On Hold

I love when I get an email from the library telling me that a book I requested is on hold. It makes me happy. I usually pile my children in the car and head straight there. Luckily, I have trained my children to think that libraries are awesome, and books are a special treat. Basically, we all love it when good books are on hold.

First SCBWI Conference

I just signed up for my first SCBWI conference. Saying I am excited, would be an understatement. I signed up for everything I could—lunch with speakers, critique—so that I could get the most out of this conference. I want to learn all that I can, and find new ways to improve my craft. This conference is going to be so much fun, and I know I am going to learn a lot. And I will, of course, report back here on everything I learned, gained, and gleaned from attending my first conference.

Ignored

Today when I asked my son to please help me clean up a mess, he repeatedly ignored me. Then, when I asked my manuscript to please help me come up with the perfect ending, it repeatedly ignored me. Good thing I'm persistent.

I Did It!

Yay! I did it! Hooray!

You're Ugly, First Draft

First drafts are ugly. Good thing there is revision to make them beautiful. Just repeat until pretty.

You Never Know

The other day my husband was going to go to the driving range. I sweetly suggested that he take our 4-year-old son. He looked at me and said, “I don’t know how that’s going to go.”

“Well I don’t know how the grocery store with three kids is going to go half the time,” I said to him, “but I still do it.”

Needless to say, he took our son to the driving range, and our son loved it. Now my husband takes him as often as he can.

I share this example, because to me it is like writing. One never knows exactly how a story is going to go, but that is ok. Sometimes the story will practically write itself. Sometimes it won’t. Sometimes the ending is easy and the beginning is difficult. Sometimes the title is causing all of the problems. Sometimes you don’t even want to try. But you have to try—even if you don’t know how it is going to go. Because your story, like my son, might just surprise you.

Catching Fireflies

Ideas are like fireflies. They fly around in a magical glow, just waiting to be caught. And we, as writers, have the job of searching for and catching these fireflies.

This may seem easy enough, but often times it isn’t. It can be a tricky thing to capture a firefly. Sometimes they fly so close, but we can’t quite reach them. Sometimes they are too quick and fleeting, and we don’t have enough time to grab them. And sometimes we are not paying close enough attention to find them.

That is why there is PiBoIdMo. For the entire month of November, we get the chance to catch 30 fireflies. PiBoIdMo gives us the jar (notebook) and motivation (daily posts) that we need in order to catch our fireflies. PiBoIdMo gets us moving. It gets us thinking. And it gets us searching.

This will be my third year participating in Tara Lazar’s PiBoIdMo, and I am excited. Every year that I have participated, I have come out with more than 30 ideas (or fireflies if you will).

There is something about participating that really puts your mind into firefly-catching mode. From the daily posts, to the Facebook page, PiBoIdMo is the perfect place to seek out and find ideas.

So come join me for this year’s PiBoIdMo, and see how many fireflies you can catch.

Artwork is courtesy of my eight-year-old daughter.