Lauri Meyers .

I have pine sap on my fingers, flour on my shirt, and strings of popcorn everywhere...it must be time for Susanna Leonard Hill's Annual Holiday Contest! The Contest :  Write a  children's story  beginning with any version of "Rocking around the Christmas tree at the Christmas party hop."  Your story may be poetry or prose, silly or serious or sweet, religious or not, based on Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever you celebrate, but is  not to exceed 350 words  No illustration notes please.  Your entry should be posted on your blog between right now this very second and Friday December 11 at 11:59 PM EST.  I must have been feeling stressed about entertaining when this idea developed, but I *think* my parties have a better track record than poor Squirrel's. (Though I did make a dreadful crunchy hummus once.) Happy Holidays everyone and may all your entertaining go well!  See all the other rocking entries at Susanna's site. ...

After my 5-year-old showed me up earlier with her writing efficiency and mastery of tension building, I finally finished my entry in Susanna Hill's 5th annual Halloweensie contest . The rules: 100 words, which must include creak, pumpkin and broomstick. (NO NO NO - seriously, I'm glad I realized I was using last year's words before midnight, but there's nothing as fun as changing rhymes! ACK!) dark, costume and haunt. It went a little wicked, and then it tended toward gross with my word changes... But it is Halloween after all. Why resist a good scare or giggle? The Bully Spell @alekksall via freepik By Lauri Meyers Great Great Grandma Thistle Would cast a wicked curse To cover children’s bums With boils, cysts, or worse. Great Grandma Narcissus Enriched with darker rhymes To pluck the eyes from kids For cauldron stealing crimes. Grandma Oleander Enhanced the evil spell With rotten skunk patoot To make the youngsters smel...

Hi! I'm struggling here with my Halloweensie revisions for Susanna Hill's annual contest, so I asked my 5 year old to help. I gave her the rules: 100 words, use pumpkin, broomstick and creak. Well, she really showed me up writing and illustrating a fabulously scary story in about 20 minutes. It all started with this: (OMG! The door just creaked. What is going to be behind that door!! p.s. Note the strategically placed pumpkin and broomstick, um, because they disappear...) (Oh the tension!!) (AGH!!! It's a ghost!)  "Are you nice?" "Well, my name is Friendy, so yeah."  "What are you doing here?" "I'm getting ready to play with my new best friend!"     "Who?" "You!" THE END Wow! Look how easy that is! Tension! Complex emotion! Fully fleshed characters! All in 38 words. And I thought this was hard:)  Happy Halloween! PS. OH NO! I am a failure of a moth...

Whatever your views are about the Common Core, I have to say there is definitely a lot of focus on writing! My daughter’s first grade class had Writers Workshop and even had a special event for parents to hear their opinion pieces. (I learned A LOT about why Minecraft is awesome and how beautiful cardinals are.) This focus sparked some questions from a pal of mine. “Miss Lauri, can kids write books?” “Anyone can write a book.” “Yeah, but can 7-year-olds write books?” My illustrations when I was a kid are not as good as Josie's! “I happen to know some very cool kids who write. Like Erik Weibel , who is 13 now, but used to be 9 when he started blogging and well, I’m sure he was 7 before then. His sister Josie is an illustrator and his friend Felicia wrote a book , or well her pets did.   “We had an author visit the school which was so cool!” “Yeah, that was totally cool. Erik and Felicia interview real authors in videos at The Write Chat.  Some...

We got 10 visitors for my daughter's birthday – caterpillars! Just like in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, these critters start out tiny as a pin head and are huge (in a small sense) within a week. Then the calls from down the stairs begin, “Mom, one is in j-formation! J-formation!” So you watch and you think you will catch it spinning its chrysalis, but you get distracted and when you come back it’s all tucked inside its new apartment. "J-FORMATION!!" We observed all of the caterpillars do this. Well, not all. Not George. He just kept climbing around, maybe wondering why no one would answer his request to play croquet. Maybe he just wanted to be a little fatter. Maybe he was the shy one and enjoyed having a little space to explore without his sister giving him caterpillar wedgies. Maybe. Or maybe George had a case of Metamorphosis Procrastination. He would worry about not knowing how to make a chrysalis. “What if I accidentally do it upside down and ...

I have been lax on my blog this year, but I’ve never gone a whole month without posting…and it’s May 31 st ! A true procrastinator like me just can’t resist the challenge of a deadline. I was considering the other day why I always gravitate towards boy characters. After all, they say write what you know, and I don’t have a Y chromosome. I don't even have boy kids. I have girlie-girls. I mean, seriously, my dryer lint looks like glittery hot pink Peeps. I was, however, a bit of a tomboy growing up. Perhaps it was my duty in life as the second girl child born in the family to somehow fill the void of the hoped for boy. So I helped my dad build things. I got muddy, and my knees were always skinned. I could belch the alphabet. I formed excellent attack formations playing He-man. My favorite summertime activity was lining up all my cars at the top of the little hill on my driveway and conducting races. (Though in a nerdiness wholly my own, I also charted the results and s...

For my 7yo, hearing she couldn’t go to Take Your Child to Work Day at daddy’s office until she turned eight was, well, horrifically painful, soul-torturing, complete and total devastation. Everyone was doing it. She turned to me for options. “Can I stay home with you and write?” “Well, I hardly write on Thursdays, because your sister is home.” “Can I stay home with you and write?” “No, you can’t stay home to watch me not work.” “Can I stay home with you and write?” “Do you have potatoes in your ears?” “I don’t like potatoes.” “Right. Well, I was going to write tonight. If you get your homework done, I’ll take you to work with me.” “Like in the office?” “Yes. Like. In the office.”   Then I realized if I was going to make it legitimate, I needed to be able to explain what I do. The truth is, well, squishy. I spend a lot of time writing in my head while staring at the swan across the street. Sometimes writing means just banging my head o...

4 Signs a Writer Hasn’t Been Writing 1. Butt cheek indentations missing in writing chair. 2. Spring cleaning nearly done, and it’s still winter.   3. The laundry is done. All of it. 4 Writer can be found dressed as bacon while playing Subway Surf. I’ve snapped these pictures the last few weeks as my Lazy Writeritis has grown out of control.  BUT I told myself I could not post them until the problem had been solved... So seeing them here is GREAT NEWS! I had an awesome writing day yesterday, and here I am writing a blog post today even though more *lovely* *glistening* *please tell me it’s almost over* snow is eminent.  (Really we should all be happy this post didn’t look like a page of The Shining.) More good news: Today is my 3 year Blogiversary! WOW! I’ve gone through so many writing stages and so much growth in the last three years. I know call tons of writers my friends. I’ve helped other ...

Tuesday was a hard day. Both kids were sniffly. There was a snow delay after a snow day, and the walls were closing in on us all. My little one fell in the garage and busted her lip. Have you noticed lip booboos bleed with the shocking ferocity of a sword wound? And my hermit crab in the Angry Birds shell passed away.  RIP Hermie. Are you playing your tiny violin for me yet? (image by Nazreth via freeimages.com) Some days call for shopping. With the promise of an ice cream cone and escalator ride, my bruised baby recovered.     She is a tough little girl and as sweet as (fill in with your own cliché – honey, apple pie, marshmallow fluff, a winning lotto ticket.)  I’ve never heard her say one of those rude things kids are known to say. No “Why are you so fat?” or “Why does that man have one eyebrow?” or “Why don’t her shoes match her purse?” So I was floored when she looked down the escalator at a woman with very gray hair and s...

I’ve had a touch of stinkifunkitis in 2015. (No this isn’t the same as the funkysmellitosis I’m also suffering from after a very sweaty yoga class.) My word of the year in 2014 was REVISE. And I revised my patootie off. But this January my revision brain is on vacation. I tried to work it with ReViMo , with medium success. I tricked it into revisions by rereading and analyzing manuscripts when not in front of the computer. Unfortunately, none of the changes are getting finalized into nice final drafts. So when I read Romelle Broas’ blog post this morning – Confessionsof a Writer: So Close Yet So Far  - which opens with this: I have a confession to make. Lately, I've been plagued by doubt, fear, and nonsense talk. I found myself yelling, “OMGollygee, ME TOO!!” Misery loves company, and boy does it feel good to know I’m not the only one facing a lot of self-doubt. But this ain’t no Pity Party. Nope… This is a Persistence Party. After we pin th...

I haven’t posted in a few-ish weeks (yikes!) I’ve started a bunch of posts, but then just didn’t finish them. I wanted to tell you how I brought the unwrapped Christmas presents down too soon from the attic and put them in my closet. My 6yo discovered these very quickly. When I told her not to go in there, she cried ,  “BUT IT’S ALWAYS JUST BEEN A CLOSET ! I DIDN’T KNOW!”  Luckily she bit her tongue and didn’t tell her little sister what she saw.   I wanted to tell you about how when I needed to get a revision done, I let my kids tattoo me for 15 minutes. They were surprisingly prolific.  Sidenote, temporary tattoos stay on for a long time! Then John Cusick’s blog post yesterday kicked me in the pants. I just needed to start a post with whatever blergh came out of my brain. If I worried so long about what I was trying to accomplish with my post I was sure to accomplish nuthin’. I need to tell you all about when I submitted to an agent in ...