We make magic bigger by demystifying the creator. It's a funny thing. When a regular real-life person replies to a tweet or a photo or a handwritten letter, the regular real-lifeness of that interaction turns into possibility. 'You could do this, too!'
Read MoreOh, the joy when teachers send me their students' monster-inspired art: silly werewolves. Big-hearted werewolves. Werewolves eating doughnuts. Regular kids love to imagine regular life in irregularly power-full, growly ways. Thrills!
Read MorePlay with words. Have fun and someday, when you're running through a sprinkler or eating a hot dog or drifting off to sleep, you'll feel a tap on your shoulder, and a voice in your ear like it's being whispered through a tin can telephone. Be ready.
Read MoreChefs curse and yell in a pressure cooker, squishing organic matter into mathematically-shaped molds. Organic matter always objects, yet we continue to squish, and this is art. Presentation is at least three of five stars. That's what makes you gasp.
Read MoreSome writers keep them to have a Wall of Publishers Who Passed And Will Someday Regret It. I don't. Each one is, really and truly, a gift. The boys and I talk about creativity, karma, romance. Nothing works out until something does.
Read MoreAdult fiction? More pirates, a book three? Poetry? That plus editing, photographing, teaching. The year is stacking up. Somebody burst in and threw all the windows open and it was fresh and bracing and I think, maybe, it was all of them doing it all at once.
Read MoreSay all you want about food and shelter but this really is the ticket. Well of course you can be an author, said my mom and dad. Better get to work.
Read MoreFor the next month or longer, I'm banned. No edits, no additions, no tweaks. The story is in my editor's hands and from there, we'll figure out what to do with this heavyweight, set a deadline, and look forward to line editing and production.
Read MoreI wrote a book, a little one, and I want to exist beyond all hope. I want it so badly. I need it to be set to paper and illustrated and bound. I've submitted it to the loveliest publisher. Now I'm trying to forget I ever wrote it.
Read MoreRoald Dahl says you're a fool to become a writer, your only compensation being absolute freedom. He had more in the way of compensation than absolute freedom. He's got a point, though, even if his own point no longer applied to him.
Read MoreTwo weeks since the manuscript. The first draft is in her hands but it's got holes and dubious underpinnings and while I've obeyed the stay-away order in principle, I've reorganized and rewritten the story fourteen times in my head.
Read MoreI went to tear out a sheet for a grocery list and found the birth of a Dread Crew scene, written while curled up on the high side of a starboard tack because for a while, I had to write everywhere. So I did. In waiting rooms, on long drives, on the boat.
Read MoreOne month later, I've gone from 24,483 to 43,287 words. I am a cross-eyed hunchback. Camille, a Dread Crew reader and daughter of a friend, sent me a much-needed package of nudge notes.
Read MoreParenthood—and writing—is pain and sacrifice and the extinction of free time and the postponing of dreams and the scrabbling in the folds of the couch for spare change and sanity, peppered with flashes of pure joy.
Read MoreIs it so wonderful, writing? I don't know. It's romantic and indulgent and optimistic, an inherently defiant act. It is a squawk that hopes to coax the squawks of others. But it's lonely and bloody work both greenlit and sabotaged by ego.
Read MoreMissy is unimpressed. She’s not one for fussing, nor for waiting. She wants to crash a flying beast and engage in illegal sabotage and write to Eric on coded postcards and it’s all stuck at the bottleneck of me. She tries to help, but I'm thick as bricks.
Read More"I'm serious," he continues. "Every band wants a record deal, but not very many attempt it. They just talk about it. I was standing at the Junos next to Iggy Pop just thinking Holy shit, what are we doing here? but there we were, and it's only because we just did it."
Read MoreAs we walked along the trail through meadows and tunnels with poplar canopies and over bridges and slippery roots it occurred to me where I might be. This is the old man’s land, where it all happens...
Read MoreI don’t even know how to say this, in case the publisher falls down a well and emerges with amnesia—but I'm told it’s going to happen, although it’s not what you might think. It’s an adventure novel for kids, and in about 18 months, it will be born.
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