Believe it or not, summer vacation is almost over. But not to worry.  I’ve had a grand time with my favorite writing buddies in Taos, New Mexico.

We stayed at the Laughing Horse Inn (a story in itself), former digs of some well-known celebs/artists who made Taos their get-away spot. Folks like Georgia O’Keefe, whose ghost is purported to visit the Laughing Horse from time to time (and sit on her bed!).

We had no such sightings, but we did have a marvelous time.  Laughing (it *is* the Laughing Horse Inn, after all), catching up, critiquing, eating, and yes, occasionally, actually writing.  Amazing!

Since my return, I’ve been working with several writing friends on a fabulous new website that we plan to unveil August 1st. We’re gearing our site towards the K-5 crowd, and we hope it’ll be a welcome addition to kidlitosphere.  Details soon.

In addition I’ve been taking a photo class with the goal of *finally* learning how to use my DSLR camera.  I’ve picked up many helpful tips, including a short course on all things Photo Shop Elements.  I couldn’t be more pleased.

Tomorrow, I’m off for one last getaway before school begins.  The good news?  I’ve been inspired by my friends’ amazing critique skills and this interview with the Plot Whisperer, re: Uma Krishnaswami‘s writing process and her latest picture book, OUT OF THE WAY! OUT OF THE WAY! I’ll be carrying along my laptop and plan to finish (fingers crossed) a picture book revision that’s been haunting me for months and months.

HAPPY 4TH!
photo credit: seantoyer

And I’m okay with a decent amount of math, too. But the bottom line is that the pendulum has swung TOO far and this op-ed article in Monday’s NYT sums up quite nicely the direction in which I *wish* education was headed.

What I wouldn’t give to teach in the (theoretical) third grade classroom described here.

All I can say is… I hope somebody with the power to make these kind of HUGE changes in the way curriculum is developed is listening.

photo credit: cleverclaire

Somehow being reminded of how “tricky” they are, both to write and to sell makes me glad I’m a picture book writer.

Stearns writes, “A really great picture book is a difficult art to pull off… It is about grace and the right words in the right place—much more akin to poetry than mere storytelling.”

Reminds me of the quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “…poetry: the best words in the best order.”

Yes. Poetry and picture books. I love them both.

Every so often I come back to reviewing my priorities and asking myself how I can put my waking hours to best use. Is there a way to wisely parse out time and energy to those areas I consider my first priorities? How can I balance teaching which, by it’s very nature, gets the lion’s share of time, with my before-and-after-day-job as a writer?

A recent post by Corey on Simple Mom, “How to Find More Time During the Day” got me thinking again. He asks the question:

photo credit: Michel Filion

” What if we replaced time focus with energy? Instead of looking at the day as a block of time, look at it as a finite amount of energy.

Then ask yourself, where do you spend your energy?

The answer to this question will tell you where your priorities lie.”

When I look at it this way, it’s clear that the bulk of both my time and energy goes into teaching.  And truth be told, most of *that* time and energy involves paperwork, district obligations, even things as mundane, but necessary, as cleaning up the mess I’ve left behind after a full day of teaching.

Very little time goes into actual lesson planning. A sad but true statement, which might be explained by the fact that I’ve been able to internalize so much of the “how-to’s” of teaching, that I’m now able to get by using the on-the-job-expertise I’ve acquired over the years.

I know I’m not alone in this.  Most of my colleagues are like me.  We all spend more time on the incidentals surrounding running a classroom than the actual hard-core lesson planning time that a new or pre-service teacher spends.

And yet… there’s always more that I *could* do (maybe *should* be doing??) that I choose not to do simply because of the amount of time required.

And while it’s true that I have an obligation to devote a huge and important chunk of each day to my students, it’s also true that a HUGE part of me wants to shift that energy to my writing.

Is there a way to do this?  Perhaps that’s the question so many of us who work full-time and try to write on the side will always struggle with.

The best I can come up with is to write first thing in the morning, early, before the sun has come up, before I must get ready for work.  And yet sometimes, like this past week when I’ve been working on report cards and putting in late hours, it seems those early hours are impossible to manage.

At these moments, I must be reminded, again, to extend myself a little grace.  Lower my expectations.  Remember that all weeks are not this week.  And once those report cards are truly finished and conferences are over, I’ll be back at the keyboard, working on the middle grade revision and that cat/mouse picture book I still need to puzzle out.

Check out Paula Yoo‘s blog and her newly established NATIONAL PICTURE BOOK WRITING WEEK (NaPiBoWriWee) : 7 PICTURE BOOKS IN 7 DAYS.

Answers to questions can be found here and here.

I’m hoping to surprise myself and generate some new drafts.  Care to give it a try, too?

The other day Julie Larios passed along a letter challenge.  The goal was to make a list of things you love that begin with the letter you’ve been assigned.

Here’s my response on things…

photo credit: CarbonNYC

BOOKS, of course.  All kinds, but especially those for children. The perfect “B” book? BABY BRAINS – written and illustrated by Simon James.

BEACHES. Is there anything better in all the world than a nice, warm, sunny day?  I think not!

photo credit: muha…

BLOSSOMS, bouqueted or un-

photo credit: Per Ola Wiberg (Powi)

BRIGHT colors.

BAGGAGE, as in luggage.  Weird, I know.  But I do like a new suitcase in the same way that I get joy from buying new shoes.

photo credit: malias

BREAD – warm from the oven, with BUTTER.

photo credit: FotoDawg

B.I.C. Butt in chair. If I’m honest, B.I.C. and I have a love/hate relationship, but it *is* part of my daily commitment to “doing the work” of seeing my writing projects through to completion.

photo credit: Lori Greig

BALANCE.  Sounds boring, but it’s one of those delicate intangibles – hard to achieve, but completely worth aiming for.

photo credit: James Jordan

BELIEVE:  Why be a writer if you don’t believe your words will some day find an audience beyond yourself?

photo credit: awezmaz

And finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a favorite “B” poem, by Julie Larios:

Here’s a peek at the first stanza:

What Bee Said

Bee not only buzzed.
When swatted at, Bee deviled,
Bee smirched. And when fuddled,
like many of us, Bee labored, Bee reaved.
He behaved as well as any Bee can have.

Read the entire poem here.

One of the best things I’ve gleaned from the novel draft class so far has been the importance of coming to the computer each day knowing what I’m going to write.  I can’t say how this will work when I get to the revision stage, but so far it’s been extraordinarily helpful in getting out that first very very rough draft.

The idea is so simple, it’s amazing that I hadn’t tried it sooner.  But, as in all things, I guess, I had to be “ready” to hear it, ready to give the suggestion a try.

In a nutshell, my process so far has been this:

• Write a three sentence summary of my story – main character wants such and so; main character does this and that to get such and so; main character succeeds (or fails) to get what he wanted.

• Using these three sentences as the basis for my beginning/middle/end structure, I a) decided what the inciting event at the (end of) the beginning of the first act would be  b) determined what the “black moment when all hope is lost” at the end of act two would be  c) determined how my character would carry on as a result of the act two crisis moment

• Brainstorm a list of about 10 sequenced cause/effect events that could serve as the initial skeleton of my story.

From this very rough outline, I sat down at my computer each night and made a rough plan of the next day’s writing.  This was critical. Once I had an solid idea of what I was writing about, the next day’s 1500 words were relatively easy to handle.

The key was knowing in a general way what I was going to be writing so that I never had to face my computer without an idea to get me going.

As a picture book writer, this has been one hugely helpful tip to free me from the worries of tackling something as daunting as a novel.

Another key: I allowed myself to write without rewriting. I just put down the words, writing the scene as I had envisioned and planned for it the night before.  Things often changed as I wrote, but I never had to face the page without some sort of a plan.

The result?  A finished draft.  Rough.  Very rough.  Terrible in so many ways.  Like a big huge block of stone, really. But at this stage of the game, that works for me.  I know it for what it is.  A horrible first draft.  One of many more to come.

I’ve set aside the story for a week or so while I work on something else.  When I go back to it though, I’ll make notes and begin the process again.  Adding to the outline, writing new scenes, cutting those that don’t pull the story forward.

The time for fine-tuning will eventually come, and hopefully, by then, I’ll have chiseled away at enough drafts so that I really and truly know my characters, know their stories and am ready for the logical/editing side of my brain to take hold.

“It can take weeks to assemble and polish a single line of poetry… poems take time… they are to be lived with and endlessly revisited.”

Fry could easily be talking about picture books.  They take ages to polish and they absolutely benefit from what can sometimes feels like endless revision.

“Poetry,” Fry asserts,  “is an entirely different way of using words and I cannot emphasise enough how much more pleasure is to be derived from a slow, luxurious engagement with its language and rhythms.”

As both an aural and oral medium, picture books also presume this type of slow, careful engagement.

Fry proposes three Golden Rules if one is going to carry on reading The Ode Less Travelled. He likens his rules to the End User License Agreement that one encounters when installing computer software.

His rules:

1. Take your time

2. Don’t be afraid

3. Always have a notebook with you.

Great words for a picture book author to live by.

Wise words.  After all, we *do* each have our own particular way of “walking,” our own particular schedules, obligations, lives.  And if we want to spend part of our given time writing, we do well to understand what works for *us.* Acceptance of our process, coupled with a belief in the value of our efforts, and a trust that all the hard work *will* – eventually – pay off is what it’s all about.

That, and the support of fellow writers who understand the ups and downs of a writing life. How and in what form we find that support differs for each of us.

One way I’ve been “caring” for my writing self has been by attending the Flintridge Book Store‘s monthly Writer2Writer meetings. Conceived and hosted by bookseller and writer, Catherine Linka, Writer2Writer is a chance for local authors to gather in a small intimate environment and hear the “particular way” one author approaches her work.

This afternoon, I had the pleasure of hearing local author, Sherri L. Smith, talk about her latest book Flygirl.  Articulate, smart, and down-to-earth, Sherri shared a bit of how she grows a story from small seed idea, to rough outline(s), multiple drafts, and finally, a finished novel.

Those of us who write know this is no small deal.  And yet, Sherri managed to make it sound – not easy, exactly – but doable, in a sort of ordinary, everyday way.

As one writing teacher I know advises: “Write more. Worry less.   There’s nothing so terrible it can’t be improved, fixed, replaced with that which is compelling and interesting. That’s the terrific thing about writing fiction. You can’t fail, you can only quit.”

That said, I finally got around to reading Perry Nodelman’s thoughts on picture books, as posted by Susan of Chicken Spaghetti back in September.  Nodelman says, “…on its own, a picture book text is not completely anything yet, any more than a playscript is complete before its performance.”

He adds, “… while each section of the text must be visualizable, they must not obviously convey visual info themselves. If they did, they’d render the pictures that are going to accompany them pointless.  So the writer needs to leave space for visuals which are nevertheless going to be a necessary part of the story. And, since in conventional publishing practice illustrators and writers don’t usually work together, it’s the text itself (emphasis mine) that must convey to the illustrator what the illustrations need to show.”

In the comments, Susan (Chicken Spaghetti) speculates: “I suspect that many of the best picture-book people (say, Sendak, Henkes, Willems) have an intuitive sense of how to construct a picture book.”

Yes, I think that, in addition to their intuitive sensibilities and their dedication to developing their craft, these author/illustrators have the advantage of working on both sides of the “fence,” so to speak, but I’d like to think that even those of us who create only the words can learn to write in the very particular way Nodelman suggests.