“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
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
This will be a short post. The door is done! Done! (I ache to replace the hardware with silver but have no more oomph for that sort of insanity.) For now, I’m back to my usual groove of teaching and writing. A new quarter begins this Monday and I am gearing up for a poetry workshop… 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
Last night, the director kept stopping us in that annoying way that band leaders have. “We’ve got to get those triplets sharp. Some of you are thinking you can just slip through them at a relaxed pace and it’s throwing us off,” he said. “I am not in a parade up here waving at you… Read more