I'm a word freak. I'm actually a lot of kinds of things freak - color freak, tennis freak, all things dachshund and min pin freak. So I picked the right line of work, I guess. But words are so much more complicated than the inner workings of a yappy little dog's brain. In my (ask my friends) never humble opinion, I believe they're more complicated than color, even. And that's saying a lot. If you could see the sea of oil pastels spread across my drawing table, you'd be convinced that indeed, that IS saying a lot.

Words are just so versatile. They can be combined to create the time honored works of Steinbeck and Jackie Collins. They can make up the screenplays of such classic movies as Citizen Kane and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Think about it. All these creations probably share more words than not. Right?

And it has been words - scads of them -that have taken over my life just about full time for months now. Some of them have been barfed onto the page in the first draft process of a new novel. Barfing words is fun. You're just ralphing it all out there to see the final sloppy big picture. Wow, I just grossed myself out. Ick.

And then, I've been revising another novel as well. That's where the versatility of language really starts to come in. This is where the clean-up crew (you) disinfects all the ick you produced in that first draft. Every single word has to be the right one for that space. Every single word has to be there for a reason. If there is any barf left, it better be absolutely necessary to your story. Okay, I'll stop with the up-chuck analogies.

I've also been working on a couple of picture books. Here's where the spotlight of scrutiny hits your writing hard. In a work usually under 500 words, there ain't no hiding of no clunkers. Every word has to compete to chosen as the ONLY word in the universe that deserves to be in that particular sentence. I like to think of them in little arenas, fighting to the death, bloodthirsty crowd egging them on... Whoa, maybe I should go back to thinking about barf or what my dad used to call "laughing at the ground".

For example, this week I had to come up with several words that could tastefully stand in for "derriere". Okay, maybe not tasteful, but the ONLY possible words that could add the something needed for that particular story. A thesaurus is great, fabulous, fantastic, splendid, but it can only take you so far. You're still the one that has to figure out the order and placement of every single one of those words. But if you're a word freak, then you're in Heaven. Yay! Word Heaven!

Being a tennis freak, though, is another matter. There, the word "freak" takes on a slightly different meaning than what I've been talking about. Whiffed overheads, balls hit long or wide, inventive oaths on the court, wardrobe malfunctions... But I'm sure my coach and team would agree. The word "freak" is still the ONLY one in the universe that fits.

I've been teaching elementary age all week and the ick factor? Well, ick has gone wild.

And in my work too. For some reason I've been plumbing the depths of grossness - why? It's a beautiful spring day. Happy is everywhere. Cute lambs. Cute chicks, cute whatever. They're all running rampant.

Long ago and far away I heard the best thing ever from my then three year old. We were out in in the yard and he gleefully skipped out in front of me singing, "The sun is out, the birds are out, the bugs are out and I can make them dead!" And then instead of stomping he drew the saga of all he saw and all he imagined he laid to waste.

Priceless. And now that now 23 year MAN is one of the most creative people I know.

At that moment 20 years ago, I saw cute and horrible whirl together in a perfect storm. It's been a hard act to follow, I tell you.

The birds have been singing up a storm today and Twig, the terrible min pin puppy has been gleefully intent on trying to make as many small things dead as canine-ally possible - namely slugs. She arranges them artfully on the dining room rug.

Destruction = creative?

The title of the illustration above is "Are Those Peas or Did You Sneeze?" A gross concept, yes? Totally ick.

I have heard a lot of the hilarious destructive this week from my students. A lot of it has been way grosser than sneezing peas.

But from that disgusting creative beginning is the Phoenix that also rises if not to greatness, then to amusing and maybe outright laugh out loud ?

Time will tell...

It's wrong to steal, right? No nicking candy bars at the corner market, no slipping fives out of your spouse's wallet, no picking up just ONE newspaper out of the piles left on your vacationing neighbors driveway. Stealing is BAD. But what am I supposed to do when I'm teaching a 2nd and 3rd grade TAG class and I hear ideas like these?

A dragon that ravages the grocery store to gobble up all the celery it can find and then redeems itself by vanquishing the evil witch by entombing her in a pile of its poop.

A hedgehog named Bob who talks so much the authorities are summoned on a regular basis.

A sea turtle named Appetite that must save the ocean from a volcano that spews garbage.

Two amiable antiheroes named Hippy Pig and Bobby McKiddo Jr. the LXXII who accidentally end up in the army - hilarity ensues.




I remember being in 3rd grade and having adults ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Funny - I guess the answer turned out to be -

I want to be a 3rd grader.

I've been dreaming about flying lately. That's not exactly true. My dreams aren't the whimsical floating these beach cats are engaged in. The flying in my dreams has been a sort of free fall that doesn't end in a splat, but a kind of "oof" as if I landed on top of a gigantic down pillow.

What's up with that?

I don't consider myself a "woo-woo" type of person. Well, there was that UFO my sister and I saw in Hawaii. Meteors do NOT stop and reverse direction, okay? And I did live in a haunted house for 18 years. Ask anyone that visited. Haunted. Totally haunted. But other than that, I consider myself pretty pragmatic.

But the flying/falling dreams kept coming. Was it some other-worldly message? No, my pragmatic brain says. They mean that you've got to do some serious toning of those triceps pretty soon. Otherwise you'll be facing some "bat-wing" issues.

Bat-wings. Flying. Get it? And I thought "muffin-top" was a horrible term. Must get weights out now.

But of course I didn't get the weights out. Instead I obsessed on the dreams some more. And then I stopped thinking about the THING - the flying/falling and began remembering all the other little bits and details of the experience. I remembered the gleam off the side of a porcelain sink. I remembered a huff of air from an exhaust pipe. I remembered the feeling I had while in the dream. It wasn't just fear or excitement but a mixture of the two with maybe a tinge of regret thrown in for good measure.

And then I realized what those dreams were doing. They were helping. I'm revising a novel right now and that process has been fun and exhilarating (flying) and it's also been kind of scary (falling). The scary part is when you lose faith in yourself. That's when you try as hard as you can to convince yourself you can't possibly do it. You tell yourself things you wouldn't allow anyone else in the world to say to you.

So I stopped dwelling about the THING - the issue I was stuck on in my revision and began paying more attention to all the other bits and details of my scenes. And I made sure I paid attention to the feeling - not only of the characters, but of the places and the action as well. I think that process helped both my novel and my dreams. Last night I dreamt I was out buying up environmentally friendly houses.

What's up with that?

The name of this piece is "Gonna be a Bright, Bright Sun-shiny Day" and it was a bright, sun-shiny day today - an elusive miracle in otherwise winter gloomy Portland, Oregon. And that was one of the reasons it made taking my six 12 to 14 year old painting students there on a field trip this afternoon the worst and the best day ever.

Worst #1: People - and I'm not talking crowds of people, I'm talking invading hordes of people. As soon as I arrived and saw the teeming masses I figured we'd be drawing more pictures of people's backsides than animals. Curse that wretched sun!

Worst #2: People - I think huge swarms of people have a lot in common with hippos. They don't move. Why should they when they're successfully blocking everyone's view? I swear I saw Bubbles, the zoo hippo lift her sweet mouth in a smirk when the other hippo tried to move her out of the way. It looked like she was telling all the people, "Watch and learn." Newsflash, Bubbles. They already know how to just stand there, the only thing moving their flapping jaw as they jabber into cell phones. Did I mention I was at the zoo and it was crowded? Grr.

Worst #3: People - 40 minutes in line to buy ice cream cones. Enough said.

But that wasn't our whole trip, far from it.

Best #1: Animals - namely the lioness that settled herself regally on the jutting boulder just as we arrived at the predator exhibit. Said lioness then basked in a perfect lioness pose, the golden afternoon light making her look other worldly. Our pencils flew over our sketchbook pages. Thank you, lioness! Thank you, sun!

Best #2: My students - yes, technically they're people, but my students totally rock. They laughed and joked and found so many things to be interesting. Even though everything was absolutely jam-packed, they seemed so happy just to be alive on a rare, winter sunny day. That happy totally got on me - it really did.

Best #3: Ice cream cones - sitting in the sun, eating them up before they melt. Enough said.

As an artist and writer I teach a lot. I teach at assemblies where there can be hundreds of students. I teach classrooms of kids, small groups and even one on one with adults. In the last 18 years I've experienced many, many moments that have been funny, inspiring and poignant. But there was just that certain, something, something that made today so very special.

Thank you, sun.

Thank you, lioness,

Thank you, ice cream.

And thank you, students. You remind me why I teach.

If you've spent enough time as a writer or an artist you'll know this scenario:

Why am I doing this? Who am I kidding? I'm just wasting my time, aren't I? Really. Seriously. You're not saying anything, but I can tell by the look on your face that I am one big, fat loser.

I think that caller i.d. is an excellent invention. That way our friends can spare themselves our - well, what do you call 10 steps above a pity party - a pity tirade? Nope, I think it's still bigger than that.

But sometimes good things happen - yay! You land an illustration job, you sign a book contract, someone tells you you're pretty.

Or sometimes this happens.

Jerry Fenter is an amazing artist, writer and teacher. And even though she sometimes wears flannel in public, she totally deserves having her work featured on the NPR website.

Wait a minute. Is MY story featured on the NPR website?

No. No it is not. I'm calling Jerry right now.

And she better not even GLANCE at the caller i.d.