Sorry if the title of today's blog entry led you to believe I was about to tell you a joke. Nope, I'm about to answer the question to last week's burning question: what do two sled dogs teams do when they meet up somewhere? I needed to know the answer because the issue comes up in the manuscript I'm in the middle of revising -- which happens to be set in Nunavik, Quebec. Last night, I got hold of my friend Mark, who is the vice-principal of a school in Nunavik and who also has a sled dog team of his own. I thought maybe the dogs sniff each other, but Mark says it's more likely that the dogs on different teams will growl or bare their teeth. Well, I'm glad I checked that one out. Though I've gone dogsledding, I couldn't remember how the dogs behaved when another team pulled up. Now Mark did say that well-trained dogs will mind their own business, and not get into fights. However fights are more interesting in a novel than getting along, don't you agree?
I'm home from school for today, and am preparing for a phone meeting with my editor on this project, Sarah Harvey. I'm looking forward to our chat. Because Sarah is also an author, we often end up comparing notes about the writing process. So can you already guess what tomorrow's blog entry is going to be about? If you haven't read Sarah wonderful new book, The Lit Report -- go out and get it straightaway. But beware -- it's one of those books that is very hard to put down once you get it started.
Talk to you tomorrow... good luck with whatever you're working on -- or playing at -- today. In this morning's "Writing for Children" class, I told several of my students they need to make their picture book texts more PLAYful... so you see, play can be part of work. How's that for a deep thought?
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