Birthdays: Sigmund Freud (1856), Gaston Leroux (1868), Harry Golden (1902), Harry Martinson (1904), Leo Lionni (1910), Randall Jarrell (1914), Theodore White (1915), Orson Welles (1915), Ted Lewin (1935), Barbara McClintock (1955), Jeffrey Deaver (1950),

Gaston Leroux, a French author, is most well known for his novel “The Phantom of the Opera”

Harry Martinson won the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Leo Lionni was a four-time Caldecott Award winner.

Randall Jarrell was the US Poet Laureate from 1956-1958.

Ted Lewin won the Caldecott Honor in 1994 for “Peppe the Lamplighter”

Quote: “Outlining is the most efficient way to structure a novel to achieve the greatest emotional impact. The most breathtaking prose and brilliantly drawn characters are wasted if the plot meanders and digresses. Outlining lets you create a framework that compels your audience to keep reading from the first page to the last…Best of all, once the outline is finished, you can write the book very quickly and in any order.” – Jeffrey Deaver

Tip: Don’t forget to get up and move every thirty minutes or so. It refreshes your brain and gets the blood flowing in your body.

Jumpstart: You’re at a large, unfamiliar hotel and get off the elevator on the wrong floor. Just as the doors close behind you, you see something you shouldn’t. What do you see? What happens next?