Expose Your Children to Music and Culture

Summer is a fantastic time to expose your children to a variety of musical, art, and cultural events. Many communities have free concerts at the park, featuring a variety of genres. If you live near a university, find out about recitals that may be open to the public. The wider the variety, the better. Museums, art shows, dance festivals, celtic festivals...the list goes on and on.

I'll be forever grateful to my dad, who took his children to many cultural events even though money was very tight. I remember the thrill of sitting in a huge auditorium and being blown away by a full evening of Beethoven. He took us to the Ice Capades and to "The Nutcracker." We went to many community plays and concerts.

Largely because of this exposure, I have loved the arts all my life.

Creating Nature Sounds

This is a lovely little website, creating a combination of nature sounds.

http://naturesoundsfor.me/

Read, Read, Read

Not only do I love to write, I also love to read. I have found that if I want to write for a certain genre or certain age group, I must first read tons of books in their genre or for that age of child. If I want to write for beginning readers, I must read dozens of books written by various authors. I read somewhere that an aspiring author of children's books should read 100 books in the specific reading level on which he or she will be focusing.

Sounds about right.

Revising

A critical part of the writing process is the revision stage. It's not always the most fun part of writing, but it is vital to producing a polished finished product.

When I begin a writing project, I initially don't worry about such things as grammar, punctuation, or even readability. I focus strictly on getting my story down. Once that is accomplished, then comes the challenge of re-reading the piece over and over again. Where, at first, I am the creator, now I must become the editor.

Each time I go through the piece, I scrutinize it for different things. One time I may look at how the story flows, whether or not the plot makes sense, where the bottlenecks are, whether all the questions are answered. Another time I will focus on grammar, punctuation--and at this stage I must be very picky. Is there an extra space between two words? Are the ellipses handled correctly? That kind of thing.

Again, this can be quite--even very--tedious. But it is essential.

One of the last things I like to do is read the piece out loud. I catch a lot of errors that way.

That's where I am today on my newest junior fiction novel, Return of the Schmurthies. For several months now I've read through that book--dozens of times (and I'm not even joking)--revising and re-revising. Today, I will read it as my readers will read it--straight through. How sweet it is!

Expressing Creativity Through Music

In addition to writing, I love composing music. It's another way of expressing creativity. I've written a number of songs and I've started a new category on this blog of some of my Original Music Compositions. I'm including "On Eagle Wings," which I wrote when our oldest son was completing the requirements for his Eagle Scout award. Becoming an Eagle Scout is quite a feat for a young man. A very small percentage of Boy Scouts ever achieve this rank. I wrote this song to honor them. It was performed at our son's Eagle Scout court of honor.

Book Trailer for Secret of Bombastic Bertha & the Bamboozles

Josh is bored—that is, until he discovers the magic of drawing in three-dimensional. But somehow things get out of control in the secret world he creates, along with Worm and Penny. In fact, the ultimate survival of the Ferkle civilization is threatened by the elusive Bamboozles, led by the notorious Bombastic Bertha. Are the Ferkles doomed to utter destruction? Will Josh’s imagination get the best of him?

“Join Josh, Worm, and Penny as they pop in and out of their 3-D pencil-drawn mural!” writes Mark Kistler—Emmy-winning creator of the “Imagination Station”—in the book’s foreword. “Travel through a land of magical valleys, mountains, and jungles, all while meeting an extraordinary cast of unforgettable characters.”

Secret of Bombastic Bertha & the Bamboozles is the first book in Marianne McKnight’s junior fiction series, “Secret Worlds.” Preteens, ages 8-11, will be drawn into the fast-paced story that sparkles with adventure, humor, and a touch of mystery.

Here's the link for the book trailer:  http://youtu.be/dYSdX_YosXM

Ideas

Where does an author get his or her ideas about which to write?

Ideas are all around us. They come from reading a newspaper or magazine article. They come from overhearing a snippet of a conversation. They come from a dream...or a nightmare. They come from asking question, like "What would happen if...?"

There is no limit to the number of ideas out there. The problem is capturing those ideas before the flea, for ideas for very elusive.

I keep a little pad of paper and pen on the nightstand so that if I think of an idea during the night, I can jot it down because chances are I'll forget it by morning. Carrying a small notebook, or even a folded up piece of blank paper, in one's purse or pocket is a great idea--especially if you develop the habit of actually jotting down ideas and thoughts on it.