This is how to do it properly

Now I feel like I've never worked at a zoo that took escaped animal drills seriously enough. (We just got to chase, like, a curator in a reflective vest. Lame.)

Important zoo safety advice

long-suffering

I'm thinking that my next book is going to be about how stupid dog owners are. Lilly says that she has PLENTY of material to contribute.

Some quotes from some Johns that I am keeping in mind for the new year

“True success is figuring out your life and career so you never have to be around jerks.”
-John Waters

I wanted to write all-ages books, kids’ literature that stands up when you read it today... It may be that this is not what the market wants, but as an exercise it was what I wanted to do. It also stops you leaning on lazy attention-getting devices – sudden death, sudden sexy times. You have to be a lot more resourceful as you write.
-John Allison

There are many things this world has too much of, but books and storytellers are not two of them.
-John Scalzi

gingerbread pugs

gingerbread pugs
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

I want to make stuff that ends up inside people's heads instead of on top, but it's the same

“There is that great line in Sunday in the Park with George,” he says, referring to Stephen Sondheim’s 1984 musical about Georges Seurat, “ 'Look, I made a hat where there never was a hat’.” He falls silent again and, as unexpectedly as those coins turn to fish, big fat tears start rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t say that line without choking up, because it states, in profoundly poetic terms, what I have always wanted to do with my life. It’s so simple and so funny, but boy it hits me deep.”

-from an interview with Teller (of Penn and) thanks to Wil Wheaton's Tumblr.

Sounds right to me

Of course there are different reasons to write, but if you’re interested in getting something published in the commercial marketplace, the only opinion that matters is that of the person who can either sell it (the agent) or buy it (the editor). My advice these days is not to share your work-in-progress with more than two or maybe three people whose opinions you trust and respect, and ideally have some experience in the very delicate art of offering artistic criticism.

-Matthew Gallaway, "Five writers explain how they got, kept and fired agents."