Monday Morning Musings

Photo from the Everglades

For some reason I am awake and up early this morning, so I think I will get some extra writing time in. After not writing for over a week, I am back at it, and am very close, within a chapter or two, of finishing it. This chapter book mystery has been relatively easy to write...kind of a fun thing for me after spending so long on my second mid-grade.

So I guess the question is what do I want to do now? I have sent the mid-grade to several agents with no success. I am about to send it off to my editor, who gets to see it first, per my contract for Knowing Joseph. So now I don't know if I want to keep sending the MG to agents, or just let it sit for awhile and see what happens.

My next step, of course, is to finish the mystery and go through the revision process a couple of times. But then what? I really don't like the part of trying to sell them. But if I am not going to do that, I guess the question is why write them?

Enough of the musings...

Today (and every Monday) I get to go do writing with the first and second graders at Indian Harbor Montessori School. When I told my librarian that I needed a good book to encourage kids to write, he gave me MY DUCK by Tanya Linch. It is the story of a young child writing a story at school, but every time she starts, her teacher tells her there is something wrong with it and makes her start over (like 'Ducks don't wear shoes). Each time this happens, the character she has been told not to use shows up in her new story all on its own, until she finally does a story about the zoo that her teacher will accept, and is happy that her teacher doesn't see the duck and the fairy on the path to see the pandas, and asks the reader not to tell. My librarian said that teachers don't like the book because it puts them in somewhat of a bad light, and it does, but I also think it can lead to a discussion of different kinds of writing...and the fact that sometimes we have to write what a teacher wants so we can learn about that kind of writing, but at other times we can just write from our imagination.

The other fun thing I did this weekend was to take care of my seven-month old granddaughter...kind of fun, but am really glad I am past doing that job full time!