The Clock is back … and so is my need to finish writing that children’s book!
Excerpt above from Amy Crouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace’s Little Hoot (2008, Chronicle Books).
That loud clock tucked somewhere in my interuterine cavity is back … but so is my inspiration to finish my children’s book not about a little owl named Little Hoot … but starring my cats, Seamus and Hortense. The narratives between and within my cats fascinates me. The vast difference in their habits and personalities, their roles in our home will, I hope, be a sweet little springboard for the search a child begins very early in life … the search for self and their role not only in the microcosm of their home but in the world.
If someone would have asked me in my 20s — even as late as age 29 — if I: a.) would have a ticking uterus; &/or b.) a desire to write and illustrate a children’s book … I would have scoffed and said No Way. Turning 30 does weird things — or at least it has for me — in body, mind, heart. When I look back, it is to learn from my past, not fixate on them — big difference!
The numerous puppet shows, the reading picture books to my cats, and beginning to beam when within the sight of little ones is a relatively new thing. The good thing is that these things are good for now, this time I know I still need to myself before actually listening to the subtle commands in my ovaries.
I found recently my preliminary sketches of Seamus and Hortense. This is a good thing for me to work on alongside the heavy project of a new, full-length manuscript that keeps going through different personalities. But writing for children is not something to be taken lightly of course. Children are not only a ready audience, but a very impressionable one. The stories my mother read to me and I read as a child are more stark in my memory than books I read last month really. It is a multi-textured experience, an excavation even, of the world — the visual, the auditory, the completely palpable.
The Michigan Library Association conference I have the fortune of attending for the next 3 days is good timing for me to begin this journey into a child’s mind again. For me to meet other librarians who work with young people, the creatives in education and literacy to gain even more inspiration.
Rediscovering the FUN of Scaring Myself to Death!
With Halloween just around the corner, I have been in that mood. That reading mood that always happens when fall finally makes its way to Michigan. This is perhaps the scariest book I have ever read. The constant, creepy notion of feeling evil really … someone in the wings of the dark watching you … it is scaring the shit out of me frankly. My chosen reading time is in the morning and at night. Especially at night. A couple hours in my reading chair followed by that hour in bed before I go to sleep. But with Salem’s Lot, my reading habits are being tried. I can read at night when I am not alone, but if I am alone (my cats don’t count for comfort in this … they are as much a scaredy cat as I am), it is a chance to take.
Two of my neighbors in my building have moved out … at the same time! There is only me, the guy in the basement, and the guy downstairs. Something about this creeps me out, but maybe I am reading too much Salem’s Lot? I read Pet Cemetery and part of It (I was too freaked to finish it) and The Shining. Until now The Shining was one of my favorite scary books of all time, but this … Salem’s Lot is like a microcosm of our fears, a fascinating idea King has captured. The characters are so real and textured, their fears are absolutely the catalyst for the entire personality of this small Maine town.
This is a superb Halloween read if anyone is looking for one … it will chill you and make you look behind your shoulder obsessively … I guess that would be a side effect.
