Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

Well, I’ve decided to stop being a chicken and post some writing goals for 2010.

1. Launch Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature, putting to use all the things I’ve learned since Wolfsnail debuted nearly two years ago. This time we’ll have a book trailer, a blog tour, sunflower seeds, and a presentation at a national conference.

2. Meet twice a month with my critique partner to make progress on items 3 and 4 below.

3. Write and photograph nonfiction picture book number 3. Subject is chosen and living (happily, I think) in a container on my living room bookshelf. It’s lots of fun to watch and to photograph.

4. Write first picture book that I won’t be illustrating with photographs. This story is near and dear to me. I think I am ready to commit it to the page.

5. Write regularly on my memoir. I started writing this for an online course through Gotham Writers’ Workshop. It was an excellent introduction to memoir and I am very happy I took the class. Now, I’m going to write, write, write.

Of course, I’ll also be mothering, teaching (2nd graders and 5th graders in separate photography and writing projects), gardening, exercising, cooking, fellowshipping, blogging, and (hope springs eternal) de-cluttering.

What are your writing goals? Does it help to make them public? I’d love to know.

Update: How’s this for coincidence? Within the hour of posting, I received an email rejection of a piece I had submitted to the online magazine Brevity. I had been encouraged to submit by Kyle Minor, who taught my memoir writing class in the fall. I gave the memoir snippet (about 450 words) to my Dad for Christmas; I asked Richard to typeset it and paired it with a black and white photograph of Richard’s. I am glad Kyle encouraged me to submit the piece. I learned about an interesting online magazine and I gained the confidence to keep writing. Eventually, this snippet will take its place in a larger work.

Today my editor wrote to suggest I draft a press release. He and I are collaborating on the marketing plan for Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature. Such is the nature of publishing with a small publishing company. (Actually, I think it is the nature of publishing, period.) We all have to pitch in and help with everything that needs to be done. A few weeks ago, I sent in a list of names to add to Boyds Mills‘ master list of reviewers, librarians, teachers, science magazines, etc., who will get an advance copy of Growing Patterns. Among them were librarians and bloggers I have met or followed during my nearly two years as a published author. I looked at each blog carefully to determine the individual blogger’s policy for submitting books for review. In some cases, reviewers want to read about a book and request a copy if interested. So, I started the press release.

The last time I wrote a press release for a book, the target audience was local media outlets at the time of Wolfsnail‘s launch at a local bookstore. I had to convince general interest publications to run a story or blurb about a local woman becoming a published author. My charge this time was different. In the first place, I was writing for specialists. Folks in the Kidlitosphere are discerning readers of children’s books. They stay abreast of what’s being published and they know what they’d like to have in their libraries, classrooms, and homes.

As I stared at the blank screen, I was temporarily stymied. How could I describe this 811-word book in a few sentences? Sometimes, when you’ve lived with something so intimately for so long, you believe you can’t find one more original thing to say. Then I remembered that I am the only person (with the possible exception of my husband and my editor) who has been living and breathing this book. To others, it will be new. This freed me to write about why I think this book will be a good addition to any (and every) library in homes and schools and cities and towns. I want kids (of all ages) to open this book, to count flower petals, to add numbers, to discover a pattern, to trace spiral shapes, and to search out examples of Fibonacci numbers in their own neighborhoods.

In a way, I was writing a review of my own book. It felt strange. I am curious about how other writers handle the marketing responsibilities that come their way.

Our two copies of Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature arrived today. The books are beautiful! The colors are bright, the pages are shiny, and the shape is a golden rectangle. After getting some positive feedback on using video on the blog, I decided that this would be a good day to use it again. You can watch the brief video below and then read on for more information.

From my early days of writing for children, I have always read what I was working on to kids. At first, it was my own. Then, I moved on to sharing with kids at my kids’ school. In addition to reading my stories and poems, I read all kinds of books to small groups and entire classrooms. I could tell from the kids’ reactions what was working and what was not. I learned, too, that kids are not willing to sit still for version after version of the same story. I learned to get my stories into pretty good shape before I shared and to read once and move on.

One of the spreads in Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator is in the book because of questions I got from kids when I went to schools with my Highlights article about wolfsnails. Kids always asked if wolfsnails eat worms. I created a scene in which a wolfsnail encounters a worm (and does not eat it) so that I could answer the question in the text.

With Growing Patterns I pushed my luck with a few of the young readers, asking them to read it aloud to me. I know they felt a little nervous, but I kept my mouth shut and tried not to be too obvious about the notes I was taking. I was watching for places where they stumbled over my awkward constructions or where they needed more clarification. Two second graders wrote out a page of questions for me. Many of the questions were about how I took the photographs or got interested in the pattern. But they also pointed out their favorite photographs and patterns. I am very excited about going back to their school this week and showing these now third graders the final product.

Thank you, everybody!

Hester Bass did a fabulous job at Power APAC today introducing visual arts students from grades 6 through 12 to the creative process of writing picture books. In the above photograph, she is reading from The Secret World of Walter Anderson, which was recently named one of Kirkus’ Best Children’s Books of 2009. Because she worked so closely with her fantastic illustrator, E.B. Lewis, she also shared much about the process of illustrating a picture book with watercolor paintings. Power APAC students had studied Walter Anderson’s work prior to Hester’s visit and had also done some historical research, but her tale sparked a renewed interest in his work and life.

Hester’s publicist at Candlewick worked with Mississippi Public Broadcasting to set up an interview for an online program titled Don’t Lecture Me. The show will go online in about two weeks.

Students provided a back drop for a mini-set on the Power APAC stage. It was a pleasure for me to see Hester in action. I always learn from my colleagues in this business. Hester’s stage presence was obvious from the moment she stepped in front of the students. She sang and she read. She encouraged the students to read, to write (and sketch) in journals, and to set goals. She got questions about publishing and about Walter Anderson. One student wanted to know about the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs.

I spent an interesting day and a half at the fall conference of the Mississippi Environmental Education Alliance (MEEA). I brought a wolfsnail (thanks to my friend Julie’s kids) to my presentation. Terri Jacobson is looking at the snail with a private eye loupe. I attended Jacobson’s private eye workshop and I learned a lot that I’ll use in my work with kids. Using a private eye is the next best thing to having a camera kitted out with a macro lens. I had a fun time coming up with “it looks like … ” lists for a gum ball from a sweet gum tree (scarab beetle, pecan shell innards, baby bird’s beak, etc.) and a sprig of flowers.

Nicole Smith and Andrea Schumann, who work in education and naturalist outreach at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, and I worked together to come up with a list of things our sprigs of queen anne’s lace reminded us of and then we wrote a poem using words from our list. We wrote a fib poem. (The lines have syllables in this pattern: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8, like the Fibonacci sequence.)
Star
Burst
Spider
Crawling ‘cross
Dandelion puff
Hunting for a cotton lollipop

Another great part of the MEEA conference for me was an introduction to Robin Whitfield and her work. Robin introduced herself as an explorer, which she says is a hard job description for people to understand.

They are more accepting of the title “artist,” but Robin doesn’t believe “artist” fully captures what she does. She spends much of her time outside — exploring, creating, and teaching. Using methods such as observational drawing, printing, stenciling, dipping, and pigment sampling, Robin interacts with swamps and other natural settings. A member of the Mississippi Arts Commission’s artist roster, Robin has worked with boys and girls clubs, alternative schools, middle school science students, and adults. My friend, Julie, attended Robin’s hands-on workshop and put up a blog post, including a photo gallery here.

The MEEA conference was sponsored by the Mississippi Urban Forestry Council and Donna Yowell, the executive director, shared some interesting projects the council sponsors for kids and schools. Older students, in particular, can get involved in inventorying green spaces in their communities and presenting landscaping improvement plans to local governing bodies. Schools can apply for grants to add trees to their campuses to provide shade, buffers, or edible fruit. Yowell said students get excited about a computer tool that allows them to do a virtual makeover.

At the recent Writing and Illustrating for Kids (WIK) conference, I asked other writers with blogs to find me and give me a card. I wanted to collect posts about the conference in one place. In the end, not all of the writers/bloggers put up posts about the conference, but I thought I’d put together a post showing the diversity of blogs in our region. If you look to the left on my blog, you’ll see that I already list other Southern Breezers in my blog roll. When I get more time at home, I’ll add these new ones to that list. In the meantime, feel free to explore:

Pat Brannon, a writer in Amory, Mississippi, blogs here.

Rita Farin, a creativity coach, blogs here.

Heather Kolich, an author and photographer in Cumming, Georgia, blogs here.

Deborah Kauffman Miller, an author in Decatur, Georgia, blogs here.

Melissa Thomas-Dubois and Dana Konop, two authors in the Atlanta-area, blog at Writing Snacks.com.

Toni Rhodes, an author and iPhone app publisher in Stone Mountain, Georgia, blogs at RhodeSoft.

Kathleen Thompson, an author in Birmingham, Alabama, blogs here.

Al Waller blogs at Varmint Bytes.

If you are a writer in Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia, and you write a blog, please post a comment letting me know about you.

I spent two very nice days this week at the Mississippi Library Association annual conference. Rick Bragg spoke on Thursday morning. He read from his latest book, The Most They Ever Had, a memior of the people in the milltown Bragg grew up in. I started reading it during the next break in the conference and finished it after I got home Thursday night. I really enjoyed it. He has such a way with words, managing to paint a complete picture through six or eight vignettes. One story of two women who met a seemingly impossible challenge (picking down and back on a very long row of cotton in one day) for two extra dollars was particularly good. I recommend this to people who are studying memoir or the use of detail to round out characters  or who just want a good read.

Nancy Opalko, children’s librarian at Oxford Public Library, introduced a panel discussion on greatstoriesCLUB, an American Library Association program aimed at putting books into the hands of underserved teens. Librarians can apply to launch a program (the deadline is Nov. 2) in their own community. Besides reading books with teens, some librarians expand the program to include visiting authors.

An author who has worked with several greatstoriesCLUB sites is Paul Griffin, a New Yorker who writes books for teenagers. He launched a “story jam” during his talk with a few lines about a librarian who received a letter containing a $100,000 donation and the promise of $900,000 more if the librarian agreed to meet the donor that night. The story was passed from person to person — with many zany twists — until a lbrarian wrapped it up in a most satisfying way. Griffin uses this exercise with teens in juvenile detention facilities to get them comfortable with storytelling as a bridge to writing. I am looking forward to reading Paul’s two books, Ten Mile River and Orange Houses.

Ken Waldman, who bills himself as the Alaskan Fiddling Poet, gave a talk on using poetry with kids. He incorporates music and movement into his very engaging presentation. In addition to his work as a traveling minstrel, he offers books, CDs, and cards. His talk prompted  an interesting discussion on the relative merits of rhyming in poetry. Waldman prefers to write without overt rhyme and encourages kids to write without thinking of rhyme as a constraint.

This was my first MS Library Association conference and I hope to return in future years. At lunch one day, I had a real treat. I had made plans to meet my friend Jackson S., a young reader who struck up a correspondence with me last year. He has found about a half dozen wolfsnails near his Hattiesburg-area home since he read Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator. I was happy to get his (positive) reaction to Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature. He and his mom took me to lunch and we had a fun time talking about reading, writing and publishing.

After describing the impossibly busy life of an editor at a publishing house that receives more than 20,000 submissions a year, Kathy Landwehr, editor at Peachtree Publishers, urged writers to approach writing as a professional, even though the financial rewards are small. “If you are not doing it because you have to — not just because you want to — don’t.” Though just about every one of Peachtree’s titles for young people can be used to advance curriculum objectives in schools, the goal of educating is secondary. “A book is to be enjoyed, first and foremost. If there’s a message there, it should be like a Trojan horse. What we really do love is story.”

A title she’s very excited about right now is 14 Cows for America by written by award-winning author Carmen Agra Deedy and illustrated by newcomer Thomas Gonzalez. It was released in August and has started with strong sales.

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Here are photographs of some of the other speakers:

The Chudney Agency
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First Second Books

Hester Bass

Lisa Lowe Stauffer

Carla Killough McClafferty

Today marks my most varied (and abundant) harvest from the garden: a cantaloupe, an eggplant, an okra, a cucumber, and two kinds of tomatoes. Yum! The okra, eggplant, and tomatoes went into a side dish for lunch. How far we’ve come from the first seedlings .

Today’s other news is that Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature is very nearly finished. I never think I’ll ever get to this point with a book, but I almost can’t bear to look at it one more time. (My editor reported dashing across to the other building on the Boyds Mills campus to write final changes into a final proof.) I know this feeling will pass. It is beautiful and I’m grateful for everyone who has helped it get to this point. Now, it’s time for it to be a book. Already. The seed for this book started germinating in February 2008 at an SCBWI/Southern Breeze conference.

Here’s our gecko in its habitat. It’s a crafty little critter. We’ve found that it stays still for a few moments, but it moves with lightning speed when it decides to move. Richard took these. We watched its tongue moving in and out as it seemed to be lapping up water droplets, but by the time Richard had repositioned the camera, it was gone. We have a few blurry images of its head and its legs.

I love seeing its coloring up close. I also like its little toes. I’ve been dousing its habitat with spring water and I moved it off of the screened porch and onto the deck so it’d have access to flying insects. Since we took these, however, I haven’t caught a glimpse of it. One of the boys found a small toad and I added it to the habitat. We haven’t seen the toad either.

I spent much of the day locating, editing, and transferring photos, and doing more research on flowers and petals. I have a few more botanical words for you: spathe, spidex, bilabiate. I think we’ll be adding a note to our definition of petal or adding another note to the notes page. The title might be “when is a petal not a petal?”