In between watching the Olympics (such INSPIRATION!), I’m working on a new wiki (trying out my Sites wiki with Google), getting my computer off our home computer network (oh, joy!), plowing away at the home sewing (borrrring!), and attempting to keep cool in our late summer heat wave here in Bremerton (the cats are all wearing wet neck collars and sleeping by the fans).

My husband and I have also been trying to harvest a few figs.

Usually, the starlings get almost all of the figs, but this year, there have not been many starlings.  And not many ripe figs either.  My husband discovered the reason why when he went up a longer ladder, higher up into the fig tree branches.  This is a HUGE fig tree, and the leaves are very wide, and the branches are tremendously leafy.

He found two adolescent raccoons sleeping off their midnight fig feast with a daytime nap on one of the branches.

We managed to get one big bowl of figs.  They taste wonderful when they are just harvested IF they are harvested when they are really ripe, but they also don’t have a long shelf life once you pick them.  I picked out the most squishy ones to eat right away, and put those into the icebox. The rest went downstairs into the cool  basement to ripen a bit more down there.

When I went down to get the rest of the figs the next day to freeze them, Shasta, our black, male kitty was lying, proudly and possessively by the bowl.  He meyowed a “look at me and praise me” meyow, but I was too hot to fuss with him.  I took the bowl of figs upstairs, peeled them, put some lime juice over the pulp, and froze it.  I’ll make fig bread later on with it.

Then Shasta started meyowing.  Meyow, meyow, meyow!  On a hot afternoon in a hot house with no air conditioning, this was beyond irritating, and I couldn’t get him to stop. 

Meyow, meyow, meyow!  No matter what I did, meyow, meyow, meyow!  Shasta may be an all-black cat (almost), but he also is a huge part Siamese.  And Siamese (Siam is the old word for Thailand) cats have the MOST whiny, raucous, irritating meyow.

Finally, after I petted him, Shasta settled down and went outside to wait for Doug to come home from painting a house.

When Doug came home and went downstairs into his computer room, he nearly stepped on two fine, fat figs neatly laid out on his lovely, new, wood floor. 

The figs were very drippy.  They had cat teeth bite marks in them, deep cat teeth bite marks.  Shasta was very happy about this discovery, purring and rubbing and just so pleased that we had also discovered  HIS figs!

Doug decided then to look for more figs.  Just in case.  He found two more large ones, also covered with cat teeth bite marks.  Also very, very drippy.  And squishy.  Shasta pranced around, even more delighted that we were FINALLY appreciating HIS booty.

There is nothing more yucky looking than an over-ripe fig that is extra squishy.  And extra drippy.  With cat teeth bite marks on it.  On a hot, dusty afternoon. 

I was glad the rest of the figs were frozen.  I really, REALLY couldn’t face eating any more figs.  Not that day!  Maybe not for a few weeks, either!

http://www.kymmco.com/index.php?id=626

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**COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org
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I have a new job, starting in September, as a reading tutor with Washington Reading Corps!

The job will last for ten-and-a-half months; I will be working 40 hours and five days a week.  I will be paid, not a lot, but I will be paid, and I will receive free training, paid health insurance, and some paid vacation and sick leave.  At the end of the program, I will also be given money for further college education. 

I’ll be working in a school not far from my home.  I will tutor children from Pre-K through third grade, in small groups and individually; I will, as well,  help to train volunteer reading tutors.  I won’t be transcribing medical reports for healthcare providers.  Yay!  Yes, in ten-and-a-half months, I will never, never, never have to hear a medical word if I don’t want to hear one!  I most certainly will not be typing any.  I am so happy about this!

I have lots of experience with children of different ages in the classroom:  When still in high school, I was hired as an aide in a newly-formed Head Start program one summer; the Head Start supervisor decided that I was wasted as kitchen help; I also did a lot of babysitting for my high school teachers at fifty cents an hour. 

When I got out of college, after helping in schools for some of my classes there, I taught preschool for two years, full-time. 

Then, I babysat on and off here and there for different people until I got out of business school when I taught in church children’s programs for several years in between doing school visits for my first book.  

Finally, I moved here to Bremerton, and children in the streets, neighbor children, discovered me, and I then did a fair amount of putting on Band-Aids, giving drinks and snacks and words of wisdom and dealing with the powers that be who should have been caring for those children properly but were not.  Along the way, I’ve learned how to do many arts and crafts activities with children. 

I want, after this Washington Reading Corps program is over, to go on to graduate school and take a Master’s in reading and literacy and thus pull together my B.A. in sociology and my fifth year of undergraduate credits in early childhood education together with my life experiences and business training.  I might consider a Master’s in special education; I’m sure it will be one or the other.

The one thing of which I am absolutely CERTAIN is that I do not want a Masters’s in writing for children and young adults!!! 

I feel a cold, creeping sensation down my backbone even thinking about getting a Master’s in English or a Master’s in writing!  I was told by an editor in children’s books that “it would ruin you.”  And she wasn’t laughing when she said it.  And she didn’t mean that I should quit my writing.

So, being a reading tutor and then pursuing a Master’s in reading and literacy does not mean that I will quit my writing. 

I am CERTAIN that I will continue to write for children and middlegraders–as I have done in the past.  I will also continue blogging and wiki building and web site building and songwriting and poetrymaking. 

I can’t seem to stop doing those things; they make me happy; it’s just that now I am free to spend more time on something else that has made me happy for most of my adult life:

Teaching children how to read stories.  Telling them stories.  Reading them stories.  Listening to stories with them.  And learning from them.

I couldn’t be happier than I am right now about these changes in my life. I couldn’t be happier!

http://www.wa.gov/esd/wsc/program/readingcorp.htm 

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!
http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!
http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom: http://www.rindarealm.com/ and http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/.

I’m on Jacketflap: http://www.jacketflap.com/ and Helium: http://www.helium.com/

**COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org
You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog. Be kind. Be fair. For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail. Subscribe in a reader

                                                                 http://www.rindarealm.com/

(Note:  This is a re-posted blog entry from my old Xanga account.)

I share in this post about me and my home town, the town where I grew up:  Chiang Kham, Thailand.  I was born in Bangkok, Thailand, in the mid-1950’s. When I was two weeks old, my parents moved back to a house in Chiang Kham, which is about as far away in Thailand from Bangkok as you can get, way, way up in the north, about forty miles from the Laotian border, in the Golden Triangle. Thailand is my country because it is my birthplace.  America is my country, too, because my parents were American.  I was thus born with dual Thai and American citizenship. So I am Thai-American but in a different way than most people think.

I have not seen color photos of the area where I grew up since I left Thailand at age fourteen, but with the help of Google, I found some links with color photos.  So, I’ll comment on the links I found, and you all can pick and choose and cruise as you wish:

Many of people who lived in and around Chiang Kham, where I grew up, weren’t Thai at all but members of a minority Thai hill tribe called the Tai Lue:  Here is an excellent photo of how they dress; the clothing is  elegant and comfortable to wear:

http://www.tatnews.org/emagazine/2209.asp

Here is information on Phayao Province where Chiang Kham is located:  Scroll down to see two photos of temples near my village, one with very interesting and old teak wood architecture:

http://www.thai-tour.com/eng/payao/attractions.html

This is a fascinating and extensive private site about Thailand by a young Thai man who has also dealt with drug addiction, a serious problem in Thailand as it is in America:  Check out his trip to the long-neck tribe!

http://www.thailandlife.com

Chiang Kham has large refugee camps near the town:  These camps do not have a good reputation, but you must remember that this area of Thailand was a very poor area long before the refugees came pouring over the border during the Vietnam war.  Life was harsh and often very short then in Chiang Kham as it still often is now.

Thailand is not a rich country and has a government that lacks adequate resources to serve its own people well much less new, huge groups of refugees.  The poor condition of the camps is, to my mind, due far more to the neglect of other, richer countries who could have done much more to help quickly in this crisis situation but did not. 

So my little village’s image has gotten shabbied up badly on the Internet now, and it’s not fair.  I love my home town and am very proud to be from there.  Sometimes, the hill tribes and the Thai did not get along so well in Chiang Kham, even way back when, and the camp situation exacerbated those problems also.  Thailand was and still is facing severe problems with deforestation of its mountains not to mention its drug and child trafficking problems.  

Just don’t make a judgment on my town and my country before you investigate further.  That is all I ask.  If you really want to understand more about Thailand, where I grew up, travel there, dress simply and preferrably modestly, don’t flash your big money and fancy electronic equipment and expensive clothes around, try to learn some good Thai manners and some Thai words, eat Thai food, buy Thai handcrafts, and just be willing to learn about the culture.  Slow down, take time to appreciate the small good things of life there.  Smile a lot. The people in Thailand are very friendly.

Here is a closeup of the refugee camps near Chiang Kham, when the camps were in use:  I saw this sort of thing all the time when I was growing up in Chiang Kham, and so this photo is not as shocking to me as it probably is to most Americans:  Lots of poor housing existed back then as now.  Some people had no homes at all.  It is the rainy season in this photo and flood time; during that season, everything gets messy and dirty for everyone.  It is life the way it was and is in this area.

And yes, many small children still go around naked or dressed only in a shirt or bib in Thailand.  It is perfectly acceptable.  The poor folk have no diapers, and there are always chickens around.

http://www.lib.uci.edu/libraries/collections/sea/seaexhibit/pic23.html

This is an image of the Buddha in a temple near Chiang Kham:  I was only actually inside a temple once, so I’m not sure if this is the image I saw then or not, but something about it seemed familiar .  There are dozens and dozens of temples all around this area, large and small, and not a single little white church with a steeple…

http://www.tatnews.org/photo_gallery/detail.asp?id=342

I found an actual map of Chiang Kham town:  We lived, I think, just off that main highway just outside the main market area, but on which side, I can’t figure out. The only identifying feature on the map that I could find was the post office.  The entire market area burned down two weeks before we left Thailand, and so, this makes it difficult for me to pinpoint the location of my home.  The village is still very small but of course had no 7/11, paved roads, electricity, etc., back then.

http://www.travelfish.org/map_detail/thailand/northern_th iland/phayao/chiang_kham/21

The land up north near Chiang Kham closer to the hilly parts is often polluted by use as a tourist motorcycle area now.  The terrain is so rough, however, that off the main road, travel becomes very difficult on a motorcycle.  I suggest that you don’t ride a motorcycle there.  Ride an elephant!

Now, we are in the plains area, between the mountains, in the dry season:

http://www.gt-rider.com/photogalleries/thailandgallery/pages/62.htm

Ahh, here in these photos is a sight that you will never find in the U.S.  These Bhuddist monks are blessing and learning how to use the fire department’s new extinguishers for this ancient carved teak wood temple near Chiang Kham!  Thai people love rituals and the longer and the more intricate the better! They also love to take and get photographs–even the monks!

If you think you know all about Buddhism, do travel to Thailand and find out how much you don’t know about Thai-style Buddhism. The Dali Lama is not very important there; the King and Queen are. And if you are an evangelical and think Catholics are irritating and all wrong with all their rituals…well, well, well…in Thailand, religion and rituals are part of daily life to a colorful and intense degree that even most Catholics could never imagine. 

I don’t know why most Americans, when confronted with the complexities of Thai life still can’t seem to grasp the fact that nothing, nothing in Thailand is ever, ever simple. My parents, particularly my father, never made that mistake…possibly part of the reason why they were both so well accepted and loved in Chiang Kham when we lived there.  The country is old, old.  It had the oldest Bronze Age civilization in the world, existing long before the Greeks.

http://www.fara.ksc.th.org/monk2.html

I love this excellent photo of the airport of Chiang Kham, with background scenery:  The airport was just starting to be built with the help of American Seabees when we left our town for the U.S.  That’s when my childhood ended, when the soldiers, helicopters, bombs, and refugees came. The hills just across the border in Laos were heavily bombed in attempts to eradicate communist guerillas.

http://www.thaiflyingclub.com/linkairportchiangkham.html

Here are lovely photos of the superb needlework style of a northern Thai tribe, the Mien or Yao, also well known in our town:  Missionaries played  and still play a large role in helping so many of these tribal people preserve and take pride in their traditional crafts and language–a fact that many Americans don’t even know.  This site is a good place to buy handcrafts, a fair trade site:

http://www.novica.com/artistdetail/index.cfm?faid=2074

Her are the rice field scenes are of fields seen from Chiang Kham:  How happy I was to see these lush fields and to know that the rice is still being raised and harvested there exactly as it was done when I was a child.

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=246221

There will be a good harvest.  No one will go hungry this year.  I am glad to know that the rice fields are still so close to the town.

This web page gives you a good idea of where we lived in relation to the rest of Thailand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phayao_Province

I spent six months in this city, Chiang Mai, attending eighth grade:  I liked the city much better than Bangkok.  Chiang Mai is called the Rose of the North.  It is much cooler there than in Bangkok!  If I were a tourist, I’d head right up to Chiang Mai and not stay in Bangkok for more than a day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Mai

This Chiang Kham temple flooded during the rainy season:  Yes, the flood water is ALWAYS that yucky looking, every single year!  It is rice paddy country after all.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131457556054427660gJazPs

Here, farmers replanting the young rice stalks by hand, one by each precious one outside Chiang Kham:  The women and children must work, too.  Nothing much has changed.  Rice is rice. Who cares if anyone gets wet either!  The rain is warm.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131456091054427660NDRzmq

I’m grateful to the person who took this photo of my village at night.  Still not too bright.  Still able to see the stars!

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131455985054427660ssEFvH

This is a closer shot of the mountain scenery from the plains:  So beautiful!

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131457312054427660LltgaN

Another shot of Chiang Kham at night:

http://community.webshots.com/photo/131454899/1131457492054427660lxfYaL

Mountains and rice fields!  And Chiang Kham nestled in between…it used to take us three days to get out of the village in rainy season—by oxcart!  But there is a paved, modern highway now, running right through the town.  Chiang Kham is still a dusty, little, obscure town in many ways.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/11319082/1327415421026738363vlQeQp

Here is another excellent photo of Thai Lue dress and information about the tribe:  I saw villagers dressed this way all the time when I was growing up, in not quite so new clothing, but lots of silverwork was worn. 

The striped skirts are a type of sarong, so cool and comfortable and yet elegant to wear in the hot weather. I wore one as a child many times.  No one in their right mind today would want to wear tight pants in any Thai weather—except for touristy types or imitators thereof!  The weaving of these cotton sarongs with lots of bright colors against a darker blue background is still done by the Thai Lue women on hand looms and is prized for its practicality and beauty.

http://web.ku.ac.th/AmazingThailand/Boonsom/tailue.html

Surprise!  Once in a blue moon, my family got to take a short vacation down to the beaches of southern Thailand–quite rarely–as my parents were poor missionaries, very poor by American standards.  We stayed in cheap Chinese hotels like most Thai travelers do—not in modern, pricy,  tourist hotels, or else we stayed in the modest homes of other missionaries, some of whom could not speak English!  So Thai was our common language then. 

The mainland beaches in Thailand have gray sand, but take a boat out to the islands, and the sand turns white under the water and on the beaches, and the water turns this incredible, brilliant blue:  The water, however, does contain some very poisonous sea snakes and jelly fish, sooooooo…Paradise, I fear, is not perfect in Thailand….no matter how lovely the scenery….but I loved living near the beach and water.  We children never got hurt.  We knew what to look out for and what to be careful about.  We learned early.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/315920413/1316603624026738363TrpSby

Sooooo….how do you like my little home town?  Do you think you would liked living there?  I loved living there.  My childhood home is still standing in Chiang Kham, changed and rebuilt and enlarged but….it is still a Thai house with much of it made out of the dense teak wood which survives even Thailand’s tropical climate!

 SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!
http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!
http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom: http://www.rindarealm.com/ and http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/.

I’m on Jacketflap: http://www.jacketflap.com/ and Helium: http://www.helium.com/

**COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org
You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog. Be kind. Be fair. For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail. Subscribe in a reader

Pumpkin, my old, yellow, fluffy cat, is over 80 years old in human years.  She’s had a stroke and limps with one back leg from that event.  She is partially blind in one eye from an infected scratch.  She has constant goopy eyes because of allergies.  She sneezes a lot, throws up huge hairballs frequently, and she occasionally misses the litter box with a big one.  Besides all this, she was declawed on all four paws and cannot hold onto anything very well. Oh.  I forgot the arthritis in her back, too.

However, Pumpkin is also smart and wise.  And clever.  She has figured out how to unlatch the cat door to the cat run.  We don’t know how she does this, but she manages someway to pat it just right so it unlatches. 

The other three cats, all of whom are much younger, know now that she knows how to do this, but they can’t do it themselves.  They, however, do know how to persuade her to do it!  This means that, while Pumpkin herself might not go out into the cat run at night, she can let the other cats do it and does let the other cats do it! 

We latch the cat door when it gets dark because, despite the wire walls of the cat run, we do have very large racoons and possums and rats that roam at night, and we don’t want to take any chances.  Now, we have to block the cat door shut with a large weight as well as latch it because of Pumpkin, the oldest and the most physically frail of all four of our cats. 

I don’t think we can train her not to unlatch the door because we can’t seem to catch her in the actual act of doing it; she’s always just approaching the act or just completing it.

What is true of Pumpkin can also be true of an old person who is writing for children. 

An old person can produce a new book.  Age has its advantages.  You tend to remember your childhood more clearly as you get older, the early years.  And, if you’ve been writing and reading for most of your life, your ability in these skills can greatly increase with the years. 

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote new books in her 60′s.  Some critics want to give her daughter, Rose, the credit for Laura’s books, but you see, Laura had been writing and reading for over fifty years.  She read good books.  And she wrote good writing long, long before she wrote her children’s books.  As old people, do, she started to remember more and more clearly what her childhood had been like.

She didn’t produce one new book for children in her old age.  She produced several in the last years of her life.  Somehow, old age seemed to unhook the latch for her creativity.

It’s why I don’t worry that much about when I sell a new book.  Unhooking the latch is what matters for me!

Here’s a rindalink to Laura:  http://www.lauraingallswilderhome.com/

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!
http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!
http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom: http://www.rindarealm.com/ and http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/.  **COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org
You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog. Be kind. Be fair. For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail. Subscribe in a reader

I notice that my new theme is called “Contempt,” which I think is VERY funny, considering how clean and elegant this theme actually is.  I’ll get to redecorate my blog whenever I like with so many well-designed themes out there for WordPress.

The only thing wrong with this new home is that WordPress does not accept java script.  It used to, I gather, but it doesn’t anymore.  It has lots of lovely gadgety stuff on its ownsome, but…it does limit my blog decorating a bit.

As if we don’t have limits in our creative lives! 

We do have limits, and any writer who won’t admit that he or she faces limits in his or her writing is not being honest–or creative.  Limits can spark your creativity in reality, really spark it.

I found myself outlining an entire early middle-grade book after long hours of crafting a wiki and writing e-mails….the outline came very fluidly and easily although I was tired.  Maybe my fatigue had something to do with how quickly I wrote the outline–or maybe not.  Maybe it came quickly because I made myself work within the limits of the outline!

Then I went again to Google Sites and got myself a free wiki to play with and maybe even publish with!  I was amazed to find how easy their software is to use.  And it’s all online–nothing to buy.  It’s free with no ads!  Yumi, yumi, yumi……..

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!
http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!
http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom: http://www.rindarealm.com/ and http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/.

**COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org
You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog. Be kind. Be fair. For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail. Subscribe in a reader

  

http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/

 I designed “Well Scribed Words” to function as a writer’s first aid blog.  It’s a collection of how-to’s and techniques in an easily accessible form.  You can use the labels (tags) feature on the right side of the blog posts to quickly locate a post that you need.

 I restrict the number of labels that I use in this blog.  This way, my readers will not experience a lot of confusion in finding a useful post! 

 If you are a writer who likes that special tidbit of writing encouragement now and again during your labor, you should enjoy this blog!

 I have done three things in this blog that I do not do in my “rindawriter” blog on WordPress:

 I have added advertising, Adsense ads from Google, are located at the bottom of the blog. 

 I have used copyright-free, royalty-free black cat gifs from Golden Web and other websites:

http://icone.goldenweb.it/index_file/l/en/d2/animals/c/cats/default.html. 

 Each short post will be subdivided into four very short sections: WRITING TAG, PROBLEM, SOLUTION, and IN MY WRITING LIFE. 

 I am only updating “rindawriter” about three to four times a month, which feels comfortable to me for a blog that is very personal and eclectic and rather slopped out in a first-draft format.

 My “Well Scribed Words” blog will be updated more frequently, several times a week, I hope, and it will not be about me very much.  It will be carefully written and edited to provide helpful information for its readers!

 So now!  Y’all know what I’ve been up to.  In part. 

 In between a whole jumble of things, yesterday, I crafted out an entirely new entire picture book text, all 230 words of it!  And stunning it is.  I can see already that this is beautiful, beautiful text even without the rewriting that it will need. 

Someone had e-mailed me an article that sparked the idea for it, and the words came very, very fast after that.

I’ve never read anything like this new picture book text, but it made ME all emotional and teary-eyed while I was writing it.  It’s so simple, so direct.  It so needs to BE a published book!  I feel that it does, anyway.

 Sometimes, ideas strike like lightening.  When that happens, the wise writer drops everything, lets the cats throw up, lets the husband make dinner, lets the children scream, lets the neighbors complain, and just writes!

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!
http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!
http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom: http://www.rindarealm.com/  and http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/.

 I’m on Jacketflap: http://www.jacketflap.com/ and Helium: http://www.helium.com/

**COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org
You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog. Be kind. Be fair. For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail.  Subscribe in a reader

I’ve read lots of advice on the Internet on how to write a picture book: 

I am NOT going to repeat the same, stale, old, how-to stuff of how to write a picture book in this blog post. 

I assume that by “picture book,” we all mean a GOOD picture book, one that children love, one that parents and teachers love, one that reviewers and librarians love, one that will get reprinted forever and ever, right? 

What we, as creators, REALLY mean, I assume, is a picture book that will make money—and lots of it—for us. 

 Now that we are all agreed upon what a good picture book is….what is my favorite picture book writing secret?

Everyone else in cyberspace is going to tell you to read lots of picture books first before you start writing one.  Well, that’s good advice as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far.  You need to do more than that. 

Oh-oh, am I talking some serious sweat time here?  Like, maybe work?  Like maybe getting out of a writing comfort zone?  I am.  You thought reading lots and lots of picture books was a tough assignment? Heh!  You haven’t gotten past the start line yet.

My secret?  Read lots and lots of picture books to groups of two and three-year-old children in a daycare, for at least two weeks, five days a week, and twice a day if you can manage it.

And do it by yourself!  With no help from any teacher or teacher’s aide to ensure good group behavior.  With no teachers building you up beforehand to the children as an exciting, famous book creator big wig.  

No, do this incognito.  Also do it without any other props besides yourself and the picture books.  The challenge is for you to do this successfully for fifteen minutes at a time, i.e., keep the group well-behaved and focused on the books.

A group of small children from different families and lifestyles in a daycare situation is a tough audience.  For one thing, you are not their sweet, beloved mommies and daddies and grandmas but an insignificant stranger and a stranger in charge of the group at that. 

The children will have no sentimental, personal attachments to you.  You’ll be fair game for every attention-getting, group disrupting behavior that they can possibly cook up.  

And, yes, small children can be very, very ruthless with adults.  A group of unrelated small children is a challenge for anyone, anytime, as far as getting them to behave nicely, focus, and listen to what you want them to listen to—as a group!

Secondly, you’re not going to puy any one of those children in your lap for a one-on-one reading/sharing time.  You’re going to have to sustain the interest of ALL of them at the same time with just the picture books and you, and you’re going to have to do it for a long fifteen minutes. 

I have done this myself, many times, for twenty minutes.  (The psychology books will tell you that this an impossible goal, but the psychology books under-estimate the intelligence and language learning abilities of small children.)

Come prepared for this picture book reading session with a tall pile of picture books.  Pick out your favorites, your children’s favorites, the librarians’ favorites, pick out what you think will work.

Now, have the children sit down in a group. Pause with the first book held enticingly closed but in plain view until the noise dies down. Tell them quietly you can’t show the book unless they sit quietly.  Then go at it.  Be prepared to smile a lot.  Clench your teeth if you must, but smile, smile, smile!

This is what will happen:  If you read picture books, piles of different types of picture books, to the same group of unrelated children five days a week, once a day, for about two weeks, you are going to discover something quite interesting. 

Those children, as a group, are going to show marked preferences for certain books.  Moreover, you are going to show marked preferences for reading certain books to them because, frankly, the children will behave better in the group if you read them the books they like.  

The truly amazing thing about the children’s book preferences in this type of situation?  Most of the books that groups of children will prefer will clearly be the “good” picture books, the bestsellers, the best-reviewed ones, the long-time favorites.  I say most. 

The children will sometimes prefer a book which is not well-known or even that good of a book–but rarely.  And likely, in that case, you’ll never figure out why, either.   Accept it.  Move on. Read it if you have to. 

You also may not personally like some of the books the children will prefer.  Inwardly, you’ll groan “do I have to read this awful book AGAIN?” However, you will read the book again, no matter how you personally feel, just to get the little rascals to behave in the group. 

The children’s picture book preferences will be that marked, that obvious.

These books then, the ones that the children will prefer will be  the books that you should take home, study, pick apart, and learn from in writing your own picture books.

“But Maurice Sendak didn’t have to do that to write good picture books,” you protest, “so why should I? 

Well, he didn’t and doesn’t need to do it.   Maurice Sendak is one of those rare adults who has never forgotten, deep inside, what it was like to be very young. 

The best writers and artists of picture books are like him.  Deep inside, somewhere, they have never forgotten what it was like to be very young.   And because they have never forgotten, they are able to stay unusually focused on what their audience of young children wants when they create good picture books.

Most of us picture book writers and artists are not like Maurice Sendak.  We don’t, in our creating, remember very well what it was like to be very young.  

Indeed, most of us have forgotten, in large ways and small, what it really felt like to be little, what things were important to us, what things we loved way back then.  We tend instead to focus on what the writing professors tell us to do.  Or we worry about what the editor says, the reviewer, the writing group, the teacher—everyone except the children. 

We forget our writing audience.

So, here’s my secret picture book writing tip:   Remember your  audience in your writing when you write a picture book.

Also, do get out of your writing comfort zone, get out of the adult writing world for a while, and  engage in some experiential and exponential learning directly with small children: 

Read many different kinds of picture books to groups of small children, by yourself, just you and them.  Take the books that they prefer home with you to re-read and study. 

Then write your good picture book. 

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU! http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom, RindaRealm!http://www.rindarealm.com/ I’m on Jacketflap at http://www.jacketflap.com/ and Helium at http://www.helium.com/ **COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog. Be kind. Be fair. For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail.

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WordPress also gives me a blog roll that can be customizeD.  At last. The HTML editor works great–fast and easy to use.  And, finally, I’ll be typing posts right here online in WordPress instead of composing them first in MS Word as I had to do with Xanga.  The software here is one streamlined baby, it looks like.

Yes, I’m finding this blogging software to be SO clean in every way.  Also, I love the open space and the clean colors and lines of the template I’m using.  Plus, there are tons of free templates out there to experiment with.  It feels like getting your home redecorated every few months or so if you like for free with all those free templates out there!

Oh, how I do enjoy the lack of other people’s advertising on my personal site! 

Okay, I’ve spent long enough here playing with the buttons.  Now, I’m off to my free wiki site to play around there because it does have something to do with writing for children although I won’t say what exactly in public.  At least not yet.  I ADORE wikis.

I will say this much:   A wiki can be quite useful thing to use in the writing process.  I am finding this to be so.  Go here and sign up for your free one!

http://www.pbwiki.com

And no, wiki is not a pagan or icky word or a bad word: 

It is from Hawaii, from wiki-wiki, and means “quick!”   Cool, huh? 

http://www.answers.com/topic/wiki?cat=technology

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!  http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom, RindaRealm!http://www.rindarealm.com/  I’m on Jacketflap at http://www.jacketflap.com/ and Helium at  http://www.helium.com/ **COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org  You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog.  Be kind.  Be fair.  For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail.     

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Xanga has become too inefficient to use, and they are now putting advertisements for people rather than things on my blog pages as well.  So, in the interest of staying family friendly, I’ved moved to WordPress.  I blog a lot about the world of books for children and YA, and, as I do in http://www.rindarealm.com/, I strive to keep things good for everyone here also.

Advertisements for people are, in my opinion, not good for children or for adults.  I’ve left Blogger because of their next-blog button that led quickly to pornographic sites.  I could not eliminate the button!

Now, I’m leaving Xanga for much the same reason:  It’s just too easy on Xanga to get quickly to pornographic sites from my blog. 

Sorry, Xanga!

Now, I’ve got to get to work and decorate my new home with lots and lots of good writing!

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!  http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom, RindaRealm!http://www.rindarealm.com/  I’m on Jacketflap at http://www.jacketflap.com/ and Helium at  http://www.helium.com/ **COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org  You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog.  Be kind.  Be fair.  For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail.     

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