P.S. Yes, this is a bank deposit slip. I write on the front of them, too, sometimes! 

 And I need to add my usual abject apologies for being such an infrequent blogger here... I'm spending a lot of time over at the Spilling Ink blog with my writing buddy and dear pal Ellen Potter, if you want to see more of what I'm doing online these days.

I took Writing Yoga by Bruce Black on a road trip to my stepson's college graduation halfway across the country a few months ago, and read a little of it every night in various hotel rooms. While reading it, the highway and chain motels vanished, and I felt like I was on a retreat, in silence and quiet, exploring my internal world. There were brilliant parts about starting a practice journal, moving past fear, and listening to inner voices that particularly resonated with me. I've never really wanted to write a journal, but after reading Writing Yoga, I wanted to start. This is a gentle, thoughtful guide to exploring your internal world through writing and yoga postures. If you are a writer and/or yoga student, this is a must read. It's also a beautifully written account of Bruce's own writing/yoga/personal journey. There are treasures here for anyone who opens this book.  As Bruce says, "You never know where life will lead you or who you'll find to help you on your way." I  consider Writing Yoga as one of those teachers.

To find out more about Bruce, check out his two wonderful blogs: Wordswimmer "Come dive into a sea of words and swim toward a new understanding of the writing process," and Writing Yoga, which is a companion blog to the book.  

My husband and I just returned from a trip to Montreal, Quebec, where we had the good fortune to visit the Botanical Gardens during the month long Magic of Lanterns exhibition in the Chinese gardens.

The lantern boat is floating on the water; behind it, outlined in lights, is the Friendship Hall.

One of the evening's participants strolls through the garden under her parasol. 

The night's festivities!

Lanterns hanging from The Tower of Condensing Clouds.

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. I wasn’t expecting anything in particular when I read this book. It had great reviews, which were promising, although not a guarantee that I’d even like it. If anything, I was hoping not to hurl this book across the room in disgust, or to return it to the library before I got to page twenty-five. (It happens.) Or to make my neighbors cover their ears when I started to shriek in anger at the bad writing. (Okay, this has never happened, but maybe someday?) Let me say that I was very pleasantly surprised by Elsewhere.  I loved it. Maybe even adored it. It’s a brilliant book, brilliantly done. It makes you think, but yet is deeply comforting. It might even be close to a perfect book. (If it is, it’s a fluke of nature. But a really amazing one.)

 I resisted reading The Book Thief for a very long time. A story narrated by Death set in World War II? Sounded like too much for me. I didn't care that a million people had read it or that it had won dozens of awards. The first page turned me off and that was that.  Okay, it really wasn't fair to give up after only a page. But that's what I do sometimes. The next time I picked it up, I forced myself to read further into the book, where i was richly rewarded for my persistence. I totally fell in love with this one. Amazing characters and brilliant plot. But, above all, this is a book with an enormous heart. And that's all I can say. Except: read it and see for yourself.

 And here are some oldies but goodies (the books, not the people; there were pictures of books here that kept disappearing. I haven't yet reinstated them.):

Ellen Raskin. Pure genius. Total delight. Crazy inspiration. Read the Westing Game to start. Or Figgs and Phantoms.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder: The Egypt Game. And many more wonderful books. She's still writing. Hooray!

 Sid Fleischman: I’ve adored every book of his I’ve ever read. And I hope I’m not misspelling his name.  

Denver Botanic Gardens (picture by Anne Mazer)

We’ve been doing a lot of writing workshops for kids this summer. When we give a writing exercise – an “I Dare You”- we try to make it as much fun as possible. Here’s one that we often use  (with variations), which Ellen Potter created for our Spilling Ink website:  “Write a scene in which your character opens a forbidden closet door.”

Every time I hear this, my fingers start to quiver, and my eyes dart around in search of the nearest pen and paper or computer keyboard. It’s instructive to watch the kids’ responses. Some of them have a similar reaction to mine. Their eyes light up, and they lean over their notebooks, writing as if someone is chasing their pen across the paper. Others think for a while before writing; still others consult with their friends. And some raise their hands with questions about the assignment:

“Can it be a bedroom door?”

“Yes.”

“Can it be a front door?”

“Yes.”

“Can I put a ghost in it?”

“Yes.”

“Can it be set in another universe?”

“Yes.”

“Is it okay if I don’t name my characters?”

“Yes.”

“My ideas are all messed up in my head. Can I write them that way?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have any ideas about closet doors. Can I work on my own story instead?”

“Yes.”

After giving several workshops in a row, I realized that every single question they asked us was actually the same one: “Is it okay to write the story my way?” They were looking to Ellen and me, as the story authorities (so to speak), to give them permission to follow their instincts. Since the purpose of our writing workshops is to, well, um… write, we wanted to encourage anything that would help them dive deeper into their stories. And dive they did. Kids are natural storytellers. Ellen and I were astonished at the pieces they read, which were alive with humor, suspense, snappy dialogue and vivid characters.  

Writing teachers often talk about “getting out of your own way.” I’ve never quite understood this concept: does it mean that YOU are the problem? But learning to write is all about finding out who you are. How can you do that if you’re always getting out of the way? (Yes, that’s a future blog post rant.) On the other hand, getting out of the way of young writers makes perfect sense to me. As their workshop leader or writing teacher, I want to clear all the obstacles, false ideas, worries, fears, and misconceptions about writing from their heads, so they can feel free to explore, wander, experiment, and discover. Who cares if they alter our writing prompts beyond recognition or ignore them altogether? The point is to write, not to write it our way. So we tell them not to worry. They can narrate the story any way they want. “Just write,” we tell them over and over.

1. Doing appearances with my friend and co-author, Ellen Potter. (She's on the left; I'm on the right.) And did a couple by myself, too!

2. Writing for other people's blogs: 

Ellen and I did an interview about reading and writing on Cynsations (click on link to read interview)

We shed some light on Spilling Ink on the Hipwritermama blog

And there's more to come on Imagination Soup  and Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast (Links below in the update!)

3.  Helping to cut my daughter's hair (that blur of blue in the background is her boyfriend, who did most of the cutting)

4. Working on my novel - yes, this is what it's been like, folks. Rip, rip, rip. (Metaphorical rips, of course, since I'm writing on a computer.) Or should I say, delete, delete, delete? If I had a picture of me pulling out my hair, I'd post it, too.

5. Squirrel portraiture: Isn't this a handsome one?

I'll try to post more regularly from now on, my friends... Promise!!

Love to all, Anne

See commandment #8!

1. Thou shall read a lot.

2. Thou shall write regularly and work steadily at thy craft.

3. Thou shall not worry. Thou canst always correct mistakes later.

4. Honor they inner vision.

5. Thou shall not steal other writers' work.

6. Thou shall not murder thy readers with boredom.

7. Thou shall not be intimidated by writer's block. Thou shall remember it happens to almost all writers.

8. Thou shall have fun.

9. Remember thou art writing to communicate.

10. Thou shall celebrate thy successes and make a joyful noise unto thy friends when thou art pleased with thy work.

Note from Anne: Commandments are intimidating, so please think of these as Ten Suggestions for Young Writers. I left them as Commandments only because  I was having too much fun with the "Thou shalls" and "Thou arts." (Obeying Commandment, er, Suggestion, number 8, of course!)

According to this very intriguing article published in the New York Times today, it turns out that animals have distinct personalities just like people. There are bold, fearless leaders among geese, for example, who are quick to explore new territory. There are predatory female spiders who eat their mates. And there are other animals who are very sensitive to their environment, take in a lot of information, and become easily overwhelmed. The squealing pigs and twitchy mice, that is.

When I was a kid, my mother used to call me "The Princess and the Pea," in honor of the princess who could feel a single tiny pea under a hundred mattresses, but if she had read the NYT article, she might have called me a squealing pig or a twitchy mouse instead. Honestly, I think I'd rather be a princess, even an oversensitive and finicky one. It just has a little more glamour to it. But I'm glad that I have soul-mates in the animal world, and I don't think I'll ever look at pigs or mice the same way again. (Is this why they are such popular characters in children's books?)

As a kid, I never knew quite what to make of my "squealing pig, twitchy mouse" nature. Other people sometimes seemed uncomfortable with my perceptions and feelings. They were probably bold geese or predatory spider types. (Wish I had known that when I was a kid!) But when I grew up, something wonderful happened. I put all those "squealing pig, twitchy mouse" observations, thoughts, and feelings into stories - and finally people could hear and accept them. Like many other artist-types before me, I had found my place in the animal, um... human kingdom.

So, I'm left with one big question: If pigs, mice, geese, spiders, birds, and other animals are so much like us, are there artists in the animal world? If there are, what do they create? 

Anne and Spilling Ink

Happy Birthday, SPILLING INK! You're finally out in bookstores... And check out the new website for the book that Ellen Potter and I have launched. There's a fabulous blog post by Matt Phelan on "Back to the Drawing Board," lots of free stuff, and best yet, a chance to win a free signed copy of SPILLING INK! See you there!