November 2019 Self-Editing Workshop

Our Children's Writers of the Hudson Valley fall event was a self-editing workshop focusing on query pitches led by Katherine Jacobs, a Senior Editor at Roaring Brook Press, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. Katherine was engaging, informative and a pleasure to spend the afternoon with.

The first free writing exercise was to describe your work in progress and then using that writing sample, find words or phrases that get to the core of your story. We discussed what is the most important thing your reader needs to know about your story on the first page followed by another writing exercise.

We examined the first page of two published works and discussed the important information that we learned from them. Katherine then explained the written pitches for those two published works, one for a picture book and one for a novel.

Katherine Jacobs

Using information from our prior writing exercises, we worked on our own pitches.

There was a discussion about competitive titles and agents. Everyone left with a handout with more advice for their work in progress.

We look forward to seeing Katherine again!

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