About Carol's School and Library Visits

Most often, Carol is asked to give a general presentation that answers the questions she's asked most often: Where do you get your ideas? How many times do you revise? How did you get your start as a writer? This session, called Making a Living Telling Secrets and Lies, emphasizes how she uses bits and pieces from her life, but change them to suit the stories she tells.

Popular discussion/instructional sessions (suited for smaller groups) include writing workshops or reading workshops.

In the writing sessions, limited to a maximum of 30 students, the author and students focus on a key component of writing: the opening hook, voice, characterization, sensory detail, or metaphor/simile. The sessions begin with many examples, taken from the best of literature, that model these important elements. A discussion of what choices the author made to create effective lines or scenes. Then students have the opportunity to use what they've learned to compose their own pieces of writing.

The workshop's message is this: reading great books can teach us how to be good writers. If we look closely--if we read the way writers read--we can learn how effective writing is created.