When my 9-year-old falls short of a goal (and even when he succeeds), I usually say something along the lines of, “The hard part isn’t making it across the monkey bars. The hard part is not making it across the monkey bars 999 times, and then trying again.”
This is a loose variation of an Edison quote, I think, about inventing the light bulb.
So when my entry to the October 2015 SCBWI Write This! competition was not selected, I had no choice but to submit for the November round, even though my first reaction was a miffed, “no wanny”. I also took a critical look at my October entry, and had to acknowledge that it was too self-consciously clever, and the play on words was easily missed.
As I mentioned in a previous post, every month, the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) hosts Write This!, a challenge to writers to write the first line of a story, in 50 words or less, responding to a prompt. It’s a great spur to the imagination, and fun to read the winning entries, which then appear in an online gallery.
This month’s prompt was, “A stranger enters . . .”
My entry, at exactly 50 words:
The teacher turned both her heads to the new kid and fixed him with all six of her eyes.
What an odd creature he was.
Only two spindly arms and legs.
No tentacles.
And where was his tail?
“You’re not from this galaxy, are you?” she finally asked.
Not unkindly.
PS: After a good number of tries, cries, and why-can’t-I’s, my son can now make it across the monkey bars in one go.
No comments yet.