Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 8
April 2, 2019
Had I Gone Looking
Had I gone looking for some particular place rather than any place, I’d have never found this spring under the sycamores. Since leaving home, I felt for the first time at rest. Sitting full in the moment, I practiced on the god-awful difficulty of just paying attention. It’s a contention of my father’s—believing as he […]
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March 26, 2019
A One-Word Controversy
hello, I have a question pertaining to, The Stuff of Stars. I have not read it, but I just saw a posting about Ekua Holmes’ illustrator award & it brought me to some reviews. One quoted the book… “in the deep, deep dark a speck floated, invisible as thought, weighty as God,” I thought the […]
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March 19, 2019
Grit and Magic
Part of learning to create things well is just practice—putting in your time, keeping at it, refusing to give up when you make mistakes, which you are going to do a lot. Nowadays, people are calling the willingness to persist like this: grit. And yet there is another aspect to this business of creating things—call it […]
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March 12, 2019
LoonSong Again
This is my fourth year to write about, LoonSong, the unique Writers’ Retreat on Elbow Lake in the wilderness of northern Minnesota. It is coming up again this fall, from Thursday, September 5th, through Monday, September 9th. And once more, it will be magical. Or at least it will be magical if it happens. The […]
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March 5, 2019
Novel-Writing
My favorite thing to remember about novel-writing is an observation I saw taped to a friend’s wall in her office in graduate school: “Nobody asked you to write that novel”. Therefore novel-writing is a choice–you can always stop, always keep going. You are free to do whatever you want. Most novelists come to writing novels […]
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February 26, 2019
On Understanding
“Will younger children understand the scale of this text?” the reviewer asked about my recent picture book, The Stuff of Stars. For better and for worse, those of us who publish are expected to remain silent before such questions, and I have. This one, however, begs an answer, so I’ll cheat a little and give […]
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February 19, 2019
The Time Will Come
The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, And say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger […]
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February 12, 2019
A Disappointed Reader
Recently I received this email from a young reader. It was, in fact, the fourth or fifth email Robert had sent me, each making the same point. Dear,Marion Dane Bauer I think I made it clear…we all want a sequel to Runt.If this can happen we will all smile.We will all laugh.We will all […]
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February 5, 2019
The Beauty of the Earth
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. Rachel Carson
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January 29, 2019
The Choices I Make
My daughter said it with me standing right there. “My mother,” she said, “is not a cookie-baking, babysitting grandma.” I was startled at the description of what I am not, but I couldn’t possibly take offense. In the first place, she said it so cheerfully. In the second, what she said is so true. I […]
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