How do you know you have a great editor? Easy. If within two books, you’ve learned to go back and lop off the first few chapters—you know, the ones you really love where you wallow around with characters who’ve become your “friends” in your favorite cozy coffee shops. Unless you can stick a critical mystery…
Author: kimgriswell
I'm an author, an editor, a writing coach, and a workshop leader. I spend my days asking questions and looking (or listening) for answers, and thinking up ideas for new stories to write for my favorite audience: kids! I guess I'm just about as curious as Rufus Leroy Williams III, the intrepid pink hero of my picture book series from Sterling Publishing, is persistent. Did you know that in 5000 B.C. people blamed 'tooth worms' for their cavities? Neither did I until I developed THE HAUNTED OUTHOUSE for the Bathroom Reader's Institute. Turns out, ancient dentists filled the wormholes with metals like gold or silver. Except the Aztecs. They used a mix of iron, water, and belly-button lint. As you'll discover by reading RUFUS GOES TO SCHOOL, RUFUS GOES TO SEA, and RUFUS BLASTS OFF! I believe that reading opens up worlds for young people. Books did that for me, and I hope my books will do the same for today's kids.
Why Sketching Matters
One of my wonderful writers shared with me something picture book author Candy Fleming told her: to keep in mind that most of what we write will be crap. Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron also remind us to feel free to write the worst garbage in the world, especially first thing every day. What I…
Hitting the Road
What’s so great about living, writing, and traveling in a Class A recreational vehicle? They’re large lumbering beasts, hard to control, impossible to maneuver in cities, and they guzzle gas. The answer has been many miles in the making. A decade ago, I fell in love with the idea of living simply, letting go of…
Genre-Shifting Writers
When I first started writing, I wrote what I read: fantasy, for the most part, and romance. (I was 20-something, so the latter was probably a given.) I came very close to publishing a romance novel with Del Rey. An editor read the manuscript I sent and liked it. If I was willing to do…
Lessons from a Children’s Bookseller
Over several years, I worked part-time at a fabulous children’s bookstore in Ashland, Oregon: Treehouse Books. Before my bookstore experience, I thought two decades as a children’s magazine and book editor, teaching workshops on writing for children across the country, and becoming a published author of multiple children’s books had taught me all I needed…
Energy Break
When I’m really deep into a writing project, I can sit at a keyboard for hours and not notice the passage of time, until some body part—usually my neck or shoulders—calls a time out. If I wait until that happens to stop, and then I stand up…ouch! My muscles are stiff and my limbs resist…
Embracing the Crone
When my daughter was young, she once told me—in all innocence—that I have a witch’s nose. Shall we say I was not…grateful….for her statement of what she saw as an incontrovertible fact. After all, witch’s noses all look a certain way, right? Long and beakish, perhaps topped off with a wart sprouting several wiry hairs….
Writing Totems
A few years ago, I worked one day a week at an amazing children’s bookstore in Ashland, Oregon—Treehouse Books. Jane, the owner, inspired me by populating the store with items that I’m sure represented the magical/mystical spirits that bless her life: fairies, gnomes, ravens, owls, trees, even the occasional piggie evocative of my own Rufus….
Gatekeepers
One of these people is a gatekeeper: an editor. The other is a hero hoping to be allowed through the gate: a writer. Which is which? Can you tell? Is it the one speaking, or the one listening? The speaker looks authoritative. The listener, earnest, perhaps eager…or intimidated. One of the most intimidating parts of…
Take Flight
Outside my RV windshield, birds soar and swoop and dive. Not just once or twice a day but again and again and again. Pelicans glide into view in arrow-tight formations. Seagulls burst skyward, wings pumping against the wind. Crows chide and ravens rave as they skim the waves. What drives this constant motion? Dogs, sometimes….
Cozies & Kim Griswell 