Awards and Aardvarks

A writer friend just nominated me for the One Lovely Blog Award.  Isn't that great?  And what a nice compliment!  Thank you, Allyn Stotz.  Please check out her blog at http://www.allynstotz.blogspot.com/ for all kinds of neat stuff.

The award carries with it some rules, which are:
   
1.  Accept the award and post it on your blog with the name of the person who nominated you, and give their link.
2.  Pass the award on to 15 others you have discovered recently.
3.  Notify the bloggers that they have been selected for this award.

So here are my nominees:

http://www.claudsy.wordpress.com/
http://www.pimpmynovel.blogspot.com/
http://www.wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com/
http://www.kellyhashway.com/
http://www.ctnyrene.blogspot.com/
http://www.katrinadelallo.blogspot.com/
http://www.childrenspublishing.blogspot.com/
http://www.cynthialeitishsmith.blogspot.com/
http://www.caseylmccormick.blogspot.com/
http://www.thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/
http://www.katielclark.webs.com/
http://www.terriehope.com/
http://www.aleerily.blogspot.com/

Do you know what an aardvark is?  Seriously.  You probably know that he eats ants and termites.  You probably know he lives in South Africa.  But did you know that an aardvark is a living fossil, because he is the only living species of the order Tubulidentata, which was a prehistoric animal species?  Did you know that he has no known relatives, or that there is no other animal even close to him, other than possibly the very rare elephant shrew?

Hmm, you are saying.  So what does an aardvark have to do with writing?  Well, think about if for a moment.  There are two ways to look at an aardcvark from a writer's point of view.  The first is that in many ways, an aardvark is an obscure creature:  aren't there times when we, as writers, feel very obscure?  We look at some of the "big" names in children't literature...Stephanie Meyer, JK Rowling, Laurie Halse Anderson, Ellen Hopkins...and we wonder if we will ever be on equal footing with them, or will we be forever obscure in our own little corner of the writing world?  I don't know about you, but there are many times when I feel very obscure, very much out of the mainstream of writing and publishing, and wonder if I will ever wallk through that portal that separates those who are known in the writing world and those who are not.

The other way to look at the aardvark is that he is an unique animal.  Unique in appearance, in method of operation in so far as his hunting and burrowing rites are concerned, and certainly unique in that there is no other animal like him.  So...are we not also unique in our writing?  In what we write, how we approach writing, the twist we put on our stories, the sometimes strange ideas we come up with, which,  when put on the printed page, turn into marvelous works of literary art?   Is it not to our advantage to consider ourselves as kin to the unique aardvark, who has no equal in the animal universe?

Hmm...well, as you can see, I'm very...um...nostalgic, melancholy,  or maybe...just off the wall in my introspection this morning.  Maybe it's the tsunami that is threatening to destroy our beautiful Central Coast.

Until next time,
Thats a wrap.