Meet Betsy
Welcome to my virtual studio. As both a writer and designer, I’m driven by a curiosity about the world. In my studio, I take that curiosity and use it to create new worlds. I write for kids and adults as well as a good deal of freelance non-fiction. Explore to find out more about me, my books, and my thoughts on writing as well as the thoughts of friends who stop by the studio. If you’ve got something you’d like to share reach out to me through the contact form. I’d love to hear from you. Scroll down to read what’s been happening in the studio.
Katzenberger: Fear & Friendship in IT WILL BE OK
The theme of the story—that we can be afraid of things that appear very small to others but feel very big to us—seems obvious to me now. But I don’t think I knew what I was trying to say until many, many revisions into the writing . . .
Judy Blume’s Puzzle
Judy Blume takes on first drafts like jigsaw puzzles. Instead of plotting everything out ahead of time or beginning on page one and writing through to the end, Blume begins by . . .
New World By Candlelight
Ryan LaSala talks about revealing the innovative details of rich fantasy worlds without it becoming an info dump.
Review: A Wreath for Emmett Till
The story it tells and the moving way it tells it is well worth a review, but what I want to talk about is the structure. Emmett Till’s story is told in a heroic crown of sonnets. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. A crown of sonnets is a sequence of fifteen interlinked sonnets in which the last line of each is the first line of the next and the final sonnet is made up of the first lines of each of the preceding fourteen poems.
Multiplication in Revision
Elena K. Arnold and Brandy Colbert drew from their experience writing numerous novels, many award-winners, to give an outstanding webinar on revising for plot. One suggestion, that stood out is to look where multiplying the voices in a scene might add richness to your work. Typically writers . . .
AMY CHU & JANET K. LEE, BRINGING SEA SIRENS TO LIFE
Last year, graphic novel sales drastically outpaced the growth rate of other print publishing. More and more readers are drawn to the marriage of art and storytelling that goes into books like Sea Sirens, a new middle-grade novel about a Vietnamese-American surfer and her water-loving cat. Spine sat down with Eisner Award-winning illustrator Janet K. Lee as well as writer and co-founder of Alpha Girl Comics Amy Chu to talk about bringing their graphic novel to life. . .
Spencer Hyde, Drawing on Personal Experiences for Waiting For Fitz
“Everything we do is an absurd ritual unless you understand the meaning behind it.” — Spencer Hyde
From wedding ceremonies to hand washing, if society understands the reasons behind an action, it is considered "normal." In his new book, Waiting for Fitz, Spencer Hyde tells the story of Addie, a teenage girl struggling with OCD. She is admitted to a psychiatric ward where she finds friendship with a schizophrenic boy named Fitz. Together the two learn . . .
The Iceberg
Culture is like an iceberg. There are cultural markers like holidays, food, clothes, etc. that stand out as the the small tip of the iceberg obvious above the water’s surface. What we need is work that represents the mass of details, nuances, and variety that truly define a culture. No culture is a monolith, nor is any culture explained simply by their most obvious difference from mainstream white society, but these details are concealed below the surface. Writers have to do the work to get at the base of the iceberg if they want to portraying authentic minority characters.
- From an SCBWI panel discussion with David Bowles, Linda Sue Park, and S.K. Ali
This idea was attributed to a talk Park attended by Leah Henderson. A perfect example of the goal of Words Unbound: share in the community, share the wisdom and we all grow together.