Imagine my joy when she sent me the April 2012 issue of Poetry, the 100th year anniversary edition.

As a result, my little family recently had a poetry night. I read from the Poetry journal, my husband read poems written by Marion Darling, and my son, so eager that he upped the number each of us could read to four, read from Shel Silverstein, who has done much to advance the cause of poetry to the hearts of children.

There’s a pause that poetry invites that I yearn for in a hurly-burly daily frenzy of activity and lists. There’s an unexpected grandeur, a quality of spaciousness that comes with sharing poetry, a quality of attentive listening that slows things down long enough for me to be where I am, and that’s a respite.

Since tweeting and facebooking don’t come easily to me, yet I wish to stay in touch, I’m thrilled, that at least with this friendship, sharing poems will do the job.

Roll with it, I comforted myself. We live in exciting times, where things move too fast to keep abreast of it all. The cover even says “Free activities & puzzles on line!” Who knew? (I checked, and they are wonderful fun for kids. Who created them, I wonder?) At the end of the book is a big splashy photo of – not your long-time Naturalist and the actual author of the book – but a top Dinosaur scientist, Mark Norell. I admire him endlessly and am flattered by association with his name, but I look nothing like his picture.

So the book doesn’t come out until Tuesday, but hardcovers and paperbacks are already on sale at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com at amazing discounts from their already reasonable prices. Not only that, but they are for sale there already used and at an even more horrifyingly deep discount. This is horrifying only to this time-warped author who earns only pennies from discounted books and nothing at all from the sale of books somehow read and returned to the marketplace almost a week before the publisher releases them. Roll with it, I tell myself.

I already knew that dinosaur science is moving ahead as fast as scientists like Mark Norell can pull new fossils out of the ground. It seems that almost daily startling new findings are announced. Last week it was the discovery of a forty-foot long Titanoboa who appeared within a few million years (a blink of the geologic eye) from the fall of dinosaurs. Three years ago, the scientific world was buzzing with the discovery that a whole family of dinosaur-birds had feathered wing-y things attached to their front legs as well as to their hind legs. A few months ago, scientists proved that and these four wing’s feathers were glossy black and iridescent, flashing purple-green-blue in the sunshine.( exactly like today’s grackle’s.)

Uh, oh. Those new findings are not reflected in the multi-colored illustration ion page 28 of my new book. Those gorgeous illustrations, oh, time-warped readers, do not exist on paper or canvas anywhere. They were entirely created on and printed from a computer by the famous artist, Julius Cstonyi, using the most up-to –date information he had at the time.

I have run into this before: in my book for older elementary readers, BOY WERE WE WRONG ABOUT DINOSAURS (Dutton, 2005.) The whole point of that book was how every branch of science changes, discovery by discovery. What we accepted as absolute facts in the 1800’s (and even the 2000’s) are no longer true.

Simply “Roll with it?” No, I love the dynamic nature of knowledge. It is exhilarating to be alive now. As an artist or a scientist, trying to keep track of all the changes, from books discarded a week before they are published to dinosaurs illustrated completely in computer bits in colors already disproven before they can be printed. This is wild ride – and fun!
Many people today are terribly uncomfortable with change. They want their truths absolute, unchanging, and black and white.

To maintain their illusion of safety from the great churning rapids of progress swirling around us, some folks climb up onto the banks and declare that they do not “believe” in change at all. “Climate change is a hoax.” “I don’t believe in evolution.” “Don’t teach today’s science in the schools.” These folks would rather we teach what we ‘knew’ to be facts a hundred or five hundred years ago, or better yet, several thousand years ago.

I’m out here, running the rapids – and writing about them as I go. Come on in – the water’s fine!

Today is Gil Marsh’s official release date, which is both very exciting and, well, boring. It’s exciting because, after months and months of build-up, the book is finally available on shelves and folks can purchase it. (Yay!) The boring part is that nothing else happens. (Ho hum.)

Which is why authors have release parties—someone has to celebrate!

Come join me and other celebrants at the Alphabet Garden Bookstore in Cheshire, Connecticut on Saturday March 10 at 11:30 a.m. I’ll read some from the new book, answer questions, and we’ll generally have fun. (Yippee!)

How do we do that? This week is Ground Hog Day, a silly American tradition, but one that lasts. What gives ir staying power? Writers might dig deeper to find out if it shows up in a story they’re spinning.

They would learnPennsylvania farmers brought the old holiday from Germany, where countryfolk watched for badgers or hedgehogs to come out of their burrows on Candlemas. If the animals saw their shadows, it predicted 6 weeks more wintery weather. What is candlemas? Keep digging.

On the 1st or 2nd day of February, the Roman Catholic Church blesses candles for future use at a special mass. Ah. But why that date?

Feb 2 is exactly half way between the first day of winter (Dec 21, the Solstice) and the first day of spring (Mar 21, the Equinox.) The ancients at Stonehenge and before knew this from studying the sky, naming the day Imbolc. Originally, tradition had a serpent rising from its burrow to foretell the weather.  In Celtic traditions, Imbolc is a day of fortunetellng sacred to the goddess Brigit. In her maiden form she stands for new beginnings, purification, and fire.  The Roman Catholic Church later canonized the pagan goddess as St. Brigit and renamed Imbolc, St. Brigit’s day.

At the core of the Groundhog’s tradition, then, the writer find millennia of supernatural power: Goddesses, Druidic priests, ancient ceremonies, holyness and The Roman Catholic Church. At the very heart?  The wild ache of all people for spring and the end of starvation for themselves and their children. Who knew?

Dig that deeply in your writing to find wellsprings of meaning and resonance. What does your main character’s name mean? In what culture? How could that inform who he is? What are his family’s traditions and superstitions? What are yours? Is there a history of unspeakable violence or clever invention to your chosen setting? Dig deeply to tap into ancient forces. Will today’s kids recognize every bit of allusion and history, the forces of culture and history? Not likely. But it will infuse your writing with that power and confidence, something no child will miss.

“Where are we going?” My husband asked.

I said I just wanted to show him the street of Indian restaurants, and sure enough, soon found one Indian restaurant after another. He asked if I wanted Indian food.

“Not exactly,” I said, although I supposed it would do.
Then suddenly I had a whim, a hankering for Ethiopian food.  “I wonder where an Ethiopian restaurant is,” I said.We walked, I kid you not, a few feet, and my husband chuckled.
“Right here,” he said. “How did you know that?”
And right there, was Awash, an Ethiopian restaurant where we had a delicious dinner (red honey wine is very sweet).

Back home and back at work I’ve struggled desperately to impose control on  a novel I’m revising. It’s not the first novel I’ve written, but you’d think I’d never even read a novel from how befuddled I’d become. I felt lost and went to all the rules you read about and the checklists people suggest and the “must-haves” from teachers and workshops –  in other words, I applied all the logic I could think of. In the process I became more and more confused and overwhelmed and it showed in my revision.

Finally, I had to let go of all those helpful hints and tips and tools and remember my story, trust the story, and trust someplace deep inside me, where, after all, the story came from to begin with. And I remembered the shape of my story.

I say trust your instinct when writing.
With a caveat: Trust informed instinct. Something in me knew to where head for Indian food.

But more to the point, the manuscript survived—flaws and all—some 150 years later.

Back when I started writing with an eye to professional markets, I used a computer, and took heed of the advice to back up everything. I copied my manuscripts onto the most advanced technology of the day: floppy disks.

I no longer own a machine that can read them.

Fortunately I have always had a Luddite streak, and I print out anything I really want to keep. As for what I haven’t—well, then it’s gone, or will be when the next advance in technology takes over my most recent electronic back up system.

Does it matter? I’m not Dickens, after all. Should a future generation ask me, “What did you write?”, I’ll be able to point out the books that were published on old-fashioned paper and, of course, the paper copies that I’ve kept. My archives.

Don’t get me wrong. I could pay someone to have my floppy disks converted into another format. And then arrange to have it converted to yet a newer one, when my current one becomes obsolete. Or I could invest in a cloud archive—where my information is kept by some other entity, safely I am told. Let them worry about the formats.

But that’s work, time and expense. And I am not convinced that 150 years from now any of these methods will still be in use. Paper, on the other hand, can still be read. And if it’s lost, well, I’m not Dickens, after all.

Is this true? I don’t know.
But even if hard work doesn’t make us lucky, it does make us better writers…
don’t you think?

If you could write your own fortune for 2012, what would it be?

And how will make your fortune? What’s your writing resolution for 2012?

I am asked that question fairly regularly. My answer, depending on the audience, will be a variation on, “I am inspired by the books I’ve read.” Sometimes it’s “stories I’ve heard,” or “an epic poem,” or “comic books.” But the gist is the same: I steal ideas.

Gasp!

Well. Not really.

Shakespeare’s plays came from Plautus, medieval romances, Boccaccio, contemporary novels, amongst others. Lewis Carroll parodied poetry of his time for Alice in Wonderland. The Harry Potter stories follow the mold of British boarding school stories crossed with the hero’s journey.

Even something as original as Deborah Freedman’s Blue Chicken is inspired by other sources.

“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”*

It’s a time-honored tradition.

* Attributed to Pablo Picasso

So a couple of months ago, I posted about how my second book was demanding a party. Well, it got one, a super wonderful “Book Birthday Party”, hosted by the literacy organization New Haven Reads. We had face painting, puppet making, birthday cake and… uh oh… what happened to the live chicken that was supposed to make a guest appearance?

This is where I must interrupt, and come back to our mantra here at the Alley, that WRITERS NEED WRITING FRIENDS. We need each other to whine to. We need each other to celebrate the good stuff. And we need each other when our special guest chicken has been “lost” to a fox.

Thank you, Cat, for coming to the rescue.

Thoreau                                                                                         

Writing for most authors, is a solitary pursuit. Most of us welcome the opportunity to write uninterrupted for hours–no phone calls, no distractions. Yet, nature lover that I am,  I could not  live like Thoreau– alone in the woods for two years with only frogs and crickets for company—not to mention no email or a Whole Foods store nearby.

Every writer has a different style, but I love writing collaboratively. I love bouncing ideas off another brain, I love intertwining other people’s ideas into my story, I love getting notes back from a critique group, I even love getting a manuscript back from my editor full of red marks. My ideal Walden Pond is two days at a retreat in the woods, another writer within shouting distance, good food to nourish the body and mind, and a poison ivy-free path to walk along for inspiration.

For those of you who don’t own a hut adjacent to a pond, there are hundreds of workshops and retreats offered in almost every corner of the world where you can recharge your battery, learn from other writers, receive advice from a mentor. You can write and surf in Hawaii, write and eat lobsters on the coast of Maine, write and drink wine in the south of France.

Here are a couple links to websites for children’s book writing workshops where you can listen and learn not only from the crickets, but from some really good authors, illustrators and editors:

  ∙ Whispering Pines: http://www.lyndamullalyhunt.com/wp_info.php

Provides the opportunity to work with others who are committed to quality children’s literature in small groups. One-on-one critiques with a mentor also available.

  ∙ The Highlights Foundation Founders Workshops:     http://www.highlightsfoundation.org/founders-workshops

Offers targeted workshops that allow you to choose the topic that exactly meets your writing needs. From sports to nature, from magazines to books, from fiction to nonfiction, and from picture books to young-adult novels—Founders Workshops give you access to publishing professionals known for their ability to help writers reach their goals.