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The Learning! The Growth!…The Pain
News flash: Making your body do stuff it’s not used to causes soreness. OK, I know that’s no surprise, but I’m being reminded of it now. It’s been 7 or 8 weeks of learning across-the-floors and flag spins and tosses for my Minnesota Brass adventure, and my body is feeling it. I’ve been black and blue from hitting myself
You Can’t Learn Everything From a Book!
Whenever I want to learn how to do something, I get a book. Replace the kitchen faucet? Get a book. Make a latch-hook rug? Get a book. Write a book? Get a book. But sadly, there’s no book of instructions for the dance and spinning routines I need to learn for the color guard. And
Color Guard: Just a Little Out of Place
Time for another Minnesota Brass update. Ever since I started this adventure about six weeks ago, I’ve felt out of place. I still do. And that’s one of the reasons I think I have to keep doing it. Last week the entire color guard was supposed to come. The veterans haven’t been coming to practice because
Where Do You Stand?
Several weeks into my adventures with Minnesota Brass, I’ve realized that where I stand during practice really matters. When we do across-the-floors, my first instinct was to get at the end of the line. Then I realized that when my turn came, I was passe-ing and chasse-ing and jazz-running across the floor right toward a line of
How Bad Do You Want It?
That’s the question you always have to ask yourself when you say you want to do something–whether that something is writing a book or joining a color guard. Older Daughter bailed on practice this past week at the last minute. Why? Because she was going out to dinner with a friend: “We’ve been trying to
A Slight Change in the Rules
Maybe you saw my post last week on joining the color guard of an all-ages drum corps. I’m going to post each week, I think, on my (possibly brief) adventure there. I need a name for this series of posts–something to make them sound funnier and more relevant than they really are. Any thoughts? Anyhow,
Risking Foolishness
One of the things I really want to do in my writing is take risks. I want to be knowledgeable about the marketplace and the “accepted” topics and approaches in kids’ writing, and I want to have a career as a children’s writer, but I also want to risk foolishness and non-publication by continuing to
It’s Like Billy Collins Read My Mind!
I mentioned recently that I had ordered Billy Collins’ Picnic, Lightning and a couple of other poetry books as my own Christmas gifts. And in a separate post, we chatted about writing in books and whether it’s a sign of love or a desecration (most, but not all, people vote the former). So I laughed
Quotation Motivation: Writing Is Bart
“Realize that publishing isn’t art, it’s bart. That’s business and art. Being true to oneself also requires being true to what publishing requires today. A writer needs to realize he can’t just sit home and write. He must market, promote, blog, Twitter, travel, call, cajole, shake hands, interpretive dance, whatever it takes to build
No To-Do List?
Every Sunday, I make my weekly to-do list. It includes reminders of all the things I try to do daily, like morning pages, blog, read 5 poems, daily poem, 15 minutes of nothing, work out, train Jack, track my food, etc. Then there’s a list of specific appointments I have, like my Wordsmiths holiday crit
Quotation Motivation: Who is that woman?
“Be curious: Who is that woman buying five lemons and two peaches at the grocery counter? What does her purse contain? And what does she dream at night? Only you, the writer, care. Don’t let her disappear out in the parking lot and into oblivion.” –Natalie Goldberg (Writer’s Digest article…Sep 2010)I love this quotation…especially
Quotation Motivation: Zipping Along the Surface
Does anyone else feel this way, too? “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver
Tech Wreck: Good News, Bad News
I spend most of my days at the computer, online, working. I’m not a longhand writer, and I love being part of the online writing community, so technology is crucial for me. The Good News: I got an iPhone (NOT a birthday present, Randy insisted, so he gave it to me the night before my
Poetry Friday: The Insult (by me)
A couple of weeks ago, I shared how I came to write some found poems recently.Last week I shared another found poem (“I’m Sort of Sorry About What Happened While I Was Walking My Dog”), again aimed at about 4th-5th grade. Today I’m sharing one last one, at least for now. It came out too old for
10 Books I Loved as a Kid
The Northwoods Children’s Book Conference had a neat event In honor of keynote speaker Anita Silvey’s wonderful book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book. Each of the presenters, plus some attendees, got up and spoke very briefly about the children’s book that most influenced them. I found this impossible and failed
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Are You Looking For?
Go to my Poetry page for:
- National Poetry Month projects through the years
- Small Reads Roundups (poems grouped by topic)
- Introductions to several favorite poetry forms