In the mail this week came a fat envelope full of letters from second graders at Sampson Elementary, which I visited during my week of school visits in Houston. I've read them over and over again. Here are some of my favorite lines, with the original spelling reproduced as best I can.
Adam, liking my titles Kelsey Green, Reading Queen, Annika Riz, Math Whiz, and Izzy Barr, Running Star, suggested I write Jackson Baxter, Writing Master. Thomas, hearing that I was stuck on a rhyming title for my work-in-progress about know-it-all Simon Ellis, suggested Simon Ellis, King of Jealous. Great titles, you two!
The kids always like best the ape dance I perform at the end of my assemblies (don't ask!). One of them wrote, "I was laughing so hard I couldn't see or breathe." Another wrote, "I almost did my scream laugh."
Blake told me, "You are one of the best athers I know. I have not read one of your book's but I just know they are reily good. I hope a lot more of your books get publisht. Try to get 20 book's or more publisht in a row that would be awsom." Blake, I couldn't agree more! I'll pass this on to my editor.
Jillian asked, "How many scools have you been to? I think you have bean to a lot! I mean, watt athor rites great books and do's not go to a lot of scools?"
Maria: "I think you are vary prity and nice." Aw, shucks, Maria!
Ava: "War do you git your story idews? I git min from my dog."
Sophie: "What year were you born in. You look like your thert five." I'll take it!
A different Sophie already has a main character for her new story: "Billy the Bad. He is vary bad."
Emily, a "shy arther" herself, sympathized with my report of all the criticism I get on my drafts from my writing group: "I feel like you in your book club my older sister reads my books and she herst my feelings a lot of times."
A third Sophie told me her reading goals: "I want to read more chapter books to impress my teacher Mrs. Hopper."
And finally, Madison told me: "When I get home I'm going to write a book." Yes, yes, yes!
And this is why I love to do author visits at schools.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Yay for Cats and Dogs
I know the secret of happiness. Well, at least the secret of happiness for me:
1) Get up early and write on the couch with my mug of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate beside me.
2) Go for a long walk in the beautiful mountains by my house.
Every day that I do this is a good day.
Every day that I do not do this is not a good day.
It is completely within my power to do both of these things, barring the occasional broken foot or other looming emergency.
So why do I ever not do them? Why do I look at the clock at 5:00 or 5:30, and say, oh, I can write later? Then tell myself, when I finally do roll out of bed at the ridiculously late hour of 6:30 or 7, I can take my walk later, too? The whole day drifts by in an unproductive stupor, filled with who-knows-what, and then at the end of it, no page has been written, no walk has been taken. Oh, the sad shame of it!
Luckily, such days are rare for two reasons:
1) Snickers the cat
2) Tank the dog
It's Snickers who meows to be fed breakfast at 5:30 a.m. It's Tank who writhes with joy at the sight of the leash in my hand at 7:00. Once I force myself out of bed to feed Snickers, I might as well fix myself some hot chocolate and settle down to write. After an hour of writing, I don't feel like leaving my cozy couch to walk, but I can hear Tank waiting hopefully at the bottom of the stairs.
So I write, and I walk, and life is good.
Yay for cats and dogs!
1) Get up early and write on the couch with my mug of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate beside me.
2) Go for a long walk in the beautiful mountains by my house.
Every day that I do this is a good day.
Every day that I do not do this is not a good day.
It is completely within my power to do both of these things, barring the occasional broken foot or other looming emergency.
So why do I ever not do them? Why do I look at the clock at 5:00 or 5:30, and say, oh, I can write later? Then tell myself, when I finally do roll out of bed at the ridiculously late hour of 6:30 or 7, I can take my walk later, too? The whole day drifts by in an unproductive stupor, filled with who-knows-what, and then at the end of it, no page has been written, no walk has been taken. Oh, the sad shame of it!
Luckily, such days are rare for two reasons:
1) Snickers the cat
2) Tank the dog
It's Snickers who meows to be fed breakfast at 5:30 a.m. It's Tank who writhes with joy at the sight of the leash in my hand at 7:00. Once I force myself out of bed to feed Snickers, I might as well fix myself some hot chocolate and settle down to write. After an hour of writing, I don't feel like leaving my cozy couch to walk, but I can hear Tank waiting hopefully at the bottom of the stairs.
So I write, and I walk, and life is good.
Yay for cats and dogs!
Friday, October 10, 2014
Queen for a Week
I'm writing this in the Houston airport, after an exhausting, exhilarating week of author visits to ten schools in the book-crazed Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District. I'm astonished yet again by the wonderfulness of librarians who can generate so much excitement in second and third graders about books and the lucky people who write them.
I feel like a queen right now - a very tired and happy queen.
This is what it's like to arrive at Bang Elementary:
This is what it's like to enter the library at Kirk Elementary (I think it was Kirk - after such a full week, the magic all starts to blur together).
In case I didn't already feel like visiting royalty, I was crowned Reading Queen (no doubt inspired by my Kelsey Green, Reading Queen) at Sampson Elementary:
And, as if my head weren't puffed up enough already, here is Ashlyn, at Millsap Elementary, in the shirt she designed and wore for the occasion:
Now I still have to WRITE the books. I did write one page a day each morning in my lovely Hampton Inn, forcing myself out of the world's most comfortable bed to do so. It was easy, with this as my reward. Thank you, Cy-Fair librarians, for a week I'll remember always.
I feel like a queen right now - a very tired and happy queen.
This is what it's like to arrive at Bang Elementary:
This is what it's like to enter the library at Kirk Elementary (I think it was Kirk - after such a full week, the magic all starts to blur together).
Now I still have to WRITE the books. I did write one page a day each morning in my lovely Hampton Inn, forcing myself out of the world's most comfortable bed to do so. It was easy, with this as my reward. Thank you, Cy-Fair librarians, for a week I'll remember always.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Wealth from Frugality
I'm in Houston for a week of school visits in the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District: ten schools in five days, focusing mainly on connecting with the second and third graders who are just right as readers for my Franklin School Friends series (Kelsey Green, Reading Queen; Annika Riz, Math Whiz; Izzy Barr, Running Star).
I was invited to come many months ago and told to make my own travel arrangements, to be reimbursed by the school district. When I searched for flights online, they were all sickeningly expensive, more than $500 round trip, with one exception: cut-rate Spirit Airlines, which charges passengers for EVERYTHING (carrying on a bag, getting a seat assignment, getting a cup of water on the plane) and whose Denver-Houston flight left at an ungodly early hour (6:15 a.m., which meant getting a 3:18 bus to the airport, which meant getting up at 2:45, which doesn't even count as early morning, but as middle-of-the-night).
I decided to buy the Spirit Airlines ticket. Even though I wasn't paying for it, somebody was, and even with all those extra fees, I still was able to fly round trip for $171.48. How could I in good conscience spend $350 more just to get a tray table on the plane, seat-back pouch to stow my reading material, and two or three extra hours of sleep?
So I did the frugal thing.
And here was my reward.
Because I arrived so very early, my host librarian, Debbie Hall, and her mega-knowledgeable first-grade-teacher colleague, Carmela, met me at the airport and whisked me off to the Montrose neighborhood to Katz's kosher deli for breakfast ("Katz's Never Kloses"), with its old-timey tiled floors and tin ceilings. I had blueberry blintzes.
Next stop: Houston's fountain-filled museum district, near Rice University. There we spent about two hours at the stunning Museum of Natural Science, dividing our time between a breathtaking exhibit of Faberge eggs and other exquisitely detailed jeweled items (I decided I wanted the ink well, to help me write my books) and the truly amazing Morian Hall of Paleontology, which offered its own exquisitely detailed gems such as meticulously excavated tiny fossils and jewel-like petrified wood, as well as the usual parade of looming dinosaurs here staged in dramatic predator-prey interactions.
We had meant to go next to Houston's Greek festival, but by that point we were tired and decided on a late lunch at a bustling Greek eatery instead, Niko Niko's, with groaning platters of Greek specialties finished off with honey-drenched baklava.
I checked in to my Hampton Inn by 3, promptly crawled into the world's most comfortable bed, and indulged in a four-hour nap. Why not? This early frugal bird had already caught hours of dazzling pleasures by the time the more expensive flights would have touched down. So I concluded my frugal day with the second most wonderful nap of my life (Cheryl: you know what the first-most wonderful one was). Yay for frugality!
I was invited to come many months ago and told to make my own travel arrangements, to be reimbursed by the school district. When I searched for flights online, they were all sickeningly expensive, more than $500 round trip, with one exception: cut-rate Spirit Airlines, which charges passengers for EVERYTHING (carrying on a bag, getting a seat assignment, getting a cup of water on the plane) and whose Denver-Houston flight left at an ungodly early hour (6:15 a.m., which meant getting a 3:18 bus to the airport, which meant getting up at 2:45, which doesn't even count as early morning, but as middle-of-the-night).
I decided to buy the Spirit Airlines ticket. Even though I wasn't paying for it, somebody was, and even with all those extra fees, I still was able to fly round trip for $171.48. How could I in good conscience spend $350 more just to get a tray table on the plane, seat-back pouch to stow my reading material, and two or three extra hours of sleep?
So I did the frugal thing.
And here was my reward.
Because I arrived so very early, my host librarian, Debbie Hall, and her mega-knowledgeable first-grade-teacher colleague, Carmela, met me at the airport and whisked me off to the Montrose neighborhood to Katz's kosher deli for breakfast ("Katz's Never Kloses"), with its old-timey tiled floors and tin ceilings. I had blueberry blintzes.
Next stop: Houston's fountain-filled museum district, near Rice University. There we spent about two hours at the stunning Museum of Natural Science, dividing our time between a breathtaking exhibit of Faberge eggs and other exquisitely detailed jeweled items (I decided I wanted the ink well, to help me write my books) and the truly amazing Morian Hall of Paleontology, which offered its own exquisitely detailed gems such as meticulously excavated tiny fossils and jewel-like petrified wood, as well as the usual parade of looming dinosaurs here staged in dramatic predator-prey interactions.
We had meant to go next to Houston's Greek festival, but by that point we were tired and decided on a late lunch at a bustling Greek eatery instead, Niko Niko's, with groaning platters of Greek specialties finished off with honey-drenched baklava.
I checked in to my Hampton Inn by 3, promptly crawled into the world's most comfortable bed, and indulged in a four-hour nap. Why not? This early frugal bird had already caught hours of dazzling pleasures by the time the more expensive flights would have touched down. So I concluded my frugal day with the second most wonderful nap of my life (Cheryl: you know what the first-most wonderful one was). Yay for frugality!
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Un-Retirement
After a month of what other people have been calling my "retirement" and I have been calling my transition to life as a full-time writer, I just made the decision to un-retire. I've accepted an offer to return to my visiting professorship at DePauw University for the spring semester.
When I set foot in Greencastle last week, I fell back in love, so hard, so fast. I kept thinking of the Dolly Parton song I used to listen to back when I had a complicated love life, many decades ago: "Here you come again, looking better than a body has a right to. And shaking me up so, that all I really know, is here you come again - and here I go...." The little town of Greencastle (pop. 10,000), the idyllic campus of DePauw (even under construction), the walk through the Nature Park to the pristine and peaceful Prindle Institute, hugs from colleagues, late night talks with my former housemate Julia. . . . it all looked better than any place on earth has a right to. It shook me up so, the intensity of the longing to be there again.
It all happened so fast. I went so quickly from "Gee, it's great to be back here," to "Wow, I really would like to teach here again some time," to "Do you think you might ever have a use for me in the future?" to "Next spring? Let me think for a second or two. . . why, YES!"
I'll be teaching children's literature in the English department, Rousseau in the philosophy department, and throwing myself once again into all Prindle Institute for Ethics activities. I'll reside with Julia and her darling kindergartner, Alex. And I'll be living in the same state as my sister for the first time since our childhood.
I already have pangs at the thought of leaving my sweet Boulder life yet again - my family, my friends, my church, my world. But I'll come back for Kataleya's first birthday in February, for spring break in March, for Gregory's graduation in May.
And I have to admit that so far I haven't liked being a full-time writer as much as I thought I would. A lifelong pattern of writing for only an hour a day (a pattern which allowed me to write and publish 50 books) is hard to break. I thought I might be able to make myself write at least two hours a day, but I just didn't seem to be able to. I wasn't completing any more pages than when I worked full time. And while I did fill the rest of my days with considerable fun, I had just as much fun before. It turns out that I'm happier when I'm busy.
Maybe a month wasn't a fair try of my new life. That's hardly time to get the opening scenes of Act III to be playing out as they should. In any case, I've said yes to DePauw, and I feel excited. I'll still need to figure out the full-time writing life someday, but I'll tackle that later.
For now, my new mantra for myself is: "Do not go gentle into that good pasture." With this decision to return to teaching for one last (?) semester, I'm feeling my oats.
I'm feeling downright frisky.
When I set foot in Greencastle last week, I fell back in love, so hard, so fast. I kept thinking of the Dolly Parton song I used to listen to back when I had a complicated love life, many decades ago: "Here you come again, looking better than a body has a right to. And shaking me up so, that all I really know, is here you come again - and here I go...." The little town of Greencastle (pop. 10,000), the idyllic campus of DePauw (even under construction), the walk through the Nature Park to the pristine and peaceful Prindle Institute, hugs from colleagues, late night talks with my former housemate Julia. . . . it all looked better than any place on earth has a right to. It shook me up so, the intensity of the longing to be there again.
It all happened so fast. I went so quickly from "Gee, it's great to be back here," to "Wow, I really would like to teach here again some time," to "Do you think you might ever have a use for me in the future?" to "Next spring? Let me think for a second or two. . . why, YES!"
I'll be teaching children's literature in the English department, Rousseau in the philosophy department, and throwing myself once again into all Prindle Institute for Ethics activities. I'll reside with Julia and her darling kindergartner, Alex. And I'll be living in the same state as my sister for the first time since our childhood.
I already have pangs at the thought of leaving my sweet Boulder life yet again - my family, my friends, my church, my world. But I'll come back for Kataleya's first birthday in February, for spring break in March, for Gregory's graduation in May.
And I have to admit that so far I haven't liked being a full-time writer as much as I thought I would. A lifelong pattern of writing for only an hour a day (a pattern which allowed me to write and publish 50 books) is hard to break. I thought I might be able to make myself write at least two hours a day, but I just didn't seem to be able to. I wasn't completing any more pages than when I worked full time. And while I did fill the rest of my days with considerable fun, I had just as much fun before. It turns out that I'm happier when I'm busy.
Maybe a month wasn't a fair try of my new life. That's hardly time to get the opening scenes of Act III to be playing out as they should. In any case, I've said yes to DePauw, and I feel excited. I'll still need to figure out the full-time writing life someday, but I'll tackle that later.
For now, my new mantra for myself is: "Do not go gentle into that good pasture." With this decision to return to teaching for one last (?) semester, I'm feeling my oats.
I'm feeling downright frisky.
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