Birthdays: Terence Rattigan (1911), Saul Bellow (1915), James Salter (1925), Nat Hentoff (1925), Maurice Sendak (1928), E.O. Wilson (1929), Aranka Siegal (1930), M.C. Beaton (1936), Linda Lael Miller (1949)

Maurice Sendak was an American illustrator and writer of children’s books. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are.

Aranka Siegal was a Newbery Honor recipient for her book “Upon the Head of the Goat” in 1982.

Saul Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times for Herzog, Mr. Sammler’s Planet, and The Adventures of Augie March.

Quote: “A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.” – Terence Rattigan

Tip: Your book will never be finished to your satisfaction. At some point, you need to say “enough” and send it out.

Jumpstart: It’s the middle of the night and your character can’t sleep because they’re too on edge because of… what? Why are they on edge? How do they calm down to sleep?