Home and at 'em

Okay, so I'm back and nobody here understands me. I'm not complaining, just remarking. Some of us in my VC class are talking about having been pulled into a cult-like thing there...and I'm totally with that. It's all-encompassing, this experience.

But now for some craft issues! I thought I might share a little taste of the lectures. Give you a sense of the people and ideas.

I'll just march into lecture 1, given by Sharon Darrow. It was really cool how the entire day (that was Thursday the 10th) had a thread, and that thread was: look inside, deep inside, look at what made you, how you grew up, your family, your experiences, and be really true to those experiences. Sharon called it a "clothesline". When she was little she remembered hanging out the wash, running through the clean linens, following the flapping shirts, racing out to take up the laundry before the thunderstorm. And the image is apt, because don't we all try to hide our "dirty linen"? Don't we all keep secrets, buried so deep we keep them from ourselves as well as the rest of the world?

Well, dig 'em up. That was Sharon's message - because as children's writers, we are really writing for the child we once were. I know I am. And there are some dark little things in there I need to face, and when I do, I think I'll be a better writer for it.