empowering young writers online

I love to hear from you

July 2, 2011

love to hear from you

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Leave me a message by selecting “Comments” at the bottom of this box.

Category:

Class messages, Welcome

100 Comments

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Comments on: "I love to hear from you" (100)

  1. arielle said:
    March 7, 2011 at 10:58 am

    I love this blog! It is soooo awesome!

  2. Diane Owens said:
    March 7, 2011 at 2:39 pm

    Thanks Arielle!

  3. The Purple Pheonix said:
    April 12, 2011 at 11:20 am

    I will write soon, but I wanted to ask you this: do you know of a website like this, but for music instead? (I want to know, because I’m a pianist).

  4. The Purple Pheonix said:
    May 3, 2011 at 6:03 pm

    Hey Diane, I’ve been writing a lot, and I’ve come up with a problem. I need a name for a wolf.
    He’s completly black, except for a teal-green magic mark on his forehead, and darker teal-green patches of fur going up his legs and tail like fire (and, due to his magic bond with his master, he can actually set _fire_ to his paws!).

    P.S: He’s undead, (but his master’s friend helped him use mind magic to be able to think again,) though he was named before he died.

    • The Purple Pheonix said:
      May 3, 2011 at 6:04 pm

      Oops. “_fire_” was supposed be “fire” in bold.

    • Diane Owens said:
      May 3, 2011 at 10:15 pm

      Glad to have you back, Purple Pheonix and super glad to hear you’re writing. Love the wolf – it’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into this character – I bet you can picture it whenever you close your eyes. As for the name, hmmm…. I think it deserves something with a history, don’t you? Lupus means wolf in Latin and Loki was a tricky mythological fire god. What if you combined those names somehow? Maybe Lokus or Luki?

  5. The Purple Pheonix said:
    May 4, 2011 at 11:03 am

    You know, the way you write, you make yourself sound like Maria from “The sound of music”. 😀

  6. Donna Jones Koppelman said:
    July 8, 2011 at 7:54 am

    What an awesome site, Diane. You’ve done a great job here. It looks fantastic. You offer tons of helpful and practical advice. Teachers must be LOVING it. I will share with my teacher peeps, as well. Congratulations!

  7. The Purple Pheonix said:
    August 30, 2011 at 2:03 pm

    Just so you know I’m going to keep coming all school year, because this site keep getting better and better! I shold have come here more during summer. 🙂
    P.S: I just started school last week 😀 (still home school)

    • Diane Owens said:
      August 30, 2011 at 2:45 pm

      Thanks – I’m glad to hear it. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see on the site (as long as it’s writing-related).

  8. The Purple Pheonix said:
    March 24, 2012 at 1:46 pm

    When was the last time someone other than you & I (& the Blue Dragon) posted something?

  9. purplephoenixwriting said:
    December 26, 2012 at 12:03 am

    Hi.
    So I’ve had writer’s block for the last month and a half, and I need your help.
    My problem is that while I have been having plenty of time to plot out the story (my favorite pastime; I already got the book planned out 🙂 ), I can’t seem to be able to write it all together smoothly.
    I don’t know how to get all the characters introduced, and can’t seem to get myself motivated enough to do it. 😦
    Any advice?

    • Diane Owens said:
      December 26, 2012 at 6:31 pm

      Plotting and writing are two different brain activities so it’s hard to go from one to the next without stumbling around a bit at first. It’s fine – and normal! – if your story doesn’t flow right now. You can always go back and smooth out the rough patches later. The truth is most writing sounds rough and choppy at first. Sometimes I’ll rewrite a sentence twenty times before it does exactly what I want it to do. I’d bet most writers would tell you the same thing.

      As far as characters, they should be introduced in the first 25% of your story but you don’t want to introduce them all at once. If you throw too many names at your readers too soon, they’ll get confused and frustrated. Introduce your most important characters first. Have them do things that show off and highlight their personalities as well as their roles and reasons for being in the story. It’s best if your characters contrast with each other. If they don’t, then maybe you don’t need as many characters as you think. If you find that a couple of your characters are doing or acting very similarly, it could be you only need one character for that role.

      That’s all pretty general, so if you have more questions, just let me know.

      One more trick for writers’ block. Set a timer for 10 minutes and just write. Not your story, not any story at all, just whatever comes into your mind. Write or type as fast as you can – no stopping allowed. This almost always works because it gives you “permission” to let all the words out – even the ones that might not be as perfect or as smooth as you’d like them to be. But sometimes, once you get past all the choppiness, there’s really good flow on the other side! Sometimes I’ll pretend I’m my main character when I do this. I still won’t write the story itself but I will write about however I think my main character is feeling about things that happened in the story or other things that might happen in the type of life I imagine the main character has. Usually I’ll find that after a solid ten minutes of that, I’m just itching and anxious to get on with telling the “real” story I have in mind. Good luck – if you try it, let me know how it goes.

  10. Lillyann Irene E. said:
    January 15, 2013 at 7:23 pm

    Hi mrs.owens.I love allyour books.I am from mrs.smiths class this year.

    • Diane Owens said:
      January 15, 2013 at 8:54 pm

      Hi Lillyann. I’m glad you love the books. I hope you share your stories on here too. I had fun in your class today – all those made-up characters and all that trouble really impressed me!

  11. Lillyann Irene E, said:
    January 15, 2013 at 7:26 pm

    Well i got to get ready.Goodnight.

  12. Mikaela said:
    February 28, 2014 at 2:23 pm

    Hi Mrs. Owens. I am trying to start a writing/book club, But I have some problems:
    1. I am home schooled, so I only get to see friends at church
    2. I live across town from all my close friends and I don’t live near any kids in my neighborhood
    3. I have five little brothers and sisters and two of them are toddlers and one is in K-5 and the other is in first grade and so it would be really hard for my mom to have 10 kids over
    4. two of my friends live 45 minutes away from town and they probably wouldn’t be able to come
    5. I am in fifth grade and I take a while to get my schoolwork done
    6. I have been saving my money for a year so I won’t be able to buy the books
    Do you have any suggestions? I have been trying to start a club since I was 7, but it hasn’t worked out yet. 😦 I really want to start one.

  13. Mikaela said:
    March 3, 2014 at 10:12 am

    Only one of them.

    • Diane Owens said:
      March 3, 2014 at 1:37 pm

      If your friend’s okay with sharing her writing and opinions on-line, you could discuss each other’s writing right here.

      For the book club, I’d be more than willing to set up a separate area on the site where you could discuss books. Maybe others will join in on the discussion.

      To cut down on the expense, you could discuss books you can get from your library. If your local library is part of a library system, they may have more than one copy of the book you want to read so you could both check it out at the same time. If not, maybe you could read e-books. They’re usually less expensive – especially this week. Check out my latest post, “World-wide Celebration of Ebooks.” Follow the link or look for it on the home page. Many of these e-books come in a format that allows you to read them on your computer so you wouldn’t need an e-reader.

  14. Mikaela said:
    March 3, 2014 at 3:34 pm

    Thanks! I would like it if you put a special place for the book club. It would really help! One of my other friends have a computer but I don’t think he’s allowed to get on the internet. I could ask his parents though! Thanks!

  15. Mikaela said:
    March 3, 2014 at 5:05 pm

    I have a book already! It is The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. Here is a link to read it online: http://www.bestlibrary.net/fantasticfiction/The-Magicians-Nephew/. It is awesome!

  16. Mikaela said:
    March 19, 2014 at 8:24 am

    Would it be all right if I write about my favorite movie series?

  17. Mikaela said:
    March 19, 2014 at 9:27 am

    And I have another question. Is it ok to put tons of discriptions in your story? Because in chapters five and six of The Magic Sword of Trestia It has lots of discriptions.

    • Diane Owens said:
      March 19, 2014 at 12:32 pm

      Description is great, but tons is probably too much. Too much description will slow the pace of the story because while you’re describing things, nothing is actually happening. This can tire readers so you might want to keep that in mind. I suggest being selective with your descriptions – choose those that create a mood or a tone or a feeling then see if your story needs the rest. Too many descriptive words in a row can actually steal strength from each other. You can find more about description on the page How Your Story Feels

  18. Mikaela said:
    March 19, 2014 at 2:48 pm

    How many kids are currently posting on here?

  19. Mikaela said:
    March 24, 2014 at 4:29 pm

    Today my little brother Christian posted some stuff!

  20. Mikaela said:
    March 24, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    Me and Christian use the same computer so he might reply to one of my comments when it is awaiting moderation. Just to let you know.

  21. Mikaela said:
    March 31, 2014 at 10:40 am

    Is there any way to add pictures to your story?

    • Diane Owens said:
      March 31, 2014 at 12:57 pm

      A picture would have to be sent as an attachment and you can’t add attachments to comments. If you saved your picture on the internet in a public place (like photobucket.com) I think you could copy/paste the URL address of your picture into your submission. I’m not positive this would work but I’m fairly certain. Make sure you have your parents’ permission first. Also, I’ll only accept original artwork. I don’t want to take the chance of accidentally posting someone else’s copyrighted work.

  22. Mikaela said:
    April 1, 2014 at 9:57 am

    Me and my friend have decided to write a story together, but we each like different genres! I like Fantasy and science fiction, but my friend likes realistic fiction and historical fiction. We tried to do a little bit of fantasy and realistic fiction together, and I wanted to put magic in it, but she is not allowed to write about magic. Do you have any ideas about how we can work together to write a story?

    • Diane Owens said:
      April 1, 2014 at 9:41 pm

      I think fantasy and realistic fiction would be a fun combination. There’s a couple different ways you could do this. You could create a character who leads a double-life – part “fantasy-world” and part “real-world” like an undercover super-hero or a modern-day mythological being. Then you could show how one part of her world keeps intruding on the other part and take turns writing the main story-line. Or, you could develop two different characters who end up meeting – you could write the fantasy character and your friend could take the real-world character. Then, together, you could tell the story of how these characters meet and how their lives become intertwined.

  23. Elsy said:
    April 6, 2014 at 2:19 pm

    Hi! This is just a really random idea that came to me when I was half asleep, but anyway:

    I think it would be cool if there were polls on the site linked to stories people have posted, particularly ongoing ones. Things like favourite character from a specific story, best plot-twist from a specific story, favourite chapter of specific story etc..
    Writers could post their own polls (about their own stories) and others could vote. If we left a comment under a question, we could do the maths after a while to see the percentage?

    I don’t get why my brain gives me stuff like this, I really don’t…

    • Diane Owens said:
      April 6, 2014 at 11:54 pm

      Elsy, I love this idea! Thanks for the suggestion (and I love that your brain gives you this stuff!) I’ll tell everyone about it on the Home Page and also include it in the instructions. I can put the polls at the end of the submissions – or throughout the ongoing stories – so readers can respond as they read.

  24. Mikaela said:
    April 11, 2014 at 8:06 am

    Can you respond to your own polls?

  25. Mikaela said:
    April 28, 2014 at 1:50 pm

    Oh, okay.

  26. Mikaela said:
    April 29, 2014 at 9:47 am

    I have an idea. We have group projects for stories, maybe we could have a group project for poems, too! Like, someone could write the first verse, someone else could write the second verse, and so on. Also, maybe you could give us a topic to make a poem to write about and all the writers on here could each write a verse! (Or something like that) Just an idea. I do it with my friends sometimes.

  27. Elsy said:
    May 20, 2014 at 12:05 am

    Hello! So I was just wondering, when’s this site’s next birthday? I was wondering if when it did come around we could do something cool or fun or unusual? I don’t really have any ideas for what we could do, but other people might…

    • Diane Owens said:
      May 20, 2014 at 9:45 pm

      I’m up for cool, fun and unusual! I’ll put up a post and see if anyone has any ideas.

      • Mikaela said:
        May 23, 2014 at 11:50 am

        We could all have a goal to finish one of our stories by Feb. 3rd and post it and you could post all of our stories first thing in the morning and we could all read and comment on the stories at the same time, such as 1:00 pm in the afternoon. then we could all work on group projects together and you could watch us and post them as soon as they are written.

  28. Paul said:
    June 3, 2014 at 5:44 pm

    Hi, Can you add a Kid-friendly Writing Rubrics & Checklists for Grade 6? We will be homeschooling our 6th grader this year, and I love the format that you have used for the 3-4-5 grade rubrics.

  29. Mikaela said:
    July 7, 2014 at 5:19 pm

    If I ever get one of my novels on here published and copyrighted, will you have to remove it from the website?

    • Diane Owens said:
      July 7, 2014 at 10:58 pm

      As soon as your writing is posted on the site it is considered published and also copyrighted. You own the rights to everything you write. If your publisher would like me to take your writing off the site, I would respect their wishes. If you made the same request, I would also respect your wishes. Everything you create and choose to share on the site is yours and always will be. I hope that answers your concerns. If not, please let me know.

      • Mikaela said:
        July 8, 2014 at 8:18 am

        Thanks! This helped me a lot. Now I don’t have to worry about having my writing taken off this site unless the publisher says.

  30. Mikaela said:
    September 29, 2014 at 2:48 pm

    I found this awesome writing contest at: http://www.youngvoicesfoundation.org/. I am entering it!

    • Diane Owens said:
      September 30, 2014 at 2:23 pm

      Thanks for sharing! I’ll announce it on the home page in case anyone else wants to enter. I’d wish you luck but you don’t really need it. You’re an awesome writer. Please let me know if you win!

    • Mikaela said:
      October 1, 2014 at 8:35 am

      usually they have a theme that you have to follow but this time they don’t.

  31. galaxywriterxox said:
    January 4, 2016 at 2:26 pm

    Hello! I have just found this website and it looks really cool! I cant wait to share my stories here.

  32. Mikaela said:
    March 9, 2016 at 3:03 pm

    Mrs. Owens, I’ll be turning 13 next month, will I be too old for this site?

  33. Mikaela said:
    March 10, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    Ok, that’s great! 😀

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