A Novel Idea

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning. Meister Eckhart I tucked my laptop into the trunk of the car just before four generations of family and I headed north to rustic cabins near the source of the Mississippi River.  I was ambivalent about bringing along anything electronic.  When I couldn’t honor a friend’s [...]

Last week, author and illustrator Ashley Wolff provided me with a link to a fairly new site called “Show and Tell Me,” author Amy Timberlake’s brainchild.  She invites children’s book creators to “show and tell” where they work and/or a favorite place.   Amy also has added rousing quotations, encouraging others to contribute favorites, too.  Two [...]

I could be packing up my car instead of posting this right now – lighting out for a little island in big Rainy Lake – if I hadn’t had to bow out of the week-long adventure a few months ago.  There was my niece’s wedding coming this week and my dog’s failing health to think [...]

There’s no denying it – today marks the last day of the four-week period I promised an agent an exclusive look at the “full.”  I’ve reminded myself that my email, months ago, noting that she hadn’t yet responded to my original submission prompted a quick reply and apologies.   She then read the manuscript and suggested [...]

So I’m driving along – you still in the backseat? – on the journey to this novel’s publication, feeling like I’m really making progress.  A lot of miles covered yesterday.  Additional research on a trio of stellar agents to query next, if, by the fast-approaching due date, the agent with the “exclusive” hasn’t responded, or, [...]

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. Aaron Copland When I read Linda Sue Park’s A Single Shard, a middle grade novel that won the Newbery Medal in 2002, the powerful writing transported me to 12th century [...]

When you are born, your work is placed in your heart. Kahil Gibran The same week I was putting final touches on the revision of my novel, Garrison Keillor wrote in an op-ed piece:  “… I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea.”  Referring to today’s writer, “blogging like crazy” and [...]

We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection.  It’s about a process, a journey.  The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives. George Leonard To write is to write is to write is to write is to write [...]

In his YA novel Feed, M. T. Anderson does an impressive job of circumventing outdated slang by inventing his own.  The story is set in the future, and a dude becomes a unit, jerks become corps, cool is now brag, and major is meg… as in:  Unit!  Did you like see that brag upcar on [...]

My time in Santa Fe is a sweet memory and I’m in the home stretch of the revision; at least that’s what I’m telling myself. One of these days soon I’ll embark on a word-by-word search and excavation of bon mots unlikely to pass a thirteen-year-old’s lips.  The occasional clinker materializes in even the best [...]