Writer Dad — Life is better with the right words.

A New City Gives Us A New Chance To Be A Couple

October 24, 2011 By Cindy 10 Comments

Sean and I met in a battery of friendly banter, beneath a backdrop of beautiful flowers.

Talking to him was Heaven on Earth, each week more lovely than the one before it.

Not only did Sean know exactly what I wanted to buy, he would always arrange and wrap my purchase into a neat bundle of brown paper, then pass it across the counter alongside a clever quip designed to make me smile.

And he always tied the experience with an invisible bow: manners, humor, and friendly help to my car.

I wasn’t quite as flush as I pretended. My purchases were abundant, but I was paying for attention, and the rush I felt when buying his flowers, then bringing them home to my small beach pad apartment.

Sean was something I’d never had before.

I felt revered because he treated me like the lady I was. He delivered delicious adventure, love letters in the mail (even when we lived together), and the perfect cocktail of conversation to meet every mood. Not to mention enough entertainment options to make Vegas look lame (MAN ALIVE, that man loves his movies!)

But nothing was better than the never ending streams of conversation and whispered what ifs under fluffy down covers. Sean gave me a set of standards I’d never known; the two of us wrapped in our courtship, nestled in bliss, even without nuptials.

I wanted it to last forever, even when I was terrified it wouldn’t.

We pooled our savings and bought our first place together – a one bedroom co-op condo, 600 square feet, on the saltier side of town.

We OWNED it, our first business transaction together.

Already beyond awesome, our second jackpot rang just weeks later when we discovered a second heartbeat right behind my own. We brought two children into our humble home. I made amazing meals for our family on the world’s tiniest stove, and enough memories to fill 8,000 square feet.

Our family of four was complete.

Although parenthood was exhausting, we held onto what was ours. In California we always had that one place. The place we had before children, when we were Sean and Cindy but not yet Mom and Dad.

We had the special spot that felt like Cheers, where everyone knows your name, but with far more ambiance, a roaring fire pit, and amazing food. Our restaurant was Cafe Piccolo. Every trip to Piccolo guaranteed warmth, family, and fantastic conversations exchanged between Sean and the owner, Moe.

Cafe Piccolo was our go-to for everything from a frivolous lunch to getting engaged to celebrating births, to comfort when bidding farewell to our city.

Transplanting our family to Cincinnati has been an enriching adventure that has drawn our already close family even closer. This city is new, different, and thrilling; an unfamiliar landscape of rolling hills, amid a sprawling sea of green as wide as the Pacific we left behind.

This move has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, trailing becoming a teacher and marrying Sean.

Life in Ohio is simpler; the air is clean, horses are everywhere, and deer run free. History is rich, quality education is non-negotiable, and tranquility is nestled neatly into our lives as writers and parents.

A new city gives us a new chance to be a couple.

We celebrated our 10th anniversary in August, finally more familiar with our city after a year in our new home. Our clean canvas has drawn sweet surprises, discoveries and plenty of mini-adventures to redefine life as a couple.

We have trails to walk, new favorite foods (especially the local ice cream and burgers), miniature golf, and a theater to call our own.

But we are still searching for our Cafe Piccolo.

Although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we find our special spot, I can’t wait to go “home,” sit by the fire, share my favorite Pinot Grigio with Sean, and wait for Uncle Moe to pull up a chair and connect with warm stories and amazing food.

Until we find our Cafe Piccolo in Cincinnati, the search is an adventure for all of us. Haley and Ethan are looking for their Cafe Piccolo, too.

We love Cincinnati and all its potential. Giant thanks to all our new friends (and Yelp!) for helping us navigate a city filled with charm and remarkable people.

Cindy

*Please leave a comment below!

Filed Under: Marriage

Lady Gaga, Beauty and the Beast, and A Promise to My Family?!?

October 21, 2011 By Cindy 6 Comments

Welcome to another Reflective Friday!

As a classroom teacher I made sure my students received at least 90 minutes of writing instruction each day.

Writing at day’s end was always a student favorite. After the day’s final clean up, we would play Mozart for the last 15 minutes, while everyone wrote in their writer’s notebook.

We called these Exit Notes.

My students loved the name, because what it really meant was that everyone needed to write something, anything at all, for 15 solid minutes in order to exit the class at the end of the day.

This precious time set aside for writing allowed all my students, including me, a sacred time to reflect, think, comment, sketch, and record their daily learning experience, while gaining personal insight.

The brainpower always sounded so loud amid the room’s heavy quiet.

Of course, some students would stare at the ceiling as though a deluge of nouns and verbs might come pouring down and onto the paper.

These students were usually my best artists.

“You can sketch what you’re thinking if you want,” I’d whisper, straightening their posture with my understanding.

Now that I have a family, people ask: “Do your children like to write?”

Absolutely!

I never have to ask Haley or Ethan to write, not anymore. Keeping a notebook is a habit for them both. For our family, writing is nearly as natural as breathing.

It is our archive of reflections that helps us understand one another better, and honor our daily life with dignity by regarding who we are today… right now in this moment.

These Friday Reflections are the digital, permanent version for our family.

We hit our targets hard this week!

Here are a few of our highlights:

Haley and Ethan helped make the school shine by planting flowers outside their school.

Service learning is an essential component in our family’s life. We know our efforts to help others in need is part of living with dignity, and leaving our signature of who we are as a family.

They used their allowance to purchase flowers and have performed extra chores to earn money to buy candy and goodies to fill Halloween goody bags for Santa Maria Community Meals on Wheels program.

Here’s a terrific resource for finding service learning projects for your group.

We kicked off our weekend by attending a Monster Mash Halloween Party last Friday, a benefit for Families for Families.

Haley and Ethan had movie night with our amazing babysitter, decorating the house with full creative abandon, while Sean transformed into Jo Calderon, Lady Gaga’s male alter ego, and I morphed into Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance head-to-toe red lace vintage 2009 VMA Awards outfit.

The night was a blast and we added another Sean and Cindy memory to our adventures in Ohio as a couple.

Sean created another of his verbal magic tricks, part of his new “Timeless Stories Told in Timely Rhymes” fairy tale series.

Here are a few lines from Beauty and the Beast:

A merchant and father, without any wife
And three lovely daughters; a wonderful life
“I’m heading to market, some time around dawn
I’ll swallow my coffee, and then I’ll be gone.”

He turned to his daughters, looked each in their eyes
Then smiled and whispered a special surprise:
“While I’m at market I’ll see many things
From pastries and pastas to bracelets and rings

We’ve had a great year, don’t mull over thrift
Each of you tell me what you’d love as a gift.”
The first daughter smiled, “I’d love a new dress
Maybe brocade since this old one’s a mess.”

The next daughter clapped, tickled pale red
“A long string of pearls,” she smiled and said
The last daughter, Belle, her dad’s greatest treasure
Gleaming with glee and pickled with pleasure

She flitted her eyes and pointed her nose:
“I think what I’d love is just one perfect rose!”
“Of course, girls!” he said, “I’ll buy all you desire
Plus plenty of fry bread, pulled right from the fryer

A great day at market, then gifts for his girls:
A flower, a dress, and a string full of pearls
Halfway to home, the sky turned to black
As serpents of lightning began to attack…

Click on the link to buy Beauty and the Beast (for just .99!)

We also published “A Promise to My Family,” a collection of 15 posts from the first year of Writer Dad (the same collection is available by clicking the links in the right hand sidebar).

Click on the link to buy A Promise to My Family (also just .99!)

* Side Note: As I was heading to Amazon just now to get the link for this, I noticed it was ranked #50 for “Fatherhood.” Not bad in the first week – GO SEAN!!

Sales are steady for Yesterday’s Gone. We loved reading some of our first reviews and receiving emails from fans. We appreciate everyone’s support with our first big title.

Dave made a page of the four trailers for Yesterday’s Gone that we’ve finished so far. They just keep getting better and better. If you’re a fan of Boricio, the evil monster with a mouth as salty as a sailor, or not, we think you will find this trailer hilarious.

You can check out all four trailers for Yesterday’s Gone here.

Here’s the Boricio-centric trailer, “What Would Boricio Do?”

Buying Yesterday’s Gone is awesome, reviewing it is even better (that’s the #1 way for authors to get found on Amazon!)

Click on the link to buy Season One of Yesterday’s Gone ($4.99)

Click on the link if you’ve already read Yesterday’s Gone and would like to give it a review (THANKS!)

Thanks for another great week, can’t wait for the next one.

See you Monday!

Cindy

Filed Under: Writing

The Skeleton Dared Me

October 20, 2011 By Sean Platt 6 Comments

The skeleton was scary
“Would I lie to you?” he said
I stared at him, no flesh on bones
The dude was surely dead

I did not believe the voice, of course
Like daggers stabbing truth
He told me I was on the freeway
Flying past my youth

Beauty fades, vanilla skin
Can one day fade to gray
Live each hour knowing you
Cannot repeat a day

Don’t fly through your life
Too hyperactive to enjoy
The best of life is possible
For every girl and boy

Squander time, you’ll have a thorn
Beneath your being, it’s true
The skeleton said I could do it
His final words were, “I dare you!”

Writer Dad

The Skeleton Dared Me is just one of 100 awesome poems in Syllable Soup. Buy it here for just $2.99

Syllable Soup is currently the #1 Children’s Humorous Poetry Book on Kindle!

Filed Under: Children's Poetry, Poetry

5 Ways to Make Your Children Remember This Halloween (FOREVER!)

October 19, 2011 By Cindy 10 Comments

I love archiving our family memories with words, pictures, and video.

These small portraits amass over time, creating an anthology of life we can store, share and set aside as an emotional companion during sad and happy times alike.

In my mind, Halloween is the kick off to indulgence and quickly approaching holidays; an amazing time for children and grown-ups alike.

The surge of adrenaline while racing from house to house, collecting the maximum haul, while transforming your identity. And for grown-ups, buying your favorite confections in bulk, of course with the intention of passing them out to trick-or-treaters, only to end up horrified when you’ve eaten an entire bowl of miniature candy bars in a single sitting, or half.

Halloween is an epic time to celebrate the things that go bump in the night, and in the bottom of our bellies.

Our children start planning for Halloween around the end of summer: discussing costumes, playing pretend trick-or-treat with their toys, developing strategies for accruing the most candy, tallying the number of crafts we can squeeze in before the BIG day, plotting the number of ways to scoop the most fun from a pumpkin, and decorating with plenty of garish materials and artistic freedom.

Childhood is sacred, and kids naturally enjoy the independence to explore and pretend. And, let’s face it, being cute and getting candy is Utopia from a child’s perspective.

Each year is more memorable than the one before, as each new costume inches our children closer toward a time when they’ll be passing the candy instead of retrieving it.

One of our most memorable Halloweens was in California. Our family dressed as characters from Star Wars, gathering robes and accessories from Goodwill and the local thrift stores. We created a fabulous look for under $20.00 and had a ton of time to play pretend prior to Halloween.

This appealed to Sean and me since we’re arguably the biggest kids in the family and our Haley and Ethan were obsessed with Star Wars at the time. Trying on our costumes in the evening to make sure we had all our Halloween moves coordinated became an after dinner ritual a few nights a week that early October.

We felt like heroes in our children’s eyes.

The children planned craft activities to turn our home from warm to horrifying, though it was the trails of glue and glitter and the residual cleanup that were truly scary.

The chewy nougat center to this particular Halloween was when our school community coordinated a Trunk-to-Treat Halloween event in conjunction with a Harvest Festival and movie on the lawn.

At least 50 cars gathered in a horseshoe. Trunks were open, decorated with pumpkins, spider webbing, brooms, cauldrons, and bats. Some people went all out with 70’s disco balls, pirates, and luau themes.

There was candy galore, hot cider, chili, cornbread, pumpkin pie, and plenty of funny photo ops. Our community united to celebrate and create a memory none of us will forget.

Our children loved it because, like many other children who attended our school, we didn’t live in a neighborhood where trick-or-treating was especially safe, or celebrated. The memory’s true value was the community, safety; fun, food and good friends.

Hot apple cider never tasted sweeter and snuggling my babies with my BFF Mommy friends while watching “The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown,” and stuffing enough candy in our mouths to make our dentists shudder.

How you choose your stolen moments with your children, and what you do with that time, is a reflection of your inner child, and the integrity you hold toward traditions and happiness.

How will you make this Halloween memorable for your family?

Here Are 5 Simple Ways To Make This Halloween One Your Family Will Never Forget!

1) DIY Costumes

Let’s face it. Halloween is a free ticket to let your freak flag fly. You can be the saucy maid instead of “just the maid,”and your kids can create crazy costumes.

It’s okay if it’s not perfect. It’s DIY!

http://familyfun.go.com/halloween/halloween-kids-costumes/

What’s more fun than letting your child be in charge for a change? Let them have the ownership and you can take the night off!

2) Ghoulish Cooking

Don’t know what to cook, that’s okay!

Let each family member choose ghoulish recipes or fall foods from a cookbook. Sean, Haley and Ethan put a post it by the meal of their choice in the recipe book and voila! That becomes next week’s menu.

http://www.brittablvd.com/Halloween/recipes.html

We get to try new foods, and the children always seem to eat more when it’s their featured recipe.

3) Let Your Children Do The Decorating

Halloween is not the time to be fussy or Type-A about decorations.

Let the tape show. It’s okay if everything isn’t symmetrical. That’s what makes it scary! Relax and let the children have fun. It will always mean so much more when they are involved in the process.

http://www.marthastewart.com/photogallery/halloween-decorating

4) Halloween Humor

Much to Sean’s delight (since he manufactures them by the quarter million) I am a lover of corny puns and jokes. They make me laugh over and over and over. Which is why my children go on daily quests to find knock knocks and riddles for me.

Print some Halloween jokes, cut them into strips, then pass them around in a jack-o-lantern at the dinner table. Everyone can be a comedian with a riddle in hand.

http://www.halloween.com/halloween-jokes-1.php

It’s funny and promotes reading and critical thinking. Who doesn’t love that?

5) Halloween Games

One of our most frequent after-dinner rituals is a game of indoor hide-n-seek. It never gets old, but during Halloween we kick it up a notch by turning out the lights.

Create your own games or go to:

http://www.primarygames.com/holidays/halloween/games.htm.

It doesn’t get simpler than a game, and every child loves them.

Although we are 2,300 miles away from our zombie loving family in California, this year we will maintain our rituals of parading in our costumes while playing lights out hide-n-seek, trying as many recipes and crafts as possible, trick or treating for truckloads of goodies, then snuggling to “The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.”

The children are aiming to horrify our new dentist by eating gobs of candy, but it turns out the dentist in Ohio offers $1.00 a pound for bags of uneaten loot.

This may be the year that dollars trump candy for our 7 and 9 year olds.

(Nah, who are we kidding?)

Cindy

What are some of your favorite Halloween memories or traditions?

Please leave a comment below!

Filed Under: Family

The Magic Key

October 18, 2011 By Sean Platt 9 Comments

Every day I sit in school
Doodling drawings, dribbling drool
I stare outside at silent sky
And start a string of endless whys

Too much to ponder, countless are queries
So I wonder and wander and think up new theories
These are today’s, the ones tickling my brain
Endlessly dropping like buckets of rain

If you have some replies, really that’s great
But if you do not, well then I can relate
I don’t expect answers, the questions are fun
I’ll start at the top with today’s Number One:

When I say no to sleep am I resisting arrest?
Does a turkey taste better only when it is dressed?
When I daydream at dark, well what is that called?
If an eagle has feathers, then why is it bald?

I understand speed of light and I get speed of sound
But here’s a new thought I’ve been tossing around
Is there such a thing as momentum of stink?
I think that it’s possible, but what do you think?

And speaking of smell, well I’ve gotta ask
When there’s fragrance so foul that it begs for a mask
And it lingers about and you’re yelling, “P.U.!”
Well, I don’t know what that stands for. I wonder, do you?

If there were no sponges, would the ocean be deeper?
Do rabbits lay eggs only when it is Easter?
I know it’s my funny bone, but I’ve never laughed
If you write smooth when it’s warm, is it still a rough draft?

Can you cry underwater? How can new be improved?
Do fortune cookies expire? Can a mountain be moved?
Were there woodpeckers riding inside Noah’s Ark?
Why is the fridge so well lit if the freezer is dark?

If every rule has exception, is there exception to that?
If donuts were square, would they still make you fat?
How far east do you think one man could travel
Before his route would unwind and begin to unravel

And he found himself heading out westward instead
Half-way behind and half-way ahead?
If I soaked a raisin in water would it grapen right back?
Do all the colors together, do they really make black?

If an escalator gets broken, is it then only stairs?
Why isn’t honey sold in bees, yet always in bears?
Why are dogs noses wet? Would you prefer fortune or fame?
Which armrest is mine? What’s the devil’s last name?

Is there another word for thesaurus or only that one?
Do you see why these whys are such wonderful fun?
I love to ask questions, they make my mind bigger
Answers are fun to uncover and figure

Classrooms are nice, but exploration is key
There’s no better way to unlock the inside of me

Writer Dad

The Magic Key is just one of 100 awesome poems in Syllable Soup. Buy it here for just $2.99

Syllable Soup is currently the #1 Children’s Humorous Poetry Book on Kindle!

Filed Under: Children's Poetry, Poetry

Memories Made Permanent With 26 Keys

October 16, 2011 By Sean Platt 5 Comments

I plan on living a long, fruitful life.

Yet, no matter how long I live, I can’t imagine there being a period. more formative than the last three years. An era that began without ceremony on July 17, 2008 And and with the registry of this domain, or and heand is only now fading as I move my first major fiction project to market.

Because I am a man with the marrow of romance and nostalgia in my bones, I wanted to commemorate time gone by with a collection of 15 posts from the earliest days of Writer Dad.

I love these stories. Each captured a moment in my life, memories made permanent with 26 keys, rather than a click and a flash.

I used to write that way every day. It was all I knew for the first six months of my online life, capturing the daily happenings of my happy, hard-working family with fingers dancing across the keys, long after my children were in bed and sweetly snoring, as my patient wife waited on me once again.

“Just 20 more minutes,” I’d say, even though we both knew I’d be 40, if not twice as long. Every word had to be perfect. After all, I was building something beautiful and we both knew it. It wasn’t just a new online audience or the promise of creative freedom, I was steadily articulating an archive of our lives, one word at a time.

I can never return to that time. Now, I write with a plan, and everything I publish must weave in or out of my ultimate agenda. Yet, there is a beauty to writing without purpose, or at least a purpose as pure and simple as grabbing the magic in a single moment.

This year has been good to me, and I’ve finally earned the right to write with frivolity again. I still believe that “life’s better with the right words” and am looking forward to returning to Writer Dad so I can take pictures with my thoughts and give my memories permanence.

This collection of 15 of my earliest Writer Dad posts are some of my favorite words I’ve ever written. They’re not necessarily the best, but they are wonderfully, beautifully, and almost achingly honest. When I assembled the collection I nearly cringed, suddenly hungry to edit yesterday’s raw copy and innocent perspective.

But I don’t believe in rewriting history and prefer to see the perfection in their flaws.

I love this collection. I love its naiveté and optimism. I love how the pages give me hope that I will recapture the purity I once had and blend it with everything I’ve learned since.

A Promise to My Family is available on Amazon for .99, is FREE when you sign up for the Writer Dad newsletter below, or you can read any of the 15 entries with a click (they’re lined up in the sidebar to your right).

However you prefer to read them, I hope you enjoy and would love to hear what you think!

Writer Dad

We Hit The Ground Running

October 14, 2011 By Cindy 6 Comments

Fridays are always reflective for me.

At the end of my week and the edge of the weekend, I consider all our family crammed in during the current week, along with everything we’d like to fit into the upcoming one.

Fridays give me a chance to appreciate the week that passed and look forward to the next one. I’d like to share some of my Friday reflections with you, starting today.

Our world is a constant flurry of words; ideas in the air and fingers on the keys. Living in our household is quintessential communication cuisine indeed, since words and language are at the core of everything we do.

Sean refers to me as his CMO, or Chief Mental Officer.

Believe me, the job is never ending. I keep the calm, turn hiccups into happiness, support and celebrate everyone’s accomplishments, provide never ending feedback or a shoulder to lean on, and always know when to listen, when to advise and when to pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees.

Maintaining balance with Sean, in our online endeavors and in life, while ensuring we tend to our many small moments each day, growing as a family with peace and dignity, well, that requires a CMO.

It’s like being one of our fictional characters Ocho the Octopus, with eight arms to hold the important stuff together.

If you don’t know about Ocho, you will have to check him out in Syllable Soup

We hit the ground running this week. Here are the highlights:

We started on Monday with our reboot of WriterDad

Sean had interviews and guest posts scheduled throughout the week to support his and David’s (AMAZING!) new serialized project, Yesterday’s Gone:

Yesterday’s Gone. This is Why Tomorrow’s Better
What the eBook Revolution Means and How Copywriters Can Prosper From It
The Evolving Model of the Entrepreneurial Novelist
Is THIS the Best Way For Writers to Make an Amazing Living in 2012?
A Radical New Way To Tap the Kindle Economy
Is This The Best Way For Bloggers To Blow Up BIG?

If you’ve not yet caught any of Sean and Dave’s Yesterday’s Gone, all I can say is WOW.

Start with the trailer here:

We also published Syllable Soup, which was the full realization of a long time passion project I really wanted to see Sean take to Kindle.

Among all the verbal gymnastics of this week, my prized moments included seeing Syllable Soup come to fruition, hearing my daughter Haley read the first eight chapters of her first book, and watching my son grapple with the writing process on a homework assignment and come out on the winning side.

I’ve always believed Sean would change the world with his words, and this week I saw him run farther and faster than ever.

Remember the Think Different ad for Apple?

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
~Apple Computer

Sean celebrated the life and vision of Steve Jobs with this touching tribute (it made me cry!)

Here’s the video, and you can find the text below:

An Apple has fallen and rolled to the ground
In a deafening quiet, heard all the world round
The branches have bounty, still ﬂourishing FULL
But a bit like a lamb freshly sheared from its wool

It’s the core of the Apple, the Steven who said
Think Different! (or else your ideas are dead)
Thomas and Benjamin, Alexander then Steve
You’re gone, but you left us so much to believe

You created computers we could afford
So easy to use, people piled on board
Apple II was amazing, inspired success
The Macintosh followed with ﬂuid ﬁnesse

Then right after that, well, who would’a thunk
The Apple’d be booted from the base of the trunk
That mattered not, you knew you’d return
In the meantime you’d let creativity burn

NEXT was incredible, and Pixar STUPENDOUS
Toy Story to Nemo, every one entertained us
The Apple eventually returned to its tree
To make the branches the best they could possibly be

First with the iMac, then OS X
You did it out loud, then you did it again
Two early rolls in a long wave of winning
A remarkable run that was only beginning

From iMac to iPod, from iPhone to Air
No other company could hope to compare
The iPad set forth a revolution that day
With just one more thing to blow us away

With an orchard designed to draw a large crowd
Your tree now sits under a game-changing cloud
It all just works, your words set in stone
Your technology helps people feel less alone

Beyond your hardware, gifts from the tree
Have landscaped my life in a major degree
On the day I turned 30, a new life begun
With so much potential, my old one was done

I opened my present, my future was changed
A gift from my wife left my life rearranged
“Now sky is the limit with Mac in your hand
You are the music, but it is the band”

My wife, she was right, I started that day
To write a new life, got my world to obey
Technology’s great, but I am a writer
And words are what make my universe brighter

You had more than plenty, a life well expressed
Here are a few of your paraphrased best:

Design by committee can lead to an oops
Which is why I always ignore focus groups

You cannot con people, products speak for themselves
And that’s why our Apples line so many shelves

Good artists copy, great artists steal
Picasso said it, but we make it real

Link up your life and make your links last
Dots connect in the future, not in the past

Trust in yourself: karma, destiny, life
Every breath that you draw feeds your body new life

Billions of millions don’t matter to me
It’s being the creator I know I can be

The impossible’s possible behind a great team
No building stands from the brawn of one beam

Don’t let dogma destroy you with other people’s thought
And turn you into someone you’re certainly not

Stay hungry, stay foolish, stay truly unique
Know what you’re doing, look after your speak

You wanted to ding the Universe and did
You’ve inﬂuenced me, well, since I was a kid
Taught me to believe in the Inﬁnity of ME
And to rap with the world standing all around me

Thank you for EVERYTHING, your soil is rich
The earth under your tree is a fertilized ditch
Your ideas seemed obvious, once they were said
So elegantly uttered from your intuitive head

The Apple has fallen, but seeds have been planted
You left us a future completely enchanted
Innovator and artist, entrepreneur and brain
You gave us a world with an obvious gain

Thank you for everything, your legacy’s alive
Filled by the decades and fueled by your drive

***

We had a ridiculous amount of fun with fiction, connected with our readers and capitalized on every opportunity to think different.

Thank you for being a part of our world this week.

I’m already looking forward to the next one.

Cheers!

Cindy

Filed Under: Writing

Syllable Soup

October 13, 2011 By Sean Platt 9 Comments

Syllable soup is not sour or sweet
No chunky vegetables, no floating meat
There are terms and expressions, from message to motto
Enunciated nouns and verbs with vibrato

There are plenty of adjectives and probably some slang
At least if you’d like your syllable soup to have tang
Would you care to make some? Anything goes
Gather ingredients and write them in rows

Mean what you say and say what you mean
To create quintessential communication cuisine
Let’s get our soup started, the syllables are hot
Decide on your words and then fill up the pot

Now start the stirring, let the flavors all change
A good hearty soup should have sounds that are strange
But you must be careful. Do not over spice
Words should enhance, invite and entice

Though all words are free, some have a cost
Sometimes they’re not simple, so your reader gets lost
The stovetop’s the page, the chef is the writer
Who chooses the words to make stories burn brighter

Syllable soup is a scrumptious delight
When the cook stirs in all the syllables right
Never too many and never too few
Make the syllable soup that’s inside of you

What’s that you say, you’d like a sample?
How about instead I just cook an example?
Seems fair enough – sometimes once we see
Then our hearts and our minds and our spirits agree

Let’s start with a word that’s been pummeled to pulp
Drop it into the soup and get ready to gulp
Your teachers have probably all said, “said is dead!”
But said is not dead, it’s like butter to bread

Or syllables to soup – I’ll explain what I mean
Your teacher just meant that “said” shouldn’t be seen
Said is a word which has only one sound
No matter how you inspect it or spin it around

Yet how many ways can you also say said?
There’s at least a bajillion bulging outta my head!
Speak, utter, voice; pronounce or reply
Your hero could exclaim, or opine or cry

Or maybe declare, recite or disclose
But a rose by another name is still just a rose
When you find yourself looking for a perfect ingredient
Don’t settle for the sound which seems most expedient

There is no substitution for that one perfect word
Which will get the page read and your stories all heard
There is music to language, each word has a beat
To get you nodding your head and tapping your feet

Each word has a sound, whether they run short or long
They are notes in the verse of a sentence’s song
Choose each one wisely, place them all in a group
Then share a savory spoon full of syllable soup

Buy Syllable Soup (and 100 other poems!) for just $2.99.

Filed Under: Children's Poetry, Poetry

Can Vocabulary Be Too Rich For Children?

October 12, 2011 By Sean Platt 15 Comments

Once upon a time, I wasn’t a writer.

My best friend and wife, Cindy, left her job at the school district, I left the family flower shop I’d loved for 12 years, and we opened a preschool together, so we could be with our two children, Ethan and Haley, for as much of their first five years as we possibly could.

We ran the preschool for several years. We had a blast in tandem. One of my duties as co-teacher, administrator, chef and resident clown was to read to the wee-ones. All day, every day.

Cindy had 17 years worth of teaching materials, and apparently a half dozen decades worth of books. Approximately 7,321 boxes were stacked in our attic and piled beside every shelf in the house. Yet, despite the abundance, I felt like I was reading the same thing over and over and over again.

I won’t say I’m easily bored, but I’ve heard that I’m pretty annoying when I am.

Cindy had been lovingly nagging me for nearly 10 years by that time, telling me I should start writing. It was her nice way of telling me I talk to much.

Of course she thought I was a good writer. The only thing I ever wrote were love letters to her. But that didn’t mean I had what it took to be a real writer. That wasn’t inside me.

It was the steady brewing of Cindy’s insistence and monotony of repetition which finally led me to try my hand at something I didn’t believe I could do.

Before I was writing blog posts, fiction, or sales copy, I wrote something to serve my day-to-day: children’s poetry. Though truthfully, I didn’t think of it as children’s poetry at all. Still don’t.

It’s the music I hear in my head, set to words.

The first rhyme I ever wrote was a cool little ditty called the Magic Money Tree. It was fun to write, and I did it mostly in my head while doing the dishes, then jotted what I could remember during rest time. I had no idea it was good until I saw the look on Cindy’s face.

She asked how long it took to write. Cindy would’ve called me a liar when I told her how long, but she knew me too well. She started calling the rhymes my magic tricks.

Though she always gives me plenty, I can never get enough of her attention. So I wrote more, a lot more. A few months later I had a couple dozen children’s rhymes that I was suddenly, and rather surprisingly, proud of.

I read the rhymes daily, and all our tiny students sat rapt for every word. Sure, some of their focus could be attributed to my familiar, friendly delivery, but that wouldn’t get the kids repeating my words in the front yard, something they did for no other book.

Perhaps it was because there were no pictures to distract from the words, or perhaps they picked up on a note in my voice that hinted at something special. Either way, I loved writing my rhymes. But even more, I loved how I felt when I read them out loud.

I found an agent. He loved them, too. Unfortunately, he said, he was tone deaf to children’s literature. He forwarded me to a New York agency that specialized in children’s literature.

I was happy. This would be my big break. I was about to be a published author and it had only taken three months.

Yes, I was exactly that naïve.

I queried the agent, but knew I had to stand out. The agency accepted a few new authors each year, and the market was flooded. I had to be clever. So I went online, bought my first domain, learned how to build a website, and put my portfolio online behind a password protected page.

Then I waited. And waited.

And waited some more.

For nothing.

When the agent finally got back to me, after an excruciating 13 weeks, she told me my work was good, great even, but that my vocabulary was “too rich for children.”

I was devastated.

I wasn’t upset at the agency, or the publishing world. A publisher’s job is to make money. They buy what they know they can sell, and they can only sell what is dictated by the marketplace. Yet, I found the rejection a cruel condemnation on our nation’s present, and a chilling harbinger of a humbled future, especially when I read to a tiny army of curious pre-schoolers who enthusiastically recited the rhymes, and were all the smarter for it.

Children do need simple language, but they also need nuance and complexity and rhythm and joy. They need their rubber band to get stretched, and the opportunity to learn all they don’t yet know.

I bought the Writer Dad domain the following weekend.

I would build my own audience, bypass the publishers, and sell direct.

It’s been a long road, and it’s taken three years, but I’ve come full circle.

Out of everything I’ve written, Syllable Soup, my new collection of children’s poems is Cindy’s favorite, by far. It’s been a beautiful ride getting it to Kindle together.

Fiction is ridiculous fun, and I love connecting with an audience online. But there is nothing like the pure music of language that surfaces through rhythm and rhyme.

I hope you love these songs as much as we have. You can get the Kindle version of Syllable Soup here. It’s only $2.99, but we’ll be running them regularly on the site as well.

Writer Dad

As Fresh As The Air In Ohio

October 11, 2011 By Cindy Leave a Comment

The dawn of WriterDad was a pregnancy.

Exciting, uncertain; a relentless onslaught of mental, physical and emotional work.

The constant slog, my endeavor to understand everything happening in a world that didn’t quite make sense to me, implementing everything Sean asked me to do so he could run farther, faster, all while feeding every immediate need of my family.

It was GRUELING.

Every minute was spent planning, writing, executing, reading, trying, failing, thriving and living. It was hard, and non-stop, but I was happy.

This was Sean’s calling. Everything about it felt natural and real.

Our most priceless possession those first three years was our family faith in Daddy and his BIG, beautiful brain. We never wavered, not once.

Our family never strayed from the trail of our ideals and ideas, family and work ethic. In spite of the never-ending demands we carved a beautiful life for our children, and held our space without surrendering to resignation, or caring what naysayers said of our dream.

We modeled perseverance, a relentless work ethic, problem solving, ownership, and how to tolerate unfortunate circumstances with optimism and pride.

Our children have been reared with an appreciation for simplicity and powerful language.

The most crushing part of these last three years was the endless exhaustion, quarreling with critics and ignoring the naysayers, protecting my children and ultimately having to say sayonara to the home and equity I thought we’d have for a larger piece of the rest of my life.

But I loved Writer Dad, the site and the man.

I’ve always been its biggest fan. I’ve had every post read out loud before it’s been published. I love the thousands of snapshots that fill up my iPhoto, but those pictures are nothing compared to the way Sean captures our family.

I was sad to see WriterDad fading away. But it was a luxury at a time when milk seemed expensive.

He made the right move; focused, made everything work. But I felt like the beautiful permanence he’d started was slipping away.

I think WriterDad meant something different for everyone who read it. For me, it was about capturing time. It is our family archive, inspiration, and recorded journey as a couple working hard to raise an amazing business and two more amazing children.

WriterDad is where Sean’s passion and love for language shines for the world as brightly as it has for me in the last 14 years’ worth of privacy and whispers.

I’ve never met anyone with such a beautiful way of harmonizing life and purpose with words in a way that feels like front porch chatter, that always leaves you craving more.

Watching everything finally come together has been like the first taste of a perfect simmering soup, then popping the cork from a beautiful bottle of wine. Mesmerizing.

An explosion of Hell yeah chased by a cool drink of water.

Sean is in constant creation; moving, making things better, and finding new ways to crystalize thoughts; thinking out and around and then kicking the box, sending it into the sky where it detonates, multiplies and rains around us.

All like as if it was nothing.

I call Sean’s writing his magic tricks because he can take nothing and turn it into something that leaves you thinking, weeping or laughing. Hell, he makes sales copy exciting.

Sean is wonderfully, beautifully exhausting.

Finally, things are slowing enough for me to enjoy everything to its fullest, all at once.

Life is as fresh as the air in Ohio.

I am looking forward to hearing and reading WriterDad’s natural cadence, and filling our archives with new stories for our children’s forever.

WriterDad is where it all started, the good old days, a scrolling timeline documenting our years as a family with passion for life.

I am also looking forward to holding hands with my Sean, skipping rope together and contributing to the success of this site.

I hope you enjoy the extra voice. As Sean says, “life’s better with the right words.”

Filed Under: Writing

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