April Is a Month for Writers

What a delicious month for writers April seems to be! It’s as if poets and editors, authors and illustrators pop up with the daffodils and remind us with a shake of their golden heads what a brilliant community we share.

First, of course, we celebrate National Poetry Month. I know folks celebrate in multitudes of ways. I’m pulling out my Poetry Speaks collection to listen to the greats read their work. (Favorite? By far, Yeats’ dreamy Lake Isle of Innisfree) Check out 30 Ways to Celebrate from Poets.org for ideas on how to join in the revelry.

Next we welcome authors and illustrators to Northeast Wisconsin for our 3rd annual Fox Cities Book Festival. I am especially looking forward to the YA writers this year, Gennifer Choldenko and James DeVita.

I hope I attend both of their sessions. I hope I don’t clam up and crawl into bed and pretend I’m sick when I should be heading out the door to hear them at the Neenah Library. The truth is I’m star-struck by both. Gennifer has this delightfully successful life that I yearn for.

Need I say more? :)

Jimmy, well, he is and will always be Jimmy DeVita, heartthrob of Spring Green’s American Players Theater. I’ve seen him play Dromio, Romeo, Angelo, Benedick, Antonio . . . and finally, after 16 years, I’ll have a chance to see him as himself. The idea is daunting. But his books Blue and The Silenced are so intriguing that I think attending his talk will be worth the butterflies.

April also invites members and non-members alike to attend the SCBWI-WI Spring Luncheon. Molly O’Neill, assistant editor at Katherine Tegen Books, will be speaking. I’ve been reading her blog, and I can’t wait to meet her. She seems both whimsical (watching elephants march through NYC at midnight? How charming is that?) and fiercely--gosh, what's the word? Determined? Capable? Grounded? No matter what, I'm looking forward to learning from her. I hope to meet her, too. Any tips from scbwi members for a newbie attending her first local conference?

And of course, April will welcome all of us writing our zero drafts with Laini Taylor to continue the work we started in March. One or two amazing souls completed their projects, but the majority of us have much left to write. I can't say what an encouragement this group of women has been to me. Knowing I have to post a number count each Wednesday with them has goaded me to the computer like no other motivation has. I consider myself dizzyingly lucky to play on the same team with them all.