“For this weekend, you get to call yourselves writers loud and proud instead of in a small voice at the end of a long list of other things you do.” My writing teacher Lois Brandt said this (or something very like it) at the beginning of our Weekend on the Water retreat with the Society of Children’s… Read more
Inspiration
I am hovering on the edge of doing anything writerly lately. I look at the work I need to do, lift my pen, scribble a few words, and then put the pen back down. The keyboard isn’t much better. I’ll open programs, stare at a screen, and then wander away to vacuum. Or worse. I’ll… Read more
I’ve struggled with what to write this week. Much has happened. A double funeral with dear friends who lost a mother and a father in two days. The kindness of neighbors who could have hurt us but didn’t. Neither of these are my stories to tell, though. So I won’t. I did see something that… Read more
Last weekend, I went to Western Washington University for the first annual Poetry Camp. After the end of the sessions and right before Jack Prelutsky, the first Children’s Poet Laureate, gave his fantastic reading of ‘Rat for Lunch,’ I went for a walk around the campus where I once went to school. I was hunting the… Read more
How to get yourself to write in nine easy steps: Tell yourself to take the week off. Give yourself some terrible, awful, no good house chore that you think will be fun like painting your front door. (Simple laundry or bathroom cleaning chores won’t work. It must be something dreadful.) Ask at least three cranky over-worked… Read more
Warning: This post has reptiles. If slithering snakes give you the heebie jeebies, you may want to skip this one. For my birthday this year, I went to see the Reptile Zoo in Monroe, WA. From this trip with my husband and six-year-old, I managed to squeeze a poem. I suppose I should start by… Read more
On Sunday, I drove across the Cascade Mountains to sunny Yakima for a three day teaching conference. In this city my grandparents once called home, I let the sun melt away my everyday stresses and felt my curiosity perk up. While strolling the neighborhood, I discovered churches with large blocks of dark stone rising above the city… Read more
I have two places to find books when I want to know what to read next. It was strange to me that in those two separate places I found first Moriarty and then Holmes, two books I adored. 1. My Mother’s Kindle A while back, my six-year-old dropped my electronic book. This is what I… Read more