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Laurie Ann Thompson

writing life

What I’ve Been Up To This Month

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The month isn’t even over yet, but so much has been packed into the last few weeks it feels more like two months already! That’s not exact­ly an excuse for neglect­ing the blog, but, you know, life hap­pens. Anyway…

Beachside Nonfiction Workshop

I start­ed out the month at the Beach­side Non­fic­tion Work­shop with Can­dace Flem­ing & Jen­nifer Swan­son. It was amaz­ing! The fac­ul­ty were all stel­lar, the loca­tion was gor­geous, and the atten­dees were love­ly. It was fun hang­ing out with oth­er non­fic­tion geeks for an entire week­end. We all strug­gled to answer the “So, what do you write?” ques­tion, how­ev­er, since we can usu­al­ly just get away with “Non­fic­tion,” and have that be the end of it! I did­n’t take near­ly enough pho­tos, but here’s the view from my hotel balcony…

Yes, it was hard work. There were a lot of ses­sions, and they were most­ly mas­ter lev­el, plus net­work­ing and cri­tiques. I came away with so much use­ful infor­ma­tion and new ideas to apply to my works in progress. There were obvi­ous­ly some oth­er perks, too! 

Seattle Reading Council Appearance

In the mid­dle of the month, some of the mem­bers of my cri­tique group (and all agency-mates at Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary, as it turns out!), did an appear­ance at the Seat­tle Read­ing Coun­cil. It was a billed as a “Books and Choco­late” event… what could be bet­ter?! We each talked about our books and process and then took ques­tions. The crowd was most­ly teach­ers and librar­i­ans, so it made for a won­der­ful evening of shar­ing book love (and choco­late!) among like­mind­ed new friends. 

School visits

I had an ele­men­tary school vis­it where I got to talk to sev­er­al third-grade class­es about my writ­ing jour­ney, grit, and writ­ing with emo­tion, as well as sev­er­al fifth-grade class­es about eval­u­at­ing sources and spot­ting fake news. It was an awe­some vis­it with super-engaged audi­ences, but alas, no pho­tos. You’ll have to take my word for it!

I have anoth­er vis­it com­ing up ear­ly in June (the last one of the school year!), so I’ve been mak­ing sure every­thing is ready for that one, too. 

SCBWI-WWA Spring Conference

Final­ly, I attend­ed and helped with the SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton’s spring con­fer­ence, Imag­ine That! It was a great week­end: hear­ing from inspir­ing speak­ers, get­ting feed­back on one of my works in progress from a pow­er­house edi­tor, and catch­ing up with author and illus­tra­tor friends in the indus­try. I’m still soak­ing it all up and pro­cess­ing what was said! Good stuff.

Book Releases!

Along with all of that I’ve been get­ting ready for the Two Truths and a Lie: His­to­ries and Mys­ter­ies paper­back release on May 21 AND prepar­ing for the upcom­ing new release of Two Truths and a Lie: Forces of Nature on June 25th! I’ve designed and ordered post­cards and swag, sched­uled social media announce­ments, and made oth­er plans to get the word out. 

TTL: Histories and Mysteries cover
TTL: Forces of Nature cover
 

Works in Progress…

And, of course, there are those works in progress, too! Ear­li­er this month I sub­mit­ted both a non­fic­tion pic­ture book revi­sion and a graph­ic nov­el pro­pos­al to my agent. I’m cur­rent­ly revis­ing a non­fic­tion pic­ture book, a fic­tion pic­ture book, and a mid­dle-grade non­fic­tion man­u­script. I’m also work­ing on a brand-new non­fic­tion pic­ture book draft and a young-adult non­fic­tion pro­pos­al. Busy, busy!

Yes, I do love my job. More so every day, in fact! =D

On fear, and how writing is like a guitar

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Fear is fun­ny. Not fun­ny, real­ly. Mad­den­ing, frus­trat­ing, debilitating.
Ortega acoustic electric mini bassAfter a busy month or so, I had­n’t had time to prac­tice my bass gui­tar at all. I want­ed to. I missed it. So I took it out of the case and sat it next to my chair so it would be easy to grab when­ev­er I had a few free min­utes. And from there it mocked me. I was afraid to pick it up. Afraid I’d for­got­ten every­thing. Afraid I would suck.
Writ­ing is like that, too. I think the writ­ers who advise oth­ers to “write every day” do so for this rea­son most of all. The longer we go with­out doing some­thing the more room there is for doubt and excus­es, so we go even longer with­out doing it. It’s a vicious cycle that can be dif­fi­cult to break out of.
Some­times, the miss­ing doing the thing becomes greater than the fear and over­comes it. Oth­er times, we force our­selves past the fear. We have been here before and can see it for what it is.
I final­ly picked up the gui­tar today. I can still play. In fact, I think I played bet­ter today than I have in months. It felt joy­ous, both the abil­i­ty to make music and the let­ting go of the fear.
Soon, my sched­ule will allow me to get back to writ­ing again, too. And I am not afraid. In fact, I’m look­ing for­ward to it.
What goals are you avoid­ing because of fear? Per­haps it’s time to begin.
Begin

In which I make my podcast debut on The Artist Rolls!

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As I’ve men­tioned before, I love lis­ten­ing to pod­casts. One of my favorites is The Artist Rolls.
The Artist Rolls logo
On The Artist Rolls, Sean and Jamie ask their cre­ative guests to fill out a form loose­ly inspired by char­ac­ter sheets from role-play­ing games like Dun­geons and Drag­ons. They use these char­ac­ter sheets to help explore and dis­cuss how each guest divides their time across the many dif­fer­ent roles cre­ative peo­ple must take on, what medi­ums they use to do their work, what their per­son­al work style is, and how they view their own skill set. They incor­po­rate dice to ran­dom­ize the con­ver­sa­tion, graphs to help visu­al­ize it, and humor and heart to bring it to life. It’s a fun way to learn about oth­er peo­ple’s cre­ative process­es and challenges.

Sean and Jamie, the hosts of The Artist Rolls
Sean and Jamie, the tal­ent­ed hosts of The Artist Rolls

I was intro­duced to The Artist Rolls by my good friend (and amaz­ing col­lage artist!) Liz Ruest. Since then, I’ve enjoyed lis­ten­ing to and learn­ing from many of their chats with oth­er cre­ative types, so it was a thrill to be able to par­tic­i­pate in one myself, made even more excit­ing by the fact that it was my pod­cast debut! I revealed much of my nerdy nature and con­sis­tent­ly rolled well below aver­age, but oth­er than that I don’t think I embar­rassed myself too bad­ly. Check it out for your­self by click­ing below:

The Artist Rolls, Episode 26 — Lau­rie Thomp­son Reminds Us to “Do Unto Others”

The importance of play

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I have a con­fes­sion to make. I’ve nev­er been much of a jour­naler, my cre­ativ­i­ty has always been bursty, and I have nev­er in my life had any­thing resem­bling a dai­ly writ­ing habit.
But I real­ly need one.
“Need” is the right word, too. I almost wrote “should,” but that isn’t quite cor­rect. It’s 1:30 p.m., and I’ve accom­plished next to noth­ing so far today. I’ve been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, surf­ing, orga­niz­ing, clean­ing… but not one thing that actu­al­ly gets me clos­er to my goals. I have a whole bunch of things I “should” be doing, revi­sions and research. That’s not the prob­lem. The prob­lem is more that I’m in a sort of funk, and none of those “should” tasks appeal to me right now. This slump I’m in, I think is because I’ve lost con­tact with my cre­ative self. I’ve let the inner edi­tor have too much to do, too much to say late­ly. Yes, I’ve need­ed it for the revi­sions I’ve been work­ing on, but it got too much prac­tice, while my cre­ative side withered.
I haven’t writ­ten any­thing brand new, aside from a few blog posts here, for almost six months. Blog posts are good, I guess. I get to cre­ate, write, practice–and it serves a use­ful pur­pose, too (I hope!). A nice win-win.
But, writ­ing some­thing for pub­lic con­sump­tion is not the same as freewrit­ing, prac­tice, PLAY. I’ve been read­ing HOW TO BE A WRITER by Bar­bara Baig  and the first thing she address­es is this need to free our­selves from expec­ta­tion and play with writ­ing, with­out fear of any­one else see­ing the results. I’ve been see­ing this advice show up in var­i­ous snip­pets here and there from var­i­ous wise peo­ple for the past few weeks. The uni­verse is send­ing me sig­nals, but I’ve been try­ing hard to over­look them to focus instead on the “should“s, the con­crete to-do list, the goal-ori­ent­ed approach to achiev­ing my dreams.
I’m a log­i­cal per­son. I write non­fic­tion. I make lists. I set goals, and break them down, and work towards them. This is all good and use­ful… to a point.
But some­times, the well runs dry. I need to rest. I need to read. I NEED to cre­ate. That, after all, is the end goal. So, it’s time to lis­ten to the universe.
You, dear revi­sions, will just have to wait. I’m cur­rent­ly busy with much less impor­tant things.

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