What Brings Me Joy

I’m applying for a grant, and even if I don’t get it, the application questions have taught me a lot. The hardest question was: What is your creative practice?

Huh? I’m a writer. I write. Isn’t that enough?

Well, no, not for this grant. So I thought harder and realized that one creative practice has threaded itself through my entire writing career; I have just never articulated it. So here goes:

My creative practice is that I love love love to learn new things. I start accumulating really fascinating information that fills me up until I’m like a balloon ready to burst, then I share what I’ve learned with others. Learning isn’t enough—it’s passing on this cool stuff that gives me the greatest joy. (Did you know that researchers use dogs to sniff out whale poop floating on the ocean? Did you know that there are 300 kinds of ice? Did you know that Van Gogh probably didn’t kill himself?) This is what has informed my writing—both for adults and children—and has probably made me an obnoxious dinner party guest, the one whose passions consume all courses of the meal ‘cause I can’t stop sharing. 🙂

My memoir, Hit by a Farm, came about because I wanted to share all the amazing things I’d learned about sheep. The Compassionate Carnivore happened because I wanted to share what I’d learned as a farmer about raising livestock humanely. Sheepish happened because I fell in love with wool and my editor insisted I write a memoir instead of a book about wool. So I cleverly wrote a book about wool disguised as a memoir.