Hope Vestergaard, Children's Author

This is my office.

This is what my desk looks like after a brainstorm. I like to imagine that ideas fly around the room and and blow the papers right off the desk. My office looks like this when I have a new idea, it looks like this when I'm working hard on an old idea, and it especially looks like this when I am feverishly working to meet a deadline. (As a matter of fact, this is when great new ideas are most likely to sneak up on me!)

My office isn't always messy. I like to clean up when I get stuck on my writing. Tidying up my desk helps me clean up my mind. Sometimes I clean up when I'm procrastinating... if my office looks too clean, it's because I am avoiding doing something I don't want to do.

There's always a pile of books by my desk. It changes from day to day and week to week. That pile is my homework...to be a good writer, you have to read, A LOT.

The big red barn you can see through the window was built in 1909. We're fixing it up to get horses. Sometimes our cows come up to the fence (which you can't see in this picture) and watch me work through the window.

This is Buck, my assistant.

Buck likes to curl up in this chair and snore--I mean, supervise--while I'm working. Whenever I get stuck in my writing, Buck and I take a long walk to stretch our legs and shake off the cobwebs. Buck is a big reader -- you can find his favorite titles in The Book Nook.

When I do school visits, kids always ask me about Buck, so here's his story.

We were looking for some kind of a Labrador retriever. We did an internet search to find all the lab mixes that were up for adoption in our area. Buck was being fostered by a woman who got him from a shelter in Indiana. When we went to his foster mom's house, she had more than twenty dogs, more than twenty-two cats, plus ferrets, rats, chinchillas and who knows what else! All these animals under one roof in a regular house in a regular neighborhood! All the dogs were very hyper, but not Buck. We had treats for him but the other dogs kept stealing them. He didn't even care. He was at the bottom of the pecking order and he didn't expect much. When we brought him home, he didn't even know how to play. If we threw him a ball or stick, he'd just look at it. So sad. Whenever we came home, he'd get so happy he'd run up to us and roll over to show us his belly, which is dog talk for "You're the boss of me" and "Give me a rub!" Now he knows how to play catch and many other games. He taught us to play hide and seek and his favorite place to hide is under pine trees.

Do you have a story to tell? Children's author Rhonda Gowler Greene's website has a great list of resources for young writers.

A Few of My Favorite Books