Q: What makes you want to write/what inspires you?

I wanted to learn how to write because I have always loved to read. I wanted to discover for myself what combination of talent and craft and imagination authors used to create a work of fiction, both for children and adults. By the time I graduated from Hamline University with an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree in 2007 at the age of 58, I had learned that writing requires a monstrous amount of time and discipline; and, since I’m often motivated by setting a personal goal for myself, over time I found myself inspired by a spirit of accomplishment as I first formed a good sentence, then a good paragraph, then a good scene, then a good chapter. Finally, I love “playing” with language the way my grandsons love to play with LEGOS: a thousand combinations of interesting ways to create something, and, in my case, a story about a little dog in a lobster trap who washes up on the shore of Prince Edward Island.

Q: What do you do when you are ‘stuck’ and can’t think of what to write next?

I usually do one of three things when I’m ‘stuck’ and can’t think of what to write next. First, I ask myself, “What happens next?” I write out something—anything—that pops into my mind, knowing that I can always delete the paragraph or scene later. In this way, I keep myself moving forward and don’t give up. Or, I ask myself, “What if … ?” and try to come up with three or more possible ways I could write a scene, even if it seems outlandish. I usually free-write these ideas by hand to see if a new plot twist might develop. Sometimes, I surprise myself. Or, I might write the same scene from a different character’s point of view, exploring whether a secondary character might point me in a new direction.

Q: How do you celebrate when you finish a book?

Neither of my published novels for children were really “finished” until the day the hardcover book was released to bookstores for sale. This is called a ‘pub date’. After I finish a manuscript and my agent has sold my story to a publishing house, I may have to revise the book 4 or 5 times before my editor approves the final copy. I celebrated the release of both of my books with a “book launch” at Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I read aloud from the book and signed copies for my friends and family. After the events at Red Balloon, I invited everyone to a party.

Thank you, Grace, for asking such great questions. They were fun questions to answer.

Close friends and family members would have been shocked if I had broken spontaneously into song – I don’t normally do that – but I almost did. At that moment, the lyrics of Something Good, from the 1965 film musical The Sound of Music came to mind:

For here you are, standing there, loving me

                Whether or not you should

                So somewhere in my youth or childhood

                I must have done something good.

People from all walks of life were in the audience: my immediate family; our close friends; colleagues from the Roseville, West St. Paul, Saint Anthony-New Brighton and Anoka-Hennepin school districts; members of Holy Cross Lutheran Church; a woman whom I hadn’t seen since we lived in Elizabeth Waters dormitory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1960’s; teachers and authors that I worked with in the MFA program at Hamline University; children’s writers from a large circle of those who’ve participated in Jane Resh Thomas’s writer’s workshops; a few folks like Henry and his mother who I met for the first time that night.

Weeks later, the memories of their faces are like shiny pieces of glass in a mosaic of my life’s best moments.

The creative members of the Red Balloon staff – Amy, Kate, Joan, and Matt – worked together to make this joy-filled evening even more special.

In the seven years since the story about a sock monkey named Throckmorton first sparked my imagination, I have often felt like Tango, our 11-year-old, 8-pound Yorkshire terrier. I’m always amazed by how fast his six-inch legs must move, and how many steps his tiny feet must take, in order to complete our daily mile-long walk. Writing The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, I often felt like a very little dog with very short legs on a very long walk.

Now it’s time to let my readers complete that journey.

Children’s author Katherine Paterson, in her Newberry Medal Acceptance Speech in 1981, expressed this feeling eloquently. Like her, I have tried to give my readers, “while they are young, the best, the truest story of which I am capable. I have learned, for all my failings and limitations, that when I am willing to give myself away in a book, readers will respond by giving themselves away as well, and the book that I labored over for so long becomes in our mutual giving something far richer and more powerful than I could have ever imagined.”

Indeed, now it’s time to unhand my story and let young readers slip into my open palm shiny pieces of truth from their own lives.

It’s time to take

something good

and make it better.