coming soon — a real live wire

While I sincerely doubt many of you, my fine readers, get all of your kidlit news from Yours Truly it may be possible that the following bit of news has escaped your attention in the kidlit blogosphere.
Guys Lit Wire, a new site launching in June, promises to provide you with everything you need to know [...]

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the grammar of fiction

This might not be all that original, and my examples may be weak, but I’m flying with this idea that forms of fiction take after the elements of grammar. To wit:
simple noun = sketch
e.g. Fool
simple subject = vignette
e.g. The Village Fool
subject + verb = short story
e.g. The Village Fool Dies
simple sentence = novella
e.g. [...]

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against homework

That’s right, I don’t believe in homework. Not until high school, and then I believe there needs to be a two-year guided course on time management and instruction on how to study effectively before juniors begin doing real work at home. Homework before high school is a colossal lost opportunity.
What is the point [...]

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how to increase your blog traffic

Here’s an experiment for any of you blogging out there who want to see a boost in your traffic. If you include just two words in the title of your blog post you can practically double the number of people who find you on search engine keyword searches:
baby. poem.
Cheese Louise, every day I’m seeing [...]

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tristan tzara programmed my ipod

Suze left her iPod at work this weekend. Normally this isn’t a major disaster but we were having company over and needed to have music playing while we cleaned up the house, if not during company itself.  So I was asked to bring my iPod out of it’s protective gym casing and allowed [...]

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what was i thinking? notes of a cybils judge

Which is harder, having to pick out your favorite dessert from all the desserts in the world or having to pick your favorite among a selection of five? On the one hand you can take everything into consideration but you could also find it hard to choose among favorites; on the other hand having [...]

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Cybils 08

The awards are up and you can feast your squinties on the final selections in each category over here. I am not surprised by one of the winners, happily surprised by two others, and look forward to checking into the rest.
My discussion of the graphic novels category may or may not appear in this [...]

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d-day

As in deadline day, as in my first packet of writing was due today, as in I just sent it off to my advisor and now it’s the waiting game.
Overall I feel pretty good about this packet because I think I paced myself well.  That’s about the only concrete thing I can focus on right [...]

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study break!

Okay, not where I wanted to be right now (as in finished) but I do have until 9 AM PST so I’m not feeling the heat. Just finished the final spit and polish (mostly spit) on my first critical essay and decided it was time for a break. It’s nearly 10 PM, and [...]

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looming

Packet deadline is Wednesday.  For the most part the writing is done — the creative chapters and the two essays and the bibliography, minus a couple books still to read.  There’s still day’s worth of hard line editing tomorrow and that lingering reading but Wednesday is looking very, very good.  Not the scary beast I [...]

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baby steps (and a poem)

I’ll start with the poem first, in case anyone from Poetry Friday has stumbled here and only wants that before I blibber-blubber about. Recently on NPR they featured a story about a book featuring six-word memoir. It’s an odd assignment, assessing your life before it’s over, and then trying to condense that into [...]

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