May 9

Birthdays: J.M. Barrie (1860), Eleanor Estes (1906), William Pene Du Bois (1916), Richard Adams (1920), Mona Van Duyn (1921), John Middleton Murry Jr. (1926), Roger Hargreaves (1935), Charles Simic (1938), Jorie Graham (1950), Joy Harjo (1951)

J.M. Barrie was the creator of Peter Pan.

Eleanor Estes won the Newbery Medal for “Ginger Pye”

William Pene Du Bois won the Newbery Award and was a two-time runner up for the Caldecott.

Mona Van Duyn was US Poet Laureate from 1992-1993.

Charles Simic won the 1990 Pulitzer in Poetry for “The World Doesn’t End”

Jorie Graham won the 1996 Pulitzer in Poetry.

Quote: “The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one sometimes forgets which.” – J.M. Barrie

Tip: Titles of books, TV shows, and movies go in italics, but not titles of individual songs. Those go in quotes. Titles of albums go in italics.

Jumpstart: What are three things your main character has never told anyone? Why?

May 7

Birthdays: David Hume (1711), Robert Browning (1812), Rabindranath Tagore (1861), Wladyslaw Reymont (1867), Archibald MacLeish (1892), Gene Wolfe (1931), Nonny Hogrogian (1932), Angela Carter (1940), Peter Carey (1943), Deborah Wiles (1953),

Rabindranath Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Wladyslaw Reymont won the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature for “The Peasants”

Archibald MacLeish was Librarian of Congress and three-time winner of a Pulitzer Prize.

Nonny Hogrogrian was a two-time Caldecott Medal winner.

Quote: “Writers live with doubt and failure. Most days we don’t succeed. Most days we know we have to rewrite, that we haven’t yet arrived. This is not always unpleasant, but it can be.” – Peter Carey

 Tip: Decide what tense you want your story to use and stick with it. Whether you go with first person/present tense (the hardest to do) or third person/past tense (the most common) doesn’t matter. Sticking with it does. Go through your work and make sure you use the same tense throughout.

Jumpstart: You have to describe the taste and uses of a lemon to someone who’s never tasted or used one before. What do you say? Remember, if you turn them off by talking only about how sour it is, they’ll never try lemon meringue pie or a tall glass of fresh lemonade. Think about how to put a positive spin on something negative.

May 6

Birthdays: Sigmund Freud (1856), Gaston Leroux (1868), Harry Golden (1902), Harry Martinson (1904), Leo Lionni (1910), Randall Jarrell (1914), Theodore White (1915), Orson Welles (1915), Ted Lewin (1935), Barbara McClintock (1955), Jeffrey Deaver (1950),

Gaston Leroux, a French author, is most well known for his novel “The Phantom of the Opera”

Harry Martinson won the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Leo Lionni was a four-time Caldecott Award winner.

Randall Jarrell was the US Poet Laureate from 1956-1958.

Ted Lewin won the Caldecott Honor in 1994 for “Peppe the Lamplighter”

Quote: “The library, I believe, is the last of our public institutions to which you can go without credentials. You don’t even need the sticker on your windshield that you need to get into the public beach. All you need is the willingness to read.” – Harry Golden

“Outlining is the most efficient way to structure a novel to achieve the greatest emotional impact. The most breathtaking prose and brilliantly drawn characters are wasted if the plot meanders and digresses. Outlining lets you create a framework that compels your audience to keep reading from the first page to the last…Best of all, once the outline is finished, you can write the book very quickly and in any order.” – Jeffrey Deaver

Tip: Don’t forget to get up and move every thirty minutes or so. It refreshes your brain and gets the blood flowing in your body.

Jumpstart: You’re at a large, unfamiliar hotel and get off the elevator on the wrong floor. Just as the doors close behind you, you see something you shouldn’t. What do you see? What happens next?

May 5

Birthdays: Soren Kierkegaard (1813), Karl Marx (1818), Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846), Nellie Bly (1864), James Beard (1903),  Leo Lionni (1910), Michael Palin (1943), Linda Fairstein (1947), Deborah Wiles (1953), Kaye Gibbons (1960), Scott Westerfeld (1963), Tom Reiss (1964), Catherynne M. Valente (1979), Robyn Schneider (1986)

Henryk Sienkiewicz won the 1905 Pulitzer in Literature.

Quote: “Sometimes tossing out vast quantities of words is better than letting a whole book bleed slowly to death. Don’t give up, just start over.” – Scott Westerfeld

Tip: Disconnect from the internet when you’re working. No looking more than once an hour, less is better

Jumpstart: What is one thing from your character’s life that would completely embarrass him/her in the eyes of his/her friends and/or family? What was it? Why is it an embarrassment? Does s/he keep it a secret? Who else knows?

In 1888 Nellie Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional “Around the World in Eighty Days” into fact. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, and with two days’ notice, she boarded a ship and began her journey.

She took with her the dress she was wearing, a sturdy overcoat, several changes of underwear, and a small travel bag carrying her toiletry essentials. She carried most of her money in a bag tied around her neck.

The “Cosmopolitan” sponsored its own reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, to beat the time of both Phileas Fogg and Bly. Bisland would travel the opposite way around the world, starting on the same day as Bly took off. Bly, however, did not learn of Bisland’s journey until reaching Hong Kong. She dismissed the cheap competition. “I would not race,” she said. “If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern.”

To sustain interest in the story, the World organized a “Nellie Bly Guessing Match” in which readers were asked to estimate Bly’s arrival time to the second, with the Grand Prize consisting at first of a free trip to Europe and, later on, spending money for the trip.

During her travels around the world, Bly went through England, France, Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Ceylon, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Bly traveled using steamships and the existing railroad systems, which caused occasional setbacks, particularly on the Asian leg of her race. 

As a result of rough weather on her Pacific crossing, she arrived in San Francisco on January 21, two days behind schedule. However, after the newspaper owner Pulitzer hired a private train to bring her home, she arrived back in New Jersey on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 pm.

Just over seventy-two days after her departure from Hoboken, Bly was back in New York. She had circumnavigated the globe, traveling alone for almost the entire journey. Bisland was, at the time, still crossing the Atlantic, only to arrive in New York four and a half days later.

May 4

Happy Star Wars Day!

Birthdays: Thomas Kinsella (1928), Amos Oz (1939), Kim Edwards (1958), Robin Cook (1940), George Will (1941), Don Wood (1945), Graham Swift (1949), David Guterson (1956), Kristin Harmel (1979)

Quote: “Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can wound and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.” – Amos Oz

Tip: Always carry a notebook or have a note app on your phone for those “brilliant idea” moments.

Jumpstart: You’ve been tapped to be the new Grim Reaper. You’re presented with the cape, the scythe, everything. Do you take the job? Why or why not? If you don’t, what happens to you?

May 3

Birthdays: Niccolo Machiavelli (1469), Jacob Riis (1849), E.W. Howe (1853), Andy Adams (1859), Dodie Smith (1896), May Sarton (1912), Ben Elton (1959), Reza Aslan (1972)

Dodie Smith is known for the book “The Hundred and One Dalmatians”

Mavis Jukes won the 1985 Newbery Award for “Like Jake and Me”

Quote: “I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring – I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house.” – Dodie Smith

Tip: Don’t use song lyrics in a story unless you wrote the song. Getting permissions can be difficult and expensive. Not getting permission could end in a lawsuit. Even a few lines can be problematical.

Jumpstart: For just one hour, you have the power of a god. What would you do? Why?

May 2

Birthdays: Novalis (1772), Jerome K. Jerome (1859), E.E. Smith (1890), Benjamin Spock (1903), Martha Grimes (1931), Esther Freud (1963),

Dr. Benjamin Spock was best known for his “Baby and Child Care” book

Quote: “It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.” ― Jerome K. Jerome

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” ― Benjamin Spock

 “You can’t be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get ‘blocked’ make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.” – Martha Grimes

Tip: Learn to use “track changes” in your processing program. It’s what most editors and publishers rely on when editing your work.

Jumpstart: Look at a scenic picture. What is happening just out of sight?

May 1

Birthdays: Joseph Addison (1672), James Ford Rhodes (1848), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881), Elizabeth Marie Pope (1917), Joseph Heller (1923), Bobbie Ann Mason (1940), Karen Thompson Walker (1980)

James Ford Rhodes won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for History for “History of the Civil War, 1861-1865”

Elizabeth Pope received a Newbery Honor for “The Perilous Guard”

Quote: “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.” – Joseph Addison

Tip: Don’t use fancy fonts, weird characters, or unusual symbols in your manuscript unless absolutely necessary.

Jumpstart: You’re at a conference and sit at a table with seven strangers whom you hit it off with, although the talk seems a bit odd to you at times. You shrug it off as you are having the best time you’ve had yet. Then you realize you’re at the wrong banquet. What do you do?

April 30

Birthdays: Alice B. Toklas (1877), John Crowe Ransom (1888), Larry Niven (1938), Annie Dillard (1945), P.C. Cast (1960), John Boyne (1971), Naomi Novik (1973).

John Ransom won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1964.

Annie Dillard won the 1975 Pulitzer for General Nonfiction for “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

Quote: “If you have good friends, no matter how much life is sucking , they can make you laugh.” ― P.C. Cast Kristin Cast

“If what you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use the simplest language possible. If the reader doesn’t get it then, let it not be your fault.” – Larry Niven

Tip: Always back up your work. ALWAYS!!!

Jumpstart: Pick one day of the week and write a paragraph or a page about that day. What do you commonly do on that day? Describe the typical day in detail, being very specific. Now, put your current character in that day—how would he or she react differently than you?

Did you know…