Right now I’m on elbow-deep in the last chapters of what I call in very heavy quotes a final draft of a novel. This means the words must follow some logical order. No more fragments and run-ons, or only if they’re deliberate. Dialogue should be at least a little logical, and trimmed. I’m making this happen by chopping out pages and paragraphs, ( Read more... )

I had the pleasure of hearing picture book author and illustrator Pat Cummings speak at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on Saturday. In her series of books, Talking with Artists, she asks creators for pictures of  drawings or sculptures they did as children, as well as the work that brought them fame, so that children can see one starts ( Read more... )

A former student just asked me what I do when I get bored while writing a novel. Apparently I’d been muttering loudly, and it was too late to claim that it’s all fireworks all the time at my table on the porch. When I find myself wiggling, sometimes I call up the great role models of obsession (which may or may not be a synonym for discipline), ( Read more... )

A few days ago, Peter and I spent a happy afternoon seeing Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered  at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. Howard Pyle has inspired many who paint people in action, and often peril, by his work based on myths, King Arthur legends, folk tales, the Bible, and other narratives, many done for Scribner’s and ( Read more... )

We who write children’s books are invested in hopeful if not happy endings, but it doesn’t mean we’re not aware that stories can end in other ways. So these past two months, while doing some radical trimming and promising myself the joy of writing the last third of the book as a reward, I had a niggling fear that my reward would take an ironic turn ( Read more... )

Last night, Peter and I attended the opening of a show highlighting the work of Ezra Jack Keats at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Claudia Nahson, who curated the show which was first shown at the Jewish Museum in New York, spoke about Ezra Jack Keats’s (1916-1983) history. We learned that he had a rough time growing up as small, ( Read more... )

It wasn’t so very long ago that I wrote a blog post called One Hundred Pages  about my grouchiness when my writing group thought I might try to cut down part of my manuscript by about a third. It seemed impossible, but it turns out it wasn’t. It seemed like it would be tortuous. From this point about two months later, I’d say it mostly hurt at ( Read more... )

This weekend Peter and I drove to Wells, Maine to help celebrate the grand opening of Shellback Artworks, a shop our friend Steve Lavigne, with huge help from his wife, Denise, is opening to sell comics and art supplies and where Steve will teach classes to kids. There was free pizza and lots of good will through the day, but maybe my favorite ( Read more... )

Today I joined colleagues who teach in the MFA in Writing for Children  Program at Simmons  speaking at a Children’s Literature Association Conference  at the Boston Campus. We each had been asked to read some and talk about our lives as authors and teachers.

Anna Staniszewski read from her first novel, My Very UnFairy Tale Life, and spoke about ( Read more... )

For most of the years of my daughter’s childhood, we rented a house for two weeks in southern Maine. Emily’s friends and their moms would sometimes visit. Some of our relatives and almost-relatives would come for a few days to relax and smell and hear the ocean. There are so many great memories. Now Emily lives across the country, and for the past ( Read more... )