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Working on character development is like making new friends. You spend time getting to know more about them and what makes them tick. What are their interests? What makes them laugh, cry? Of course there's very often the influence of physical appearance that determines whether one is drawn to a character or not. Author Tom Pawlik makes mention of the appearance factor in his conversation on The 9 Ingredients of Character Development. In his clever acrostic: CHARACTER he notes that Appearance: … [Read more...] about Character Development

An exceptional challenge put out by Vivian Kirkfield inspires writers to really work on trimming down their words when expressing their ideas. The challenge was to write a story for children 12 and under using only 50 words. It was indeed a challenge to give a beginning, middle and end that would evoke emotion and vision. I often walk or sit in my gardens when I look for inspiration. That's why when I had the opportunity to photograph my children and nieces and nephews for graduation pictures I … [Read more...] about #50 Precious Words

I was experimenting with my markers again this morning while a water color wash was drying. This was one of the sketches I came up with. It was inspired by all the recent talk of women fighting for equality and fair treatment. While I did not attend the Women's March on Madison, I was with the marchers in spirit. There is so much yet to be done to make life better for all those who are marginalized. This little marker experiment is just my simple nod to all those who fight to create a safe and … [Read more...] about Women

This is the piece that I submitted for the Tomie dePaola award this year. His prompt was to: using ourselves as the character, create a scene from our youth that said something about the person that we are. He asked that the emotion of the character be immediately apparent. Tomie stated that, in viewing the pieces that he selected as winners, he experienced an element of caring about the characters. He wanted to know more about them. Some of them had not overly defined spaces. Some had a bit … [Read more...] about When Work is Finished

I thought I'd mess with a set of simple kid's markers this morning just to see what would come of layering the colors over one another. Would they be too bold to make any kind of pleasing combinations? Would they look too diluted, being as they were just a cheap brand of markers? Sometimes it feels good to just start putting something down on paper. But often I feel apprehensive about wasting paper, supplies (though not in this case), or even precious time without a clear goal or project in … [Read more...] about Always Reaching