Every year, students in APU's Freshman writing program submit essays and compete in three catagories: best personal essay, best argument, and best research paper. APU welcomed more than a thousand new students this year. Competition? Yea, more than a little.

I'm so proud that one of my students took first place in the personal essay catagory and second place in the researched argument category! Alyssa Hetschel was honored at the recent FWS Academic Conference.
Alyssa writes with a confident voice. She is gifted at recognizing the telling detail, and she knows how to edit distractions to make every word tell. That is what makes her a Great Writer.

I love Eric Carle, the author and artist behind classic children's books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I stumbled across his blog and really like these thoughts about creativity, time, seeds, and hatchlings:

Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Seed that Grows into a Story

Sometimes ideas for my books seem to burst into bloom. But often the seed of the idea had been planted much earlier; had been growing quietly inside me for years. An example of this, the seed or idea for my book From Head to Toe, was planted all the way back when I was in high school. I had a strong aversion to physical exercise and sports and felt pressured by the competitive nature of physical education. As a result, I often skipped gym class.

Years later, as an adult, I suffered from back pain (while I enjoyed walking and gardening I spent a lot of time at my desk in my studio and all of the sitting I was doing started to catch up with me). I went to see a massage therapist who gave me exercises which I did every day. These stretches had wonderful names: "Angry cat" was one of them and "old horse" was another. As I did these exercises the feelings from years before, of not enjoying gym class - of feeling like an outsider at school when it came to sports - came to the surface. The seed for the story started to grow and with the names of the exercises dancing in my imagination, the idea for From Head to Toe began to take hold. A young child once told me, "Ideas come from both your inside and your outside." I have found this to be true for me. The inside event (the feelings I had as a school boy who didn't like gym class), and the outside event (doing the exercises given to me by my massage therapist) somehow mingled together to make a book.

http://ericcarleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/seed-grows-into-story.html

Taking time, letting things unfold, being alert to the stories all around him. That's what makes Eric Carle a *great* writer.

that's my chicken!

My friend and colleague Joseph Bentz  is an incredibly talented writer. He just did an online interview with Patricia Hickman, and in it, he mentions that when I have projects that are "on hold," I file them "under the chicken."  I actually have a plastic inbox for these items, and I actually have a large ceramic chicken that I set on top of them all.

When projects seem to be languishing (waiting for a response to a query, waiting for the publisher to take action, waiting to recover from the bruise of a wrong-headed review, waiting  for a vague idea to come into focus), I am tempted to get impatient, stomp my little foot, spit, fume, and complain. Instead, I look at the chicken, smile, and realize that sometimes things just take a little more time.

To read Joe's interview, go to http://wordsunwired.blogspot.com/2009/03/lessons-learned-from-ceramic-chicken.html.

To find out more about Joe's books, go to http://www.josephbentz.com/

Persistence, flexibility, and p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e.  That's what makes Joseph Bentz a great writer.

I told David how much I enjoyed Martian Child, a novel that tells the story of how he adopted his son. As is so often the case, the recent movie version does not do justice to David's book. I told him that I admired his writing because it is so powerful and effective. "I labor over every sentence to get it just right," he said.

Craftsmanship. Relentless attention to craftsmanship. That's what makes David Gerrold a great writer.