Weekly Note: Living a Creative Life
Plus pie, puppy, and podcasts
It’s been a busy couple of creative weeks around here including:
🏫 Two school visits. One to
’s awesome second graders…
and the other with fifth graders at Jefferson Elementary in San Francisco as part of their annual Author’s Day.
📖 I also got to hang out with these awesome authors and illustrators:
❓One of my favorite questions (from a second grader) was “How does it feel to be an author?” Such a big and great question! I said it feels like many things: exciting when I sell a book, scary when I first send out my work, fun when I get to do things like visit schools.
✍🏻 Plus I’ve been critiquing for SCBWI, working a little on my middle grade novel, receiving some secret news that I can’t wait to share, and of course looking after our new puppy who is keeping us all on our toes.
🥧 Oh and we celebrated Pi Day for the first time. I made BBQ pork hand pies, a chicken pot pie (everyone’s favorite), and pumpkin pie. It was fun to channel creativity into cooking. I forget how much I enjoy it when I’m not scrambling to get dinner made and kids out the door to activities!
p.s. This is a long newsletter thanks to all these photos so if you want to see the whole thing, pop over to Substack where you can also leave a comment or a ❤️.
p.p.s. some of the links below are bookshop.org affiliate links so I might earn a small commission if you buy from them, but as always I encourage you to visit your local independent bookstore instead. This month I’ll be donating any affiliate earnings to Doggie Protective Services (the rescue where we adopted May).
On Kidlit Survival Guide recently I talked about how to write when distracted and Vicky shared her thoughts on writing for TV.
Erin Entrada Kelly was a guest on the SCBWI podcast and I may have to re-listen while making notes. I loved what she said about being immersed in the creative life. She’s always learning, even after winning two Newbery Medals, and often takes classes in different areas of writing such as science fiction.
When I visited schools this week I shared my Invent a Bug project. It’s a sneaky way of learning about creating characters while making up fantasy insects. Find the activity on my website along with many others. After they come up with their bugs, they can extend the activity by writing a story involving their inventions.
I’m currently reading Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin which is already so inspiring and I’m only on the first chapter.
I recently read The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. I don’t usually read thrillers but I wanted to read it before the Netflix adaptation is released. I didn’t like the main character in the book so I’m curious to see how Keira Knightly plays her!
I love finding movies that we can all enjoy as a family these days. But since my memory of older films can be hazy, and I don’t want to pre-watch newer movies, I use Common Sense Media to decide what to watch and to check for any content that I might need to explain! I mentioned this service to a friend the other day who had never heard of it so I’m sharing here in case others haven’t come across it before either.
That’s all for this week!
With love,
Christine xo
Buy my books from your favorite local independent bookstore, my local indie Linden Tree Books, Bookshop.org, or other online retailers.