Many thanks to all the great kids and educators at Hodgkins Elementary in Hodgkins, Illinois for welcoming me on Tuesday. And especially to Tracy Cleveland, librarian extraordinaire. We talked writing process all day long, and I even got some advi...

He was a wild thing, fearlessly breaking new ground. May we all be so brave and creative.

This week I'm putting on my editor's hat and responding to both critical and creative writing from my five students in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in creative writing. They are all super bright and great writers, so the process is...

Software issues reared their ugly head again, and so I've jumped ship with this blog. As you can see, it's now hosted on Posteruos. I'm looking forward to getting back in a regular blogging groove again. But not right this minute. Along with being...

4/14/12 -- The blog software I use -- Adobe Contribute --had been acting up for a while, but now, suddenly and inexplicably -- is working fine again. I didn't do anything to fix it; it fixed itself. Technology. It's a love hate thing, but mostly l...

3/12/12 -- Last Wednesday, flying home after 2.5 weeks of school visits in Arkansas, Alabama, and North Carolina, it occurred to me that it had been months since I'd made any real progress with my writing. Sure, I'd spent time at the computer work...

3/10/12 -- I'm just back from a 2.5 week school visit trip to Arkansas, Alabama, and North Carolina. Great school, great teachers, great kids. But with so much traveling and speaking going on, plus responding to packets of work from my stellar stu...

1/27/12 -- Trips to Kinnelon, NJ and Mill City, OR have kicked off school visits for the year. Next I'm headed to Bakersfield, CA, but not before a weekend in the mountains with my family. Skiing and snowshoeing are on the agenda, plus evenings ar...

1/24/12 -- Software issues have kept me from posting recently, but have now been resolved. Whew! I'm back, both figuratively and literally -- back to blogging, and back in Oregon after an intense and stimulating ten-day residency at the Vermont Co...

01/01/12 -- A new year, a new blog! You can still read all of last year's entries here. Check the bottom of any blog page for all archives.

12/23/11 -- I took a break yesterday and went snowshoeing with family and friends. At one point we came out of the woods onto the edge of a meadow. In its middle we noticed an area where the snow had been disturbed, so we headed over to check it o...

12/9/11 -- For over thirty years my wife, Debbie, has said that she was absolutely positively NOT interested in rock climbing. Imagine my surprise, then, when she announced recently that she wanted to give it a try. She did, and is now belay certi...

11/21/11 -- After a lengthy phone conversation with my editor, REVENGE OF THE MUTANT UNDERWEAR has, well, mutated. Instead of a sequel to ATTACK OF THE MUTANT UNDERWEAR, it will now stand on it's own -- new characters, new story line (mostly), and...

11/11/11 -- Question from a 4th grade girl: "At what age do you start to like it when people guess that you're younger than you really are?" The answer is interesting to ponder -- I'm guessing 30 for most people -- but what I find much more fascin...

11/8/11 -- Right Brain, I'd like you to meet Left Brain. Left Brain, this is Right Brain. I'd appreciate it if you two would get along and work together. I need to get some writing done.

11/1/11 -- These are the times that try writer's souls. Roofers are just above my head -- seriously, three feet, max -- thwack-thwack-thwacking away with nail guns. I keep looking up, waiting for chips of plaster to fall, or a booted foot to come ...

10/22/11 -- Reading, wRiting, and Running -- my version of the 3 R's.

10/13/11 -- Early morning at the Hartford, CT airport. The steady hum of the concourse is punctuated with snippets of nearby conversation floating in and out of my consciousness: "They didn't have sesame bagels, so I got you cinnamon." "I don't kn...

10/12/11 -- Interesting wording of roadside sign on the outskirts of tiny North Brookfield, CT. Guess it's better than "Congestion ahead," which would lead you to believe you're going to come down with a cold soon.

10/4/11 -- As a faculty member of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in creative writing, once a month I receive 50 pages of work from five students (so 250 pages total) to critique. Although a big job, I love it and the students, who ar...