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An Author’s Visit On Wednesday, February 15th, a local author visited our school. Her name was Tanya Lee Stone. The reason she came to our school was to help us celebrate “I Love To Read and Write” week. The first idea she talked about was to assure us that she has been writing for a long time, ever since she was a child. She talked about how she got her own ideas for her stories. We played a fun game that went like this: First, she pointed to someone in the audience and they picked an object out of a bag. Then, we told her who we thought the object could have belonged to and what it might have been used for. This activity showed us how people get ideas for writing by looking at the objects and images around them and then imagining what could be happening. Tanya Lee Stone gets a lot of her ideas while she is on a walk. Next she talked about the steps needed to publish books. First, you decide what you want to write about. Second, you write the rough draft. Then you revise it until it is detailed and clear. The manuscript is then sent to the editor. It will come back with lots of red lines and feedback. Even at the last step of the process she continues to revise. If the editor says yes to the story the art director will hire an illustrator. The illustrator does a light sketch and sends it back to Tanya. Sometimes she says that she would like some changes but most of the time she does not say no to the picture. She told us that it takes a long time to publish a book, especially depending on how long it is. Tanya Lee Stone has written more fiction than nonfiction. She likes fiction better because she likes to create and imagine things. She also likes nonfiction because she can research subjects and learn new things. Sometimes she reads for two months on a subject before beginning to write. We asked Tanya lee Stone a lot of questions such as how many books has she published. The answer is 80 books. She told us that not all her books get published. Her favorite book, Rattlesnake Rumba, did not get published, but she said she has not given up on it yet! We thought that was amazing! Her visit inspired us to write stories and not care what other people think of them as long as we like them. Tanya said, “Not all stories have to be published. I don’t care how long or how short my stories are; I just like my books! The secret of writing is to rewrite and rewrite until it is as good as it can be.” We think it was an inspiring, fun visit. Now we want to read more of her books! By Natalie, Molly, Anna, Jamie, Jack and Logan |
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Thank you Tanya for
helping to inspire Orchard's budding young authors!! You can find out more about Tanya at her web site: http://www.tanyastone.com/. |
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