Goeje Dag from Amsterdam

Goeje dag means hello in Dutch. I am writing to you today from Amsterdam. And tonight I leave for Nice -- and cooking school.

I just met with Samantha Haywood, a literary agent based here. I learned a lot of interesting things about the state of publishing in Europe. As in North America, the YA industry is thriving. So that's good news for me -- and my "boeken" (that's Dutch for books).

The day before yesterday, my daughter and I went to see the Ermitage Museum here. And of course, I was thinking about you, dear blog reader -- that's why I wrote down the following quote from painter Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky believed there were three "forms of abstraction." Though he was talking about painting, I was thinking how his theory could also be applied to the writing process. Here are the three phases he described: "Impression or processing of observation and effects; Improvisation, which appeared suddenly and unsconsciously; and Composition, the highest synthesis of consciousness, intuition, experience and emotion." I think that last phase is like the re-writing part of writing, where you need to use all your skills at once. 

Okay, I'm using the hotel internet and I'm about to run out of time. Hope all is well wherever you are! I'll try to do another blog entry from France.