back to work

I’ve worked with kids for almost 30 years, but my summer class at Uptown Stories was the first time I had a group of diverse, dedicated writers. I could give them a prompt and off they’d go—no talking, no stalling, just pens scribbling furiously. It was amazing! But because I’m a creature of habit, even teaching just four hours a day threw my entire writing routine out of whack. I didn’t run in the park, and I ate way too much takeout because I was too tired to cook when I got home. I went from averaging over a thousand words a day last week to writing absolutely nothing—on the novel, that is. Each night I developed lesson plans and writing prompts, and this morning I got up early to type up the last of the students submissions (their work will be published in an anthology). But I didn’t add a word to The Phantom Unicorn. I did, however, print out three sample chapters and my outline to share with the kids. Before and after our trip to The Cloisters on Wednesday, we read the novel together and the kids seemed really into it. Then on the last day, we went down to Books of Wonder and held a reading; afterwards several parents came up to tell me that their child couldn’t stop talking about The Phantom Unicorn. So…I think it really works for the middle grade crowd. One of my older writers (a rather cynical eleven-year-old) even said she would read the book not because she knew the author, but because it was as good as any book she’d find in her school library. High praise! I’m thrilled that Charity Russell will be doing the cover art and if my agent passes on the story, I’ll self-publish it and have Charity do black and white illustrations for the interior as well. If I can get back to writing a thousand words a day, I should be able to finish it over this long weekend. Then I need to switch gears and get to work on The Dragon Thief. Purple is making excellent progress on Benny Doesn’t Like to Be Hugged—just four more illustrations to go!—and I finally found a couple of Senegalese sensitivity readers for The Return. So I may self-publish three books this fall…and it feels like fall outside today. I’m ready for autumn. I’m ready to go into hibernation mode and read and write and dream all day…