down the writer's path

Arthur Plotnik: Why blog?

Arthur Plotnik was kind enough to answer a few questions directly for Down the Writer's Path. This segment continues an interview that runs the rest of the week. Plotnik is the author of the newly released, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style. Copyright Vikk Simmons, 2006.

Let's talk about blogging. You've done some yourself. Does it demand a particular type of approach in dealing with language? Does it warrant a place in a writer's aresenal? Do you think it can be an important platform for writers? Some bloggers have been able to leap frog into a book contract as a result of their efforts. How should a writer approach blogging?

The recent YearlyKos convention of bloggers in Las Vegas—attended by a Who’s Who of luminaries and a gaggle of mainstream media correspondents—gives some idea of the power and potential of bloggery. But to think that putting up a blog will make you a Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (king of political bloggers), with book contracts pouring in, is akin to sending off a novel and waiting for the check by return mail.

Yes, writers should have a blog, with occasional posts, either as part of their own site or on a host platform. It’s an expected part of your digital business card these days, a presence that proclaims, “Hey, I’ve got something to say, too.” But one has to realize that, with virtually everyone having a blog, yours will have all the impact of a sandwich sign worn on Main Street—unless you dedicate yourself to it and its marketing. And then you’re taking time and energy away from the conventional writing pursuits, aren’t you?

The most avidly read blogs seem to be those that are ends in themselves—complete heads-up reporting, investigative scoops, vital information, select links, and name contributors. Or, good blogs lucky enough to catch the eye of some mainstream power. Yes, a fetching blog might interest a book editor, but so might writing and sending out interesting manuscripts and proposals.

I do a couple of blogs in the voice of an imaginary dog—Spunky—a pooch from the cover of Spunk & Bite. I do it for laughs, and to offer some realistic advice or cynical perspectives on publishing that would seem self-serving or petulant in my own voice. This is my blog presence. If someone looks for me, I’ll be there; that’s the main idea.

I blog in natural, conversational language, in the spirit of the personal “log” that blogs are supposed to be. I include useful links, but not so many as to launch the reader into otherspace. Fortunately, my host’s meg capacity discourages graphics, which can be distracting when overdone—just look at some of those MySpace blogs; they’re like The Matrix double-exposed over X-Men. I do a post every few weeks, disdaining automated notifications to a subscriber network (does anyone want those endless alerts?) It’s a very small effort, leaving me strength to write columns and books.

Here, by the way, is an interesting new view on why daily posting to your blog is very yesterday.

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If you've come to the interview late, be sure you read the previous posts this week and the one by Brigit Ganske from last week. Check out Spunk & Bite and see for yourself why so many are praising Plotnik's latest work. You might also want to check out Art's website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, Plotnik's official bio. If you haven't already, read my review of The Elements of Authorship then return for more soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Arthur Plotnik chats about publishing's Internet dance

Arthur Plotnik was kind enough to answer a few questions directly for Down the Writer's Path. This segment is part of an interview that will run the rest of the week. Plotnik is the author of the newly released, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style. Copyright Vikk Simmons, 2006.

The Internet is a vast, growing force that the publishing industry has been slow to embrace. Do you see the Internet having any impact on language? Is it a positive or a negative force? What do you think about text messaging?

Deep questions, and I’m not the deep sort. But the industry’s Net-groping seems pretty hot and heavy to me, considering that every major publisher is invested in Internet publishing projects. But if they’re stuck at first base, it’s over how to sell the value of virtual publications. It’s hard enough to make people buy a tangible book, so shiny and cuddly, convenient, portable, giveable, keepable. But outside technical publishing, even with sites that draw advertising, very few publishers are cashing in on packages of digital content—not in a medium whose concept is the free exchange of free expression.

What publishers have to offer, over free Internet writing, is value-added content. What value do they add? Screening and editing. Theoretically, a publisher has separated the wheat from the chaff and refined it to the highest quality. That’s why busy readers in search of excellence—excellence of form, language, and style as well as content—still pretty much go to books. Add these values to the Internet’s strengths—vitality, currency, and interactivity—and there might be a product worth paying for.

Internet affects language by changing it faster than pre-Internet usage ever did. It pours seas of new words and slick locutions into the vernacular, and many of them stick. It pushes trendy locutions into Cringeville in a hurry. But I don’t think it changes the principles of forceful or elegant writing. Such writing dazzles as much in pixels as it does in print.

Text messaging leaves me cold. But that’s just I, who agonize over words. If I were 19, messaging the young woman with the compelling tattoo across the café, I’m sure I’d dig it.

As a follow up, how do you think today's writers should approach all the many and varied opportunities the Internet affords, particularly given its enticing instant publication gratification?

Step up and choose your level of interaction. For example:
---If money isn’t the whole point, commit to being an Internet author, exploring every possible publishing site and concentrating on those that offer the best framework, editorial service, and exposure for your writing. Create your own appealing site to help showcase what you’re doing throughout the medium. The goal: What you want to say gets out there, well presented and permanently findable. You are heard.

—Use the Internet to build the “platform” that print publishers are demanding these days. Disgustingly, publishers now want you to have an audience in hand, a following, before they’ll take you on. Put some of your work on a writing-community site and/or your own blog. The friend-making machinery of such sites as MySpace.com can help you recruit followers in a flash. Use the “viral spread” techniques of the Net (two mentions leading to four, etc.) to get your work noted or linked to---to build the Googleability of your name. If you’re writing nonfiction, work the online communities in your subject field.

—Focus on publishing in print, but use the Internet to supplement what you do there, as well as help promote it. Want a good example of an author’s site so helpful and engaging that it warms you to anything else its author does? You’re looking at it (“Down the Writer’s Path”).
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For more on Plotnik's views, read last week's interview conducted by Brigit Ganske. Check out Spunk & Bite and see for yourself why so many are praising Plotnik's latest work. You might also want to check out his website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, his official bio. If you haven't already, read my review of The Elements of Authorship then return for more soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Arthur Plotnik gives names, talks MFA programs and the Iowa Writers Workshop, and offers a bit of advice

Day 5 in Down the Writer's Path's series with Arthur Plotnik. This segment is part of an interview with Arthur Plotnik, author of the newly released, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style by Briget Ganske, Spring 2006 and posted with their permission.

Which current writers do you most respect or admire? Why?

Recent favorites for style or sheer power include novelists Roth, Tom Wolfe, Dom DeLillo, E. Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, Fay Weldon, and Mark Leyner. Poet Billy Collins. Critics Anthony Lane and David Denby. Columnist Maureen Dowd.

I like the linguistic bravado, the inventiveness, of some of the British novelists—writers like Martin Amis, Rupert Thompson, Will Self, Zadie Smith.

My most recent discovery in language reference books: Garner’s Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner. Should be on every writer’s desk, as they say. Right next to my works.

Where did you go to undergrad? Did you concentrate on writing there?

In my third year at the State University of New York’s Albany campus, as editor of the school’s literary magazine, I published a few stories then considered off-color for a teacher’s college. The worst of the offending tales was mine. A city-wide, freedom-of-speech hullabaloo erupted, and ultimately the university president himself booted me out. (I was since named an honorary alumnus. Yay.)

I’d lived by the pen during those years, and now I’d died a small death by it; the karma was in play. I sold my first short story the next fall to a men’s magazine, then got myself into the state’s young, open-armed Binghamton campus, where I edited the literary mag and studied writing under a nurturing English faculty.

Tell me about your experience at the Iowa Writers Workshop.

Exhilarating and terrifying, as I imagine most such programs are. Imagine that first day in the Fiction Workshop, when a tall, intense, 26-year-old snapped the creases of his chinos, settled himself on the front edge of the instructor’s desk, and announced softly, “I’m Philip Roth.” Or when Lost-Generation novelist Vance Bourjaily handed back a comic story saying, “I laughed all night.” On the other hand, picture our barracks classrooms as the frigid Iowa nights descended, when the reading of a student’s best effort drew a killing silence from sourpussed classmates, or when the nastiest critics, smelling blood, swooped in to pick the poor student clean.

What do you think of MFA programs in general? Are they necessary for writers?

Many writers succeed without them; ergo, not necessary. But they’re a good framework, a motivation, for coached writing and revision, for learning to profit from criticism, for getting to feel like a writer in the writing community and perhaps finding your niche. Of course, you’re gambling a year or two of time and tuition that might be spent on a more practical graduate degree, like information science, education, or journalism. If aspiring writers can get the workshop experience within other degree programs (as I did for an M.A. in English), they should consider doing so.

MFA programs vary, but I suspect most of the fiction workshops teach the basic lessons described in my autobiographical writer’s guide, The Elements of Authorship. In brief, they tell you to understate, surprise, reward, focus, be accurate, particularize, justify actions. dramatize, get attention, and be sincere.

Your books are packed with useful tips, but if you had to give just one piece of advice to writers, what would it be?

Language counts, even in this supposedly dumbed-down world. People will care about language as long as they use words to symbolize everything they care about. Has anything stirred juices and moved souls more than the well chosen word? People may be dazzled by graphics, by Manga, by video, by offensive cartoons—but what do they want to do next? Talk about it. In words.

And if you want your words to stand out from the competition, the secret is freshness—the power of novel, inventive expression. If a modifier, a sentence, a passage seems stale, spavined—forceless—then labor over it until it feels newborn. Yes, everyone else is out there having fun while you’re moiling away with words. But you are a writer, and your kind of fun is, well, different.

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If you've come to the interview late, be sure you read the four previous posts. Check out Spunk & Bite and see for yourself why so many are praising Plotnik's latest work. You might also want to check out Art's website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, Plotnik's official bio. If you haven't already, read my review of The Elements of Authorship then return for more soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Arthur Plotnik tells all about living the writer's life

Day 4 in Down the Writer's Path's series with Arthur Plotnik. This segment is part of an interview with Arthur Plotnik, author of the newly released, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style by Briget Ganske, Spring 2006 and posted with their permission.

Do you find it difficult to live as a writer? Specifically, do you find it financially difficult to support yourself by writing? And more generally, do you find living a "writer's life", however you want to define that, a difficult thing to do?

The only time I tried to support myself exclusively as a writer—a two-year period of decent paychecks —I ended up on the couch, with a psychiatrist telling me “the golden-haired boy needs a haircut,” whatever that meant. But I took it to mean: stop isolating yourself in a small room with made-up thoughts and big dreams—and engage in a real profession. Of course, for the most part I’d been writing erotic pulp novels, one a month (see later question), which wasn’t the healthiest kind of isolation.

After that episode, with a specialized degree and full-time editorial work, I was able to balance the writer’s inward life with a clean, well-lighted, outward life—one whose restraints were both disciplining and motivating for writing done at night and on weekends. The limitations of a job can act like a compressor of creative energy, which explodes at night in manic writing sessions.

Anyway, the dough earned from those extra efforts—averaging maybe seven or eight grand a year over the uneven decades--- has been gravy. Even now, my post-editing career as a writer only supplements basic income.

I think the so-called writer’s life is an escapist fantasy. You know—the seaside cottage, the cats, the breaks for beach walks, and by night the cultivated friends and exquisite wines. Serious writing is more about 60-hour weeks of research, keystroking, screen-staring, and wall-pounding. It’s about the freedom to obey agents, editors, and publishers. About deadlines and self-doubt, competition, continuing education, and plenty of costly outlay. And—if you want to retain some personhood--- about getting out of yourself and serving the needs and aspirations of those around you.

Have you had difficultly getting published?

Of the seven nonfiction books attempted, all have been published—the first three without an agent. But literary fiction, poetry, novels—it’s such a lottery, and I probably don’t play enough to win. As for the columns—editors have, happily, come to me. You want to get published? Write something of compelling interest to an identifiable, paying audience, and write it in language that beats the competition in expressiveness and force. Learn how to write queries and proposals. Then keep hammering at the gates of agencies, media, and publishers.

Describe the process you undertake to get published.

Short stuff? I write it and send it to likely markets. Nonfiction books: I write a complete proposal, the most excruciating act next to chewing off an arm. But it has to be done and done right, even before sending it to the agent. You or the agent send the proposal to editors, along with a few sample chapters, hoping for a contract. If you get one, you write the rest of the book.

Book-length-fiction proposals require a synopsis, which is like chewing off both arms and one leg.

A good primer on writing nonfiction proposals can be found at the New England Publishers site. (Scroll down through several topics.)

I read in a profile online that you have published numerous paperback novels under a pseudonym. Why do you use a pseudonym? Do you think of these books as unrelated to the work you publish under your own name?

Those books are ancient history. Along with Don Westlake, Lawrence Block, and others in a stable run by the Scott Meredith Agency, I wrote a sexy pulp novel every month under various pseudonyms. I happened to be ghostwriting for one of the regulars, but I did 22 books netting about $900 each—a goodly sum in those days. Almost prudish by today’s standards, the books contained no profanity, only the usual action described in purple metaphors—trains, tunnels, pistons, furnaces, and the like. The titles were probably the sexiest thing about them: Lust this and Slut that.

The thrill of being a young, bona fide, published novelist soon faded in the grind of hack writing (literary touches were discouraged). Did anything worthwhile come out of it? I got rid of a lot of bad plots, learned to manage massive output, and used the dough to go back to grad school. And maybe I made a soldier or two happy.

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Come back tomorrow to discover writers Plotnik admires, as he considers the value of MFA programs, and offers a little bit of writerly advice. Be sure you check out Spunk & Bite and see for yourself why so many are praising Plotnik's latest work. You might also want to check out Art's website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, Plotnik's official bio. If you haven't already, read my review of The Elements of Authorship then return for more soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Arthur Plotnik answers the big question: Why Write?

Day 3 in Down the Writer's Path's series with Arthur Plotnik. This segment is part of an interview with Arthur Plotnik, author of the newly released, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style by Briget Ganske, Spring 2006 and posted with their permission.

Why do you write? Or, why do you feel compelled to write?

I ask myself these questions when the going is bad. Then the answer is, “Because I’m so invested in it, because I write better than I play piano or golf, and—to paraphrase Al Franken—gosh darn it, people like my stuff .” When it’s going well I don’t ponder the why of it, because the answer is self-evident: It feels wonderful.

Should others write? Yes, if only to find the words that encapsulate and give shape to experience. Writing can be transformative–as who doesn’t know? It can make the larval you into the chrysalis you, and maybe even you the big butterfly. One can write to engage and stimulate audiences, too; it’s what most of us scribblers do. But a writer must never tie self-esteem to the crapshoot of fame or even publication. The writing gives you the gift, says E. L. Doctorow. If you don’t feel that (eventually), don’t write.

At what point in your life did you become interested in writing?

Third grade. The town paper (White Plains, N.Y.) ran a weekly “Junior Page,” and something I wrote for class made it there. Once I beheld that byline and felt the wonder of expression-made-tangible, the Writing Devil had my soul. I never stopped: School publications, freelance fiction, newspaper reporting, pulp novels; government, trade, and professional writing; magazine columns, nonfiction books, unpublished masterworks; and some low-commitment poetry and blogging.

At what point did you become interested in writing about writing?

As a mentoring editor. I fell into several editorships early on—school literary magazines, specialized newsletters and magazines—with staffers and writers asking for advice. I offered more than I knew before I came to know a few things. (Sorry, those of you I misled!)

My first published advice was to editors in The Elements of Editing, but much of that advice appealed to writers—for example, the criteria for judging a manuscript, or the relationship between editor and writer. When that book hit the jackpot—paired with The Elements of Style by the Book-of-the-Month Club—I fancied myself an author with a knack for explaining what I know. And what else did I know but writing? Besides, it’s gratifying to help writers; some of them thank you in the most expressive ways.

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Come back tomorrow when Plotnik tackles "living the writer's life." Need a great book on language, grammar, and style? Or maybe you'd like a healthy dose of grammar-inspiration? Order a copy of Spunk & Bite and see for yourself why so many are praising Plotnik's latest work. You might also want to check out Art's website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, Plotnik's official bio. If you haven't already, read my review of The Elements of Authorship then return for more soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Arthur Plotnik chats about the writing process

Day 2 in Down the Writer's Path's series with Arthur Plotnik. This segment is part of an interview with Arthur Plotnik, author of the newly released, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style by Briget Ganske, Spring 2006 and posted with their permission.

Describe your writing process. Do you write everyday? Do you plan or plot things out?

I wish I could say I write naked from midnight to dawn, supine in a bathtub filled with nasturtiums or newts or something---but no such exotica here. Otherwise, is anyone interested?

Well, if so: I am dully disciplined, up early most days and at the keyboard from 8:30 to six, with breaks for websurfing, lunch, and a walking errand or two. I am blessed with my own small study, where I work pleasantly aware of my artist wife painting in an adjacent room. (Hey—maybe I do live the writer’s dream.)

I write slowly, agonizing over words, cursed by an editorial mindset that prevents freeflow. I rely on the reference books and literary collection that surrounds me, as well as search engines. (I look with astonishment, perhaps envy, at would-be writers laptopping away in cafes.) When I find myself blocked, I play some jazz on our out-of-tune piano, thus abusing a different part of the brain. In good weather, I’ll take a half day off here and there to bike or walk or maybe play golf with wisecracking codgers on the city courses. And a big trip now and then.

I have trouble outlining. It’s so boring. It feels better to surprise myself with what comes next, then sweat through the transitions and reshaping. But I keep resolving to outline; I’m sure it would make things easier and keep first drafts from running absurdly long. I’m better at simply listing the elements I want to include, even if half end up not making it. My advice: If it’s within your personality, outline, especially under tight deadlines.

When you write do you always have a certain audience in mind?

It depends. In occasional forays into poetry, I write only for the words. “We are the words that tell who we are,” said poet Eduardo Galeano. For my columns and books on writing, I imagine an audience craving refreshment from nuts-and-bolts lessons or inspirational pablum—an audience that will welcome entertainment, even sarcasm, along with good advice. For niche writing I try to gauge the niche reader’s knowledge and tastes; for example, in my discursive guide The Urban Tree Book, I pulled back on the farcical stuff and indulged in the tree-adulation I shared with the intended audience.

Audiences are so segmented, diverse even within a segment. Is there any general reader? The closest might be the reader of non-genre fiction, and when I try my hand at such writing I don’t think of audience. The story rules. I’ve published some (legitimate) fiction, but have three novels sitting in drawers. Should I have pegged them to readers I don’t care about? That would have required some serious dough up front, and no one was offering.

There is that school of thought that says write to please yourself. And writers like John Updike picture a certain typical reader. But if you want to publish, ultimately you have to please an editor, and an editor’s job is to please an audience, sometimes the widest audience possible. There will be revisions that conflict with your integrity. It will come down to balancing values: what you want to be, what you want achieve, what you want to earn.
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Come back tomorrow to read Plotnik's answer to the great question: Why write? Haven't picked up your copy of Spunk & Bite? Why not grab a copy and punch up your language? You might also want to check out Art's website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, Plotnik's official bio. If you haven't already, read my review of The Elements of Authorship then return for more soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Does Arthur Plotnik take on the revered Strunk and White?

This interview is part of a series featuring an interview with Arthur Plotnik, author of the newly released, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style by Briget Ganske, Spring 2006 and posted with their permission.

Where did you get the idea for Spunk and Bite? Have you always been disappointed with Strunk and White's The Elements of Style?

I was drunk on Strunk and White when I first read it and became a loyal disciple. And I still take a cold shower now and then in its good advice on clarity and concision. My problem is not so much with its few outdated rules as with E. B. White’s inhibiting advice in his chapter on style. A breezy, daring stylist himself, he advised a conservative approach for everyone else. But today’s frenetic media environment—the competition for attention—demands something more; namely, the expressiveness that I describe and coach in Spunk & Bite.

The idea for the book grew out of an early column I wrote called “E. B. Whitewashed,” but I’d say only 5-10 percent of the book crosses swords with Strunk and White. Most of the text takes stock of the liveliest expression today and what makes it lively. And—with an attempt at exemplary liveliness—I prompt writers to experiment with these ideas and techniques.

How do you measure the success of your own writing? Or, how do you know when you have written something good?

My mentor, Longinus of the third century, said that judgment is the last outgrowth of experience. If I were inexperienced, I’d rely more on the brutality of friends and strangers to give me honest appraisals. The Internet has made that process a bit easier. But now I feel about 80-percent confident as my own appraiser. For works I want to publish, I try to tell readers something they didn’t know, and tell it in a style that refreshes them from everyday drivel, from the fug—the stale air–of the commonplace. I have a good sense of when I’ve pulled it off, when I’ve written something with spunk and bite, so to speak.

The remaining 20 percent of a judgment comes from feedback, of course, and I bristle as much as anyone at negative feedback. But I try to listen. When someone I know praises a work, I often try to reread the work in their persona, getting the outsider’s view of what worked. Or just reveling in the experience.

How do you know when you are finished with a piece of writing?

When, in the black-leather guise of a merciless self-editor, I’ve beaten and burned everything predictable, labored, or lazy, then seen to it that what remains is fresh, stimulating, inventive, and quick-witted.

Good writing is bad writing revised. I revise those wayward drafts until they cry for mercy. If the authorities ever saw how I beat my sentences, they’d put them in foster homes and throw me in a cell.

How much time do you spend revising and editing versus actually writing?

It’s all actual writing; there’s no dividing line, especially with the ease of digital editing. There is actual talk, and what you would have said to someone if you had it to say over. But in writing, you always have it to say over—until it’s exactly what you wanted to say. That’s the beauty of the written word.
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Come back tomorrow to hear Plotnik offer up his writing process, and if you haven't picked up a copy of Spunk & Bite why not grab a copy and punch up your language today? You might also want to check out Art's website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, Plotnik's official bio. If you haven't already, read my review of The Elements of Authorship then return for more soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Get a little Spunk & Bite with an interview with Art Plotnik

Why is language or style so important to writers? Well, according to Arthur Plotnik, "Most editors become editors because of a special infatuation with language...all else being equal, the masterly, distinctive use of language lifts an editor's (or agent's) heart. It means that the writing, as is, will please critics; that it will deliver on a promise to readers."

I don't know about you, but staying true to the reader is my number one goal. Arthur Plotnik is the author of the new Spunk & Bite: A writer's guide to punchier, more engaging language & style, a terrific new book that is bound to provide inspiration while giving you a stimulating and often humorous read. While he's a great teacher, Plotnik does even more: He leads by example. Try his opening paragraph:

"Sometimes when I'm digging for the right word, I long for a terrier-like acuity, a canine's sensory gifts applied to language. Imagine if dogs ever figured out how to write--how to put that spunkiness and bite of theirs into literature. Think of those olfactory superpowers attuned to sniffing out metaphors or tracking, not the bone mot, but the bon mot. We dry-and-fleshy-nosed writers could be in big trouble."

If Plotniks's name resounds with a familiar clang, maybe you encountered the Grand Master of Punctuation and Style in one of his earlier books such as The Elements of Editing or The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts into Words. If you're a librarian, perhaps you went a few rounds with the master during his tenure as editor of the American Library Association's magazine, American Libraries. I first encountered the master a few years ago when I read and reviewed The Elements of Authorship.

As a young writer, Plotnik studied under Philip Roth and Vance Bourjaily at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Not a bad start. If you have the time, check out Art's website, Spunky's Blogrr, and, if you want to know more about the man, check out his official bio. And don't forget to return for more tidbits and soundbites from the Great Plotnik!

Good news comes in twos: Heather Ames and Heather Ivester celebrate publication

If your name is Heather it's a good time to see your words in print. It must be so because two friends, both Heathers, have anounced the release of their first books. In addition, Heather Ivester from Mom2Mom has also launched the Mother's Love writing contest with a May 1 deadline, so you better get busy.

BlogTrek's Heather Ames writes of the release of her first book. THE SWEETEST SONG is available from a new e-book publisher, Romance at Heart. Heather's been blogging for a while now and she's chronicled her return to the world of books after five years in the video documentary realm. She and I go way back. I met Heather in my second creative writing class at the local community college years ago. At the end of class, we formed a small critique group to tide us over until fall and ended up being critique partners for the next six years. We share plenty of war stories and lessons learned.

Meanwhile, Heather Ivester can't be any more excited with the release of her new book, FROM A DAUGHTER'S HEART TO HER MOM. Her publisher is Nelson Books. Heather's launch is timed perfectly to coincide with Mother's Day. A new friend, Heather is a dedicated mom and a new writer who is already exhibiting great promise. She's taken the time to form a solid platform for the launch of her new nonfiction book and I'm impressed with all she's accomplished. Don't forget to check out her Mother's Love contest.

Millions mourn children's author Stan Berenstain

Today children young and old mourn the death of Stan Berenstain, co-creator of the famed children’s classic stories about the Berenstain’s Bears. The 82-year old cartoonist died Saturday in Pennsylvania and is survived by his co-author and wife, Jan Berenstain.

Philadelphia-born Stan met Jan while they attended the Phildelphia Museum of Industrial Art in 1941 and soon began drawing together. Their cartoon feature It’s All in the Family, found in The Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping magazines, quickly captured the hearts of America; but the true beauty of their voice and wisdom came in the 1960s when the husband-wife team developed the loveable Berenstain Bears series. And was it not fitting that their Random House editor be the wonderful genius, Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss? Who better to help them develop books that both teach and entertain?

Teach and entertain they did. With the publishing of The Big Honey Hunt, the artistic duo created more than 250 books about their lovable bears, and for more than forty years children have delighted in the stories and learned life’s lessons along the way. The age-old problems of messy rooms, telling white lies, and throwing full-fledged continue to haunt parents today, and so the books remain relevant in a world that often seems so different from the time when the bears first padded onto the American family scene. With more than 260 million copies of the books sold, the Berenstain Bears is the bestselling children’s book series and the TV show ranks in the top ten of PBS’s shows for 2-5 year olds.

Only weeks ago, in an announcement that assured the Berenstain’s legacy continued growth, Pizza Hut’s Leslie Tubbs, BOOK IT! Beginners program director, said, “We’re very excited about featuring the Berenstain’s Bears in this year’s BOOK IT! Beginners program. . . The Berenstain Bears have warmed the hearts of millions of children and are sure to make reading even more enjoyable for the children enrolled in this year’s program.”

For a more detailed look at Stan Berenstain’s creative life, take a look at Down A Sunny Dirt Road, the autobiography he and his wife authored. You’ll delight in their stories of a life shared with Dr. Seuss and those wacky, but still wonderful Berenstain Bears. To quote Kate Jackson, vice president and editor-in-chief of HarperCollins Children’s Books, “There is nothing the Bear family likes better than a good book.”

If you'd like to hear Jan and Stan Berenstain talk about their wonderland career in Bear Country, check out the Library of Congress 2003 National Book Festival. Be sure and watch both webcasts (parts 1 and 2). You can also read their Book Page Interview.

The main content of this article was cross-posted on Blogcritics.org