Author journals highlight slices of Janalyn Voigt’s writing life.
I’ll admit it: I’ve procrastinated on drawing the rough maps of Elderland from which artist Anna O’Brien will create real maps for inclusion in DawnSinger, which releases this fall. I found it easier to consult maps filed away in my imagination while writing DawnSinger. Unfortunately, now that others want to see those maps, I have to put them down on paper.
In this case, I know my motives for procrastination, and they aren’t good.
It only takes one person to fly a kite.
Or so it seems.
As you clutch the grip and watch the brightly-colored banner flutter and dip above you, it’s easy to forget…
My mother served a healthy portion of Southern manners alongside helpings of black-eyed peas, hominy and cornbread. I learned to put others before myself, to give up the best, to step aside and go last. Factored into this training was the fact that shyness plagued me. You might not guess it now, but as a child I was embarrassed even to breathe.
Given my upbringing, it’s not surprising…
It happens whenever I, who fondly imagines myself an organized person, become smug. It’s enough to send me back to bed with the pillows over my head, wailing, “When did I sign up for this anyway?” What am I talking about? Change. Oh that.
Ever since I tried to plan the entire next year of Girl Scouts in June, I’ve understood my tendency to look further ahead than the average person finds comfortable. Anyone who’s organized a family reunion way in advance (guilty here) knows that people just don’t want to think that far ahead. Upon reflection, they may have a point.
With a shiny new year gleaming like a child with newly-washed ears…
I sometimes stare at people in disbelief when they ask me how I come up with my ideas. I want to ask how they don’t have ideas. A veritable barrage of them plague me — so many, in fact, that I’d need several lifetimes to pursue them all. After much pondering, I’ve concluded that the world contains two types of people…
Paper littered the card table around the sketch of a portion of Elderland, the fantasy world of my Tales of Faeraven trilogy. I worried my bottom lip and murmurred to myself. “I’m in big trouble.” It seems fantasy worlds are much easier to imagine than to chart. With the artist waiting for my preliminary sketches…
Sound advice can come in unexpected ways.
When a plane prepares to land, there’s always that moment where the engines quiet and the forward momentum slows. The landing wheels come down and, at just the right moment, the back engines roar. A landing can be smooth or bumpy, depending on general conditions and how well the pilot prepares.
I’m about to bring my own “plane” in for refueling. In the past year I’ve…
