June was a busy, beautiful month! I finished a manuscript/book dummy, took a Botany Class, attended a Pride Bird Walk with friends old and new, celebrated my cousin’s graduation, and then went to a writing workshop in the Catskills in New York!
Here are some things I’ve learned:
I’m used to writing for myself little journal entries, Substack posts, and poetry even, but writing for kids is something else altogether! It’s challenging, but fun. Really proud of myself for finally writing a manuscript and getting it out into the world. The hardest part was starting to be honest! And cutting my words down…again and again and again…
I took an ethnobotany class with some friends via School of Self Reliance and it was incredibly informative!
Learning what wild plants and wildflowers I can forage and use is really exciting and empowering. I still have a lot to learn and probably won’t be all willy-nilly picking plants and flowers, but I at least am fairly confident about identifying Mediterranean Mustard. It tastes like broccoli!
We had an amazing guide named Calvin (Friends of Ballona Wetlands) who led us on a great bird walk through the Ballona Wetlands. It was really cool to be around so many queer birders as well! There were about 20 of us and we spotted some horned larks, a juvenile little blue heron, many double crested cormorants, and many more!
We surprised my cousin Jerome who finished his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering (if I’m not mistaken), at his graduation lunch! I’m the oldest in the group of cousins I’m close with and while I don’t always feel like I’ve grown that much older, it’s weird to witness someone I always saw as a little 6 year old boy suddenly become a grown adult pursuing their dreams. Time goes by too fast!!
I was accepted into a Picture Book Writing Workshop led by Annie Barrows and Susan Rich (Editor-at-Large at Little, Brown Books), held in a farm in the Catskills called Milkwood. It was an incredibly humbling and inspiring experience.
I feel I am accustomed to sharing artwork and thus getting feedback and critique on it, but my writing practice has always been very personal, private, and vulnerable. Having to share my unpolished writing with others felt daunting and I almost had imposter syndrome, but those feelings thankfully left quick and I felt I was in safe space to share with my fellow cohorts.
I learned so much about writing for children’s books, but more importantly, how invigorating it is to be in a space with other fellow writers and to share openly with one another. We had delicious food and treats cooked and baked by our hosts Sophie Blackall and Ed Schmidt as well as the lovely Milkwood Staff. The four days were filled with enchanting fireflies, glorious thunder and lightning, beautiful birds, picture books galore, a hammock I fell from (ha), and so much natural beauty all around us. Incredibly thankful I got to experience that Milkwood Magic everyone speaks so fondly of.
Anddddd that was my past month! Hope to publish another blog post for July or August, but we’ll see.
Til next time!