2017 NAPIBOWRIWEE DAY EIGHT – CONTEST WINNERS! (May 8, 2017)

GUESS WHAT?!

YOU DID IT!

WE DID IT!

WE WROTE 7 PICTURE BOOKS IN 7 DAYS FOR NAPIBOWRIWEE 2017!

CONGRATULATIONS, EVERYONE! 🙂

And of course, congratulations to everyone who at least WROTE EVERY SINGLE DAY! Even if you did not complete all 7 books, you wrote every day and did not give up all week! I am so proud of all of you!

How is everyone feeling? Let me tell you about my day!

PAULA’S 2017 NAPIBOWRIWEE DAY SEVEN RECAP (May 7, 2017)

Okay. So here’s what happened. I battled Writer’s Block today. I was exhausted from a busy work week, a stressful week not knowing if our WGA union would go on strike or not (thankfully NOT!), and also keeping up with everyone’s comments on this website and maintaining and updating each blog for our NAPIBOWRIWEE week. AND I was trying to write my own 7 picture books in 7 days!

So far, I was pretty happy. As I have mentioned before, I was unable to do 7 for 7 for the past few years due to many complicated schedule conflicts. This year, I was very happy that I was able to write 6 for 6. A few of them were non-fiction stories, and so far, I will say that ONE of these non-fiction drafts is definitely going to be revised later this month and submitted to my book agent. So I’m very excited about that!

The other fiction books I wrote were mostly fun writing exercises for me and good practice for poetry writing. I think one of them might become something more, but I have to focus on my non-fiction for now. My dream one day is to have a fiction picture book published (especially one about a cat of course LOL!) but my “brand” is non-fiction so I have to focus on that for now.

Anyway speaking of non-fiction… so today I did not know what I wanted to write about. So I looked at my list I had prepared earlier of possible future non-fiction historical figures to write biographies about. Some of these ideas included politicians because I’ve always wanted to write a picture book biography about a representative in Congress or a Senator.

So as I started researching some of the political names on my research list, I stumbled upon a very specific childhood story about one politician that made me immediately gasp and ask, “WHY HAS NO ONE EVER WRITTEN A PICTURE BOOK ABOUT THIS BEFORE?” This childhood anecdote reminded me of another wonderful picture book biography that focuses on ONE EVENT instead of the entire life story of a historical subject – AMELIA AND ELEANOR GO FOR A RIDE by Pam Munoz Ryan and illustrated by Brian Selznick (Scholastic 1999).

I fell into the rabbit hole and did more research and came up with a skeleton draft. In a way, I think this draft is more like a glorified outline, but I’m tired, it’s been a long week, and I created NAPIBOWRIWEE so I decided I WILL count this skeleton draft as Book No. 7 because I am the Boss of This Event. LOL. 🙂 So there! Hahah! But I’m so excited about this story that I am going to pitch it later to my book agent as a SECOND BOOK PROPOSAL.

This is why I love/hate doing NAPIBOWRIWEE – it is soooooo much hard work but at the end of the day, forcing myself to write 7 stories in 7 days helps me discover future books that I can develop and nurture from these very rough drafts.

I’m glad I didn’t throw in the towel – I was very tempted to give up today and just eat chocolate and watch a lot of Food Network TV shows instead. LOL!

So my final NAPIBOWRIWEE lesson for everyone is…

And again, I can’t thank everyone enough for your daily comments. Because of my work schedule and commute, I couldn’t respond individually to everyone but if my website had a LIKE button, I would have hit LIKE on all of your wonderful posts! Thank you so much! I treasure our NAPIBOWRIWEE community and friendship!

So now it’s time for YOUR reward… who won this year’s contest drawing? Keep reading below!!!!!!

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2017 NAPIBOWRIWEE CONTEST WINNERS

Every year, I put a list together of everyone who participated in NAPIBOWRIWEE. In the past, I literally typed everyone’s names up and printed it out and cut them up into little strips and had my cats pick the names out of a hat. Seriously. You can look in my archives to see photos of that. Like this one below with Oreo, Beethoven & Charlotte:

But over the years, this event has gotten so big that the ole names-in-a-bowl doesn’t work anymore.

As a result, now I’ve gone hi-tech. Full disclosure for honesty and because I love the movie QUIZ SHOW and want to make sure my “game show” follows FCC federal regulations on gaming fairness LOL 🙂 so I used this website to help me randomly pick our winners: http://www.miniwebtool.com/random-picker/

IMPORTANT NOTE: Dear Contest Winners – I will be emailing you ASAP to make arrangements for your prize deliveries, so please keep an eye out for my email in your in-box sometime this week!

DRUM ROLL… HERE ARE OUR CONTEST WINNERS!

Winner of an autographed copy of Jason Gallaher’s WHOBERT WHOVER:

WHOBERT WHOEVER, OWL DETECTIVE By Jason Gallaher, illustrated by Jess Pauwels (Simon & Schuster July 2017)

MONICA MAYPER

Winner of an autographed copy of Courtney Pippin-Mathur’s DRAGONS RULE, PRINCESSES DROOL:

DRAGONS RULE, PRINCESS DROOL by Courtney Pippin-Mathur

ARTELLE LENTHALL

Winner of an autographed copy of Terry Pierce’s MAMA LOVES YOU SO:

MAMA LOVES YOU SO By Terry Pierce, illustrated by Simone Shin (Little Simon 2017)

ANGELA KUNKEL

Winner of an autographed copy of TERRY PIERCE’s MY BUSY GREEN GARDEN

MY BUSY GREEN GARDEN By Terry Pierce, Illustrated by Carol Schwartz (Tilbury House 2017)

CATHY HOOKEY

Winner of an autographed copy of Emma Otheguy’s Martí’s Song for Freedom:

MARTI’S SONG FOR FREEDOM by Emma Otheguy, illustrated by Beatriz Vidal (Lee & Low Books, July 2017)

LAUREN KERSTEIN

Winner of an autographed copy of Andrea J. Loney’s BUNNY BEAR:

BUNNYBEAR By Andrea J. Loney, illus. Carmen Saldaña (Albert Whitman & Co. 2017)

JOY MAIN

Winner of an autographed copy of Paula Yoo’s SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIXTEEN SECONDS: THE SAMMY LEE STORY:

SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIXTEEN SECONDS: THE SAMMY LEE STORY by Paula Yoo & illustrated by Dom Lee (Lee & Low Books 2005

LORA “LOLO” LAFFAN

Winner of an autographed copy of Paula Yoo’s SHINING STAR: THE ANNA MAY WONG STORY:

SHINING STAR: THE ANNA MAY WONG STORY by Paula Yoo & illustrated by Lin Wang (Lee & Low Books 2009)

CHRISTINE EVANS

Winner of an autographed copy of Paula Yoo’s TWENTY-TWO CENTS: MUHAMMAD YUNUS AND THE VILLAGE BANK:

TWENTY-TWO CENTS: MUHAMMAD YUNUS AND THE VILLAGE BANK by Paula Yoo & illustrated by Jamel Akib (Lee & Low Books 2014)

JOAN LONGSTAFF

Winner of an autographed copy of Paula Yoo’s GOOD ENOUGH:

GOOD ENOUGH by Paula Yoo (HarperCollins 2008)

JENNIFER G. PREVOST

Winner of an autographed copy of Paula Yoo and Shirley Ng-Benitez’s LILY’S NEW HOME & WANT TO PLAY?:

Lee & Low’s DIVE INTO READING early emergent reader series featuring The Confetti Kids Books #1 and #2, written by Paula Yoo & illustrated by Shirley Ng-Benitez (Lee & Low Books 2016)

ALEXANDRA DONAHUE

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE Notebook:

Our official NAPIBOWRIWEE notebook! Pick yours up here: http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

MEGAN JONES

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE MousePad:

http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

CINDY CLEMENS

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE Button:

http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

TRACEY BROWN

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE Travel Mug:

http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

ROSEMARY WHATLEY

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE Coffee Mug:

DARCEE FREIER

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE Tote Bag:

http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

NICOLE TURNER

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE BEACH BAG:

http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

DIANE O’NEILL

Winner of the Official NAPIBOWRIWEE T-Shirt:

http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

DAVID MCMULLIN

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CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS!!!! Please stay tuned – I will email everyone this week to make arrangements for your prizes!

The final official NAPIBOWRIWEE blog announcing our official 2018 dates will be posted on May 9, 2018 at 9 AM EST/6 AM PST. Please note – our event is ALWAYS the first week of May. Every May 1-7 is our NAPIBOWRIWEE event.

IMPORTANT WEBSITE NOTICE: This website goes on hiatus from June 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017. I will post new updates in 2018 before our May 1-7, 2018 event. You can always keep up on all my books & TV & music adventures here at my main website: http://paulayoo.com

If you want souvenirs from our store, please visit it here: http://www.cafepress.com/paulayoonapibowriweeclassic

You can also keep up with our official FACEBOOK page:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/109169309167365/

You can also keep following me on Twitter @paulayoo for future NAPIBOWRIWEE updates.

And I’m on youtube! Subscribe to my channel here for all my fun violin videos and cat videos! https://www.youtube.com/user/PaulaYoo

And if you want, you can also follow my cat OREO and his baby siblings Beethoven & Charlotte here: https://twitter.com/oreothecatyoo

Grateful thanks again to everyone who participated. I’m very honored and moved by everyone’s fun comments posted on all our blogs and by your hard work and enthusiasm and kind words. You guys ROCK!

And of course, a big THANK YOU! to our Guest Authors/Rock Stars Jason Gallaher, Courtney Pippin-Mathur, Terry Pierce, Emma Otheguy and Andrea J. Loney!

Now go get some rest. You deserve it. Please keep me posted on what happens to your 7 books and your future writing adventures! As always, remember… HAPPY WRITING! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT!

xoxox

Paula Yoo

May 8, 2017

21 Comments »

  1. Thank you, Paula! I appreciate the group push to write every day. It helps me to focus. Happy writing/rewriting!

  2. Yay! Yay! Thank you, Paula! And… the random picker picked me for Emma Otheguy’s Martí’s Song for Freedom! Yay! 🙂
    I finished 6 and 3/4 drafts plus an outline for my 7th. I will finish the 6th and 7th this week. My manuscripts included a NF PB Bio about a political figure from years past who I’ve been researching for a while and the rest of the books were fiction. I tried different formats (A challenge I present to myself each year). I love NaPiBoWriWee!
    Thank you!

  3. Have said it before, but thank you so much Paula for organising this week and I’m really excited about receiving Twenty Two Cents! Can’t wait to read it! I’ve loved this week and it has both exhausted and energised me at the same time! NEVER SURRENDER!

  4. Yay! I did it – 7 drafts in 7 days! I was a winner even before I found my name under the coffee cup. (My tea will be so much sweeter!) Thank you so much, Paula, for this wonderful event! This was my first year, and I’m a FAN! Looking forward to next year.

  5. Paula, thank you so much! And Thank you to all the guests for every pearl shared! And to all the other participants for such a fun and encouraging writing e-atmosphere! First year, will definitely become part of my spring therapy and I’m giving myself credit for 6 3/4 drafts, last day got busy celebrating my daughters birthday and is really a bunch of idea sorta written out!

  6. Hooray! Talk about the icing on the cake. I can’t wait to see the goodness that comes from everyone’s NaPiBoWriWee drafts. I’ve enjoyed this tremendously, it was a pleasure being surrounded by such inspiring and creative individuals.

  7. Hugs everyone and thank you for your kind words. I hope everyone had a fun time! Contest winners – I just emailed everyone to get your snail mail info for prize delivery, so please send me your info ASAP. Thank you! Everyone rest up – you deserve a break this week! Keep me posted on how your Lucky 7 Manuscripts for 2017 NAPIBOWRIWEE do this year! xoxo Paula

  8. This was a fun and productive challenge. Thanks for putting it together, thanks to the contributors for some quality posts, and congratulations to the swag winners. Happy writing and good luck, everyone!

  9. Well, ending on the weekend was really hard for me. I was travelling and though I’ve “written” a few picture books while driving in the past, it just didn’t work out this year. BUT… I did manage four complete drafts plus two alternate versions of day two, so that’s…I dunno, 4.55? Day 4 is so cool that I added it to my June planner for dummying and revision. Awesome event. Thank-you and thanks to all the contributing authors. Congrats, Paula on your drafts and congrats to all the winners!

  10. Congratulations to all the winners! Sorry that I haven’t kept up with posting but the last three days have been crazy around here. I completed my 7th draft at 2:30 this morning and I have it in my NaPiBoWriWee 2017 folder, but am not counting it as having been completed on time.

    Thank you for doing this again, Paula… I love NaPiBoWriWee as it gives me the kick in the butt I need to take the ideas that I come up with during StoryStorm (aka PiBoIdMo) and expand them into rough drafts. As always there are a couple that are more suited for chapter books and I’ll be fleshing those out in the next few weeks as I find that taking a break from writing picture books after NaPiBoWrtWee helps me come back to them with a fresh perspective.

    I will definitely be back for 2018!!

  11. So Paula, Please just return the Three (3) Tuna Steaks being air-mailed to Beethoven; as he promised me a prize spot in the final drawing day. Thanks ?.
    And to everyone else, thank you for sharing with me. I truly feel blessed to be a part of something big. Also, this is just the beginning, time to write, revise, rewrite… rinse, lather repeat… Godspeed.❤️

  12. CONGRATS TO ALL the prize winners–that includes ALL OF US FOR COMPLETING SUCH AN AMAZING WEEK OF WRITING!!!! *APPLAUSE!!!* I know I feel like a winner: I now have a treasure trove of books to revise and work on this year–and all from NAPIBOWRIWEE!!! GOOD LUCK to EVERYONE as we work throughout the year! And CONGRATS ESPECIALLY to Paula: YEA! You completed ALL 7 this year! (And THANK YOU for the GET WELL wishes, Paula! TOO SWEET!) I hope we are all inspired to keep writing every single day, no matter how much or how little it might be. YEA, NAPIBOWRIWEE WARRIORS!!! See you next year!

  13. This inspiring event is enough, but to find I’d won Courtney Pippin Mathur’s Dragon’s Rule Princesses Drool as well and that Paula will happily ship it to me on the other side of the globe, what a bonus! Thank you once again Paula and guest bloggers for such an interesting, challenging and productive event. Can’t wait till next year 🙂

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