It’s been a minute.

We’ve been butt-in-chair, hands-on-keyboard as Jane Yolen would say. But we wanted to take a moment to celebrate our new books with a giveaway!

First, about the books. You can see them in the sidebar if you’re reading this page on your desktop. If you’re on your phone, head over to Books by Winged Pen Authors.

Richelle has a story in SCBWI’s Haunted States of America anthology, Halli’s Locked In is young adult contemporary, and Rebecca’s Math All Around series helps kindergarten and 1st-grade students learn math concepts.

The me from way back when we started this blog would have been so excited to see these new book covers on the website!

Over the next few weeks, we’ll feature each of the books with author interviews (and remind you to enter the Big Book Giveaway!) But this is the Winged Pen, so we also have to share how we got to this remarkable point of having 6 books coming out within 24 days of each other.

Of course, a lot of it was luck. If we’d tried to pull off launching books this close together, we’d certainly have failed. For once, the mercurial gods of publishing were on our side.

But another important part of our journey was persistence.

Sharing Our Writing Journey: Persistence

Richelle: Somehow I ended up on the long and winding path for my writing journey! I went through a bit of a crisis a few years ago. I’d been pouring myself into fiction, neglecting other parts of my life and exhausting myself. I had a couple of big setbacks, and I had to decide if I wanted to keep going or if it was OK to let this dream go. I decided to quit.

After a whole two weeks of being a former writer, I got a few ideas I was excited about, so I started noodling around with them, and before you know it, I was writing again. But this time I decided it was just for me. As long as I was having fun, I would keep doing it, but without the pressure. And that has been key to my ability to persist. I’ve detached myself from the outcome a bit — if things go well, as they did with the Haunted State of America, then yay! If nothing comes of my WIP, well, I had fun writing it. 

I think one of the keys to persistence is knowing what you can control, and for most of us, the only thing we can control is the writing. When you let the rest of it fall by the wayside, it’s easier to keep going when nothing is happening. 

Oh, and another key: celebrate the good stuff!

Halli: Take a reader, fill their head with an endless stream of ideas, add a lot of whining and moaning, then drop them in the middle of a wonderful, supportive community. BAM! You have a kidlit author.

Being an author is not an easy job. Writing is hard, waiting is hard, rejection stinks! But the thrill of seeing my words on the page, even if it’s just my computer screen, outweighs all of that. 

I’ve always been a reader and in awe of how writers craft stories and characters that pull me in, make me laugh, cry, and need to sleep with the lights on. It’s that love of storytelling, the thought that I can share ideas I’m excited about, that keeps me writing. It’s why I make time to write every day and why I carry notebooks with me. I want to tell stories, even if I’m the only one who reads them.

Don’t get me wrong, my ultimate goal is to keep publishing books. Seeing your book on a bookstore shelf, knowing strangers are buying it because they are intrigued by the story is an amazing feeling I can’t begin to describe. But I don’t write for other people. I keep going because I love to put words together, to see the characters and plot take shape. I want to know how the story ends. 

Rebecca: Sometimes it’s hard to keep writing kidlit when there is so much rejection along the way. But I find that whenever I miss the writing time I’ve got blocked on my calendar, I’m disappointed. So I keep writing.

The truth is, I really enjoy writing. It’s like a puzzle. How do you get the characters from the beginning of the story to the end having learned what they need to learn to overcome the HUGE obstacles you’ve put in their way?

The puzzle requires fitting the right set of characters with the right challenge so that the shapes fit together neatly. It requires finding the pieces to fill in plot holes. It requires figuring out the right number of puzzle pieces so your story doesn’t get longwinded, but fleshes out all the juicy details. Most importantly, it requires having a couple friends willing to peer closely at your puzzle and tell you where you’ve gotten it wrong so you can make it better (thanks Halli, Richelle, and Karin!)

And more persistence comes with the number of revisions it takes to get the story right!

I hope to publish more books, but I plan to keep writing whether or not I do.

And now, for the celebration . . .

Winged Pen’s Big Book Giveaway!

This book giveaway is actually 4 book giveaways! This is both because our books are quite different and because that way you have 4 times the chance of winning. You can enter the giveaway for whichever book appeals to you or all 4!

Good luck and keep your butt in chair and hands on keyboard!

The Winged Pen