Teen Writing Week: Day One
Today was the first day of our teen writing week with author Leanne Hall. Workshop attendees drew creative inspiration from the Love and Devotion exhibition, focussing on the use of description, and how to use the different senses to create a feeling of place in their writing.
Our special industry guest for the day was Tye Cattanache - Marketing Manager for Children's Marketing and Publicity at Penguin. Tye explained that her role means that she gets to read a lot of books - at least 5 a week! She then promotes these books to teachers, to try and make the school curriculum more exciting for students.
Tye gave the scoop on the inside of the publishing industry - which is not always as glamorous as you might think. It's not all famous authors and book launches, there's a lot of meetings and negotiations...
"Imagine you've always wanted to go to Disneyland. And when you get there you go to Sleeping Beauty's castle and think 'Wow! This is where the magic happens!' And then you lean up against a wall only to discover that it's made of cardboard, propped up by wood."
The good news is that at the moment, most publishers in Australia are accepting unsolicited manuscripts, and they love getting good writing from young people. What better way to publish and market a YA book, than to have one that's written by a teenager? So get writing, and keep writing!
