Good as Gold!

We found out a bit ago but weren't allowed to share until the official announcement had been been but Nubs is a Gold Winner of a NAPPA -- National Parenting Publication Awards.

Yay, Nubs!

I double-dog dare you. . .

I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that I love words. And things with words on them. Like this old flash card which is now pinned to my bulletin board:

It reminds me -- the old stick-in-the-mud that I am -- to try to forget for 5 minutes that I am the completely boring old broad that I am, and push the edges of the envelope in some way. Since I am a total coward, that envelope pushing is not likely to come by rock climbing or bungee jumping or even tweeting.

The only place I can be brave is on the page. And even then it is tough going. I still can't believe I had the audacity to recreate life on the eastern Montana prairie in 1918 (yes, Timmy, that WAS before I was born) or more recently, explore life in a Japanese American incarceration camp during WWII. And now, I am slipping on the worn brown oxfords of girls who slogged through the Depression, trying to bring to light the day-to-day of that trying time.

I tremble a bit at the chutzpah needed to shape stories from lifetimes I've never experienced personally. But I draw courage from writers like Karen Cushman and Karen Hesse and Katherine Paterson and Rodman Philbrick and Gary Schmidt and Sarah Miller and Laurie Halse Anderson, all of whom have hoed up stories from the fields of our collective pasts and dared to tell them for contemporary readers.

Tell me about the dares you've taken in your writing. If you're like me, some have worked out and some have been totally flops.

But I hope you celebrate both the successes and the flops because the important thing is that you dared.

I know nothing. . .

So I'm dating myself: is there anyone else out there who watched Hogan's Heroes and remembers that line by the German sergeant, "I hear nothing, I know nothing"?

Well, that's how I feel. The other night at the fabulously organized Inside Story, someone came up to me and asked if I was still teaching. If so, he wanted to sign up for my class.

I said I wasn't teaching, and then added, "The thing is, I don't know anything anymore." I'm sure he thought I was being coy/modest but the sad fact is that I was speaking the truth. The more I walk this writing tightrope, the more I realize how thin the wire we tread.


I can feel things -- like that there should be one more beat in this paragraph, or one less statement of emotion in that paragraph -- but I sure as heck don't KNOW any darned thing.

I so admire writers who are confident of what they know.

I'm just not one of them.

Tune in Wednesday

Maybe the talented illustrator (and now writer, too!), Elizabeth Dulemba, can remember how it happened, but I can't quite recall how we ended up meeting for coffee at the SCBWI annual LA conference a few years back. She's so positive and creative -- it was a pleasure simply to be in her orbit that day -- and we have been email buddies ever since.

Now she's blogging and tomorrow guess-who will interviewed on her blog.

The UnTidy town Award

If you are a fan of Barbara O'Connor's blog, as I am, you will know that she is a neatnik who could give Martha Stewart a run for her money. She talks about somewhere in Ireland (I think) where villages are given "Tidy Town" awards.

I would never, ever win one for my office. I spent the weekend purging because I had finished one big research project and needed to make room on my desk -- and thus in my head -- for the next. I managed to thin out my books, easier to do when I think of the kids reached by Page Ahead or my local elementary school who will be the recipients of said books. I pitched computer manuals for the computer I had 10 years ago and I even weeded things off my bulletin board.

But the wall of paper made up of old manuscripts has me beat. What do I do with the 21 drafts (and then some) of the Two Bobbies? The plastic bin full of Hattie stuff?
Not to mention the shelf of books about eastern Montana.

What do you do with the "stuff" leftover after making a book?

My groaning shelves really need to know!