The Liebster Award

Wow, my good friend Susan Woodring -- who is totally biased and so very encouraging to me -- has awarded 50 shimmering pages the Liebster Award! How nice you are. Thank you :)

This award is actually pretty cool. It's designed to bring new readers to small blogs like this one, with fewer than 200 followers. The best part is I get to bestow the award on five of my own favorite blogs, which is really tough because I have many favorites. Blogging has really become its own interesting art form. That said, I'm thrilled to tell you which blogs I visit most often (some of which may have more than 200 followers -- I'm not sure??). But they're great blogs, and I encourage you to visit them.

First, I'm supposed to tell you stuff you don't know about me. I don't know why you'd care about any of this, but I'll try to make it as interesting as possible. This is why I write fiction, after all, and not memoir.

Here goes:

1. My love for writing might've been sparked by a love for school supplies. My aunt Jane owned a school supply shop, and whenever we visited her, she loaded me up with fat crayons, gold star stickers, wide-ruled paper, and Elmer's glue. I liked the other glue better, the rubber glue with the brush inside the lid, and she gave me that, too.

2. The first thing I attempted to write was a play about Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad. I was in the fifth grade, and I had a teacher who set my mind on fire with stories. She read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh aloud to us each week, and I couldn't wait for that next 30-minute reading. I dreamed about those field mice day and night for the whole year. In her class, we also watched a TV program on PBS where an artist illustrated a story as it was being told. I can't remember the name of the program now, but I loved it so. I began lurking around in the school library, self-consciously poking around in the stacks for Hardy Boys books. I liked Nancy Drew, too, but I think I preferred the boys. I liked books about magic, too. I still like books about magic and mystery. My first success at writing was a poem I wrote in the 7th or 8th grade. It was about Christmas, and it was rhyme-y and awful, but it established me as the family writer even though I didn't actually attempt to write again until I was in college. Mostly, it got me thinking wrong-headed about writing. It became another way to show-off. But I was better at other things that garnered me lots of attention so I put writing away until I could get really good at it. Then I forgot about it.

3. I was the kind of kid who preferred hanging out with adults. They always had stories to swap. I loved it when relatives would come and everyone would try to out-tell the other. The stories were rich in those weekend-long storytelling marathons. Usually, though, I found myself with one adult at a time. I was often a helper of some kind. I helped my mom clean the house and string green beans on occasion. I helped her clean the pool we had later when I was in high school. Helped her in the big garden she maintained. I fetched wrenches and small tools for my dad and helped him sort things in his shed. I went with him to flea markets and served as his assistant, fetching sausage biscuits and coffee or holding down his booth when he needed to hit the jon and check out the competition on his way back. When I was really young, I would clamber up the steep hillside to my granny's house and help her water all the flowers in her yard. I loved to bring in the coal in the cute black pail that set beside the stove. I liked to sweep up around the stove with the tiny broom reserved for that purpose. It was not the tidiest house, nothing like my mom's. And I especially loved opening the stove and running the grate back and forth with the end of a poker until all the ash settled down and I could either scoop out all the old ash with a little square-headed shovel (I was meticulous in this work) or add new coal to the fire. I loved working with that stove. I also made instant coffee for anyone who wanted it and carried it to them, sneaking sips that would eventually turn into a full-blown caffeine addiction by the time I was ten or eleven. Being the helper made me more or less invisible to adults. I could watch them without their knowing about it.

4. The first manuscript I ever saw belonged to my baby sister. She was in middle school, I think -- maybe she was a freshman in high school -- when she began to read Harlequin Teen romances at a staggering speed. I had forgotten about writing altogether, but here she was secretly writing her own novel. I don't remember how I found it or if she let me read it. But I remember being jealous and proud at the same time. Here she had done this thing, my baby sister, all on her own, in private. I wanted to be just like her.

5. Every now and again, I would hear about a speech writing contest -- I guess this was in high school -- and I wanted to enter it, but I didn't know how. I didn't know the first thing about writing a speech, and besides, I didn't like the idea of having to stand up and deliver it. I sort of did like that idea, actually -- if I was any good at it, I would get a lot of attention -- but I was afraid. I don't want to blame my teachers, but I wish someone had read my mind and encouraged me. I wish, too, that someone had taught me then -- right then -- that writing is not about perfectionism, A+ papers and shiny gold stars. It has taken me decades to come to this knowledge on my own.

Now it's my turn to share five of my favorite (liebster) blogs. Check these out, and don't forget to visit Susan Woodring's wonderful blog, The Habitual Writer. Thanks again, Susan, for nominating 50 shimmering pages.


Okay, here they are. My top 5 favorite blogs!! Enjoy.

1. Katrina Denza
2. Livia Blackburne: A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
3. Jeff Goins, Writer
4. Home of Baggot, Asher, & Bode
5. Write it Sideways