Some Websites I'd Like to Share

As some of you know, I've been writing my brains out these past couple of weeks (and even longer, but the past two weeks have bumped my blogging to some extent, while I was meeting deadlines for contests.)

Now it's time to share: There are two travel-writing contests going on:  I've entered one: Amazing Travel Stories, with a submission deadline of August 31st, and I want to enter the second one next: Dave's Travel Corner has a travel writing essay.  The deadline for that is July 1st.  Both are no fee contests, and you can submit online.  I got these notifications via my friend Rosi Hollinbeck who is currently sharing great news about a Highlights workshop she just returned from on her great blog, The Write Stuff.  Thanks, Rosi!

I know, I know, this is a blogsite normally about writing or reviewing children's books: PBs, MGs, YAs.  But even children's writers travel, and your article doesn't necessarily have to be about traveling abroad. Check them out.

The Writer's Digest contest deadline was yesterday.  That is so famous that it didn't occur to me to post it.  Sorry.  I also made a mistake in reading the guidelines, but recovered from shock and submitted two picture books.  (They only wanted children's fiction 2,000 words or less.  Ha-ha.  My children's mystery is 24,000.)  It does pay to slow down when you read those guidelines.  But the good news is that I polished up that book so many times, getting ready to enter it, that now I'm ready to query on it.

Meanwhile, here is a contest that is still open:  Children's Writer Poetry or Verse Story Contest .  Their deadline is October 31st.  If you already subscribe to their newsletter, your first submission is free and later submissions are $15.00 each.  If you do not subscribe, then each submission is $15.00.  (You can submit more than one.)

The following website, isn't a contest, but it provides useful tools for checking your own WIP for interest level, reading level, and wordcount.  I got this from another writing friend, Teri, in one of my writing groups.  It's  Renaissance Learning.  Some of you may already know about it.  (I am often the last to know about things.)  But at the site, you can click on any children's book they have in their "library" (PB, MG, YA) and learn the reading level, the interest level, and the word count and see how your own WIP compares as you labor on.

That's it for today.  Back to work.  Happy reading.  Happy writing.  And do enter one of these contests.  (You don't even have to write the perfect query letter for any of these!)