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Quotation Motivation: Flap Those Ears

  “We should approach the page as a dog approaches an open car window. We have to stick our heads out, let our ears flap and watch for bugs in our eyes. We have to be in and of the moment. We have to let our hearts fly.” –N.M. Kelby A dog with its head

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Boston Pictures…Minus a Few

I blogged Monday about the quick trip my husband and I took to Boston. Now I have a few pix to share, except none of our tour of the USS Constitution, which was a high point of the trip. The camera battery died (of course) that morning. And Facebook isn’t letting me upload pix from my

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Thoughts

Back from Boston’s Back Bay

Randy and I just got home from a short trip to Boston, and we had a great time. Highlights included a whale watching cruise (where we saw two mother humpback whales and their calves, plus a couple of minke whales), touring the USS Constitution, and eating amazing amounts of food (Randy–seafood, me–salads, pastas, and sandwiches). We

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Quotation Motivation: Set Our Own Conditions

  To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy … is to set our own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) I’m struggling to be happy lately. I do think happiness is largely

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Lesson Plan for Emotion Poems

On Friday, I shared just a few of the cool poems that 4th-8th graders came up with in my Young Authors Conference workshops. A few people asked about the process, so I thought I’d share the outline of what we did. Each session was only 50 minutes, which gave us 45 minutes tops for the whole

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Poetry Friday: Poems of Hope and Fear by Young Authors

 I had a great time working with 4th-8th graders at Young Authors Conferences in May, and I wanted to share (with their permission) just a few of their poems. We imagined certain scenes/settings, and then the writers brainstormed all the things Hope and Fear could do in those situations. They used randomly chosen verb lists to

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Poetry Friday: Jane Kenyon Went to My Pool?

  I started reading Jane Kenyon: Collected Poems recently, and was shocked when part of one of the poems described a landmark of my childhood, The Langford Hotel, in Winter Park, Florida. My family had a membership to the pool, and my dad put on pool/diving shows there, sometimes including my sisters (I took diving

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Quotation Motivation: Lost at Sea

  “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”–Andre Gide This is one of my favorite quotations, because I need to remind myself of this frequently with regard to my writing. In my life, I’m up for adventure and change and challenge. But in my writing, I find

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Poetry Friday: Seal Lullaby (by Rudyard Kipling)

Yesterday, I was catching up on a little blog reading from National Poetry Month, and Kathi Appelt in her interview at The Miss Rumphius Effect mentioned her father reading Rudyard Kipling poems to her as a child. I’ve shared this poem once before, but I love it–so here it is again. Seal Lullaby Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the

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Three Days With Fourth Graders: The Poems

Last week, I shared some of the highlights and the areas I needed to work on in my poetry residency with fourth graders. Today I want to share just a few of their poems. Most of these were first drafts, written in three minutes or less–we put the timer to good use! I loved how

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Thoughts

Words Matter: Let Someone Know

I got the loveliest email last month. It was from Autumn Lubin, a woman I’ve never met, who recognized my name in an article about a writing fellowship. She works with foreclosure intervention counselors who work with families facing foreclosure, and here’s part of what she wrote: I start each of my classes by reading your poem “Smaller.” One of my

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Jeanette and Laura at Pinewood

Three Days With Fourth Graders: The Good

Back in April, my first trip was a three-day poetry residency with fourth graders. Four classes, an hour per day with each class. Most of my school visits are large-group presentations, so I hadn’t worked with classroom-sized groups on multi-day projects in ages. I had a great time with the kids, but afterward, I wondered

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Always a Runner-Up, Never a Bride

I’m back from a two-day mini-vacation with my husband (yay!) and I’ve got some good news to share! I was named an Honorable Mention for the Loft McKnight Fellowship, a much-coveted annual award here in Minnesota. The winner, Debra Frasier, gets $25,000 (hence the coveting!). The Honorable Mentions (my crit group partner Connie Van Hoven, Lynne

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Poetry Friday: A Round of Rondeau Redouble

  So, every once in a while, I get to write poems with the Poetry Princesses, which is an intimidating thrill. First, we did the crown sonnet. Next up was the villanelle. And then, with barely time for a deep sigh of relief after we posted those in December, we somehow ended up embroiled in a

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