Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts by Mina Witteman

33 1/3 – Swordfishtrombones (via erik at booktunes)

Posted on September 16, 2011

Don’t you just love Tom Waits? I know I do, and so does Booktunes. Booktunes is about to publish the next batch of great books with music, starting with Harstad’s Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? and — Yay! One of my favorite writers — Andrew Smith’ In the Path of Falling Objects. Two epic novels with epic playlists! Stay tuned! Awaiting the new Tom Waits album I put his Swordfishtrombones on the recordplayer and took David Smay's booklet by the same name from the ever growing Booktunes pile. The book is part of the 33 1/3 series, a collection of books each focusing on one more or less legendary album.  The book is divided by chapters titled the same…

Categories: A Bit of Everything

Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Conference Now Open for Registration

Posted on August 31, 2011

Venue? Check! Speakers? Check! Program? Check! Flyers? Check Website? Check In short: The first SCBWI NL conference is now OPEN FOR REGISTRATION Are you interested in writing and illustrating for children and do you need guidance? Are you already writing and illustrating for children, but do you wish to hone your craft with the best teachers out there? Are you interested in how publishing in the Netherlands and in the global market works? Would you like to know about literary agents, about app building, about book making, and above all about writing and illustrating for kids and teens? Now is your chance! On Saturday November 5, 2011 the conference The Netherlands and the Big World Out There: Publishing in the Global Market will be…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, YA books

Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fun Stuff and Happy Days in LA

Posted on August 14, 2011

Of course there was also fun stuff in LA, not just scary stuff. Jon Scieszka was there to whip up spirits and he did that with his usual fervor. Scieszka writes because he loves to make kids laugh, he says. His inspiration comes from all the weird stuff that happened when he was growing up with his five brothers. You can read all about his adventures growing up a Scieszka in his autobiography Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka. He’s also very serious about his job as a children’s book writer. He advocates reading and literacy as fervently as he loves making the world laugh. In 2008 he was appointed the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and he has…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Scary Stuff

Posted on August 9, 2011

The 40th Summer Conference of the SCBWI is over. I’m at the airport lounge looking out over the airport, seeing friends leave the hazy city that shimmers in the background. It makes me sad that I have to leave, knowing that it will take quite a while before I will see most of my friends and my mentors again. While writers work in solitude and –usually– love the quietness, just like I do, there is nothing more energizing than being around kindred spirits. We’ve shared a lot these past week: break-throughs, new publications, leaps-forward, staggering discoveries, stirring workshops, riveting keynotes and above all continuing friendships and the making of new ones. Being at the conference as the Regional Advisor of the Netherlands chapter was…

Categories: Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: , , , , ,

Boys Don’t Read! Boys Don’t Read?

Posted on July 21, 2011

There is a lot of buzz going on about boys not reading. Authors, publishers, librarians, booksellers, they all rack their brains to find ways to get them to read. Particularly young adult boys seem to have fallen in a deep and dark literature-less pit. I’m an inveterate optimist if it comes to reading, even when it concerns boys. They do read. But there are some preconditions. First of all the book needs to be good. It needs to be a stories about stuff they’re interested in. Young adult boys have a vast range of topics that appeal to them: girls, scooters or cars, experimenting, hanging about… Not necessarily in that order. Just kidding. There are way more issues that grab them. The young adult…

Categories: Books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Platform Presence: Delight or Fright?

Posted on July 17, 2011

Recently Google announced and launched its social network platform: Google+. It’s a cross-over between Facebook and Twitter and lots of people put in a word or two about it. Some like it, some don’t, some love it, some hate it. But whatever you feel, it’s there and you can’t evade it. For me the important question was: do I genuinely need another social network to add to my visibility? That seems an easy question. Right? You could argue that, in order to get as much buzz around The Writer Known As Mina Witteman as possible, I should jump at Google+. Eventually, Google+ will lure in public from Facebook, just like the Zuckerberg trap lured in public from MySpace and Hyves. It will, no doubt,…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: , , , , ,