HELLO?! WAKE UP! ARE YOU SLEEPING IN?

I bet many of you are either a) sleeping in or b) very exhausted and cranky from staying up late on Day 7. LOL! 🙂 Congratulations to everyone who participated in my 4th annual NATIONAL PICTURE BOOK WRITING WEEK (AKA “NaPiBoWriWee”!)

Many of you successfully achieved the event’s goal – to write 7 picture books in 7 days. The purpose of the event is to encourage everyone to FINISH first drafts of book ideas you’ve had bouncing around in your head but had been procrastinating on actually writing out. Now you all have either seven (or at least a couple) first drafts that you can revise later in the year. YIPPEE!

Today’s blog is our wrap up blog. I am also going to announce the winners of our 2012 NaPiBoWriWee Contest! (Winners were chosen at random for a bunch of cool prizes!)

IMPORTANT NOTE: I normally post at my “regular” blog. The link for that blog is here: 

https://paulayoo.com/blog

(Another Important Note: If you want to comment on my regular blog, you have to have a separate login user name and password. The regular blog and the NaPiBoWriWee are separate WordPress accounts.)

Today, I posted a blog in my regular blog site about how today, May 8, 2012, marks the debut of the paperback release of my YA novel GOOD ENOUGH!

The news about that is posted in this link here:

https://paulayoo.com/blog/?p=1321

And now, let’s get back to our NaPiBoWriWee wrap-up blog and find out who won this year’s contest!

(Keep reading after the jump for all the updates & winner announcements!)

NAPIBOWRIWEE 2012 WRAP UP THOUGHTS

I’ve had a blast “meeting” many of you on my website. Thank you so much for your kind comments and enthusiasm for this year’s event. Some of you are NaPiBoWriWee veterans, and several of you were first timers!

I was thrilled by how many of you managed to get 7 picture books done in 7 days! Yippee!

And I was equally thrilled by how many of you managed to get at least ONE picture book done. I was proud that you wrote every day, and even if you did not finish 7 books in 7 days, you at least have some strong ideas and character profiles ready to continue working on for the rest of the year.

As for me, I DID manage to squeeze out 7 picture books in 7 days. It was a lot harder this year due to my work meetings, social obligations with friends visiting from out of town, and a computer meltdown that caused an emergency visit to the Apple Store on Day 6. LOL! Sigh. 😛

But I had brainstormed ideas and plot points before the event, so that helped as I slammed through my drafts. Unfortunately, a few picture books were supposed to be written in poetry form, and I had to settle for writing them in prose. But I was pleased with the prose versions and think they might remain that way now. One book STANK – I realized it was a half-baked idea. But that’s the point of NaPiBoWriWee – sometimes you don’t know if your idea works or not until you write out the whole draft. Another book made me realize it was NOT a picture book but a potential middle grade novel. Again, I never would have discovered that had I not started writing!

So all in all, I’d say this NaPiBoWriWee was another rousing success! 🙂

######

WHAT WILL HAPPEN FOR THE REST OF 2012?

POSSIBLE NAPIBOWRIWEE REVISIONWEEK?

Many of you have expressed interest in doing a post-NaPiBoWriWee “revision” week. I think that’s a great idea. I will have to wait until I know my schedule for TV work for the rest of the year and then I will pick a week later in the year. I’ll also brainstorm how the week should be structured. One thought is that we spend 7 days revising each book. 7 revised picture books in 7 days? Obviously you can’t revise a book in one day, but maybe this Revision Week will give us a first start. You often need to revise a book several times over, so this revision week could help us figure out how much revisions need to be done per book. 🙂 I’ll keep you posted and make announcements later in the spring/early summer. Any comments or suggestions you have will be greatly appreciated. You can comment here or email me (paula at paulayoo dot com).

CHARITY?

One of you suggested we have a future NaPiBoWriWee charity event where somehow we raise money by writing every single day. 🙂 I loved that idea and will research it for possibly our fifth NaPiBoWriWee in 2013. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll definitely research it for you. 🙂

HOUSEKEEPING TIPS

My Own NaPiBoWriWee?

Some of you who were unable to participate May 1-7 are thinking about hosting your own NaPiBoWriwee for another week in June. I’ve already talked to those of you interested in doing that. I just ask that you please acknowledge this website and this specific blog for folks to read our past blogs for advice and encouragement and promote it here: https://paulayoo.com/napi Thank you! 🙂

Can I Post Your NaPiBoWriWee 2012 Logo On My Blog/Website?

The simple answer is YES. I only request that you please give credit to my designer, SANDY TANAKA somewhere in your blog for her art work. This was a professional logo design job, so I want to make sure my designer gets full credit for her work. Thank you! 🙂

NAPIBOWRIWEE REUNION?

We meet every year at the annual national Society of Children Book Writers & Illustrators conference in early August. This year’s conference is August 3-6, 2012.

I usually make an announcement on this blog and on Twitter about the exact date and time. We meet in the hotel lobby of the conference. Past, present and future NaPiBoWriWee folks are invited. Please follow me on Twitter @paulayoo and keep checking my YOO INK news headlines box on my website’s main page for updates on when this year’s reunion will take place.

Until then, please check out the SCBWI website for info on the conference: http://www.scbwi.org/ For more info on the conference itself, following their blog here: http://www.scbwiconference.blogspot.com/

######

NAPIBOWRIWEE 2012 STORE

You can also purchase souvenir T-shirts, coffee mugs and notebooks at our official NaPiBoWriWee 2012 Cafe Press store. The logos this year were designed by designer Sandy Tanaka.

The store link is here: http://www.cafepress.com/npbww2012

######

NAPIBOWRIWEE 2012 CONTEST WINNERS

FINALLY! Here are the winners of this year’s contest. I will be emailing the winners this week with details on how to arrange for your prize deliveries.

The winners were chosen AT RANDOM from names drawn in a hat. One of my cats, Beethoven, volunteered to oversee the drawing…

Beethoven even helped with the actual drawing of the winners’ names, so you have photographic evidence that this was a FAIR contest. 🙂 All names were drawn AT RANDOM from the hate.  I really wish I could give EVERYONE a prize, but sadly, these were the names Beethoven the cat drew from the hat. 🙂

####### 

And without further ado… HERE ARE THE WINNERS. CONGRATULATIONS!!!

(I will contact all the winners via email later to make arrangements for your prize deliveries.)

— Winners of a NaPiBoWriWee 2012 souvenir coffee mug!

CATHY MEALEY

MARGARET (SPYSCRIBE)

LAURI MEYERS

— Winners of a NaPiBoWriWee 2012 notebook!

DONNA KOPPELMAN (KOPPELMOM)

JULIE ROWAN-ZOCH

— Winners of a NaPiBoWriWee 2012 souvenir T-shirt!

DANA CAREY

DIANE O. (DENA)

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of the paperback edition of my first picture book, the IRA Notable SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIXTEEN SECONDS: THE SAMMY LEE STORY (Lee & Low ’05)

CARLA J. (CARLA)

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of my second picture book, SHINING STAR: THE ANNA MAY WONG STORY (Lee & Low ’09)

NANCY T. (Nantanslp)

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of LISA WHEELER’S SPINSTER GOOSE: TWISTED RHYMES FOR NAUGHTY CHILDREN, illustrated by Sophie Blackall (Atheneum Books 2011)

EMILY SCHOENFELDER

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of KELLY DIPUCCHIO’S CRAFTY CHLOE, illustrated by Heather Ross (Atheneum Books 2011)

JENNI B.

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of HOPE VESTERGAARD’S NOTHING RHYMES WITH ORANGE: PERFECT WORDS FOR POETS, SONGWRITERS, AND RHYMERS, edited with Bessie G. Redfield (Perigee Trade 2008)

JANIE BILL

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of CAROLYN CRIMI’S PUGS IN A BUG, illustrated by Stephanie Buscema (Dial 2012)

ROMELLE GUITTAP

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of ANN WHITFORD PAUL’S WORD BUILDER, illustrated by Kurt Cyrus (Simon & Schuster 2009)

MINDY ALYSE WEISS

– Winner of a personally autographed copy of ANN WHITFORD PAUL’S WRITING PICTURE BOOKS: A HANDS-ON GUIDE FROM STORY CREATION TO PUBLICATION (Writer’s Digest Books 2009)

HOLLY R. (HJREED) 

CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN TO OUR WINNERS! Again, I wish I could give EVERYONE a prize. So for those of you who did not win this year, I give you a lot of POSITIVE VIBES for your future writing endeavors this year! 🙂

######

Well, that’s it for this year’s NaPiBoWriWee 2012 event. I cannot thank everyone enough for making this such a FUN event. I’m so excited by everyone’s writing progress. I also feel that this event benefitted my own writing because I have been procrastinating myself on getting some picture book drafts down on paper. So I’m equally as excited as everyone else by this week’s productivity!

A reminder: I am back to posting blogs on my REGULAR blog at: https://paulayoo.com/blog

BUT… I will post future NaPiBoWriWee blogs at this site (https://paulayoo.com/napi) about some of the topics we discussed above in this blog entry, including info on our possible first ever NaPiBoWriWee Revision Week and our reunion at the SCBWI conference in August.

Until then, please visit my website regularly. I post the latest Blog Schedule and News at the YOO INK section on my front page. I also tweet @paulayoo.

######

THANKS FOR PARTICIPATING IN NAPIBOWRIWEE 2012!

Now I highly recommend everyone take a BREAK today. BUT remember… I believe writers should write every day. So starting tomorrow… WRITE! You can just write a journal entry, or brainstorm new ideas or even start thinking of revising what you wrote this week. Just. Write. Every. Day. That’s what I want! 🙂

As always… HAPPY WRITING! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! 🙂

Much love and hugs,

Paula 🙂