Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 39

Another Response to “Why Wait?”

Last week and this week I’m passing on reader responses I received when I asked if anyone had advice for a twelve-year-old novelist, Diana, who wants to publish.

I published Barbara’s response last week. A self-published writer, she suggested that if Diana wants to self publish she will need to have a team in place to help with editing, book designing, etc. She also suggested that, precisely because Diana is twelve, such people might emerge, willing to help.

Here is another perspective:

Hi Mario...

Responses to “Why Wait?”

Last week in this blog I presented a letter from Diana, an enthusiastic twelve-year-old writer. She asked me for help publishing the novels she has written. And she headed her e-mail with a very pertinent question, “Why wait?”

I answered her personally, but as I did I began to feel …well, rather out of touch. Forty years ago when I began publishing, a twelve year old, no matter how talented, wouldn’t have had the remotest chance of being published. In fact, focusing on publication would have l...

Why Wait?

That was the headline for an e-mail I received last week . . . “Why wait?” The message was from Diana, and with her permission–and her mother’s–I give it to you below.

Dear Marion,

I am a young writer, twelve years old. I plan to become a author in the future, but why wait? So over the past years I have been writing. I have a book that I feel confident in. I have written The Fight for the Throne and the sequel to it. My cousin and I have created our own writing club where people write their s...

Kids Saving the Rain Forest

Whoever it was who said “Ninety percent of the pleasure of travel is in anticipation and the other ten percent is in recollection” had hold of a disheartening truth.

I’m just back from a week in beautiful Costa Rica and the deepest discovery I made is that I’m allergic to the entire place.

I’ve long known I have a slight allergic reaction to mold. In Minnesota my head gets a bits stuffy when the fallen leaves begin to rot in the autumn and again when the snow melts in the spring. A nuisance, no...

Betrayed by Dragon

Not long after I fell on the early December ice, dislocated my elbow and broke the radial bone, I wrote about having discovered Dragon software. It was quite magical. I spoke into a microphone, and the words I spoke appeared on the screen in front of me.

As I said earlier, I wasn’t sure I could write that way. Many years ago, I began having problems with carpel tunnel, and my very practical-minded brother recommended that I try voice recognition software. I was convinced, though, that my words...

Must They Be Funny?

“Must they be funny?” It’s what Shonna McNasby asked following my last blog. And her thoughtful question calls for a response.

Shonna also said, “I am an aspiring author of picture books, and what I write, I’m told, is rather quiet and sometimes sad. Everywhere I look there are hilarious picture books, (which I do love), and I just saw a notice in SCBWI about a publisher who just can’t find enough, and is hosting a competition to find more.

“Of course this bothers me as a writer, but it also bo...

The Sadness of Maturity

It was a lyrical picture-book text. The subject was spring. And it bounced back because the editor found the tone, somehow, too sad.

My agent was bemused, but when he passed the comment on to me, I understood.

An undercurrent of sadness often shows through in my writing. There is, truth be told, an undercurrent of sadness in me.

I have never been a jolly type, even when I was a child. I have always been thoughtful, even pensive. I love to laugh–don’t we all?–but making others laugh is rarely my...

Whale Watching

Last July I was on the east coast, having traveled there to receive an honorary MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts where I taught for so many challenging and satisfying years. After the ceremonies my partner and I went on from Vermont to the coast of Maine, a place neither of us had ever visited before.

The Maine coast, in case you don’t know, looks exactly like its pictures.

Our final day there, I signed up for a whale-watching trip. It’s something I’ve long wanted to do. I’ve seen whales r...

Starting Over and Over and Over

Perhaps it’s a curse, this business of putting your thoughts out there for other folks to see. When you do your mulling silently inside your own head you can allow yourself to forget what you said to yourself. When you publish your thoughts, even on so ethereal medium as the Internet, they have a way of hanging around.

On New Year’s Day I talked about starting over. I talked, in fact, about how life seems to be made up of starting over. I even pointed out what a good thing it was to find every...

What Did I Learn?

Last week I wrote about spending two weeks working on a Christmas picture book and coming up at the end with a story that didn’t work, even though I loved much about it.

Carol Brendler wrote with a question. She said, “I typically chalk up those weeks of writing that yield nothing to a learning experience. It doesn’t feel quite so wasted then. I wonder if you feel you learned anything from that Xmas story, even though you have proven again and again that you’re a master storyteller.”

It’s a wis...