Riding the Wind: Writing for Children & YA
Do you aspire to write fiction for children and young adults? Do you want to hone your skills or simply want to find out what an author’s day is like and how she turns an idea into a published book? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, Riding the Wind will take you where you want to go.
Award-winning Australian author and teacher Rosanne Hawke offers a fresh approach to learning to write by sharing her knowledge through her experience – this is a textbook cum memoir, with a personal touch that mentors the reader. Riding the Wind distils her practice and wisdom in both writing and teaching, making this a valuable guide which offers an extensive range of topics and realistic encouragement to writers. Rosanne writes from a faith perspective, bringing the spiritual and the practical together in a way accessible to readers of all persuasions.
Published 2019
Morning Star Publishing
Australia
What people are saying
Riding the Wind has something for everyone. For aspiring writers, it is a practical ‘how-to-do-it’ manual of the highest quality. For people who read rather than write literature, it is a book of literary theory, imparting viewpoints on what literature is and how the thing we love is produced. For everyone who is curious about the writing life, here is a chance to find out. By the time I had finished, I felt that I had read the literary autobiography of someone I had come to admire very much.
Emeritus Professor Leland Ryken, Wheaton College, Illinois
Riding the Wind is a thoroughly researched how-to-write book, well-informed by the author’s long career as a writer and teacher, full of practical advice, and written with humility and grace. Novice writer-readers, particularly those interested in writing for children and YA, will find it an accessible clear guide: more experienced writers will be refreshed and provoked into rethinking their own work and process. Unashamedly Christian in its approach, it encourages all writers to pursue excellence and to ride the Wind.
Anne Bartlett, author of Knitting
Riding the Wind is a book to be loved, to have page corners folded, passages underlined, notes scribbled in the margins. Carry it with you on your writing journey; there is no guide as gracious as its author Rosanne Hawke.
Saskia Capon, tutor and post graduate student
Riding the Wind is an eminently readable discussion about writing from a very successful practitioner. It is generous, sensible, practical and wide-ranging. The tips and insights evident throughout would be of help to any writer, no matter how experienced.
I enjoyed Rosanne’s comments on chapter endings, the use of twists in a narrative, the interpretation of rejection notices, and on how to recognise when a manuscript is ready to send off. The whole chapter on editing was particularly fine.
She reveals how she learnt to be a writer herself, overcoming difficulties, always prepared to listen to criticism and rewrite from scratch if necessary. This aspect of the book will be particularly encouraging for aspiring writers.
Eleanor Nilsson, author and academic
Students of writing will appreciate the wealth of information you have provided here, Rosanne, and appreciate a forensic examination of the writing process through your own work ... it reads beautifully.
Amanda McKenna
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