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I don’t know any anyone pushing themselves to try something new who doesn’t suffer from impostor syndrome at least sometimes. Sometimes I have it when I’ve already finished something; when I look back at a book or story I’ve sold and wonder if it’s actually any good, or if everyone who liked it was wrong.
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I’m taking creative writing lessons with my six year old. Every day, we watch Ms. Lisa – a teacher who sounds like maybe she’s from Brooklyn. We give a thumbs up when we agree with something. The videos are pre-recorded, but Ms. Lisa says she can see a lot of thumbs up, and we feel
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Imagine you’re a frog. Because you’re cold-blooded, your body is the same temperature as your surroundings. So as the temperature around you drops, your body also gets colder and colder, and you move slower and slower. You don’t have clothes or a furnace to keep you warm. You don’t even have fur! So what do
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Marylanders go to the beach the way you go Up North. You have your family cabin in the woods; my family had a townhouse on the Delaware shore, a three-hour drive away – the longest car trip imaginable. For the two decades of my childhood, going to the beach was my summer vacation, and it
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In 1996, I was 16 and living in Bethesda, Maryland (January mean temperature: 37 degrees). One ordinary brown January afternoon, my siblings and I went to see 12 Monkeys. While we sat in the dark theater, a surprise Nor’easter snuck over the East Coast. A couple of hours later we emerged and stared at the swirling
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The mulberry bushes stretch far up a hill, and we eat all the berries, like a mama bear and two cubs storing sunshine for the long winter. The seeds crunch between our teeth like bones as juice drips from our chins and hands. We are sticky, and we like it. “Mama,” my son says between
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More than 800 years ago, Norway was caught in a civil war. Two groups fought over who should rule the country. The ruling party made fun of the rebels by calling them Birkebeiner (“Birchbarkleggers”), because they wrapped bark around their legs to stay warm and protect them in battle. In the winter of 1206, the 18-month-old prince
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Brrrr … it’s getting chilly out there! It’s fun to walk out in the mornings and see that lovely coating of white frost. But what is frost, anyway? There are different kinds of frost, depending on how they were formed. Radiation frost is the most common and is what accumulates on windshields in the morning.
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You’re in the woods, building a fort or exploring, and having a great time. A few hours later, you get a horrible, itchy rash. Argh, poison ivy! Despite the name, poison ivy does not make poison. Instead, every part of the poison ivy plant – leaves, stem, vine, berries, roots – makes an oil called
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This one is obviously for Mom, who loved to read us Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst when we were little. Or maybe we just asked for it a lot. This is the gem that starts the book, and I ask you, how could anyone write a sentence
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Katie Venit 