wordswimmer

Silencing Your Critical Voices

2012-01-29T08:00:00.006-05:00

Working my way through revisions, I start to hear critical voices--voices that aren’t kind, voices that aren’t helpful.Each time I wade into the water to resume a draft, I have to swim past inner doubts about the worth of the story, as well as my own uncertainty about my worth as a writer.Sometimes I can find the passion that prompted me to start working on the story days or weeks or months

Swimming Into The Digital Age

2012-01-22T08:00:00.011-05:00

Lately, I’ve been wondering if poetry books–if, indeed, any books– will survive in the digital age.We’ve come a long way from the time when poets sat inside a cave and recited their poems around a fire to an audience hungry for words and stories. Now we sit in our cozy beds or comfortable sofas with our iPads, Nooks, or Kindle Fires in our laps, the glow of the screen replacing the campfire as

One Writer's Process: Cynthia Lord

2012-01-15T08:15:00.000-05:00

As a way of learning more about her characters, Cynthia Lord keeps a list of questions that she likes to ask herself.“What does she want, and why hasn't she achieved that before the first chapter?” says Lord, whose first novel, Rules, won a slew of awards, including the Newbery Honor Award, and who relied on these questions to help her find out more about her characters in her second novel,

Insights Into Criticism

2012-01-08T09:15:00.000-05:00

Over the holidays, I found myself leafing through a favorite book on my shelves--The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, selected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald--and came across these words which I thought I'd share with you to begin the year:"No matter how just the criticism, any criticism at all which depresses you to the extent that you feel you cannot ever write anything worth

Beacons of Light - 2011

2011-12-16T12:00:00.008-05:00

At this time of year we emerge from the water grateful to the many writers, family members, and friends who supported our efforts to keep swimming month after month and who encouraged us to keep putting words on paper.It's a challenge to keep swimming, to make our way safely past waves and shoals, kicking against stiff currents and past rocky shorelines, into the deep water of our imagination.

On Swimming With The Flow

2011-12-11T08:00:00.007-05:00

In her collection of short stories and essays, Dreamweaver’s Dilemma, Lois McMaster Bujold writes about her writing schedule:I do not have a typical writing schedule because writing is a rare privilege that I can’t always arrange to have happen. I do not write every day. I wish I could...And how she finds names for her characters:Names are such a pain. I work on them. I comb the telephone

Voices From the Depths

2011-12-04T08:00:00.006-05:00

In his brief Author's Note, which appears at the end of Requiem, a slender but powerful collection of poems about the Terezin Ghetto, Paul B. Janeczko writes:“I chose Requiem as the title of this collection because I saw many of the poems in it as solemn songs to the memory of the people who died within the walls of Theresienstadt.”Solemn songs, indeed. These poems stand as memorials honoring the

One Writer's Process: Bobbi Miller

2011-11-27T08:00:00.001-05:00

A typewriter made with rubberbands was one of Bobbi Miller's favorite childhood toys. Perhaps it was a sign that one day the young girl who loved playing with the keys of that typewriter would grow up to write books for children.“I wrote my first poetry in high school English courses,” says Miller, whose first short story appeared in print after she graduated from college. “Marion Zimmer Bradley

Navigating By Resistance

2011-11-20T07:00:00.001-05:00

Do you feel resistance when you step into the water?A hesitation, perhaps, to put your foot in?A reluctance to jump?And once you’ve entered the water and started writing, do you feel the page resisting the words that you try to write?Do you feel the words themselves resisting you?Resistance can take many forms.In Steve Pressfield’s Do The Work! Overcome Resistance and get out of your own way, he

Jump!

2011-11-13T08:00:00.004-05:00

The moment you open a book, you hear (or don't hear) a voice in your ear urging you to jump into the story.It’s not a voice that you hear consciously.It’s more like a gentle whisperMaybe you pick up a book because you recognize the name of the author.Or because you're drawn to the title.Or you like the subject.But none of these things matter as you begin to read the first line.And none of these

Swimming Through Heartache

2011-11-06T08:15:00.001-05:00

The poems that appear in Eloise Greenfield’s The Great Migration: Journey to the North (illustrated by Jay Spivey Gilchrist) strike the chords of heartache and dislocation, exploring the lives of African-Americans as they struggle to make the journey from the South into the unknown Up North.Greenfield writes about the thousands who risked their lives to make a better life for themselves and

One Writer’s Process: Eric A. Kimmel

2011-10-30T08:00:00.002-04:00

Since his first book, The Tartar’s Sword, came out in 1974, Eric A. Kimmel has published over one hundred titles, many of them winners of such prestigious awards as the the Caldecott Medal, the Sydney Taylor Award, and the National Jewish Book Award (which he won twice–first for The Chanukkah Guest, then again for The Mysterious Guests), as well as numerous state children's choice awards. He is

Skating on Thin Ice

2011-10-23T08:00:00.005-04:00

In Pat Hughes' YA novel, Open Ice, star hockey player Nick Taglio takes a hard hit from behind during one of his high school games and struggles to come to terms with what a grade-three concussion may mean for his future on the ice.It isn’t Nick's first severe injury. He’s had concussions before. But each one, his doctor explains, takes a little more time and rest to recover from, and this time

Shifts in Emotional Equilibrium

2011-10-16T08:15:00.002-04:00

In Helen Frost's new verse novel, Hidden, only Wren and Darra, two teenage girls in the same bunk at camp, know they share a secret.It was Darra’s father who stole a car with eight year-old Wren hidden in the back six years earlier. Wren survived by staying out of sight until she could find a way to escape.The only person who knew Wren was hidden in the garage where the car was parked, and who

A Writer’s Expectations

2011-10-09T08:00:00.005-04:00

Our expectations can change everything–how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about our work–and can shape the course of our lives as writers.If we set high expectations for ourselves, we may doom ourselves to disappointment.How many authors start off writing in the belief that they’ll finish their novel in a few months, find an agent to auction it off for a hefty (ie–six figure) advance, and

One Writer’s Process: Catherine Ryan Hyde

2011-10-02T08:15:00.002-04:00

If Catherine Ryan Hyde wasn’t “pathologically stubborn,” she doubts that she’d have succeeded as a writer.“I doubt I would have made it,” Hyde admits. “I couldn’t get an agent for several years. They just weren’t interested. So I wrote short stories and marketed them myself. I got 122 rejections before I placed one. I eventually placed over 50. And racked up over 1,500 rejections.”Now the

Disarming the Plot Monster

2011-09-25T08:15:00.001-04:00

On our beach walk this morning we were lucky to find Judy Irvin Kuns, the author of the middle grade novel, While You Were Out, (Dutton Children's Books), just coming out of the water.She was kind enough to stop and share some thoughts on how she's learning to swim past what she calls the "plot monster."Her guide? Jane Vandenburgh's Architecture of the Novel.With any luck, Judy's thoughts on plot

Beach Talk with Janet S. Wong and Julie Paschkis

2011-09-18T08:00:00.002-04:00

More and more writers and illustrators are discovering the mysterious interplay between art and yoga, and how yoga seems to serve as a catalyst for creativity.It was yoga that inspired illustrator Julie Paschkis and poet Janet Wong to collaborate on Twist: Yoga Poems, a collection of sixteen poems and illustrations which explore a variety of yoga poses. The book, which was named a Bank

Distracting Currents

2011-09-11T08:30:00.004-04:00

It happened again this past week.One morning after I finished breakfast, put up a pot of coffee, and set my manuscript on the kitchen table to start work, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to check my e-mail before sitting down to write.And checking e-mail turned into a fifty minute distraction--messages from readers, friends, students, colleagues; updates on my Facebook account; new Tweets to

One Writer's Process: Leslea Newman

2011-09-04T07:45:00.001-04:00

Lesléa Newman admits that she is happier writing than not writing, even when the work isn’t going well. “I think the reason I still love writing and being a writer is that I’m really in love with language,” writes Newman, , the award-winning author of more than sixty books, including A Letter to Harvey Milk, Nobody's Mother, Hachiko Waits, Write from the Heart, The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, The

How Stories Come to Us

2011-08-28T07:45:00.001-04:00

Our stories come to us in a variety of ways, none of which are in any way predictable ahead of time. Stories seem to sneak up on us. They lurk in the darkness, waiting, or they tease us with a thread fluttering in the wind, or they crawl into our laps when we’re not looking. The arrival of a story is always a surprise, always a mystery, and we have to stay alert, vigilant, always looking for a

The Challenge of First Drafts

2011-08-21T07:30:00.000-04:00

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” ~ Terry Pratchett Some writers gripe and groan about the challenges of first drafts, but I’m the kind of writer who loves them. They’re messy, unmanageable, unpredictable, often impossible, but I love them all the same. I love the freedom that a first draft offers a writer. I love that there are no road signs (because there are no

Finding Our Balance

2011-08-14T08:00:00.008-04:00

Until reading Penny Blubaugh’s novel, Serendipity Market, I hadn’t thought of storytelling or writing as a way of restoring the world’s balance. But it’s an intriguing idea, isn’t it? Do you think we tell stories as a way of regaining our equilibrium? And do you think we read and write stories for much the same reason–to fill the space in our hearts so that we don’t feel so empty, so out of

One Writer’s Process: Tricia Springstubb

2011-08-07T07:00:00.002-04:00

“Writing is like a window,” says Tricia Springstubb. “Every day I look out and discover something new.”Springstubb, the author of What Happened on Fox Street, which received starred reviews from The Horn Book and Kirkus Reviews, and was selected as one of the best books of 2010 by The Washington Post and Bank Street School, likes to work in the morning, then take a break and go walking or

Magic Inside the Reader’s Mind

2011-07-31T08:00:00.004-04:00

For Lois McMaster Bujold, whose many novels and short stories have brought her Hugo and Nebula Awards, a book is not a “sheaf of inked paper with the gaudy cover glued to the spine.... not an object on the table.”Rather, it is an event that takes place in the reader’s mind, she writes in “The Unsung Collaborator,” one of her essays on writing that can be found in Dreamweaver’s Dilemma, a

Beach Talk with Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell

2011-07-24T07:30:00.001-04:00

Remember playing Tag as a child? Someone would sneak up behind you or catch you without warning and shout, “Tag, you’re it!”It was a game of narrow escapes, near-misses, breathless dashes and sprints, and a chance to reach out and (sometimes) unfreeze a best friend.Two ardent lovers of poetry (and best-friends), Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell, have taken the pleasure and delight that each

Finding Inspiration

2011-07-17T08:00:00.002-04:00