MORE THAN ENOUGH (behind-the-scenes) ~ A Passover Story

Howdy, Campers!

I'd like to present my newest picture book.

Book, say hello to everyone.

More Than Enough ~ A Passover Story
by April Halprin Wayland, illustrated by Katie Kath (Dial 2016)

You can see that it's still a bit shy, so here's the elevator pitch:

it's a story for 3-5 year olds
about being grateful
for having more than enough each moment
as a family prepares to celebrate Passover.

Would you like to hear the crazy, rollercoaster tearing-out-my-hair behind-the-scenes story of how a seed of an idea became this published book?

Thank you for nodding yes.

It all began in 2009, as I was hiking with my family in Kauai, Hawaii. There were a lot of steep hills. But the leaves were glistening from the morning rain, the soil was a rich red, and I was with the ones I love most. I thought of my favorite Passover song, Dayenu.  

Dayenu means "it would have been enough." We sing about being grateful even if we'd only been freed from slavery; grateful even if we'd only been led out of Egypt, etc.

To me, it's what all great religions and philosophies teach: be aware of and grateful for the blessings of the moment.

As I sang the song, I was keenly aware of the blessings of each step of the hike:

If I only hike up this rich, red dirt, that's enough;

if I only see the blue and green ocean from the top of this hill, that's enough;

if I only dive into the warm waves, that's enough...

My husband  hiking Kauai

I flew home and wrote this as a free verse poem, based loosely on the form of the original song, and read it aloud at a friend's Seder (Passover meal).  They liked it!

So I rewrote it as a picture book and submitted it in May of 2009 to my editor at Dial, who I'd loved working with on my last picture book, New Year at the Pier.  

Here are the first four stanzas of the manuscript as first submitted:

If we had driven along the jungley road

And had not found the hiking trail

Dayenu

If we had found the hiking trail

And had not reached the hill overlooking the ocean

Dayenu

If we had reached the hill overlooking the ocean

And had not gone swimming

Dayenu

If we had dived into those deep blue waves

And had not built cairns when we got out of the water

Dayenu

My editor liked it. She liked it!

But...would I change the setting of the story?

Take it out of Hawaii? I harrumphed to myself.  The whole idea was that this concept is universal.  And wasn't Hawaii rich with illustrative possibilities?

But, okay. I took it out of Hawaii.

Great, she said.  And she really liked the farmers market at the end of the hike. So...could I expand on that...and shorten the hike?

Shorten the hike? Argh. I guess...

I did.

Fine, fine, she said, when she got that version.  Now--could you write this for three to five year olds?

Well, I can...but I don't want to.  I did, working closely with my critique partner and friend, poet and author, Sonya Sones, on the rhythm of each stanza. 

Wonderful, she said. And...could the family buy Passover foods at the farmers market?

Passover food? But the whole idea was to take the concept of Dayenu--of gratitude for each moment-- out of the holiday and into a regular day, I thought ferociously, pounding the carpet.

But I did. I deleted the fresh ahi tuna, avocado and mangoes and loaded the family's market bags with apples and walnuts, lilacs and honey. 

Terrific, she said. And...could you have them getting ready to go to a family Seder after the market?

...okay.

Good, good!  And could you cut out the hike altogether?

 *  *  *  *  

April?

 *  *  *  *

April, are you there?

*Sigh.* Yes, I'm here. And yes, I said weakly, climbing down from the proverbial cliff with the support of my agent, Marietta B. Zacker--yes, I can cut out the hike.

Fabulous!, she said. We're nearly done!

Between 2009 and 2014, I worked with experts in Judaism, checking every detail and writing and rewriting the glossary. (You may know the expression, "Whenever there are two Jews in a room, there are three opinions."  It's true--every fact is a matter of interpretation...)

I rewrote this 200-word story more than 34 times.

And finally, the skies cleared!  Now I love this story.  Thank you, Jessica Garrison, clear-eyed editor--Dayenu!

Now first four stanzas read:

We wander the market
surrounded by colors—
Dayenu

We buy apples and walnuts,
lilacs and honey—
Dayenu

We reach through the bars
to lift one purring kitten—
Dayenu

He licks Mama’s nose
so she says we can keep  him—
Dayenu

*  *  *  *

Dayenu!  Passover is April 22nd-April 30th this year.

Here's the 37 second book trailer my son and a friend's daughter made...be sure to watch all the way to the end:



Aren't those illustrations delicious? For more, click the following:

1) Katie Kath talks about illustrating this book 

2) Katie interviews the book's designer, Mina Chung.

3)  Jama Rattigan interviews me (and so much more) at her always scrumptious Alphabet Soup!

 And congratulations to, Irene Latham and Charles Waters for winning the National Book Award!

                                              

                                                  Illustrator Katie Kath, who you will meet
                                                in the next post, holds our newborn book

A 10th Inning Resource-rich Read-Aloud Wrap-up...

Let’s hear it for my fellow bloggers’ insightful and informative posts celebrating World Read Aloud Day and Read Across America!
IMHO: all have hit it out of the park.
(Guess who has Spring Training on her mind and the 27-day-count-down 'til the baseball season begins?)

April highlighted the value of listening as we read aloud the picture books and poetry we write.

JoAnn shared the favorite books she read aloud to her children and the magic created.
Bobbie WOW-ed us with how reading aloud empowers our imagination.
Carla reinforced the impact of reading aloud our own books when we visit schools.
Marti concluded our series of posts by sharing how reading aloud her work helps her revise.

To make sure we keep reading aloud to those children we teach/love/treasure/care for, I packed today’s post with nine resources.
(Again: guess what’s on my mind?)
For the record, I’ve been a Read-aloud devotee since Kindergarten.  In a heart-beat, I can see myself seated on the Kindergarten reading rug at Overbrook Elementary, hanging on Miss Patton’s every word, so afraid that ugly duckling wouldn’t find his family. As a classroom teacher, reading aloud to my fifth graders was my favorite part of the day. (Think THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.) Little did I know the impact of that experience until students wrote me later in their lives how they read to their kiddos the books I’d read to them.  Outside the classroom, I thought nothing was more delicious than reading to my own kiddo, until his kiddo came along and proved me wrong. J As I wrote in my March 23, 2015 interview with Dr. Steven Layne, author of IN DEFENSE OF READ-ALOUD (Stenhouse), in my book (so to speak) read-aloud needs no defense.

So,

re-read my interview with Dr. Layne, then savor the Read-aloud Tips he shared in the March 25 Wednesday Writing Workout.  His motto is “Practice makes perfect!”

While revisiting earlier TeachingAuthors posts, stop by April’s review of Sylvia Vardell’s POETRY ALOUD HERE, SHARING POETRY WITH CHILDREN 2 (American Library Association) which Booklist calls “required reading for all librarians.”

If you’re looking for a good book to read aloud to children in classrooms, bedrooms, living rooms, libraries, whether they’re yours or someone else’s, you can check out the American Booksellers Associations E.B. White Read Aloud Award Winners, including last year’s winners Jacqueline Woodson’s BROWN GIRL DREAMING (Nancy Paulsen) for middle graders and Jon Klassen’s SAM AND DAVE DIG A HOLE (Candlewick) for preschoolers. This year’s winners will be announced in May.

 Also worth checking out is Wisconsin Librarian Rob Reid’s “Reid-Aloud Alert” column which appears in Booklist Online and also in Book Links Magazine. The January 2016 issue of Book Links offers his recommended “first line grabbers.”

ReadWriteThink offers all sorts of classroom activities, including reading a song and choral reading, as well as additional websites and resources.

As JoAnn noted last year in her post about her niece’s PAWS FOR TALES program in Greenbay, Wisconsin, young readers can get lots of practice reading stories to dogs.

The Shelter Buddy Reading program “trains kids to read to dogs as a way of readying them for permanent homes, all while instilling a greater sense of empathy in the readers.”
You can watch the program in action in Missouri last week, thanks to this ABC newsclip.

Here in Chicago the SIT STAY READ program allows children to gain confidence while reading aloud to trained Dog Buddies – in schools, in libraries, in bookstores.

READER’S THEATER is yet another confidence-building read-aloud opportunity.  Toni Buzzeo noted in the introduction to her READ! PERFORM! LEARN! (Upstart Books) that “reader’s theater offers readers the opportunity to become familiar in advance with the text they will read, to practice it until they are fluent with it, and then to relish the positive experience of reading that well-practiced text aloud for an audience.” Usually a story’s script, taken from a written work familiar to the class, can be divided so that everyone gets a reading part.  No memorization.  No costumes.  No staging or special lighting is needed.

Finally, what could be better than getting together to read aloud? I’ve seen with my own two eyes the magic Mary Ann Hoberman’s YOU READ TO ME, I’LL READ TO YOU (Little, Brown) creates.  It’s a true game-changer in building confidence and connections, especially for beginning readers. The Queen of Poetry offers 13 rhymed variations, designed to be read aloud by two voices, on the theme of coming together to read.

          “I’ll read one line”

                                                (“I’ll read two.”)
                                          “You’ll read to me.”
                                                                                (“I’ll read to you.”)

Here’s hoping that when it comes to reading aloud, the resources I’ve shared help you score big time.

It’s never too late to celebrate World Read Aloud Day!

(And never too early to shout, "GO, CUBBIES, GO!")

Esther Hershenhorn

Reading Aloud as Revision Technique: What the Mouth and Ear Know

Are you ready to March Forth on this March 4th? If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this post by fellow TeachingAuthor JoAnn Early Macken. Today is also Poetry Friday. I don't exactly have a poem to share, but at the end of this post you'll find some advice from Mary Oliver that reads like poetry to me, along with a link to today's Poetry Friday roundup.

If you've been following our blog, you know our current topic is Reading Aloud, in honor of the recent celebrations of World Read Aloud Day and Read Across America. April kicked off the series with a discussion of reading aloud as it relates to poetry and picture books. Bobbi picked up where April left off, focusing on the relationship between listening and imagination. JoAnn then shared the titles of favorite picture books she read to her boys as well as advice from Mem Fox’s Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever (Harvest Books). And, most recently, Carla discussed how she often reads from her nonfiction books during school visits because in some cases "hearing the scene read aloud is more moving that reading it silently would be."

Today I'm going to look at the topic from a slightly different angle than my co-bloggers: that of a novelist revising a manuscript.

On Wednesday, I shared the results of my "30-Day Boost Your Writing Productivity Challenge," which was a great success. I finally finished a major revision of a middle-grade novel I've been working on for a LONG time. I'd originally written the novel in third-person-limited point of view, from the perspective of a ten-year-old boy. After having the opening pages critiqued by editors at several conferences, I realized the story didn't have a strong enough voice and decided to rewrite it in first person.

Interestingly, this isn't the first time I've rewritten a novel's point of view. The first draft of my middle-grade novel Rosa, Sola (Candlewick Press), which I wrote while I was in the Vermont College MFA program, was also in third-person-limited. I had a complete draft when one of my advisers encouraged me to rewrite it into first person. This task is harder than it may seem--it involves much more than simply changing "she" to "I." The first-person voice must sound true to the character in every respect, including her background, education, mood, way of seeing the world, etc. I resisted the change at first but eventually did as my adviser asked. She was pleased with the revision, but I wasn't. Rosa, Sola deals with a family tragedy, and, to me, the first-person narration sounded too mature and thoughtful to come from an average ten-year-old struggling with difficult emotions. So I rewrote the novel yet again, back to third-person-limited. That was the version that was eventually published. (You can read more about that revision process in this blog post.)

In the case of my current project, though, as soon as I'd rewritten the opening in first person the story felt much stronger and more engaging. I definitely prefer having a first-person narrator for this novel. But I needed to make sure the voice was consistent throughout, and for me, one of the best ways to do that is reading the manuscript aloud. Even though I've used reading aloud for this purpose before, I'm still amazed at the things I noticed/caught that I didn't when reading silently.

English professor Peter Elbow, author of Writing Without Teachers and Writing with Power, discusses this process when he talks about "what the mouth and ear know" in his most recent book, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing (Oxford University Press). Below is an excerpt from the chapter on "Revising by Reading Aloud.":

     "The mouth and ear tell us not only about individual sentences but also about longer passages. We might have worked on two individual sentences and made each one strong and clear, but when we read them one after another we hear something wrong at the joint. Perhaps there’s a slight contradiction, or they need a transition, or they need to be in a different sequence. Or perhaps each one has a lovely rhythm, but the two rhythms work against each other . . . .
     Reading aloud helps us hear problems in the larger organizational structures too. When we are revising, we do lots of stopping and starting; we often lose perspective on the whole as we follow the twists and turns of the micro organization and lose sight of the macro organization. We can’t see the forest for the trees. Even though logic seems much more a matter of mind than body, nevertheless we can often hear a lapse in logic. That is, we can hear when the train leaves the tracks, whether they are organizational tracks or logical tracks.
     Reading aloud can even help us feel a loss of energy or focus or presence. The mouth and ear can lead us to say, 'Okay, everything’s pretty strong and clear here, but you’re taking too long. Spit it out, get to the point quicker. You’re tiring me.' "     

I hope I'm not tiring you with this post, Readers, and I encourage you to read more of this chapter online here, especially if you're a classroom teacher. I think you'll be interested in Elbow's discussion of how he has his writing students read their work aloud, either to the class as a whole, or to a partner, as part of their revision process.

On to a different topic: with National Poetry Month just around the corner, I've been thinking about delving into poetry again, something I haven't done in ages. I pulled out my poetry journal and found an entry where I'd re-written a paragraph from Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook as a free-verse poem. I called it "Getting Ready," because that's the title of the chapter it's taken from. Here are Oliver's exact words, with only one phrase cut from the original text, as I wrote them in my journal:

          Getting Ready

     The part of the psyche

     that works

     in concert with consciousness

     to supply

     a necessary part of the poem

     exists in a mysterious,

     unmapped zone:

     not unconscious,

     not subconscious,

     but cautious.

     It learns quickly

     what sort of courtship

     it is going to be.

     Say you promise

     to be at your desk 

     in the evenings,

     from seven to nine.

     It waits,

     it watches.

     If you are reliably there,

     it begins to show itself--

     soon it begins to arrive

     when you do.

     But if you are only there

     sometimes

     and are frequently late

     or inattentive,

     it will appear fleetingly,

     or it will not appear at all. 

excerpt from A Poetry Handbook © Mary Oliver

Oliver's words reminded of why my "30-Day Boost Your Writing Productivity Challenge" was successful: because I committed to setting aside regular time to work on my manuscript. If I truly want to write poetry again, I'll need to do the same. I hope that's a commitment I'll be able to make.

Meanwhile, I plan to at least read more poetry, starting with the poems in today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Linda B's wonderful TeacherDance blog.

Happy writing!
Carmela

Wednesday Writing Workout: 30-Day Challenge Results

My "30-Day Boost Your Writing Productivity Challenge" ended yesterday, March 1. I'm happy to report that, for me, it was a great success!

My original goal, which I shared on January 27, was a modest one--to spend at least 2 hours/week on my work-in-progress. As I reported on February 10, I got off to a shaky start. But I stuck with it, and, as you can see from the Toggl app report I've copied below, I ended up spending 24 hours and 40 minutes on the project over the 30 days. What's even better, I completed the revision and have sent the manuscript off to 3 beta readers for review! I am thrilled! This is a project I've been dragging my feet on for months. It's wonderful to finally have it finished.

Now I'd like to hear from you.

Wednesday Writing Workout:
30-Day Boost Your Productivity Challenge Results Report

If you participated in the "30-Day Boost Your Writing Productivity Challenge," give us YOUR final results report via a comment to today's blog post, on our TeachingAuthors Facebook page, or in an email to teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com.

I'm hoping many of you were successful in meeting your goals. But even if you didn't accomplish all your goals, I hope you'll give yourself credit for trying.

Happy writing! And happy reading, too, since today is NEA's Read Across America Day! What are you reading these days?

Carmela

Reading Aloud for Maximum Impact

With picture books, you can read aloud the entire book fairly fast.  Not so with the type of books I write--long nonfiction books.  As I write these I will occasionally read aloud sections that I’m working on to get the feel of how it flows.  But they are way too long to read it aloud in one sitting.

Most often my experiences with reading aloud takes place at school visits.  Sometimes my host school asks me to talk about the topic of one particular book.  Sometimes they ask me to talk about research or close reading.   At least once during a school visit, I read aloud to the audience-regardless of their age.  To do this I set up the context of the scene so it will make sense. 

Take for example my book 

Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium.   

In this book, I want the reader to see Curie as a woman first, and scientist second.  I explain who Marie Curie is and what she has done.  Then I read aloud the section of the book when Marie comes home to find out that Pierre has been suddenly killed in an accident.  I want listeners and readers to feel her loss as she grieves the loss of her beloved husband and co-worker.  In cases like this one, hearing the scene read aloud is more moving that reading it silently would be.  Next I cover the fact that she continued her work regardless of her grief and was awarded her second Nobel Prize for it.  Again, I want them to get that Curie was a woman first and scientist second. 

  
Carla Killough McClafferty

Reading Aloud: Magic for Readers and Listeners

Mem Fox’s Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever explains the importance of reading aloud to children to help them develop their own reading skills. She describes some of the benefits:

“Children who realize in their first few weeks and months of life that listening to stories is the purest heaven; who understand that books are filled with delights, facts, fun, and food for thought; who fall in love with their parents, and their parents with them, while stories are being shared; and who are read aloud to for ten minutes a day in their first five years, usually learn to read quickly, happily, and easily. And a whole lot of goodness follows for the entire community.”

Fox details the simple techniques she recommends for reading aloud to children, the benefits they reap in speaking skills, and the three secrets that help readers “get the message.”

I have such fond memories of reading with our kids that some of their favorite books are still on my bookshelves today. After all these years, I could probably recite long passages by heart from gems like these:

Jamberry 

 Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear

Grandfather Twilight 

 The Salamander Room 

Oh, the Places You’ll Go  

 John Henry

Reading with our two sons was a magical experience for me, too. Thinking of them, I’m posting a favorite poem from a collection I remember enjoying together, The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems by Mary Ann Hoberman.

  

Brother

I had a little brother
And I brought him to my mother
And I said I want another
Little brother for a change.

But she said don’t be a bother
So I took him to my father...

Read the rest of the poem (and others) on the Poetry Foundation site.

April began this Teaching Authors series with a post about the joys of listening. Bobbi’s contribution focused on imagination. Be sure to check them out, too, if you haven’t yet. Also be sure to Like our Teaching Authors Facebook page.

Elizabeth Steinglass is hosting today’s Poetry Friday Roundup. Enjoy!

JoAnn Early Macken

To Catch the Magic

I so loved April’s discussion, using listening to learn the art of language, rhythm and pacing. April reminds us “to catch the magic.”

The process of listening gives us access not only to the word but to the substance of the word.



Listening to stories is more than just about the craft, or the illustrations that embellish the craft. It’s about learning to engage the imagination. As Nigel Sivey (How Art Made the World, 2005), “… the art of humans consists in our singular capacity to use our imaginations. “

We know stories are the oldest invitations to the human experience. Humans have told stories for over 100,000 years. Every culture in the history of the world has created and told stories. While not every culture has codified laws or a written language, all of them have told stories.

Some researchers suggest that stories predate language (Kendall Haven's Story Proof, 2007).  That is to say, language was created after the story was imagined in order to give the story a voice. The power of the imagination is uniquely human. Birds sing, and some can even dance. But naturalists know that it is not their imaginations at work.

Rather, it’s their energetic rites of spring. Some gorillas have been taught sign language. But it was human imagination that created the language.

Albert Einstein used mathematics to develop a model for understanding the nature of physical science. But he used his imagination – using his famous thought experiments -- to make the leap to his breakthrough thinking about the space-time continuum and the nature of light.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” --Albert Einstein

Imagination is key to innovation. Not just in creating elaborate theories that explain gravitational waves. Imagination creates empathy, allowing one to connect emotionally to someone's experience. It helps find creative solutions to stubborn problems. It broadens our perspectives about our own limited reality. Imagination allows us to look beyond ourselves.

Listening, especially active listening in which one accesses and evaluates the sounds, taps directly into and engages the imagination. And like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.

As we celebrate World Read Aloud Day this week, choose your favorite read aloud and exercise your imagination!

Don’t forget to checkout Teaching Authors on Facebook!

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” -- W.B. Yeats

 Bobbi Miller

(ps. All photos provided by Morguefile.com!)

Just Listen

.
Howdy, Campers!  

Happy Poetry Friday!  The link to PF and my own poem are below.

Our new topic, beginning today, is Reading Aloud, because World Read Aloud Day is on February 24th and Read Across America is on March 2nd. And to round that out, check out StoryCorps' National Day of Listening.

One of my cherished memories of reading aloud was when my poetry teacher, Myra Cohn Livingston read poetry to us for long stretches of time. Nothing was expected of us. We’d simply lean back, listen, luxuriate in each word.

Myra taught me to read every poem aloud twice: first to hear it, then to feel it.

As I began thinking about reading aloud, I remembered how, many years ago, my friend Erica Silverman used listening to learn the craft of writing children's books.

Now Erica is a multi-multi-award winning author of  over twenty children's books, including Raisel's Riddle, Don't Fidget a Feather, Liberty's Voice - The Story of Emma Lazarus, When the Chickens Went on Strike, Big Pumpkin, the Cowboy Kate and Cocoa series, and the newest in her Lana's World series, Let's Have a Parade. (See this page of her website for all Erica's books.)

When I asked Erica how listening helps her write, she wrote:

Long ago, when I started writing picture books, cassette recorders were large and clunky. Tape wore out or broke. But I took my cassette recorder with me in the car. There it sat, on the passenger seat, ready to catch my barely-baked ideas as they came bumbling out. There it sat, ready to play back my rambling mass of words, the start of a long process of revision.

This was safer than putting pen to paper while driving (should writers even be issued drivers licenses?) But I realized that blathering into a tape recorder was not just for road trips. Turned out it was a useful way to tiptoe past the gauntlet of sneering critics that gather at my blank page daily, waiting to pounce.

And what a great learning device! When I discover a great picture book or early reader, I record it. And then I listen over and over - for rhythm, language, pacing. To catch the magic, to ponder what works.

My ancient cassette recorder is retired now. But the voice recorder on my iPhone is with me always, ready to catch my barely-baked ideas as they come bumbling out.

What terrific ideas.  I particularly love the idea of recording picture books and then listening to them as you drive. Thank you, Erica! (Perhaps those self-driving cars were created with writers in mind...?)

I used the word "listen" as a prompt for Poetry Friday:

DON'T LISTEN
by April Halprin Wayland 

Don't listen to them, said the anteater.

There's no use worrying about Jaguar.

There's no use working yourself into a lather

About what Jaguar will do to you.

Place your ants in neat rows.

Push the recalcitrant ones in line with a stick.

Stuff moss in both your ears.

Don't listen to their many-legged chatter about Jaguar.

It's Man

You need to worry about.

drawing and poem (c) 2016 by April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.

==============================

And thank you, Donna, at Mainely Write, for hosting today!

And one more thing, Campers: consider liking our Facebook page. We'd love you to join us!

written with frost-bitten ears by April Halprin Wayland, from New York City after the SCBWI Winter Conference

Roses are red, violets are blue…

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I ♥ choosing words.

Such magic!

Who knew?

With Cupid dominating February’s beginning weeks, we TeachingAuthors this time around are appropriately sharing what we love about writing.

April loves the Writerly Peeps who keep her writing.

Bobbi loves the fully-dimensional villains who wreak havoc with their heroes. 

JoAnn loves the Magic the act of writing creates.

For Carmela, slipping into the "skin of story" fills her with joy.

For Carla, research wins her heart.

Were I writing a List Poem entitled “All I Love About Writing,” each of my fellow TA’s above loves would claim a line.

I’d also include:

·       that delicious flow that envelopes me once all parts of me are engaged in the writing process, allowing me to get lost, and even better, somehow found;

·       the characters who tell me their stories, many of whom have yet to live in others’ hearts but certainly hold a place in mine - Lissy, Yitsy, Leo, Moses, that troop of orphans from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition;

·       the young writers and readers I’ve come to know;

·       and my “storied treasures” whom I teach and coach.

Writing – the learning, the honing, the process, the craft, and writing within the Children’s Book World, continue to gift me on a daily basis.

What I love the most, though, is the choosing of words.

Words that “lingered in my fingers,” as JoAnn so poetically put it, or “that poured from my pen.”

Words, that when ordered, help me speak my heart.

I did not know when I first began writing for children in earnest how writing would help me uncover my voice, that first person singular pronoun “I.”

How writing would help me recover that voice.

How writing would then help me discover my story.

There are all those words tumbling out, to be turned and twisted, held this way and that, pushed here, pushed there, ’til in time they find their rightful place.

Miraculously, what was once inside me – in my head, in my gut, in my heart, beneath my skin, slowly, bravely, makes its way out and onto the paper.

And if I’m lucky, into the World.

Think the prefix “ex” in what we do when we write – i.e. “express,” i.e. “press out.”

As I remind Young Writers in S IS FOR STORY, 

“You choose the words.  You wave the wand.  You make the magic.”

Here’s to writing and all it brings us!

Esther Hershenhorn

p.s.

Remember to check out the ongoing 30-Day Boost Your Productivity Challenge to make sure you’re maximizing your writing time.