favorite trees and a measuring tape to ensure we have the right size before we make the cut.

We drive our truck down the hillside and let the kids sit in the warm car with hot chocolate while we cut the tree and lift it into the truck. Not to sound cliché, but we live and learn. It’s the struggles and the triumphs that bring magic to holiday stories like these. If we simply bought a tree every year at our local greenhouse, that would make for an awfully boring story. And our tree would cost $85.00 instead of $20.00. The magic lies within the colorful details and the special memories we’re making for our family.

It’s the same with your writing. You have to get your character from point A to point B. While the beginning and the end are important, it’s the magic that happens in the middle of the story that the reader will remember. All too often as writers, I believe we have a clear visual or written outline of our story, and we don’t want to stray from that structure. But sometimes, if we don’t let the characters choose their own paths, the story becomes contrived and forced. You simply lose the magic because as the writer, you’re not able to give up the control and allow the characters to take over. One time I wrote a scene where the girl reached over and kissed the main character. He was surprised at how forward she had become. So was I. It wasn’t something I had planned for her to do. And that’s a good thing. As writers, we need to give our characters enough independence to get into trouble and create their own magical stories.

If my husband and I weren’t persistent in finding easier ways to cut down our tree, we would still be tired and sore from dragging the tree and the kids or worse yet, given up completely on cutting down our own tree. And where would that have left us? With no traditions or memories to share with our children. The same emptiness a story has without a magical middle. Or the frustration a writer feels getting through a first draft. If you give up, the story doesn’t get written.

So this holiday, my gift to you is five magical ideas to make your holiday special and five magical ideas to make your stories sparkle.

Holiday Ideas

1. Cut down your own Christmas tree. (Wear boots, gloves and park close to where you’ll cut)
2. Make ornaments for your loved ones. (Every year my mom and dad gave my brother and I an ornament to celebrate something special that happened that year. I kept the tradition for my sons. Above is a homemade ornament my mom received over 30 years ago from a boy in her cub scout den. It still hangs on our tree today. Here’s a link to a similar ornament. http://kids.creativity-portal.com/d/projects/sled.ornament/

Or pick up the Big Fun Christmas Crafts and Activities (Williamson Little Hands Book) by Judy Press where you’ll find fun and easy holiday crafts to do with your children. http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Crafts-Activities-Williamson

Little/dp/0824967860/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292129230&sr=1-1

3. Mix together reindeer food to sprinkle on the ground Christmas Eve so the reindeer can find their way. Here’s how:

      Ingredients:

      ½ cup uncooked oatmeal

      ½ cup glitter (sparkly holiday colors)

      ½ cup red or green sugar crystals (used for cake decorating)

Place ingredients in a plastic bag, seal and shake. Sprinkle it on your lawn on Christmas Eve so the reindeer can find their way.

4. Buy used books at your local library or a used book store for a person who can’t get out to purchase new books or make a wreath like this one. Follow this link to learn how: 

http://www.ilovetocraft.com/holiday/christmas-yarn-wreath.shtml. Take the books and the wreaths to a local nursing home for the residents to enjoy.

5. Give a gift of homemade goodies to someone. (See recipes below)

Story Sparkles

1. Write your first draft uninhibited. Tear off the scabs.
2. Make a bad scene way worse.
3. Put your characters in unique or awkward situations.
4. When rewriting, start with a blank page and rewrite it ALL so you’re not tempted to leave in mediocre first draft writing.
5. Write a story that excites you, and it will surely excite your readers.

I will leave you will my Aunt Lee’s biscotti recipe. She just turned 90 last month (Happy Birthday Aunt Lee!) and sent me her recipe and along with four dozen biscotti to eat. Yum.

Biscotti recipe:

Ingredients:

1 C. shortening (if you’re looking for an organic non-hydrogenated shortening, I highly recommend Spectrum)

5 eggs

1 ½ cups sugar

5 tsp. baking powder
4 cups flour

1 tsp. anise extract
1/2 tsp. salt

Cream shortening and eggs. Add flavoring and remaining ingredients. I put my dough (bowl and all) into the refrigerator for at least an hour. The dough will be easier to work with.

Mark the dough into four sections. The dough may be rolled into a log shape. Keep the logs narrow because it will spread when baked. Grease pans (6x12). Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until brown.

When loaves are slightly cool, slice and return to the oven to toast. 

I will also share with you my Grandma’s delicious pizzelle recipe:

Ingredients:

2 C. flour

1 ½ C sugar

¾ C butter or margarine (melted and cooled)

1 Tbsp. anise extract or vanilla

4 eggs, slightly beaten

2 Tsp. baking powder

Preheat pizzelle iron. Mix flour, sugar, butter, anise extract and eggs. Drop 1 tablespoon onto heated pizzelle iron and close. Cook about 30 seconds or until golden brown.

Both of these Italian cookies go great with coffee.

Happy holidays!

NanoWriMo, Butt-in-Chair and More: Tools to Get You to Just Finish Your Novel

We're kicking off this blog with a month of posts about novels. I have to confess I had my doubts about being the debut poster on this topic, because although I love novels and although I've even had three several-hundred page nonfiction books published (as well as assorted picture books), I've never actually managed to finish any of the half dozen novels I've started.

For anyone out there who's like me, I'm here to tell you about some of the tools/tricks I'm using right now to help me finish at least one of them. Though maybe you should take them with a grain of salt until I actually get a first draft completed...

• NaNoWriMo November, in case you've been avoiding all writing-related sites recently, is National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is an unbelievably cool idea/organization: you write a 50,000 word novel. In a month. Yes, 30 days. From scratch. For those of you who also hated math in school, this works out to 1,667 words a day, which may not sound bad, but is in fact a lot of words if you are really good at distracting yourself with trips to the refrigerator, trips to the bathroom, trips to the coffeemaker, more trips to the bathroom, and oh, heck, even trips to the laundry room. Fortunately, if you go to the nanowrimo site and sign up, you get tons of emails inspiring, encouraging, nagging, scolding you, etc. until you get your daily quota done (and post it on their counter thing). 
• Not much of a joiner, you say? November's a terrible month for you? Want to keep working on something you already started? No worries. You can: a) do nanowrimo unofficially (like I'm doing with my son - we nag each other with no need for gobs of emails); or b) you can do a mini version (set your own target word count or write a picture book or something); or c) you can join one of the Plan B groups, like the janowrimo people, who go through a similar process in different months, not even just January; or d) cheat, and pretend you just started, which will make those first few days very easy, but the last ones super tough. 
• BIC HOK TAM This is a mnemonic I first heard about at a writing conference years ago - and it remains the most effective tool I know for successful writing. It stands for: Butt-In-Chair; Hands-On-Keyboard; Typing-Away-Madly. And in the end, it's the only thing that works. To remind myself to settle in and work, I decorated my writing chair (shown above) with buttons, making it a button chair. Get it? Hilarious I know. (I was nice and spared you a view of my butt in the button chair.) Here's a close up:

• It is about the easiest craft ever. Find some spare buttons or cut them off the shirt of your worst enemy (preferably when he isn't wearing it). Grab a hot glue gun. Apply dots of glue to the chair and stick the buttons on (dot, stick; dot, stick - the hot glue sets up quickly). Don't worry about being all arty about it - just get it done. That will put you in the right frame of mind.
•  Yoga I'm not much of a New Age-y person, but I've got to say yoga is great for stressed out writers. It teaches you to focus, helps you work out the kinks from sitting in your button chair too long, and reduces the stress you feel from trying to beat the nanowrimo deadline. If you're prone to carpal tunnel or other desk jockey ailments, I strongly recommend the great exercises to prevent repetitive stress injury you can find at My Daily Yoga.
• A Tree House

Okay, not strictly necessary. But a place where you can get away from your every day responsibilities and people looking over your shoulder is a big help. A couple years ago, I took over my kids' old treehouse playhouse, painted it, added curtains and some nice furnishings from my neighbors' trash (yep - even the Oriental rug, which is in better shape than some of the rugs in my house, came from the trash), and got the electrician to run wiring to it when he was here fixing some other stuff, and now I have the perfect writing get away, when the weather cooperates. Which it magically is this week!

Of course, when all else fails, there's always the inspiration/reward of chocolate. Preferably Linder's Dark Chocolate with a Touch of Sea Salt...

How about you? Anyone else have great ideas for a kick in the button chair?