I offer a variety of programs for students of all ages, including adults. I have spoken at many schools and writers’ conferences.

My credits

I am a Berkeley-trained attorney who practiced federal appellate law for nine years. I am also an author of five novels for teens, one for pre-teens, and eleven humorous chapter books for children, and an award-winning humor columnist for the Aliso Viejo News and Laguna Niguel News sections of the Orange County Register. I moonlight as a stand-up comic.

My first young adult novel, Storky: How I Lost My Nickname and Won the Girl, was published by Penguin in 2005 to a starred review from Publishers Weekly and great reviews from Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and ALA Booklist. It was published in translation in Germany, Serbia, and Italy. It’s also an audiobook and an e-book.

In 2005, Writer’s Digest Magazine published my how-to article, “Breaking All the Rules,” which was featured on the magazine’s cover. The magazine published my sequel to that article in 2007.

In 2007, Penguin published The Band, my trilogy for teens, and my teen novel Stuck in the 70s.

The three books in my humorous series for children, Supernatural Rubber Chicken, were published in 2008. These books got great reviews on CNN and in newspapers all over the country. More importantly, they’re a big hit with boys and girls.

My eight-book humorous series for children, Zeke Meeks, will be published in 2012.

References are available upon request.

Programs for students:

The long road to publication. I will share my writing process– from ideas to outlines to rough drafts to critiques to many, many revisions– and then speak of my persistence on the path to publication. I will also show how a book gets illustrated, three different covers for my first book, and “galleys” and “Advanced Reading Copies,” which are made before the books go to print. And I will show off my fun rubber chicken collection.

Fiction writing workshop. I guide students of all ages through writing exercises on creating compelling characters, conflict, a central theme, and a satisfying conclusion, combined with a general talk on my writing process and on what makes a good book.

How to make readers laugh. I teach children and teens how to write humor, with guided writing exercises based on the tips I’ve shown them. I use my fun rubber chicken collection to make points about writing humor.

Programs for adults:

The hidden benefits of humorous books. What teenagers can learn from so-called “happy” books. (Just don’t tell them they’re learning.)

How to write a novel when you have no spare time. If I could write a novel while pregnant with my third child, others can write one, too. Here’s how to make the time, and make the most of that time.

How to write for any kind of audience. From an author who’s done it all, from dry legal briefs, to short newspaper columns, to how-to magazine articles, to short stories in literary magazines, to novels.

Common rules of writing and publishing which are begging to be broken. Based on my Writer’s Digest Magazine articles. Which rules must be followed and which rules should be disregarded.

How to add humor to a serious manuscript or write a funny one.

How to write and sell a series.

I am also happy to tailor a presentation to suit your group’s needs.

My fees are low, and discounted further for groups in Southern California.

D. L. Garfinkle

I grew up in L.A., the second of four children. I’ve always loved to read and write.

I majored in Economics at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, went to UC Berkeley’s law school, worked as an appellate bankruptcy lawyer in San Diego, married, had three children, and wrote my first novel.

Now I’m a fulltime homemaker/writer in Orange County, California. Penguin has published five of my young adult novels, and Mirrorstone (owned by Hasbro) and Capstone have published my twelve children’s books. In addition to writing books, I write a humor column for local sections of the Orange County Register and how-to articles for magazines such as Writer’s Digest Magazine. I hope you enjoy my writing.

Writing stuff for your friends is cool too. When I worked at the bankruptcy court, I liked to write funny articles for the newsletter, poems honoring people who were retiring, and skits for our annual holiday party. It was just fun. Now I like to send my friends a funny holiday letter every year, keep a blog, and post a lot on websites and e-mail lists.

But this article is about writing for publication. So here’s what works for me, anyway:

1. Get your butt in that chair. I love to think about my novel. It’s a thrill to complete a novel. It’s the actual writing of it that I don’t like so much. Put it this way: It never gets to the level of a day at Disneyland (unless we’re talking about a humid day on a holiday weekend in the summer). Most times it feels a notch above cleaning the kitchen. But to get to that completed novel stage, you have to write the thing. Write every day, or almost every day, whether the spirit hits you or not. Sit down and do it. Just a half-hour to an hour a day should give you a completed young adult novel within a year.

2. You don’t have to know every bit of the plot before you write. I like to know a little about the main character, what he wants, what stands in his way, and whether he’ll get what he wants. In other words, I know the beginning and end, but have no clue about the middle. You can kind of plot it as you write. And rewrite. And rewrite. Sigh. If only I could be an author without actually writing a book.

3. Take a writing class or join a critique group. Knowing that I had to read 8 pages of my stuff every other week motivated me to keep writing.

4. Actually listen to your critique group. You don’t have to do everything they say, but don’t let your ego be so big or your psyche so sensitive that you won’t revise your work according to their suggestions. Hint: you can name your antagonists after any mean people in your group.

5. Finish your book already. I’ve seen too many people with a bunch of half-completed manuscripts. It’s really, really hard to write an entire book. I hate being in the middle of one and trying to figure out where to go. And rewrites are a huge pain in the neck. But if you want to get published, you have to learn how to see a novel through from beginning draft to polished final product.

6. Getting published is not about who you know or what the hot trends are. It’s about writing a great book. (I mean, unless you’re Madonna.) Until you’ve crafted the best work you can, don’t even think about agents, or publishers, or whether Toby Maguire is too short to play your main character on screen. (Okay, I’ve thought about it. Shia LaBeouf is Storky, and one of the Olsen twins is Gina. But it’s not like I called their publicists to see if they’re available. Not lately, anyway.)

7. Never give up. I revised Storky approximately 4.6 zillion times—including after it got me a wonderful agent, after it won the San Diego Book Award, and after it went to the editorial board at a big publisher. I collected lots of rejections, including nasty, name-calling letters, impersonal forms, and a heartbreakingly close call. But I used those rejections to make my book stronger and stronger, until it finally sold. And– this sounds so soppy and clichéd, but it’s true– now I couldn’t imagine a better publisher for my book than Putnam.