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Since this is the 5th post in this award-winning series (not really), you probably don’t need an introduction.

Here’s some links:

Part 1: The Letter

Part 2: Travis Jonker, Paul Acampora, Michelle Knudsen

Part 3: Diana Murray, London Ladd, Jeff Mack

Part 4: Vikram Madan, Lizzy Rockwell, Matthew McElligott

NICK BRUEL

I feel like the hardest part of cultivating ideas is respecting that they exist.  Let me explain… I had a teacher in college who posited that ‘writer’s block’ did not exist.  Instead, what we called ‘writer’s block’ was, in fact ‘pride’.  As creators, we are often guilty of imagining our ideas but self editing and not making them real because we’ve decided that they are simply not good enough to meet our standards.  I have come to believe this is true.  Here is how I combat this.  I have a disorganized mind and a disorganized office to accompany it, so when it’s time for me to contemplate a project I will simply take sheets of printer paper and write down every idea that comes to mind, good or bad, and not worry for a moment about the order in which they come.  When this happens, two things are possible… 1) Maybe it’s a lousy idea.  That’s okay.  I can either move on to the next or develop it into what I want.  It doesn’t matter, because I’ve made my idea real by writing it down and giving myself the opportunity to go back to it later, assuming I do.  2) Maybe it’s a pretty good idea; I just needed to make it real in order to recognize it.  This can happen more often when we think.  I will then stuff all of my idea sheets into a manila envelope that I label with a marker, and this only serves to keep my ideas collected together.  In the long run, all I’m doing is exercising a loosely organized form of daydreaming.

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For 20 years now, Nick Bruel has been herding Bad Kitty into one enormously popular sack, er, book, after another. And if you know anything about herding cats, you know it couldn’t have been easy. Nick keeps the series fresh and energetic and timely, and somehow manages to keep Bad Kitty under control. Well, not exactly control, but you get the idea. A remarkable achievement, still rolling along. Congratulations, Nick!

SUZY LEVINSON

In recent years I’ve noticed that my creative practice feels less like a practice, and more like a series of random, haphazard events. I’ll have a good idea, lightbulb-style! I’ll write fast, revise even faster, put the story out into the universe like some kind of speed demon! Then I’ll go utterly brain-dead for about a month, twiddling my thumbs until the next idea presents itself.

This doesn’t feel like the most productive use of my time.

In an effort to cultivate a more reliable creative practice and combat Brain-Dead Month, I’ve been mindfully gathering tricks that will shake me up and make stories fall out. I think my favorite’s the “fun title” trick, which works as follows: I’ll come up with a title, usually incorporating some kind of wordplay, the kind of title I can imagine popping on a bookstore shelf. I’ll go online to make sure the title’s not taken already. I’ll type the title at the top of a blank Word doc, type “by Suzy Levinson,” paginate into fourteen and a half sections, write the flap copy, and then all I have to do is write the story. Yes, it feels like working backwards, but it’s surprisingly effective.

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Readers will have to wait for Suzy Levinson’s next poetry collection, Dinos That Drive (coming in 2025!), but until then, don’t miss the book that turned this reader into a huge fan, Animals in Pants. Brilliant and hysterical. Animals in pants? What kind of twisted, demented mind comes up with this stuff?! And where can I get more??!!

NANCY CASTALDO

That’s easy. My creativity and my curiosity are sparked when I travel. I always carry a notebook or my phone so that I can easily jot down an idea when it arrives. An idea can arrive when I might be visiting a farm in Italy or just taking the train along the Hudson River near my home— which brings me to the second way I keep my home fires burning. I don’t stop thinking about what I already know and how that knowledge connects to everything else in the world. Sometimes you just have to be curious about the things that are familiar and see where that rabbit hole takes you.

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Nancy Castaldo has written award-winning books about our planet for over 25 years. She writes to inform, inspire, and empower readers about the world around them. She’s interested in wolves and whales, farms and seeds, rivers and dogs and astronauts and . . . the list goes on (seemingly) forever. And when Nancy is interested in a topic, a book often follows.

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