A Novel Idea

Life just keeps getting stranger. After posting the blog entry that precedes this one, I returned to the Twitterverse.  Decided to let my eleven followers know that I was back (surely able to fit posting one-liners into a schedule devoted to fiction writing, right?).  I joked: Heard you missed my tweets, Yoko, so I’m back.  [...]

If I learned anything at KidLitCon 2010 in October, it was that to build a following and to attain success, a blogger must post frequently and consistently.  “Never on Sunday,” warned bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater, a blogger out-dazzling every other.  Consider that she managed to post an original painting every day for two and a [...]

Fear is the cheapest room in the house.  I would like to see you living in better conditions. Hafez The results of writing my first letter to the Universe were amazing.  Even two decades later, I’m periodically moved to offer up thanks.  So it’s hard to explain why the experience didn’t prompt a whole string [...]

I last posted over a month ago, but not for any lack of writing prompts.  There was no shortage of moments when I found myself thinking,  “I need to write about this.”  I coulda-shoulda provided an entire post about the first-ever WriteOnCon, for instance — an online conference in August for writers of children’s and [...]

Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops at all. Emily Dickinson There was this promise on the cool breeze that wakened me after a string of hot days and humid nights that it was going to be a glorious birthday.  The sudden shift in [...]

Entered the vast Twitterverse yesterday.  Writer Dennis Cass made me do it. In a recent video, he’s a hapless author anxiously absorbing a host of tips from a social media guru who seems intent on bringing the clueless writer up to speed.  Clearly, to the networking novice, it seems like light speed.  The guy’s painfully [...]

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way. Babe Ruth As noted in the first process report last November, it’s a stretch calling an accumulation of rejections progress.  If I can use the word in the querying process at all, it’s with the awareness of an attitude shift from a few years [...]

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 [...]