Five Things on a Friday

Lake Umbagog, New Hampshire

1.  I've been enjoying the Olympics every night.  Who knew volleyball had so many variations?!

2.  I was pleased to see Rules was a recommended book on Oprah.com It's a list created by ALA, but still, how fun to say "my book" and "Oprah" in the same sentence!

3.  It's August. It was very hard to turn that calendar page. I don't want  the summer to end.

4.  I cried working on the end of my book yesterday.  That's a good sign. Powerful emotion in me means a better chance of it being powerful reading. I've been dreading those hard near-the-end chapters. But in order to rise, first you have to fall. 

5.  There's one week left of "Teacher's Write," writing camp over at Kate Messner's blog. I have two lessons next week. On Monday and Wednesday, I'll be talking about how to teach kids to plot stories.   When I do writing workshops with kids, I find that's the element they struggle the most with. They don't generally have trouble creating interesting characters and rich worlds, but they do often have a hard time setting up the story, continuing it with increasing tension, and paying it off. So that's what I'll be talking about.