Wednesday, November 11, 2009

On Seeing Mary Amato in Jeff City

Mary Amato, author of 10 children's books, visited our fair city this past week. She did a great job with the children present in the room. You can tell she loves kids and hearing what they have to say. I especially appreciated her words of encouragement for all would-be writers in the room. She admitted that as a child, she hated to write! She would sit before a blank sheet of paper and freeze.

I had this preconceived notion that all writers were born that way. Pen to paper as soon as they could hold a pen upright, so to speak. I was one of those, too, who found it intimidating to write. There were just too many ideas swimming in my head to commit one over another to paper. (There still are...you should see my notebook!) I would journal occassionally, but even that became laborious and too introspective. Now that I'm writing some fiction, I actually feel liberated in a way. I can let my imagination fly, with no personal repercussions. It's still hard to wrangle all those thoughts in a cohesive story, but it sure is fun to try.

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