So. Risk.
The idea is that when we know the spine of our work and our Big Why for writing, we're ready to challenge ourselves. To take risks.

Now, the risk may be different with each project, but I'm willing to bet that underneath it all there is one consistent risk that you take over and over, one that is related to your spine as a writer.

I know that was true for the friends that I emailed with about this topic, and it was Jo Knowles who expressed it best. Now Jo, in case you don't know, is the author of Lessons from a Dead Girl and Jumping Off Swings. Click on those links if you don't know the books. You'll see that Jo does not shy away from risk. And yet, when Jo and I talked about risk, it wasn't the subject matter of her novels that came to the fore. It was something larger.

Listen to Jo:
For me, the risk is finding the truth. That’s the hardest and scariest part. Because always the truth, whatever it is, has something to do with the core of who I am and what I fear or don’t understand. I think the stories I write, whatever they are, are attempts to face whatever that thing is. To me, there’s always a risk in that. But there’s a reward, too.


Have you met Jo? She's delicate. Petite. Soft spoken. Here's a picture of the two of us. Notice how my head is twice the size of hers. She is a tiny thing. And nice, to boot.

I thought knowing this might add context for when you read this next response of hers. In our email exchange, I asked her how she knows when she's really risking something, when she's stretching and challenging herself.

Her reply:
I think more often it’s how I know when I’m not stretching myself. Usually my agent tells me. And usually it is as simple as this: “Jo, you still haven’t gotten angry yet. You need to find your anger!” This has become a bit of a joke with us because Barry knows I have anger “issues.” As in, I don’t get angry very often, and when I do, I’m very quiet about it. I’m not sure I even know how to be loud. But there are ways to be loud without literally being loud, and that is what Barry is really getting at.

It’s at this stage that I go back to question one , because usually the truth lies in something I am angry about but haven’t figured out how to express. For example, maybe I am angry that bad things happen to good people, and how weak and powerless that makes me feel. Or maybe I’m angry with myself because I wish I had done something differently but I can’t change time, and how frustrated and ashamed that makes me feel.

So a lot of times, it’s an inner anger that I have to harness, and then let my characters, much as I love them, feel just as strongly. Only when I’m rewriting a scene I've been struggling with that suddenly makes my face prickle with heat and my heart race with fear or, yes, anger, do I know the truth is bubbling and I’m there. That’s when I’m stretching.

Does this remind you a bit of Kate's reply from our last discussion? Me, too.

So, I'm going to ask you again. (Because this is the sort of question we need to ask ourselves a second time. And a third. And maybe a fourth or fifth time, too.)
Where's your risk?
In what ways does that risk relate to your Big Why?
And how does it come into play in the work you are doing right now?

So, we talked about challenge in relation to form here and here.
And we talked, too, about the spine of the work and the spine of the writer (the Big Why that keeps you writing).

I'd like to go back to challenge and risk for this post, because two of the friends I chatted with after my first challenge post wrote to me about the challenge for writing deep emotion. Both of these women are smart and honest writers. Both of them are kind and sincere people. And both faced the challenge of getting at the emotional depth of their characters by doing something that is out of character for themselves: getting angry.

Let's start with Kate Messner.
Many of you know Kate from her books Spitfire, Champlain and the Silent One, and the recently released The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. Kate and I talked about that last novel and the challenge that kept her writing.

Here's Kate:


Here's what Kate said:
I've given some thought to your question about taking risks & facing challenges in writing, and my brain keeps circling back to a particular scene. It's the chapter of THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. set in the doctor's office -- the one that my editor kept sending back to me. I revised and revised and revised it -- at least I thought I revised a lot -- but every time the manuscript came back to me for revision, there would be a little note on that page.

"I'm just not getting a sense for what she's feeling."

"There needs to be more tension here."

"I still don't think the emotion in this scene feels true."

"Still feel like I'm not really getting a sense for what Gianna is going through here, how intense it is."

Those notes eventually brought me back to the rejection letters I'd received on an earlier draft of the book. More than one mentioned the way I seemed to be "protecting" my characters too much, keeping too much control over the story. It was that old problem, back again.

Who among us hasn't faced that challenge? Identifying a "problem" persistent in our work and wondering if we are up to the challenge of fixing it.

I know I have certain weaknesses. I find it terrifically hard to write action scenes. My characters are most at ease standing around talking about what it is they hope to do and how it might feel to do it. One of the biggest challenges I face is actually making them do the thing on the page. The temptation is always there to start the next chapter by saying "And once that was done, they were able to talk about what they'd do next." Writing action scenes is a skill I want to develop, and one of my WIPs is an exercise in doing so.

But Kate's challenge was a different one. Yes, it meant approaching a category of writing she felt she wanted to do better -- but it also required something deeper than writerly skill.

I understood enough about story to know that I'd have to put my characters through some pain, but when it came time to actually do that, I kept backing off. The third or fourth time I got the manuscript back from my editor, I knew I'd need to approach that scene differently.

So I packed up my laptop and left the house on a Saturday morning, not when I usually write, and set up shop in a corner of our public library where no one ever goes. I opened that chapter and only that chapter with the intent of really going there, going to the doctor's office and getting deeper into Gianna's mind than I had before. And I realized that she wasn't just sad about her grandmother's failing memory. She was angry.

Angry...isn't an emotion that comes easily to me. I live in a family of pretty happy, relaxed people. But angry was what I needed, and so I sat in that corner of the library writing a little, but mostly just thinking and fuming, over what was happening in Gianna's life. And finally, the words started to sound right to me. I finished the new chapter with tears running down my face. And I was tense -- uncomfortably tense -- for an hour after I got home. But I finally felt like I had gone where I needed to go, and the scene finally felt true to me. Interestingly enough, it's the scene I've heard the most comments about since the book was released - the one that people say has made them cry. And I get that now. It made me cry, too.

Kate not only had to take the risk of writing a difficult scene (will it work? won't it?), she also had to risk a part of herself, her own deep emotion, to get there.

On Thursday, another slow-to-anger writer talks about the risks in her work.

But now it is your turn:
What is at risk for you in your work?
How does it relate to the spine of the piece?
To your spine as a writer?

Yesterday, Sara Lewis Holmes and I talked about establishing a formal challenge for yourself when constructing a work of fiction -- how such a challenge can serve as motivation, can underscore the spine of the book, and can structure the work in such a way as to make it manageable. Here's that conversation. And if you're not sure what I mean when I say spine, I'm using it in a particular, Twyla Tharpian way, which you can find explained here.

There were tons of interesting comments in the trail and since I brought up poetic forms yesterday, I thought I'd highlight these two contributions from the poets in the crowd

kellyrfineman said this:
As I've said before in writing and in workshops I've presented, I find working within actual forms to be very freeing - closing off a lot of doors leaves you inside a very stable-feeling room, so that other levels of crazy challenge seem tackle-able. As when I wrote the plot of Pride & Prejudice as a double sestina for the Jane project. Absolutely crazy? Yep. And I loved every moment of it, even as I knitted and unknitted stanzas time and again. I think that working with poetic forms establishes a solid frame on which you can hang words, and you are free to be daring in your word choices because you have the strength of that frame to hold you up. At least that's how I envision it.

liz_scanlon would agree, I think, though she also feels the frustration with the challenge that Sara described yesterday:
I think rhyme serves as both spine and challenge in many of my manuscripts. It gives me somewhere to go when I'm starting out, sort of sets the latitude lines, thank god, because things are not pretty when I'm a free-range chicken, and allows me to actually finish a draft. That probably stinks but at least the skeleton's there to mess with.

And that's when rhyme becomes a challenge -- sometimes feeling like a fun little puzzle (a la Sara's Rapunzel) and then eventually, almost always, a madness-making worry. "Why on earth have I boxed myself in like this," I scream and gnash my teeth. Forgetting that I boxed myself in because otherwise I'd still be cleaning out the silverware with a whole bunch of wild ideas in my head.


What do you think?
Poets, do you agree?
Novelists and picture book people, do the confines of a form offer you freedom?
And does the challenge of the form propel you in your writing?

More on this coming up next time.

Okay, you say, isn't just showing up and putting words on the page challenge enough?

I think that for some of us, just getting the story down is pretty challenging, so I'm not going to discount that for a second. But I also think that focusing on that challenge is also what can be debilitating for many writers. Sometimes we get too wrapped up in it.

Sometimes it helps to have another challenge to focus on.

Like when I take my kids to the local candy shop, Delish*. They want everything in the place and are easily overwhelmed. I have to put on limits: a budget. Nothing that is in the shape of body parts. Nothing that will crack your teeth. The more we narrow things down, the more manageable the candy store -- and the more likely the kids are to leave with something yummy. (Yes, we once left the shop with nothing when indecision led to tension led to one child whacking the other with a dino-pop.)

Talk to poets who write in form. Writing about something as huge as, say, death can be overwhelming. But many will tell you that writing a sestina about death puts some limits on what they can say, it forces them to pare down, to think within a particular framework, to distill all that could be said into something smaller, more precise, and ultimately into something so much more individual.

After my post about challenge, I got a few emails from friends. Sara Lewis Holmes and I talked about formal challenges. Sara, you may know, is a poet and a novelist and is the author of Letters from Rapunzel and the new book, Operation Yes.**

Here's the cover of that book, so I can break up all this text with a pretty picture.

Nice, huh?
Okay, now here's something that Sara said in our conversation:


I asked about the "puzzle" of Operation Yes and another really important point came out -- the formal challenge was linked directly to the spine of that book. Here, I'll let Sara tell it:


Then Sara asked if I also think about form and challenge.
I do.

Now, the form part of things doesn't seem to start as early as it does for Sara. I start with voice and character and a lot of rambling. But pretty soon, I'm thinking about the overall mood/tone of the piece and that, for me, is directly related to the form or shape of the book. I start thinking about what that book would feel like to read -- both emotionally and physically. I know how long I want it to take to read and how many pages and what that should feel like in the hand. And part of my challenge is to get the story to conform to the material form of the book that I've imagined.

But more about me and my challenges later.

Right now, I'm wondering about you.
You've got your writer's spine and your project spine.
Do you have any sense of the form of your work in progress?
Does that form present a particular challenge for you?
Does the form relate to the spine of the project?

And I'm also curious -- if you are one of those worry types -- does focusing on the puzzle of form help you "get over yourself"? Does form present a challenge that helps you attend to the work instead of to yourself?




* Did you follow the link to the article about Delish? Yes, its owner is a 16 year old boy. How cool is that?

** In the interest of full disclosure, I read and loved Operation Yes so much that I blurbed it. Thought you ought to know.

*** Sara also said this about Community as spine: It was why I wanted to work with Cheryl Klein. In our first conversation, she used that word "community" and I was smitten.

Just a quick follow-up.
The Burlington Bookfest was wonderful. Fun and funny and great to see so many people who care about kids and books. You may already have seen this photo on Jo and Kate's blogs, but I'm posting it anyway, because it is a great reminder for me of the day, and because my hair looks good.




That's Kate Messner, Jo Knowles, and Julie Berry seated. Tanya Lee Stone and I are standing. You can tell that Tanya is the seasoned pro amongst us. She's the only one wearing color and holding her book in the photo.

Our panel led to great discussion about the different ways that each of us work -- a topic that I love thinking about, as you may know. And I'm going to be thinking about it more in the next few days, because after my post about challenges, I got some really interesting emails from a variety of writer friends and I want to share with you just what each of them had to say.

How about we meet again on Thursday and we'll start the conversation, okay?

Are you still thinking about spines and challenges? Good. Keep thinking. We'll talk more about that soon. Today? Just a little current event.

If you live anywhere near the Burlington Vermont area, take note. This weekend is the Burlington Book Festival at which there will be a bucketful of children's authors and illustrators, including Jo Knowles, Tanya Lee Stone, Julie Berry, Kate Messner, and me all speaking on a panel. We'll be talking about writing for kids -- the craft, the business, balancing writing and the other parts of our lives. The panel is on Saturday, September 26th at 1pm at the Fletcher Free Library. Come by and say hello.

So, we've got these two things to hold onto now.
1. Our own writerly spine. Our Big Why. Our Reason for Writing.
2. The spine of the work. That little hold-in-your hand notion that we can return to whenever we're feeling lost.

Feeling good?
I'm glad.

Because once we've got those two things firmly in our grasp, it is time to jump. To take risks. To try something wild and new and frightening.

What that is, only you know.

For some of us, frightening is in the content of the work. The subject matter, the issue at hand, is one which scares us so much we have to slam our laptops shut and go rushing to the refrigerator.

Sometimes the risk is in the style or structure: a point-of-view we're not used to writing in, past tense instead of present, short instead of long, long instead of short, forward instead of backwards, up instead of down.

Sometimes it is genre or form or age group or market.

Sometimes we can't even pinpoint where the stretching is, but dang if it doesn't feel like our entire being is leaning, reaching, elongating as far far far as it will go.

This is good, you know.

It makes for work that matters.
It makes us grow.
And it even makes the writing more fun.
Doubt me?
Think about this:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, coiner of the term flow, says that one of the key conditions for getting into that time-altering magical flow state is to be challenged. To feel that you have the skills needed, but that you will have to use them all and to their fullest in order to reach your goal.

SO -- is there a challenge for you in this WIP? Can you articulate it?

Yesterday, I posted about finding your own spine as a writer -- your Big Why, your reason for doing what you do, that thing which keeps you upright and centered.

The concept of the spine comes from Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit. She's a dancer and choreographer, Ms. Tharp is, and she uses the metaphor of the spine to think about the organizing principle around which a particular dance is centered.

Listen, here's what she says (page 142-143 if you want to follow along in your hymnal):
The spine is the statement you make to yourself outlining your intentions for the work. You intend to tell this story. You intend to explore this theme. You intend to employ this structure. The audience may infer it or not, but if you stick to your spine the piece will work."

As an example, she talks about a dance she created for which the spine was Euripedes' The Bacchae. Now, when the dance was performed, there wasn't a person in the audience who could tell, but for Ms. Tharp it was the spine of the piece, the bit she returned to every time she felt herself going astray.

Here's an example from my own work.
The spine for one of my WIPs is this: A Small Boy in a Big World.
That's it. Simple. Maybe even cliche. But cliches are fine for spines, if they give you what you need.
For me, every time I get lost in the story, or am unsure how to approach a scene, I think: A Small Boy in a Big World and it roots me in tone, perspective, theme, point of view.

Think about your work in progress -- whether you are drafting or revising.
Can you identify the spine of that work?




P.S.-- I accidentally deleted all my responses to the comments below. It wasn't on purpose. Sorry about that. Sheesh.

This summer I taught a revision workshop at The Pacific Northwest Children's Book Conference. I covered all the nuts and bolts stuff, but I began the workshop by asking each participant to consider her spine.

Not her backbone (except maybe metaphorically), her spine -- the thing which centers her as a writer. That which holds her up. Her "Big Why" for doing what she does.

See, conferences -- even nurturing conferences like this one -- can bring out the competitor in us. We can hear about this person's new agent or that person's three book deal or someone else's brilliant premise for a chapter book series and we can lose sight of who we are, what we want, what really motivates us to write the books that only we can write.

And so I asked people to consider that question -- what is your Big Why? What is it you really intend as a writer?

That's the place to start in revision.

And it is the place to return to over and over and over again, when you find yourself lost in market news or at conferences or even in your own manuscript.

What do you intend for yourself as a writer?

I am listening again to Granny Torelli Makes Soup on my iPod. (I don't have music on there. It is all recorded books.) I am noticing how this book, half of which takes place in one location, Rosie's kitchen, balances the static setting with tons of zippy, zingy, action-y verbs. Here, I'm going to pull out the book and show you what I mean:

"She reaches in the freezer, snatches some chicken, flips it into the microwave, zaps it to defrost. Seizes the big red pot, fills it with water, tosses in salt and pepper and a dash of soy sauce.

Hands me a knife. We chop, chop, chop, fling it all in the pot, such a good smell bubbling in the kitchen."

It might be too much if the nouns weren't so simple: chicken. salt. big red pot. But it is not too much and it adds a wonderful vitality to what otherwise might be a rather slow and uninteresting set of actions.

What do you think of that?

Last week was glorious -- spent knee-deep in books and ideas and writerly good will.
I was on faculty, but in truth, I felt like a student -- I learned so much from my fellow faculty and from the students whose manuscripts I was lucky enough to critique.

At the Pacific Northwest Children's Book Conference, the ratio of student to faculty is about 5-1, and we all spend a lot of time snug up against one another, not just in workshops and lectures, but at meals, too. And it was at one of those meals that I heard Bonny Becker (author of the witty picture book A Visitor for Bear) say a very wise thing. A student had mentioned something about a writer having natural talent. Bonny said:
"Talent, and the belief in it, is a trap. Being instantly good at something can make you believe you either have it or you don't. If you buy into that, when things get rough it means you lost it. You don't have it, or enough of it, after all." And there's nowhere to go after that, is there?

Bonny's thoughts go along with one of my favorite Malcolm Gladwell quotes, from an interview he gave about his book Outliers:
"Talent is the desire to practice, right? It is that you love something so much that you are willing to sacrifice and commit to that -- whatever it is -- task, game, sport, etc."

I used both these quotes in my talk about revision.
Some people love revision. Some hate it.
But I think all of us agree that revision is where the book happens. Story might show up in a draft, but a book is made in revision.

That's where I am now, doing a serious revision (so much so it is almost a new rough draft) of a long-suffering manuscript. It has been so good for me to be reminded this lesson about talent -- especially since writing this book has brought me back to my ten-eleven-twelve year-old self, a time when I was being told I was a "talented" writer. (I'll bet you were told the same.)

Hard work trumps talent.
How long it has taken me to learn this.
How long it will take me to learn it again and again.

Back to work . . .

I mentioned yesterday that I will be on faculty at the Pacific Northwest Children's Writing Conference this year. This is a fabulous, nurturing, energizing conference, one I was delighted to attend two summers ago and am so honored to be a part of this year.

(It's at Reed College. It looks like this.)
photo permission of Reed College

Those of you who looked into this conference earlier may want to know about one change. Due to the sad passing of Craig Virden, the special guest speaker is now Arthur A. Levine. Otherwise, the faculty remains the same: Marla Frazee, Susan Goldman Rubin, David Gifaldi, Ann Whitford Paul . . . oh, here's a link to the faculty list so you can see for yourself.


Earlier this year, I talked with Linda Zuckerman about why she created the conference. I asked this:
When I was at the conference as a student two years ago, I was struck by how nurturing the whole thing was. There’s a very different vibe from most of the other conferences I have attended, very retreat-like. Very non-competitive. And very much focused on the betterment of craft. I suspect that is by design. Is it?

And she said this:

Thank you for noticing and yes, definitely by design. When I was in publishing I attended and participated in many conferences over the years and I was often struck by the impersonal quality of some of the classes and lectures. (It wasn’t simply a function of the number of participants, although that is always a factor. ) Occasionally a speaker seemed more interested in promoting his or her own books than teaching; some speakers were marvelously entertaining but rarely gave specific suggestions or information about writing or illustrating; sometimes it seemed the conference was being used as a stage to highlight the charm and brilliance of the speakers.

So when I started our conference 10 years ago I consciously decided to do something different. I tried to find charming and brilliant people - of course! - who were not only published authors but experienced teachers who loved to teach .I wanted people who really cared about helping other writers and illustrators make their work better, regardless of whether they were beginners or published. I wanted people who loved children’s books for what they are and what they can be. I think the “different vibe” you describe is in large measure due to the warmth and generosity of our faculty.

Also, as an editor, I’m very much aware of – and interested in – the various aspects of the craft of writing. There is so much to learn about it!

You know Linda was an editor at Harcourt, right? She knows what she's talking about. Her first page workshop brings that out in spades.

But Linda is also an author now. She's written a novel, A Taste for Rabbit, and a picture book, I Will Hold You Till You Sleep. I wondered if being an author changed things. If she viewed conference differently now than she did before she was writing. She said:

Having worked with writers – and illustrators – all my life, I feel a great deal of sympathy for the creative struggle, (although I have to say my understanding of that struggle was more theoretical than real.) So in planning the conference I have always tried to keep the needs of the writer and illustrator in mind. But now, when I think about what the sequence of sessions should be and who should talk about what, I often ask myself, “Would that have helped me?” I learned a lot about writing from actually writing – it seems obvious, doesn’t it? - so I try to encourage our faculty to incorporate hands-on exercises in their sessions whenever that’s possible.

One of the interesting things that happened after I started to write was that I found myself addressing the group as “we” instead of “you,” as in, “We have to pay attention to what’s happening in the publishing business if we’re going to be professional writers.” I don’t think I’ll ever go back to “you.” And that’s a good thing!

Actually, nothing about the conference feels like "You". It all feels like "We". The year I attended, Kirby Larson talked a lot about her about-to-be-released novel Hattie Big Sky and her struggles. David Gifaldi talked about fear and overcoming it. Linda herself shared the challenges with getting a book accepted for publication. The whole thing is We.

I think there are still a few slots open if you want to be part of the We this year. I'm not sure. Check here.

Next installment: talking with fellow faculty member Ann Whitford Paul, who this year is doing a three part picture book workshop that I cannot wait to be a part of! You'll love what she has to say . . .

Let's start, though, with five:

1. Thank you Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast for this neat look at Henry Cole's art. Henry is the artist who illustrated this:



Not to mention this:
and this:
and about four dozen other books. Nice to see him get the credit he deserves.

2. Thank you Becky Levine, for your sweet endorsement of Mouse Was Mad earlier this week. Becky won a copy of the book in Cindy Lord's contest.

3. I am grateful for Cindy Lord. For her book, Rules, which has brought such joy and understanding to kids. For her conference talks and workshops, which have helped writers improve their craft. For her friendship, which is solid and true. And for her willingness to overlook the dust and disarray in my house both time she has visited.

4. I am also grateful for my email writer buddies who just endured a week of whining from me. Their responses were the perfect balance of encouragement and "shut up". Exactly what I needed.

5. There are a million-billion more meaningful things to be thankful for . . . but I'm going to go frivolous: I am grateful for the garage door man who just today replaced the old one that I backed into. (Another story, another day, 'kay?)

Here's a quote from yesterday's notebook entry:

. . . the first thing you have to do is let go of the fear of looking like an idiot to people who don't know you . . .

Under which I have added: . . . and to people who do.

The quote is from one of Christine Kane's blog posts. It is regarding the formation of Mastermind Groups (or success groups or whatever you want to call them), but I think it applies just as well to critique groups and workshops. And it was important to me because this summer I'll be doing that twice amidst people who are complete strangers to me.

In a few weeks, I'll be heading to the Pacific Northwest Children's Book Conference at which I will be faculty.* One of the things I look forward to most is leading afternoon workshop/critique sessions. It will be my job to set the tone for these sessions, as well as guidelines for how critiques will operate. I want this to be as useful as it can be for the writers involved, and I also want it to be as safe as possible. I want each participant to know that it is okay to look like an idiot, if doing so will lead us to write better, bolder, braver books.

A few weeks after that, I'll be on the flip side of things, a participant in Vermont College's Summer Postgraduate Seminar in a workshop led by Printz medalist An Na. Soon I need to submit the pages I want to workshop. ACK! This is a work in progress. I mean IN PROGRESS. And yet, if really want to get the most out of it, I have to be okay with looking like an idiot. (or a hack. or whatever the fear word is for today.) I'm gonna say it again: It is okay to look like an idiot, if doing so will lead us to write better, bolder, braver books.



*More about this Conference tomorrow -- including an interview with Linda Zuckerman in which she explains how she created this conference to be challenging, but wonderfully nurturing of artists and their work.

I have been intrigued by odd things of late. Desks, for one. What sorts people use and what they keep on them. If I get some good snaps this week, I'll show you mine. But first, let me show you Oliver Sacks's desk. You see that row of rock-like things? Those are elements.
Yeah, like from the periodic table.
Oliver Sacks keeps elements on his desk. Except the ones that are missing, because he gives them as birthday gifts.
I love that.

I'm also rather caught up in notebooks. Not the electronic kind. The paper ones. What ones people keep and what they put in there. Look at this article from Design Observer.
It inspired me to start keeping notebooks, which has been good, because the MC in my WIP keeps one, too. And we share a feeling about those notebooks, me and my MC.
We want to share what's in there, while simultaneously being petrified that someone will see.
How about that?

Both these things interest me because I think our desks and our tools can sometimes tell us a lot about our process, our goals, and, yes, our fears.


Here, I'm going to get over a small fear right now and share something that is in my current notebook. I'm not going to worry what you might think about me or what I'm writing or what struggles or glories I might be having because I'm posting this. I'm just going to lift it from my notebook and share it with you, because currently it is making a difference to me and it might help you, too.

This is from a podcast on Merlin Mann's website 43 Folders. I edited it just a tiny bit, down to the part that mattered most to me: "As long as you are half-assing your creative projects, you are constantly forgiving yourself. It takes courage to take yourself seriously." Here's the link to the podcast, which is otherwise about bundling up your tasks and making real chunks of time for creative work.

Do you keep a notebook? Is your desk simply a workspace or is it a source of inspiration/collection for you? Want to share one thing that is in your notebook or on your desk that matters to you Right Now?

CONGRATULATIONS JEFF KINNEY!
Once again, that Wimpy Kid rocked the kid reading world. Diary of a Wimpy Kid was the overwhelming choice for Best Book of the Year among Vermont school kids. Unfortunately for those kids, Mr. Kinney is in huge demand these days and wasn't able to get to Vermont for the big state-wide celebration. Unfortunate for the kids, yes. For me? A huge lucky break.

Last Friday, it was me up on the stage at the Vermont Technical College talking to 700 fourth through seventh graders about fear and writing and dreams and hard work. And I had a blast! The kids were so smart and funny and brave -- shouting out answers to my questions from the far balcony seats, laughing at my jokes, and sharing their thoughts about books like Love That Dog and Donuthead and Maniac Magee and Sarah, Plain and Tall.*

After the talk, there was a receiving line of sorts, and I got to talk with kids from all the schools that attended. Some kids showed me their toe sock, others told me about the instruments they played or the stories they write. Mostly, though, we celebrated books. What other books on the DCF list did you like? The most common answers: Cracker by Cynthia Kadohata, Schooled by Gordon Korman, and Blue Lipstick by John Grandits. But I loved hearing one boy tell me all about this great book of nonfiction that he thought was the absolute best book on the list -- Tracking Trash. When I told him that I knew the author lgburns, I earned about a thousand cool points. "Tell her she wrote a good book," he said.
Loree? You wrote a good book. :)



* In my talk, I tell about finding models for what it is you want to do. The books mentioned here were my middle grade models when I began working on A Crooked Kind of Perfect.

I'm heading to New Hampshire and Massachusetts this week.
If you're in the neighborhood, I hope you'll come by!


Thursday, May 14
10 am Mount Washington Valley Children’s Museum
2936 White Mountain Hwy, North Conway, NH 03860

3:30-5:00 p.m. Conway Public Library
15 Main Street, Conway, NH 03818


Saturday, May 16
10:40 a.m. Children's Book Week Celebration at the Boston Public Library (also on the schedule: Sarah Pennypacker! Megan McDonald! and more. Click the link, friends. Clickety click!)
Copley Square at 700 Boylston Street

Sunday, May 17
12:00 p.m. Eight Cousins Bookstore
189 Main Street
Falmouth, MA

3:00 p.m. Titcomb’s Bookshop
432 Route 6A
East Sandwich, MA 02537

Picked at random by daughter Seven, the winner of this:


and this

is this: cloudscome

Email me through my website with your address and I'll send them right off to you!

You are some Zen-ny kind of people, my friends. So many of you are water under the bridge types. You don't get mad about stupid petty things like potholes and inept cashiers. When you get mad its over the big stuff! Not stompin' mad or hoppin' mad -- World-Changing Mad.
Makes me proud to know ya'.

(Okay, I was relieved to see a few of you who, like me, get to stompin' about laundry and people messing up your space. Whew! I am very very glad to know you, too.)

Tonight, late, I'll do the drawing and tomorrow I'll post the winner.

In the meantime, think of me at Bear Pond Books today, stompin' and rolling' and hoppin' with the toddler set, signing copies of MOUSE WAS MAD for the lot of them. Oh, and if you have any good wishes, I'll take them. My voice is still on the croaky side.

Tomorrow, I'll be at my neighborhood independent, Bear Pond Books reading and signing copies of Mouse Was Mad. My daughter, Seven, is quite excited about the whole thing. She and a friend, daughter of the store's children's book buyer Ms. Jane, will be greeting guests and handing out cookies and pouring punch. She is also willing to sign books, if asked.

Also tomorrow, I'll post the winner for the the What Makes You Mad drawing. If you haven't yet added your comment telling what makes you mad and what makes you feel better, and you want to be in the drawing for a copy of Mouse and a box of these:



then get crackin'. Time is running out.