One of the members of my writer's critique group just got two of his books published! I am so excited for Gene! It's always been in my head that if I can just be near success, if I can touch it and see what it looks like, I can do it, too. My friend Kyle managed to get a business book published recently. Andrea, another member of my writer's group, has been the illustrator for numerous projects. I sound like an advertisement, don't I? I don't mean to, it's just I get excited for people who I knew before they were "successful." It means they DID IT--made a goal, put in the time, kept going when it wasn't easy, and then reached the goal. They get to wear the badge: I DID IT!! (And the badge ought to look like that as well: all bold caps with two exclamation marks.)
I've always learned by example. When I was 8, the fam was at the zoo and as we were eating our lunch in the lawn area near the pond, I saw two boys trying to catch a duck. "It must be possible," I thought to myself, "if they're trying to do it." Since my mind told me it was possible, I decided to catch a duck. I sat very still away from everyone with my back to a tree and held out a piece of bread towards a duck. The thing was very cautious. In fact, it hardly moved my direction. But still I sat and waited because obviously those boys knew what they were doing. My patience won out, the duck came to nibble the bread and I grabbed it. Mom took a picture. She was so excited and I couldn't figure out why because couldn't everyone catch a duck? (I'm glad I didn't try the boys' method of duck-catching, which was running as fast as they could after any duck out of the pond; they never did catch a duck, I realized as their family was walking away.) Perhaps everyone could catch a duck but the question is whether they believe they can and are they willing to put in the time and patience needed for it?
Back to Gene--I am going to sound like an advertisement because I'm so excited for him--Gene's books, so far, are The Pigeon Catcher and Henrietta H. House. The first one is a Young Adult thriller, similar in some ways to the movie Inception (funny, I was critiquing Gene's manuscript before the movie came out). And Henrietta H. House is a Middle Grade novel. (After having critiqued several of his other books, I'm looking forward to some more of Gene's good reads: his humorous Jamison Pond: The Spy Who Came Down with a Cold; his sci-fi The Spider Wars; and his amusing The Not-Witch. I hope he edits FAST!
I've always learned by example. When I was 8, the fam was at the zoo and as we were eating our lunch in the lawn area near the pond, I saw two boys trying to catch a duck. "It must be possible," I thought to myself, "if they're trying to do it." Since my mind told me it was possible, I decided to catch a duck. I sat very still away from everyone with my back to a tree and held out a piece of bread towards a duck. The thing was very cautious. In fact, it hardly moved my direction. But still I sat and waited because obviously those boys knew what they were doing. My patience won out, the duck came to nibble the bread and I grabbed it. Mom took a picture. She was so excited and I couldn't figure out why because couldn't everyone catch a duck? (I'm glad I didn't try the boys' method of duck-catching, which was running as fast as they could after any duck out of the pond; they never did catch a duck, I realized as their family was walking away.) Perhaps everyone could catch a duck but the question is whether they believe they can and are they willing to put in the time and patience needed for it?
Back to Gene--I am going to sound like an advertisement because I'm so excited for him--Gene's books, so far, are The Pigeon Catcher and Henrietta H. House. The first one is a Young Adult thriller, similar in some ways to the movie Inception (funny, I was critiquing Gene's manuscript before the movie came out). And Henrietta H. House is a Middle Grade novel. (After having critiqued several of his other books, I'm looking forward to some more of Gene's good reads: his humorous Jamison Pond: The Spy Who Came Down with a Cold; his sci-fi The Spider Wars; and his amusing The Not-Witch. I hope he edits FAST!
RSS Feed
