Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. The blog name refers to the mythical pact made between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House and still miraculously in print.
Since March, writer and former student Jen Breach has helped me manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog. They have lined up and conducted author/illustrator interviews and invited and coordinated guest posts. That support has helped me get through weeks when I’ve been in edit-copyedit-proofing mode, and it’s also introduced me to writers and books I might not have found otherwise. Our overlapping interests have led to posts for which I might not have had the time or attention-span. It’s the beauty of shared circles—Venn diagrams, anyone?
There is No Map for This: Guest Post from Tom Birdseye
This title is a writer’s dream. Take the words “there is no map for this” and you can use them as preface for anything doubtful, anything scary, a day gone wrong, a question unanswered.
You can use them to refer to life itself.
Fertile Ground for a Dialectic
by Tom Birdseye
Jacket! Draft! Trilogy!
I wrote Book Uncle and Me without a thought about who it might be for. I wrote it because the story kept scratching at the inside of my brain and wouldn't leave me alone. It was originally published by Scholastic India. I never thought I would ever write a sequel.
Only a couple of years ago, when I was doing a zoom presentation during the Covid years, a child in the audience asked, "Is there going to be a second book?” The question stayed with me, although I didn't have a coherent answer for it at the time.
What happened when? The challenge of writing a companion book
I started writing the text of a possible companion book to Out of the Way! Out of the Way! last year, with a focus on water and with a girl as protagonist, a contrast in my mind to the earlier story about a boy and a road and a tree.
I thought I’d written a tidy picture book text, stayed true to my young character, followed more or less the shape of the previous story.
