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I've been reading this awesome book called Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo.

It's a compilation of LOTS of interviews with amazing songwriters, such as Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Randy Newman, Frank Zappa, Carlos Santana, Dave Brubeck, Brian Wilson and on and on and on.

One thing I love about it is reading how different their writing processes are.

Some write every day.

Some don't.

Some write only when inspiration strikes.

Some force the writing.

Some write the whole song at once.

Some write part of it and let it stew for a while.

Some need total quiet.

Some write on tour buses or in hotel rooms.

So, that got me to thinking about writing PROCESS.

And I've come to the conclusion that.....different strokes for different folks.

There should be no RULES, because everybody is different.

So....here are the things I DON'T do, even though I've heard that I should:

1. I don't write every day. Some days I'm not inspired. Some days I'm in a school. Some days I'm watching Judge Judy reruns. But I've written 10 books, so I do, eventually, get the job done.

2. I don't outline. I would LOVE to outline. I'm a super organized person whose favorite possession is a label maker. But they just don't work for me. I develop the story as I'm writing.

3. I don't keep a writer's journal. I want to. So. Bad. I want to write really cool stuff like Linda Urban does. OMG. I LOVE her journals! I love reading how her thoughts and ideas turn into novels.

When I'm in schools, I want to tell students that I keep a writing journal. I want to tell them I carry a little notebook wherever I go. I've considered lying, but I'm a terrible liar. 

And I love journals. I buy lovely leather ones with handmade paper. And then I write stuff like, "Ate too many chips today. Dang it!" or "Got the cutest sweater on sale at Nordstrom! Yay me!" Maybe I'm just shallow like that. *shrugs* But journals just don't WORK for me. I journal in my head. Seriously.

4. I don't use color-coded Post-It Notes on the wall, rearranging them for plot and scenes and characters and all that stuff. I WANT to! Really bad. But that just doesn't work for me.

Hound Dog True
By Linda Urban
Harcourt Children’s Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-547-55869-1
Ages 9-12
On shelves September 20th

There’s identifying with a work of children’s fiction and then there’s wondering if the author of the work has somehow discovered time travel and was able to observe your younger self. Such were my feelings upon picking up and reading Hound Dog True, the lastest from A Crooked Kind of Perfect’s Linda Urban. I don’t want to cast aspersions on Ms. Urban, and if she wants to use her highly developed time travel technology to spy upon my elementary years that is her business. Of course I appreciate that she changed the names in this book to protect the innocent (which is to say, me). It occurs to me now that there may be a chance that Ms. Urban wrote this book with another child in mind. Indeed, after having finished the title I can see sheer hoards of kids who were exactly like me when they were young picking up this book and finding in its heroine Mattie a kindred spirit. It won’t be hard for them to do. She’s the underdog’s underdog.

She has it all worked out, you see. The plan is perfect. It can’t possibly fail. After traveling from place to place with her mother for years, Mattie and mom have finally moved in with mom’s brother. Uncle Potluck is exactly the kind of uncle you’d want to have around too. He tells great stories, and talks to the moon, and best of all he lets Mattie tag along as he fixes up the local elementary school for the coming year. In fear of the kids in her new class, Mattie has determined that if she’s a good enough assistant to Uncle Potluck in the summer then she’ll be able to assist him over her lunch and recess period every school day and avoid her compatriots. She’s sure she’ll be able to convince him, but when she meets the niece of her new next door neighbor, Mattie starts discovering that maybe other kids aren’t entirely frightening.

There are books for kids out there where the protagonist is supposed to be shy. They almost never ring true. Sure, the kid will act hesitant to do one thing or another, but eventually they’ll have these moments where they go out of their way to be brave and they lose me. I was a shy kid. I understand the crippling fear a person can feel when they encounter a potentially hostile fellow student. And Linda Urban gets all of that. She gets how you can worry about being babyish one moment and then fall into old habits the next. She gets how a person could view lunch and recess as “the lawless times” when the safety of adults lessens and kids are allowed to pick on one another openly. It doesn’t take much to instill in a child a fear of their fellow man. Hound Dog True understands.

One remarkable aspect of the book is the fact that Urban manages to create a passive protagonist that doesn’t drive you up the wall. Generally when a writer conjures up a character that is afraid of basic human interactions the reader’s response is a uncontrollable urge to shake the hero for all they’re worth. You don’t feel that way with Mattie, though. This is remarkable when you realize that it’s when Mattie attempts to be proactive that she gets herself in the biggest messes. Her plan to become a janitorial assist

The Children's Book Council hosts the Children's Choice Book Awards. The favorite book finalists for this year were determined by close to 15,000 children and teens. I highly recommend checking out these books!

I should be sleeping right now because I barely have in the past 48 hours, but I’m too wired because I had such a great time at the Michigan Library Association Spring Institute last night! Hurray! I was up there because they had chosen Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature as [...]

It was Linda Urban’s grandmother who gave the award-winning author her first lesson in perfection. “Only God can make something perfect,” Urban’s grandmother told her. Those words were spoken years ago, but they're still etched clearly in Urban’s memory. “So many of us, when we set out to write, start with an idealized notion of what a poem or a story or a novel should be,” explains Urban,

My middle school students had a fabulous day with guest author Linda Urban (lurban), talking about A Crooked Kind of Perfect, writing, setting goals, and having the courage to follow dreams.  If you ever -- ever -- have an opportunity to host Linda at your school, sign on the dotted line without delay.  She's an amazing presenter who left kids laughing as well as feeling inspired and appreciated.  I took lots of photos, but I think this one might be my favorite -



Linda  spent our after school  period signing books in the school library, answering questions from kids, and listening -- really, really listening -- to their ideas about her book and their own goals and dreams.  Thanks, Linda, for a fantastic day!

 Tomorrow, I'll be on the other side of the author visit, sharing Spitfire and presenting my Revolution program to middle school kids in Colchester and students in the after-school program in Brandon, Vermont.  I'll post on our 18th century adventures later this week!

My middle school students are getting a dream team of visiting authors this month. 



This Wednesday, Linda Urban (lurban) will spend the day with us, talking about A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT and her writing life.



And on March 31, Loree Griffin Burns (lgburns) will visit to talk trash -- TRACKING TRASH -- with our middle school kids.

Are you jealous yet?

Meanwhile, HUGE congratulations are in order for both Linda and Loree today!   Both of their books have been selected as finalists for Vermont's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award.  Kids in Vermont will read as many books from the list as possible, and then they'll vote to choose the winner next spring.  For the full list of 2008-2009 DCF titles, visit the blog of Steve Madden, librarian extraordinaire at Camels Hump Middle School.   It's a fantastic, fantastic  list -- one that will make you want to be a Vermont student, too. 

A brief history of my reading Linda Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect: I had prepared myself not to like the book; I'm not a big fan of drama in kids' literature and the content lent itself to drama (mother works all the time, father has OCD, she's an outcast at school) so I feared that the book would take itself too seriously.  But one of my favorite bloggers, ShelfTalker, raved about it so much that I grudgingly checked it out of the library.

Congratulations to Shannon Hale for winning the YA fantasy award for Book of a Thousand Days! 'Tis much deserved.

And thanks to the judges for picking a winner out of our brilliant shortlist. Congratulations to Linda Urban who won for A Crooked Kind of Perfect.

For a full list of all the winners, visit the Cybils blog.

i was doing this for illustration friday's green project, but seems to be something you may find in your closet if ur unlucky (or maybe lucky... he seems kinda friendly!!)
wayne