Jane Yolen's Blog

My back seems to be good one day, terrible the next. I am going to physical therapy and water therapy and doing my stretching exercises daily, but I can never guess from one day till the other how I will feel when I wake up. Time for a new mattress, methinks.

Books: Scholastic sent me (twice) copies of an audio/book package of How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food. I worked more on the book with Jason, and am pleased with some of the poems.

Worked with an illustrator friend trying to re-kick-start...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

Okay, I will admit it. I was wrong about the shut down of publishing for the holidays. This is what happened in the past two days:

I sold three fantasy poems to Asimov's. PW gave a rave review to my upcoming fantasy novel, Except the Queen (go to co-author Midori Snyder's website In The Labyrinth to see it) and the SF Book Club  took the book as well as an alternate selection. The editor of The Emily Sonnets sent me the edited manuscript thoughtfully done), the assistant editor on Lost Boy...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

In a listserve I am on (which I cannot name or quote because it is private) we have been discussing Author Notes and Dedications. And some of the correspondents have been suggesting that authors should not do lengthy Notes or Acknowledgments. After a few rounds of this, I wrote the following. Kudos to any of my readers who get all the references–or the majority of them.

As a writer, I can thank any dang person I wish. I can acknowledge the help I have gotten. I can mention my cat (if I have...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

Sometimes I get behind on this journal because there is so little to report. Sometimes because I am doing too much to find the time. Decembers are always a little bit of both. So here goes:

Books: I heard that my upcoming graphic novel, Foiled, has been chosen as a Jr. Library Guild book, which means the Jr. Library Guild will be purchasing a certain number of the sheets from the first printing and binding them in their own JLG binding. Always a great start for a book. It means the publisher c...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

Book News: I have received first copies of On the Slant, my photographic autobiography for the middle grades, first color xeroxes of Hush Little Horsie with the wonderful Ruth Sanderson's awwwww-inspiring paintings of horses and their babies.

Started a new picture book called The Mermaid Who Loved A Pirate which seems to be a rhyming Little Mermaid Meets the Dread Pirate Roberts/Long John Silver and girl rescues boy plus "The Keeper of the Eddystone Light" which I used to sing as a child at...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

In these quiet times after a holiday, ordinary folk spend time with family and friends, have a vacation, go to movies and malls.

But I use the days to be pro-active in writing and business stuff. So I sorted through five files of old book materials to send to the Kerlan, did some poetry, worked on the glossary for BUG, some more research for several books over the weekend, watched a little bit of mindless tv, read some more of LINGER, the sequel to SHIVER.

Then Monday it was doctor time...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

Thanksgiving and the day after–since Heidi was doing all the cooking–afforded me some writing time. That meant I did two poems for the 30 Days gig, worked a bit on Girl's Bible, did some research for the GB, managed to fiddle with a lot of pieces of paper littering my house (bills, filing stuff, etc.), spoke to both the boys and got caught up on their family stuff. The usual.

And then we got down to the serious business of eating.

Heidi's Thanksgiving consisted of Maddison and Glendon and me...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

In these four days, I finished my go-round on the entire BUG manuscript (the golem book) including filing things down, adding a new song, a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms.

I wrote four poems for the "30 days 30 poems" challenge.

Answered lots of email. Lots of catching up on back stuff.

Saw a movie with Bob Marstall, my movie buddy–"Men Who Stared Down Goats" which was both amusing and serious. An anti-war movie artfully disguised as bizarre comedy. Reminded me of a movie I saw years ago, ...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

A busy and fraught few days,

Wednesday: tarting up my talk for NCTE and the Lee Bennett Hopkins roast, getting everything ready for an early morning plane on Thursday, paying bills, banking, cleaners, etc. To bed by 8.

Thursday I was out of the house before 5 a.m., plane to Philadelphia landing at 8:35 a.m., and in my hotel and ready to party by 9:30 in the morning. Of course I had nothing on the docket until evening, so I used the time to write. I did some poetry, some organizing for...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »

Someone on one of my online lists just asked the authors to comment on the Solitary Genius theory of writing. This is what I said, and I thought it might be interesting enough for my journal readers to re-post it here, though I have tarted it up a bit more:

I know hardly any PUBLISHED (not self-published) author who subscribes to the Solitary Genius theory. It's a truly damaging myth. I place it alongside the Genuine Artist in the Garret

To begin with, no writer can be alone with all...

View full post on Jane Yolen's website »