Expected April 2016:
Categories: A Bit of Everything
Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing
If you’re interested in finding out more about my writing and me, hop on over to Cynthia Leitich Smith’s amazing Cynsations blog. I was interviewed by the wonderful Angela Cerrito, author of The Safest Lie.
Categories: A Bit of Everything
What have I been up to?
This summer, I finished the second book of my Dutch middle grade series Boreas and the Seven Seas (Boreas en de zeven zeeën). The first book came out in June and reviews are coming in now summer is over. It seems kids, adults and reviewers alike love this new adventure book that tells the story of 12-year-old Boreas, who has to go on a round-the-world trip with his parents.
On a sailboat.
For three years!
Needless to say, Boreas isn’t psyched about this adventure. Which 12-year-old wants to spend three years on a small boat with his parents? Boreas wants to hang out with his friends, go to soccer games, start high school after summer break. But he has no say in the matter, no choice. They will board the Argo, an old First 42, and they will sail.
Initially, Boreas is bored out of his mind, but then he ends up in adventure after adventure, from colliding into a young refugee’s raft in the coastal waters of France, to a tractor race on the Channel Island Sark, to a scary stowaway adventure on a Spanish fishing vessel with his best friend Merel, who joins them during summer break.
What do reviewers say?
Boekenbijlage wrote: “Boreas’ story is informative and thrilling and makes you forget on which beach you are. You experience the waves and the wind as if you are there, and you feel Boreas’ doubts after he starts seeing the fun part of traveling. Action, drama, bantering and mortal fear. It’s all in there. And breathlessness, but that’s mainly with the reader. Because you want to read this book in one go, even if it’s hard with over two hundred pages.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you like sailing or traveling, if you’re a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. No one will regret choosing this book.”Kidsweek gave Boreas four stars and wrote: “Great about this book is the adventurous voice. The lapping of waves, the nightly tingling of boats in a port, the panic at sea when the wind hurls the boat to a broach. It’s like you are there and feel the wind pull your hair.”
Readers on Goodreads give it high ratings and say sweet things about the book and about how they couldn’t put it down.
Make your reader sweat!
For my earlier novels, I received similar compliments. How does that work? Make your readers feel as if they are living your story? My secret is that I make sure I have experienced what my protagonists experience. If my main character trudges through a scorching desert, you can rest assure that I have trudged through a scorching desert. Does he have to find his way on an icy and creepy-misty mountain? You can bet I wandered through ice and snow and mist on a mountain. Does my protagonist tumble down a waterfall in a kayak? Then you know, I cascaded down a waterfall head-first, too (on raft to be honest, not a kayak). I experience firsthand what my main characters go through and I can relate to the pumping of the heart, the chills that run up your spine when you go under in churning waters, losing track of what’s up and what’s down, and not knowing if you’ll ever surface again.
Alive, that is.
That I put into my books. That feeling, that hair-raising notion of excitement when doing things you’ve never done before.
With Boreas it was an easy ride as I am a sailor, too. My dad taught how to sail before I could even ride a bike, and when we were old enough he bought a bigger boat and we roamed the seas every weekend and every holiday. Like Boreas’ parents, my parents sailed the seven seas for twelve years and I had the pleasure to join them often. Boreas’ adventures at sea, are my own adventures pulled from my memories. Broaching while spinakering, climbing the mast at mid-sea, feeling how the swell and the waves roll the boat.
Now what?
Now I have finished the second book of the series. It’s scheduled to come out early 2016 and I am eagerly awaiting the comments and feedback of my awesome editor Marlous. A nail-biting adventure in itself.
I thoroughly enjoy writing Boreas, because while writing his adventures I can feel how the wind pummels my face and how it blows my mind free. I can taste the spray of water on my chapped lips, smell the briny tang of the sea, hear the high-pitched voices of dolphins telling me a story.
My hope is that Boreas and the Seven Seas will travel the world like Boreas does and that one day everyone everywhere can read my books.
If you read Dutch, Boekenbijlage featured an interview with me to find out what drives me in writing.
Categories: A Bit of Everything
IllustWriter – Picture Book Writing for Illustrators and Writers
Mina Witteman
Posted on June 25, 2015
Illustrator, would you like to write your own story?
Writer, do you want to hone your picture book storytelling craft?
Here’s your chance! Take the next step and learn from two experienced colleagues, both children’s book writers, editors and creative writing teachers. Become an IllustWriter!
IllustWriter is a 7-week (6 sessions) course in writing picture books for illustrators by Sieneke de Rooij and Mina Witteman.
Zie IllustrAuteur voor de Nederlandse versie van deze cursus pentenboek schrijven voor illustratoren.
- Registration: Click here and fill in the form!
- Date/Time: October 1, 8, 15, – 1 week break, but the work goes on – october 29 and november 5 and 12, 2015 (backup date november 19, 2015); 10.00 – 13.00 hrs
- Location: ABC Treehouse; Voetboogstraat 11 – Amsterdam, 1012 XK
- Course fee: € 325,- excl. BTW (VAT), € 393,25 incl. BTW (VAT)
- This course will be taught in two groups. Mina Witteman wil lead the English speaking group; Sieneke de Rooij coaches the Dutch illustrators/writers.
In this course, we’ll work on the creation of a strong story. We will explore character and perspective, plot and storyboarding, tension and humor, climax and ending, interplay between text and image, and killing your darlings until you have a quality manuscript that is ready to submit. All theory will be illustrated with examples from Dutch and English/American picture book writers.
In between classes, you will work on home assignments. Supported by positive feedback from your teacher as well as the other participants, you will learn to closely review your own work.
During these seven weeks, you will increase your insight and sharpen your strategies for writing good stories, based on firm knowledge of theory and practice of picture book writing. And we guarantee: you’ll have a lot of fun on the way.
© The ‘IllustWriter’ course and workshop are developed by Mina Witteman and Sieneke de Rooij
Categories: A Bit of Everything
IllustWriter – a 7-week Course Picture Book Writing in Amsterdam
Mina Witteman
Posted on June 20, 2015
IllustWriter – picture book writing for illustrators and writers
Illustrator, would you like to write your own story? Writer, do you want to hone your picture book storytelling craft?
Here’s your chance! Take the next step and learn from two experienced colleagues, both children’s book writers, editors and creative writing teachers. Become an IllustWriter!
IllustWriter is a 7-week (6 sessions) course in writing picture books for illustrators by Sieneke de Rooij and Mina Witteman; oct-nov 2015, Amsterdam.
This course will be taught in two groups. Mina wil lead the English speaking group; Sieneke coaches the Dutch illustrators/writers.
Click here for more information!
Click here for registration!
Categories: A Bit of Everything
What’s on my mind Facebook wants to know. That’s an easy one: books are what’s on my mind and one in particular. Next month my Dutch middle grade adventure novel will hit the shelves. And this is what it will look like:
Action and adventure at sea!
The story?
12-year-old Boreas is convinced his parents are getting divorced. They’ve been acting weird, lately. Secretive. When they, at last, tell him what’s going on it’s not a divorce but something else and it will uproot Boreas’ life just as much: the family is going on a three-year, round-the-world trip on their sailing boat. Everything’s arranged, up till the final details like enrolling Boreas into a distance learning school.
At first, Boreas hates it. He misses his friends and his home, but soon he is plunged into adventure after adventure. Even more when his friend Merel joins them during summer break. At the end of that holiday, Boreas’s parents give him a choice: does he want to go back with Merel and live with his grandparents or does he want to stay?
Boreas and the Seven Seas is the first book of a three-book series filled with thrilling adventures like man overboard and climbing into the crow’s nest during a storm, but also with a young Sudanese refugee on a raft and a hair-raisingly thrilling tractor race. That makes the book suitable for all adventurers – whether they can sail or not!
Boreas en de zeven zeeën
ISBN 978 90 216 7438 4
Cover: Annemieke Groenhuijzen
Categories: A Bit of Everything
Tagged: Adventure, boreas, middle grade, Mina Witteman, Ploegsma, refugee, seven seas, tractor race
Happy New Year all!
I haven’t been around much lately and I can tell you why. Together with my SCBWI colleagues from France, Belgium, Germany+Austria and Switzerland, I have been super busy with the preparations of the second SCBWI Europolitan Conference. This time, the conference will take place in my fair home town Amsterdam on Saturday April 4 and Sunday April 5. Two days jam-packed with presentations, panels, hands-on workshops and opportunities to share your work with publishing professionals from all over the world.
It’s going to be awesome, this conference.
For one, because we have a faculty line-up to die for. I mean, what would you do if you could meet and work with two of the coolest agents in the world: Brooks Sherman of The Bent Agency, and Marietta Zacker of Nancy Gallt Literary Agency? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could show your portfolio to HarperCollins’ creative director Martha Rago and work with her in a small group on how to present yourself and your portfolio? Of listen to the amazing Greet Pauwelijn, the publisher of Book Island. Or talk to the incredible Jill Santopolo, editor with Philomel Books, who will let you in on the secrets of what editors tell their sales force when it comes to our books?
We Need Diverse Books’ Marieke Nijkamp will deliver the opening keynote ‘Here Be Dragons!’ and lead a panel of publishing pros through the realms of diversity.
We are thrilled that they – and many more cool people who love creating children’s books as much as we do – are joining us at 42. That’s right: 42. That’s the venue where it will all take place. And isn’t 42 the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? That heralds well, doesn’t it?
Our motto will be CREATIVITY IN BLOOM – GROWING BEYOND BOUNDARIES. So, leap out of your comfort zone and venture beyond boundaries, your personal boundaries and your creative boundaries! Join us in Amsterdam and let your creativity bloom like the Dutch tulips. We promise you that you won’t be disappointed!
For more information and registration, visit our conference pages: SCBWI Europolitan Conference. Follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook group Europolitan Happenings.
Categories: A Bit of Everything
Mina Witteman 