Birthdays: Carl Sandburg (1878), Khalil Gibran (1883?), John Holmes (1904), Wright Morris (1910), Alan Watts (1915), E.L. Doctorow (1931), Allen Appel (1945), Barry Lopez (1945), Carolyn D. Wright (1940), Elizabeth Strout (1956), Nigella Lawson (1960), Antonya Nelson (1961), Ree Drummond (1969), Karin Slaughter (1971)

Carl Sandburg is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

Kahlil Gibran is best known for his 1923 book “The Prophet”

Wright Morris is a two-time winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

Carolyn Wright won the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry

Elizabet Strout won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “Olive Kitteridge”

Quotes: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L.Doctorow

“Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.” – Carl Sandburg

Tip: Use all five senses in writing. If your character walks past a bakery, let the reader smell the aromas. Her perfume? Have him inhale deeply. How does the wind in the trees sound? How does his clammy shirt feel on a hot day? Give us details that put us there with the characters, but be careful not to overdo.

Jumpstart: You character is a secret agent with many aliases. Select five names to represent his or her different personalities and describe how the character dresses or changes his/her appearance, job, and background information to become each persona.