My writing philosophy is something like: If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. Whatever it takes to find the sweet spot of my writing soul. I court this space. Very much like The Little Prince taming his fox. The fox told him everything he needed to know: Come every day, come at the [...]

  “It’s so heavy!”             Everyone who has held my shiny new IPPY medal has had the same reaction. “Well, it IS a metal,” I say smugly. “Bronze.” I leaven the comment with a smile because I, too, was surprised by the heft and by the honor of winning a national Independent Book Publisher’s Award for [...]

When I set out to design our 2010 holiday card, I began with a pile of odd sized scraps of printmaking paper I’d found while cleaning out a closet. My husband pointed out that the 2-1/2 x 10” paper scraps were not a customary greeting card shape and would not fit into standard envelopes. As logical [...]

All of Your Messages Have Been Erased. Miss Fox’s Class Earns a Field Trip. Incomparable treasure, gifts from beloved friends, these books on my desktop inspire me to write. And intimidate me to silence: peering down at the covers hovering on the ledge above my keyboard, words seem inadequate. Vivian Shipley arrives for dinner with [...]

Waiting for the print-publishing world to settle down and start buying again a a real downer. You can start to spend way too much time trying to read the minds of editors and publishers. You wonder if you should change your style. Switch subjects? Do a complete rewrite of the manuscript you love?  And surely [...]

I love to write poetry with children. At a super fun after-school workshop with K-5th graders at Tabor Community Center, I chose spiders as a topic. I took the children on a spider walk (hunt) outside.  We came inside and did a group warm up by building a yarn/string spider web between us. As each [...]