The Sixth Annual GROG Arthropod Roundtable

hosted by Sue Heavenrich

Welcome to the Sixth Annual Arthropod Roundtable! Grab your cuppa, pull up a chair, and please help me welcome our guests. 

Laura Gehl is a former science teacher and scientist who is now a full-time children’s book author. So it almost makes sense that most of her books center around science and nature themes. Her newest board book is Odd Bugs , the third in a series that includes Odd Beasts and Odd Birds. 

“When I was doing research for Odd Beasts, I came across a lot of fascinating bugs and couldn’t wait to give them their own book,” says Laura.

Melissa Stewart is a science writer, children’s book author, and avid nature lover. Her new picture book is Monarch and Mourning Cloak: A Butterfly Journal. While visiting schools to take about her earlier butterfly book, A Place for Butterflies (published in 2006) she noticed that many students raise monarchs. She also noticed that they thought all butterfly species have similar lives and habitats. 

“Butterflies are an incredibly diverse group of insects,” Melissa points out. “So, in 2008 I began writing a book called Two Butterflies, Two Lives to help kids understand the variety of foods butterflies eat, the different habitats they call home, and the many ways they survive winter weather.” Over the years, that book evolved into Monarch and Mourning Cloak!

Karen Jameson is a retired elementary school teacher and author of lyrical, rhyming picture books. Insects have found their way into several of her books (including the beetles and dragonflies in It's Time to Shine). There’s even more bugs in her newest book, Who Nests Here?

“Insects have such unique ways of nesting,” says Karen. “I spotlight gall wasps, mole crabs, scorpions, and devil crayfish in my new book. And who wouldn’t thrill to see a termitarium – a giant termite nest?!

Katherine Hocker is a science illustrator, naturalist, and educator with an inordinate fondness for aquatic insects. Her new book, When You See Us, takes us on a field trip into the mysterious and fascinating world of aquatic insects. 

"They are some of the most watchable wildlife I know,” says Katherine. “They live pretty much everywhere on Earth, and are easy to find and observe. When you consider that they live double lives as some of our most familiar winged insects, such as dragonflies and mosquitoes, everyone should know about them!”

Jenni Walsh writes novels for kids and adults. She confesses that she didn’t know how cool bugs were until she was researching their defense mechanisms for her middle-grade tale of mystery and thievery, The Bug Bandits. 

“My book is inspired by a real heist that occurred at the Philadelphia Insectarium," says Jenni. "Over $40,000 worth of rare insects were stolen – and I found this utterly fascinating. In the book, we call it a buglery.”

I’m joining in this year because 13 Ways to Eat a Fly is celebrating its fifth birthday! Before writing books for kids, I taught science and also worked as a newspaper reporter. One afternoon I was covering the opening of a nature preserve. People were standing because there were “small bees” perching on the sun-warmed metal chairs. Those “bees” were actually flower flies – awesome little pollinators! That’s when I realized that too many folks have no idea about the diversity of flies buzzing around them. 

Initially I wrote 13 Ways to Eat a Fly as a backyard field guide. Bo-oring! It took a few years (and many revisions) before I came to the idea of making it a backwards counting book. You know: starting with a bunch of flies that disappear one by one as each hungry critter (or plant) grabs a snack. I added a brain-eating fungus, because who can resist zombies! I got to wondering... 

... why did other folks chose the format they did?

Melissa Stewart

Melissa: Because butterflies are so beautiful and graceful, I thought free-verse poetry would be the best way to share information. Initially, I wrote a series of poems in two voices, but the first-person point of view wasn’t working. Over the years, I continued to revise, writing draft after draft and receiving rejection after rejection. The book’s design pays homage to this process by showing each poem atop a stack of papers. Finally, in 2023, I decided that perhaps the book needed an additional conceptual layer that tied into the art and design. So I sent the manuscript to my friend, illustrator, and past collaborator Sarah S. Brannen. I let her know what I was thinking and invited her to go on a hike to brainstorm. A few hours later, we had a vision for what the book could be—a nature journal bursting with art, poems, and informational notes.

Jenni: I wrote The Bug Bandits for my 10-year-old so middle grade was the perfect age group for him. He’s a reluctant reader but I’m pleased to say he couldn’t resist a heist book that is Night at the Museum meets Home Alone.

Laura Gehl

Laura: I love writing board books because they can serve as a child’s first introduction to a topic—in this case, really weird and amazing bugs!

Karen: Lyrical, rhyming picture books are my jam. It feels natural to write this way in the main text - a style which is brief and accessible to younger readers. Science concepts in the back matter are written in prose for those who wish to explore the topic in more depth.

Katherine: I wanted the story to be told in the voices of the insects themselves—a kind of song they sing to reveal their secrets. That called for a more lyrical approach.

Me: As a kid, I was fascinated by ants. They lived in sidewalk cracks and in our garden, often working together to carry bits of dead beetles to their homes. Plus they have queens! Being a fairy tale-reading second-grader, how could I resist? I wondered ...

... what was the gateway arthropod for other authors?

Katherine Hocker

Katherine: Caddisflies! I remember discovering them as a child—these tiny crawling underwater beasties that built themselves homes out of grains of sand or tiny twigs. We used to call them “stick bugs.” It was many years before I learned that they have a winged adult form.

Laura: I read about a poop-shooting caterpillar when I was in grad school, and one of my first-ever published pieces of writing was about that caterpillar. I’ve been hooked on bugs ever since!

Karen: I am obsessed with dragonflies! Not only are they beautiful, but they’re symbolic of joy, good omens, and transformation.

Melissa: I’ve been a lover of all creatures big and small since childhood. I was fortunate that my parents owned 10 acres of woods, and we had a national forest across the street from our house. My brother and I spent most of our time outdoors—immersed in the natural world. Some of my long-time favorite insects include walking sticks, lightning bugs, and of course, butterflies.

Jenni Walsh

Jenni: I’ve always loved butterflies. When we visited the insectarium the book is based on, my family and I loved walking through the butterfly pavilion. We also hatched them at home and had a release party. It inspired my main character, Liberty, to have a butterfly releasing business in The Bug Bandits!

Me: Today is Earth Day. What can we – and the kids we write for – do to help make our backyards and neighborhoods better places for bugs?

Jenni: There are certain native plants that encourage bug-life, such as butterflies. I encourage everyone to find out what plants/flowers are bug friendly for your area!

Karen Jameson

Karen: I include a Nesting Site Conservation section in the back matter of Who Nests Here? Here’s a few tips: 1) Pick up trash and keep waterways clean. 2) Leave rocks, shells, pine cones and other natural elements where they are, as they may be someone’s home. 3) Don’t poke sticks into nests or move them to another site.

Laura: This is pretty easy for me, because my husband and I don’t have the time or energy to keep our back yard neat or tidy! Having a messy yard with leaf litter, brush/wood piles, clover and dandelions, and sections of longer grass is great for bugs!

Katherine: Aquatic insects need water to survive. Many, such as caddisflies, stoneflies, and mayflies, need water that’s very clean and cold. We can help them thrive by protecting our ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers.

Melissa: Grow native plants is the most obvious answer. But Earth, our precious planet, is one big interconnected system. Anything we can do to lessen pollution and climate change, and to preserve natural areas is going to help every living thing—including us.

your host, Sue Heavenrich
looking for spiders

Me: To these great suggestions I’ll add that using natural mulches, such as dried leaves, grass, and straw creates the perfect habitat for spiders. Also, my lazy gardening provides other benefits. All those dried, hollow flower stems that I never remove turn out to be great homes for native bees. 

We could talk bugs all day long… but I’m out of coffee. Check out our author websites, drop by our blogs, and remember to head outside and watch some bugs!

Laura Gehl at https://lauragehl.com/

Sue Heavenrich at https://www.sueheavenrich.com/

Katherine Hocker at  https://katherinehocker.art/

Karen Jameson at https://karenljameson.com/

Melissa Stewart at   https://melissa-stewart.com/

Jenni Walsh at https://www.jennilwalsh.com/

Celebrate Poetry Month With Roberto Germán ~ Christy Mihaly

This April is the 30th anniversary of National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate the important role poetry plays in our lives and well-being. Today GROG is pleased to welcome poet Roberto Germán to share some poetry insights.

Many people assume poets must be "special" people, but Roberto believes that anyone can be a poet. He points out that writing poetry connects us with our innermost emotions and thoughts, and helps us make order of the chaos. That's something we can all use!

Educators

Roberto and his wife Lorena Germán founded and run Multicultural Classroom, which offers schools and other organizations training in social justice and inclusivity. They travel nationwide to bring their programs, workshops, and wisdom to educators and students, seeking to bring a diversity of perspectives to education.

Roberto and Lorena Germán

Poetry Workshops

Roberto also runs poetry workshops in schools. These are designed to help students find their voices through poems. Poetry, Roberto points out, is a powerful tool to help young people tell their stories. Writing poetry helps kids process their experiences and emotions as they develop their identities. He tells students of his own turbulent early years as a Black Dominican-American, the son of immigrants.

In 2023, Roberto published Blue Ink Tears, a bilingual collection of poems interspersed with handwritten notes and photographs.  Roberto wrote the poems over many years, starting when he was still a teen. He tells students that if he could do this, they can, too. His poems explore themes of immigration, race, family, masculinity, love, and loss.

In reading his work to students, Roberto models how poetry helps tap into our emotional truth. He teaches young people to honor vulnerability rather than burying their feelings. He told me he didn't have a mentor to share these lessons when he was growing up, but eventually he realized that writing could be a tool to process his thoughts and feelings. He hopes his poetry workshops help students do the same.

Poems from Blue Ink Tears

I've chosen some shorter selections from Roberto's collection to share today. Enjoy! 

Roberto addresses themes of love ... 

... and immigration, heritage, and metaphorical belonging (also, there's a food thread) ...

... with some haiku exploring themes of history and heritage: 

                                   

For more of Roberto's poetry, you can hear him recite his work here. To see a student reading his own poem after one of Roberto's workshops, check this out. 

Profound thanks to Roberto for sharing.

And Happy Poetry Month to all. 

Fezziwig is a good name for a rabbit. But if she were a tyrant, Woundwort would be better.

 

        

Shakespeare knew it.

 

Dickens did too.

 

They knew how important character names are. 

 

Names do a lot of heavy lifting in our stories. They affect how readers react to our characters as soon as they meet them on the page. That affect can be positive or negative. Shakespeare is a master of this, of course, with the foolish Dogberry and the poisonous Malvolio. Dickens is, too, and seemed to have a wonderful time choosing names, from Fezziwig to Ebenezer Scrooge. Beverly Cleary gave us Ramona and Beezus, and Kate DiCamillo gave us Mercy Watson and Despereaux Tilling, to say nothing of Winn-Dixie . . .

 

Letter Sounds

I thought of this the other day, as I read aloud a picture book manuscript I’m working on. In line after line, I found myself stumbling. Every time I came to the main character’s name, it stuck in my throat.

 

Clearly, action was needed! I needed to find a name that was still descriptive of the character, but easier to read aloud. My original name contained a lot of hard C sounds (like you hear in kick and crush). If another word with a c sound followed the name, my tongue tangled.

English is wonderful in its variety, and part of that are the sounds that the letters make. Some are hard, like C (which sounds like /k/), but C can also be soft like an /s/ (celebrate, city, and circle are all examples of this letter sound. Hard C rattles and cuts. Soft c doesn’t.

 

I liked the edge that hard C gave my character’s name and, by extension, him.

This is nothing new; certain letters hit the ear in a similar way – think of Cruella de Vil (that V! the name contains cruel and devil!), Nurse Ratched (listen to the ratcheting sound, and the name contains rat to boot). Watership Down gave us General Woundwort, and His Dark Materials, Mrs. Coulter. Does that mean you can’t have a villain named Fluffi McBodkins? Of course you can, and I’d love to see you run with it!

 

 Fezziwig, the bunny in question

 

Back to my recent experience. The C name just wasn’t working. And so, the fun began: finding a new name. I wanted the name to be realistic (sorry, Fluffi), and American with European roots. It was just a last name I was after. Way back when, I was counseled to hunt through the white pages for likely names; fortunately, we now have the internet, which gives us millions of options. 

 

History Counts 

Names should be of their time, too, especially if you’re working on an historical story. The Social Security Administration keeps track of the top names per year. In 1984, Jennifer, Jessica and Ashley ruled the hospital nursery, along with Christopher, Michael, and Matthew. In 2024, Charlotte, Amelia, and Olivia had taken over; for boys, Liam, Oliver, and Henry were among the top choices.

Here’s the link for the SSA: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/state/top5_2024.html

You can also check the Census website to find names that are common: (https://www.census.gov/topics/population/genealogy/data/2010_surnames.html) 

 

Wait, what if you want something completely different? The least common names? Here's a good place to look: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/rarest-baby-names-state-brilliant-194500337.html. This list of unusual names is broken out by state.  And this list (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53301/least-popular-american-baby-names-according-early-records) gives you a breakdown by year. Who knew that Icy was an unpopular girl's name in 1885? And what was going on in 1913, with the least popular names were Louise for boys and Louis for girls? 

 

One of my favorite sites is Behind the Name (https://www.behindthename.com/), which gives you an overview of the name’s history and origin as well as meaning. Here’s a sample of what the page offers:

 

I love the "People think this name is" section because of the extra insight it provides. And food for thought, too: Frances is considered formal and classic (who knew?). There are also graphs that show the popularity of the name in different countries. And on the landing page, there are links to names from various cultures. 

 

All right, I wasn't going to say anything. But I feel obligated. In one particularly popular book series, there is a character who is not from the author's cultural background. The character has a name that some consider to be offensive. If you are writing characters from other cultures, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. 

 

Nuff said. 

 

Last Names

As I mentioned, this whole adventure started because I wanted a last name for the bad guy in my picture book. One list at Parade.com, contains more than 300 suggestions, broken down by categories. The section on villains includes names ripped from the headlines (Manson, Gacy, Dahmer), clearly suggestive names (Crook, Bane, Nadir, and Gallows). I didn't go for those suggestions, but who knows when I might need such a name in the future?

 

 I checked the US Census web site, which provides lists of common surnames in the United States (https://www.census.gov/about/history/census-records-family-history/frequently-occurring-surnames.html). Here are the most common surnames as of 2010:

 

 

If you hear a good name, make a note of it. One day, you’ll find a character walks onto your page and asks, “Who am I?” And you’ll be ready to answer.

 

Beyond the Book: Why I Built a 20-Day Pacing Guide (And Why You Should Too) by Todd Burleson

As creators of children's literature, we spend years obsessing over our characters, researching our settings, and polishing our prose. But getting a book into a classroom requires more than just a compelling story. It requires saving a teacher's time.

In my 34 years as a teacher/librarian, I have learned that the most precious, scarce, and fiercely guarded resource in any school building isn't funding or technology. It is time. Teachers pour their hearts out for their students every single day, often at the expense of their own evenings and weekends. When an educator finds a beautiful, complex novel they want to share with their students, the joy of discovery is frequently followed by a quiet, exhausting realization: Now I have to build the unit. They have to spend hours aligning standards, writing discussion questions, and building cross-curricular connections from scratch.

When I set out to launch my middle-grade historical fiction novel, The Secret War, I didn't just want to release a book. I wanted to build an entire experience. To help educators teach it, I wanted to give them the exact tool I always wished someone would hand me: a fully integrated, zero-prep roadmap.

That is why I created a comprehensive Teacher Companion built around a 20-Day Pacing Guide.

My pedagogical philosophy leans away from rote memorization and toward deep, empathetic inquiry. I explicitly designed the guide for "Discussion Over Assessment". Students don't need more multiple-choice tests checking for plot retention; they need pathways to sit with the complexity of history. The pacing guide treats each section of the novel as a distinct unit of meaning, structured to easily fit a four-week novel study.

The entire guide is modular. Educators can mix and match daily "Bell Ringer" prompts, character lens dossiers, and interdisciplinary STEM activities to fit the specific needs of their kids.

For authors, creating these resources isn't just about marketing. Teaching is an act of profound hope. By providing these tools, my goal is to give educators back their Sunday afternoons, allowing them to focus entirely on guiding their students through the shadows of history.

To my fellow children's literature writers: How are you supporting the gatekeepers of your stories? When you release a book into the world, consider what tools you can provide to make an educator's life a little easier.

---

The Secret War officially launches on April 1st. If you visit my author website, toddburlesonwonders.com, you'll see I’ve intentionally built the landing page for the book to be an immersive "experience" for prospective readers (I'll share a post diving into exactly how I built that digital experience later!). There, you can also download the free Educator's Guide, which includes the 20-Day Pacing Guide and the Student Field Notes workbook, and explore more of the history behind the story.

Christy Mihaly writes about the power of Music and Silence

by Sue Heavenrich

Today I’m talking with GROG’s own Christy Mihaly about her book, Music and Silence: The Passion and Protest of Pablo Casals, illustrated by Mariona Cabassa. It will be released next month by‎ Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Christy and I have been critique partners for nearly as long as she’s been working on this book, and it’s been a wonderful journey to watch it grow up and, now, hit the shelves. 

When Christy began working on her story that would become Music and Silence, she was at the beginning of her writing journey. She had just returned from a year of living in Spain (her husband was on sabbatical). 

Christy: When our family moved to Seville, I left my job as a lawyer in Vermont and resolved to spend the year evaluating whether I could start a new career as a writer for children. 

in Cordoba

During that year, I encountered fresh inspiration on every corner. Everything I did and saw felt new and unfamiliar. Everywhere I went I thought, “This would make a fun story for kids.” So, I wrote and sold an article to AppleSeeds magazine about the Pinzon brothers, Spanish sailors and navigators that all Spanish schoolchildren know about and without whom Columbus wouldn’t have succeeded. 

I also continued with my cello lessons, and I decided to learn more about Pablo Casals. So we visited Barcelona and went to his birthplace and museum. The more I learned about him and his life, the more I admired and appreciated him, his ideals, his activism, his pacificism, his principles, and his passion. I started thinking I’d like to write a book for kids about Casals. I realized lots of people in the U.S. didn’t know his story, but I thought maybe they should!

 dressed for la feria

Sue: With all that inspiration, you wanted to write something for children. Can you share your navigation from story idea to writing a book?

Christy: When I returned from Spain, I attended a workshop at the Highlights Foundation about writing nonfiction for kids. I learned a huge amount and started seriously on the path to becoming a nonfiction children’s author. 

Sue: We met at that workshop!

Christy: And that was the beginning of our years-long collaborative friendship. In 2014 I took an online writing class and wrote an initial draft of the Casals book. I was still researching the life of Pablo Casals, viewing videotapes and movies about him, listening to recordings, and studying the co-written memoirs he left as well as biographies and press articles. I studied mentor texts. I explored possible themes and put together musical word lists. I shared drafts with critique partners and revised. I also started, prematurely, sending the manuscript out to editors. Editors under a certain age didn’t know who Casals was, so they didn’t understand why people would want to know read about him. Clearly, I had more work to do.

Sue: One of the things we’re told as writers is to come to our story from different angles. 

Christy: Yes. I changed the focus and tried different approaches. Some of my drafts included direct quotations from Casals, in boxes. I loved this; the editors, not so much. I laid out the page turns and tried to squeeze Casals’s whole life into 12 spreads - thankfully, the final book is much longer than the typical 32 pages! I cut down the words about his childhood and then put them back in. I cut pages from his later years. One time, I received a thoughtful critique from an editor and, at her invitation, edited and re-submitted. But that revision was rejected.

I must have revised my story more than twenty times that year, and I continued working on it into the next year, 2015 when I sold my first picture book, Hey, Hey, Hay! – a rhyming picture book about making hay. That was a thrill, and an educational process. 

signing the contract with Erzsi

And then, in 2016, I submitted the Pablo Casals story to literary agent Erzsi Deak, who loved it enough to offer to represent me. Yay! At last! Erzsi had a couple suggestions, so I tweaked the manuscript and then she started submitting the story. But nobody bit. 

Meanwhile, the political winds in the U.S. were shifting, and Erzsi and I discussed bringing more emphasis to the anti-fascism theme in Casals’s story. I made more revisions while also trying new approaches to the story. In one draft Pablo’s cello narrates, and another draft is told in verse. I didn’t end up with any of those versions, but each one informed how I eventually wrote the story of Casals’s life. 

In 2018 we started a new round of submissions. The story felt more timely than ever. After about a half dozen rejections, we received an offer from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Over the next seven years the story wended its way through the publishing process, getting delayed for a bit by Covid. In 2022, when the search for an illustrator started, I knew I wanted an illustrator from Catalonia, Casals’s homeland. I pushed for Mariona Cabassa, whose work I knew because she had beautifully illustrated my 2021 book, Barefoot Books WATER: A Deep Dive of Discovery. It took a while, but it was worth the wait. I am so glad she brought her gorgeous art – and love of Casals – to this project.

Sue: Fourteen years is a long time to keep believing in a book. What words of wisdom might you offer to kidlit writers who are having a hard time getting an editor to love their stories? 

Christy: Write the story that is in your heart. Because that’s what writing is about. Don’t get distracted when people tell you what the market wants, or how to sell to a certain editor – unless those are stories your heart also wants to tell. Editors and agents love to read work in which they can sense the author’s passion and commitment, stories that are animated by the author’s love of the topic, the characters. If you don’t love what you’re writing, write about something you do love writing about.

Sue: You started playing the cello as an adult. What advice might you offer to folks who want to learn how to play a cello – or any instrument – later in life?

Christy on the cello

Christy: First, accept that you’ll never be a brilliant player. Or, you won’t develop the level of competence you would have if you’d started young. So let go of that expectation. Do it for the joy of making music, for the pleasure of learning a new skill – that’s what keeps us young.

Second, you must practice. A lot. But don’t overdo it, because you do not want to injure yourself. (I speak from experience.) Take breaks. 

And third, find others to play with. My cello teacher organized a group of students to play together. I love making music in a group, together with other (older) musicians. I also loved playing duets with my daughter, who was taking violin lessons and who is  a better player than I’ll ever be. What a joy! You might look for a local community orchestra or band to play with. Or draft your family members and friends.

Sue: I should probably have asked you this first. What is it about Pablo Casals’s music that absolutely gobsmacks you?

Christy: I love the emotion that permeates his playing. I love that he isn’t afraid to show us his passion through his musicianship. His technique, obviously, is lovely, and he produces a gorgeous, mellow tone. But what I love most is that when he makes his cello sing, you can hear the music of his heart.

Thank you, Christy, for sharing your book love and your lessons on how to courageously dive into new things! 

Christy Mihaly has written books on topics from civics to sunlight, and math to moose, including a picture book about making hay when the sun shines! You can find out more about Christy’s books and writing life at her website, www.christymihaly.com. 

And if you'd like to preorder Music and Silence here, (OR Christy's book coming out in May, America's Founding Myths ... And What Really Happened here), her local indie, Bear Pond Books, is taking orders online. Christy will sign your book before it goes out. You can specify how you want it personalized .... or call the bookstore and let them know. Thank you!

Finding the Right Container: How a 10-Year Research Rabbit Hole Finally Took Flight by Todd Burleson

Every historical fiction writer knows the danger of the research rabbit hole. You go into the archives looking for a simple background detail to flesh out a scene, and you stumble across a footnote so staggering it derails your entire project.

For me, that footnote was a date: April 26, 1944.

I was working as an elementary school librarian, researching the Wright brothers, when I learned that on this day, Orville Wright stepped onto the tarmac at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, to take his final flight. He climbed aboard a Lockheed Constellation, a sleek, futuristic aircraft whose 123-foot wingspan was actually longer than the entire distance of his historic first flight at Kitty Hawk forty years earlier. During the 50-minute flight, Orville even took the controls, later joking, "I guess I ran the whole plane for a minute, but I let the machine take care of itself. I always said airplanes would fly themselves if you left them alone".

As a writer, my brain lit up. The poetic contrast between that fragile 1903 flyer and the massive 1944 wartime transport was irresistible. I was determined to tell this story.

My research journey hit a gold mine when I connected with George Hatcher Jr., the son of Colonel George Hatcher, the pilot who flew Orville that day. George Jr. generously shared his father's firsthand accounts, including articles, personal reflections, and even audio recordings from a local radio station. Having those primary sources, hearing the actual voices and reading the immediate reflections of the people in the cockpit, infused the history with an authenticity I could never have invented.

Armed with this incredible research, I sat down and wrote the story. Because of my background in the school library, I envisioned it as a 1,000-word picture book. I polished it, sent it out on submission, and waited.

It was rejected across the board.

For years, the manuscript sat dormant. I couldn't understand why a story with such incredible, primary-source-backed history wasn't landing.

It took a conversation with a brilliant publishing innovator to help me realize my mistake: the history was solid, but I had put it in the wrong container. That single historical moment was too heavy, too complex to be confined to a 1,000-word picture book. It didn't want to be the entire story; it wanted to be the symbolic anchor for something much larger.

I took the story down to the studs and rebuilt it a dozen times, but it now lives as a middle-grade historical fiction novel, The Secret War.

In the expanded canvas of a novel, Orville’s brief appearance on the tarmac took on a much deeper meaning. To my 12-year-old protagonists, the Lockheed Constellation represents the thrilling dawn of modern aviation, but it also casts the dark shadow of wartime progress. By 1944, the pure dream of flight born in a bicycle shop had evolved into terrifying machinery, while their own hometown of Dayton was secretly processing radioactive "spark plugs" for the atomic bomb. The history finally had room to breathe, perfectly encapsulated by a realization in the book: "The plane was the dream. The cloud was the cost".

It took me more than ten years to realize that a rejected manuscript doesn't always mean a bad idea. Sometimes, our meticulous historical research just needs a bigger canvas.

To my fellow writers: do you have a "failed" prototype or a rejected manuscript sitting in a drawer? If you look at the research you gathered for it, is it possible the story isn't dead, but just waiting for you to build a different container?

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The Secret War officially launches on April 1st. To learn more about the book, download the free Educator's Guide, or explore more of the history behind the story, please visit my website at toddburlesonwonders.com.

Changing Your Creative Routine and THE ARTIST'S WAY by Kathy Halsey

 

Changing Your Routine and The Artist's Way

We are blowing through March in a hurry.  My wintering season is waning, a season where I intentionally slowed down to nurture myself and in my 13th yearsof writing, changed up my routine. Maybe you feel you need something new to light you up also.

 It began with the decision to take the seminal writing book The Artist Way and really commit to the craft of it and the 12-week course. I am now on week 9. I have finished 60+ Morning Pages (3 notebook pages written long-hand, every morning.) You may have picked up this book or done morning pages, even taken an artistic date. or two. But the power of it is the consistency of devoting time to yourself to spill what's in your reptilian brain and retrain yourself to put your creativity and yourself above all else.

 Here's what I know I must do for this practice, your way of using the book may be different.

1. There is no wrong way to do it, except not to do it. Knowing there are no mistakes is freeing. I cross things out, use stream-of-conscious style, review my previous day, and my gleanings on what was helpful. I mope, give myself room to dream, and hold a mirror up to observing myself as a creative person.

2. The silly things and odd exercises the book asks you to do daily DO matter. These include writing, an affirmation each day, reading/reciting the BASIC PRINCIPLES every morning, (I don't do them again at night, but it's suggested.), create a "safety circle graphic" showing your creative boundaries. Inside your circle you write what you need to protect and name people who support you. Outside the circle boundary name things and people you must be self-protective around. (I find these change--some people go on the edges of the boundary.)  Make up your own mantra and affirmations. 

3. Keep your artistic date with yourself every week, even if it is small. I began my Artist Dates in a big way, signing up for a 2-hour watercolor class at The Franklin Park Conservatory. It was easy as all the materials were given to us. The instructor gave us notes and lists for supplies afterwards. She circulated among the students to demonstrate techniques, too.

Other dates have included repotting my Christmas cactus along with buying it a proper mister, going on a rock walk, using cartoon panels to frame my # #haikusaturday posts, going to a "sketch-in" at the Columbus Art Museum, buying watercolor pens, redecorating my office with my own art and hanging a painting I never mounted. 

4. Don't share your Morning Pages, but further in Week 9, you will begin reading your pages to highlight new insights and actions needed. I found recurring issues over time, procrastination, and fear of not knowing how to do something "right". I noticed giving myself advice and a way to counteract a block. I became more protective of my own time. I listened to my heart and gut first. I feel more confident, calmer and more accepting of who I am. 

5. Trust the process for reclaiming your artistic self. Yes, you will find more abundance in your life, more time, more gifts that seem to drop in your lap. At first, I didn't believe this. But the more I open myself up, the more opportunity I find magically appears in my life. This is synchronicity, the Creator, God, the universe opening. By now I have learned that, "As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle, but powerful changes are to be expected." - Julia Cameron