Website and Interview

It's a happy day!

I have been interviewed over on author Joanna Marple's Miss Marple's Musings blog, which I was quite thrilled to do. Joanna regularly blogs about illustrators, her traveling adventures, and kidlit in general, and I suspect she might love kayaking almost as much as me. It's worth following, so check it out. 

If that weren't cause enough for thankfulness, I've also just launched my new website, which you can view by clicking on the Wordy Bird Studio tab above, or by clicking here. It is still a work in progress, and I look forward to completing its evolution with a page just for kids, and the Wordy Bird Studio store, where you'll be able to purchase giclee prints of my work and other items. 

AND... I also have a new Wordy Bird Studio Facebook page, where I'll be posting links about writing, publishing, illustrating, and all sorts of kidlit goodies. You can find and follow it here. 

Thanks for dropping by the birdhouse. 

NESCBWIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My submission for the poster contest.
Poem "Infirm Pachyderm" by Jane Yolen.

                           NESCBWIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!

If you’ve been, you know why I’m squealing with delight. If you haven’t, then what I say here can’t possibly fully convey how wonderful it is to spend three days with kid-lit folk, see old friends, meet new ones, and soak up wisdom, energy, and knowledge from so many esteemed writers, illustrators, editors, and agents. I return feeling warmed to my core and full to the brim: with knowledge, with inspiration, and with love for these folk and what we’ve all dedicated our lives to. Full and gushy and overflowing.

I’m also shocked and delighted to be able to say that I won 1^st prize in the “published” category of the NESCBWI poster illustration contest. I’m still shaking my head in wonder.

I'm also thrilled and excited to say that my wonderful, extremely talented crit partners and dear friends, Dave Bird and Mary Davison, took out 1st and 3rd in in the "unpublished" category, including Dave winning the major prize of the R.Michelson Galleries Award. Congrats, guys, I'm so, so proud of you. 

Thank you, thank you to the incredibly hard-working and dedicated organizers, faculty, and volunteers who make these conferences possible. You are full to the brim with AWESOME. 

Community

Three weeks ago, I embarked on a class at RISD, as a student this time round. A few weeks before that, I found myself co-creating a new critique group. It’s a great time for me creatively, and in part because I am sharing a greater sense of community. There is so much to learn from listening to other people talk about your work, about listening and talking to others about theirs.

If you have been my client you will have read my thoughts on the importance of a critique group. If you have taken one of my classes, you will have heard me speak often and passionately about the necessity of a writing/creating community, of a critique group, of not going this path alone.

So I now belong to two critique groups, both small—three people in each—which for me is the magic number. A critique group of three, if working well, provides the right amount of exchange without being overwhelming, and a focused and lengthy time spent on not just the nuts and bolts of each person’s work, but on discussion of process and other matters, the kinds of things a writer goes through in solitude, which must be shared if one is not only to write, but to stay mentally healthy while doing so. It can provide a gentle intimacy, and often grows into real friendship.

Both of my critique groups are wonderful. Both work and work well. And each group came into being almost effortlessly, almost spontaneously, which I think really counts for something.

One takes place in an unusual flat-roofed home, down a path past a Japanese maple, lush groundcover, large rocks. There are sculptures in the house and exotic artifacts, prints and paintings that evoke more spiritual, darker, or more thoughtful times and different cultural traditions. There are wine and sweet treats, glimpses of hummingbirds in summer, an opossum in winter. I always look forward to that environment, and it always feels both an adventure and like coming home. The other, so far, takes place in either an unexpected city tree house of sorts, or on a cricket-sung, firefly-flickering porch. It is too new yet to know where or even if it will settle, but no doubt there will always be music. Each experience in both groups is an unceasing free flow of energy, exchange from writer to writer, artist to artist. Each is warm and generous. And it’s lots of fun.

If you don’t have a critique group, I hope you’ll find one. If you start or join a critique group with the right people, and if you really give yourself to a mutual sharing of work, ideas, comfort, and understanding, it will be one of the best decisions you ever make. Not sure where to start? There are various ways, but for children’s book writers, your regional branch of SCBWI is the very best place to begin.

Now go find the fellow creative folk who fit with you, who feed your craft, fuel your ideas, and whose work and process you really care about. I could wish you no greater pleasure…except maybe a large book deal… but even then you’d need someone to share it with who’d really get what it took to get you there, and who was with you along the way, and who understood with no explanation  in the first place the need to be a writer.

Go on, find them—off you go!

Silver-Spangled Thank You

Well of course there were no Sunday Hikes in the wilds of Rhode Island this week, as I was carving up the dance-floor in a pair of silver boots. Yes, that was me! Why did Wordy Bird make this dubious fashion choice* (apart from the fact that it made me feel like a superhero)? Because I was at NESCBWI’s Silver Anniversary regional conference!

And what a conference it was. Where else could it be confirmed that Jane Yolen is, indeed, a goddess (did we ever doubt it?), that Harold Underdown has a three-way split personality (each of them as insightful and witty as the next), and that Tomie dePaola has an unusual thing for black velvet? Thoughtful, heart-ful, soulful keynotes by Steve Mooser and Lin Oliver who created SCBWI forty years ago? What else can I say but “WOW!”

Edward J. Delaney and Steven Withrow’s Library of the Early Mind, which screened on Saturday night, is a must-see—not just for creators of kids’ books but for anyone who cares about children. Steven, when will we be able to purchase a DVD???

I was thrilled to see several of my writing students at RISD receive awards: Caroline Gray, Lin Norman-Lyman, and special congrats to Jeannette Bradley for winning the R. Michelson Galleries’ award. So proud of you all. And super-congrats to my friend Besty Devany for winning the 2011 Ruth Glass Scholarship (not to mention another award earlier last week)!

And of course, I attended great workshops and learned so much. I have to give a particular shout out to Janet Fox whose two sessions I attended: “Plot Don’t Plod, Pace Don’t Race” and “Elision.” Janet, not sure if you’re on the listserv or if you’ll ever read this, but I can only partially express the impact of your two talks on me. After being so devastatingly blocked for so long with the novel that tugs my heart and soul more than anything I’ve ever written, I feel as if I experienced a sudden turning on of my lights in both of your sessions. It feels as if the rest of my novel is now waiting to burst forth from me. Can’t wait to read your books. If any of you ever have the chance to hear Janet speak, I encourage you to jump at the opportunity.  

To Greg Fishbone, Kathryn Gargolinksi, Marilyn Salerno, Sally Riley, keynote speakers, critique-ers, faculty, and all the volunteers and helpers who worked so hard to make it all possible for use to attend - thank you.

To all my RISD students who weren’t there this year… hie thee hence to NESCBWI 2012! 

*Now safely ensconced in daughter's dress-up box.

Whispering Pines 2011

Whispering Pines is my favorite SCBWI event. It's not just the incredible speakers such as Newbury Honor author Cynthia Lord, senior editor at Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), Cheryl Klein, agent/author Ammi-Joan Paquette of EMLA, and Mary Lee Donovan of Candlewick Press, and author/illustrator Jennifer Thermes:

Ammi-Joan Paquette, Mary Lee Donovan, 
Cheryl Klein, and Cindy Lord ponder magic wands

Nor is it just the bountiful spread put on by WP's chef (yes, everyone who goes to WP feels compelled to mention the food!), or the setting, which is as peaceful as it is beautiful:

It's not just the catching up with like-minded friends who understand this fun, maddening, necessarily obsessive path we're all on, and the making of new ones.


There's a spirit about the place and the people who go to WP...I imagine it's a fairly rare thing to put forty or so published and aspiring writers in a room together and feel a complete lack of competition, to feel only support and warmth and a genuine desire to see others succeed. But that's just what you'll find here. 


While some attended peer group critiques on Saturday afternoon, I took a little time to write: 

Raffle baskets! 

And of course, Kids' Book Jeopardy!

Thank you to WP director, organizer extraordinaire, and author Lynda Mullally Hunt for a truly fab weekend! Only 51 weeks to go until WP 2012...

The Pines, They Be Whisperin'...

The 'Wordy Bird's Favorite Things' Raffle Basket.
You know you want it!

Early tomorrow, I'm off to New England SCBWI's Whispering Pines Writers' Retreat. 


I'm excited to catch up with some writerly friends, talk books and writing among the pines, and hang out with Newbery Honor winning author, Cynthia Lord; Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic) Senior Editor, Cheryl Klein; Charlesbridge Editorial Director, Yolanda Scott; and Ammi-Joan Paquette, agent at Erin Murphy Literary Agency... Maybe one of them will win Wordy Bird's Favorite Things!


Have I mentioned that SCBWI and its events are so very worthwhile?