Sam Altmann was the lucky recipient of a mentorship with Stacy McAnulty in the Writing With the Stars contest.  Here is what Sam had to say about her experience. 

I am infinitely grateful to Tara and Becky for hosting this contest, and to the incredible Stacy McAnulty for choosing me and my work. We now have a dedicated Stacy bookshelf in our home library, and are eagerly awaiting the release of Brave.

Stacy and I connected immediately, and set up a plan for the next few months. Our goal was to have three polished manuscripts and a kick-ass query letter. Initially, I sent her my top manuscripts, and she weeded through and shared her thoughts on marketability. That was the first thing I learned; you can write a humorous, grammatically correct, well-paced picture book, but without that “hook”, it’s probably going to remain in your practice pile. And that’s okay.

Genius writing ability aside, one of the many other reasons I was so thrilled to work with Stacy was her approach to editing and revising. She pushed for big revisions when something wasn’t working, and, at times, we needed to completely overhaul a manuscript. I learned to look at character motivation, plot, and pacing from so many different angles. For certain manuscripts, I wrote three or four different endings before choosing the one that fit the best. Sometimes we would think something was working, but in the end, it just wasn’t right. So we’d start again.

I am happy to say that we met our goal of having three polished manuscripts and a strong query letter. But the most important thing I learned is to always keep writing. Again, some manuscripts might live in the practice pile, but others may just become “the one”.

I am so appreciative of Stacy’s infinite patience during this mentorship. Under her guidance, I feel as though the quality of my writing has improved, and I have a better knowledge of marketability and industry insight. It’s a tough industry, but I feel so lucky to have someone as brilliant as Stacy in my corner.

Stacy was the muse behind the contest and so I want to triple thank her for all she has done to pay it forward.  Be on the lookout for her next two books. Brave, the companion book to Beautiful, is out October 3, 2017 (illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vreithoff) and Earth on Jan. 23, 2018 (illustrated by David Litchfield).