Ballet dancers make floating in the air look easy. They make balancing en pointe look effortless. How do they do that? Only because of the hours of training and torture they have put their bodies through. Only through sacrifice and suffering. Behind all that ease, lies hard work. Maybe tears. Certainly pain. Mastery is making… Read more »
Posts Tagged: Writing
Your True Voice
When my 14-year-old niece EP was visiting from the UK last month, she took a singing lesson. (Here’s a picture of a singing lesson from the olden days. I put it here because I like the singing lady’s hat. Our lesson obviously looked nothing like this thank goodness.) The teacher is a friend of mine… Read more »
Follow the Fish!
We writers are always being asked where we get our ideas. I got this one when I wasn’t looking—when I was trying to write something else altogether. And became my latest picture book, POOR DOREEN: A FISHY TALE. The story I’d wanted to write was going to be elegant and atmospheric and quiet about a… Read more »
Wither into the Truth: creating in old age
Some artists keep on working late in life–and get better with age. Others peak early and then fizzle out. Brooke Allen in the NYT writes, “Creative artists who continue to work late in life so often seem to undergo a sea change: a distillation, a new intensity, a sloughing off of excess and ornament in… Read more »
“Song of the Stars”
“And high above a single star set in the highest heavens shone out brighter than all the others and poured down silver onto the little shed… ‘A Light to light up the whole world.’” Song of the Stars When Zondervan asked me to write a Christmas picture book, my first thought was (I’ll be honest)… Read more »
Limericks
Now it’s high time for some Limericks. Limericks? you say. Limericks are sometimes looked down on. Why? Some of the reasons given are: 1/they’re simple 2/they’re short 3/they only have 5 lines 4/they’re not very hard to write (Come to think of it, isn’t that pretty much what some people think of children’s picture books?… Read more »