Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin (1706), Charles Brown (1771), Ellen Wood (1814), Anne Bronte (1820), Compton Mackenzie (1883), Ronald Firbank (1886), Leonard D. White (1891), Neville Shute (1899), William Stafford (1914), Robert Cormier (1925), John Bellairs (1938), Suzanne Berne (1961), Sebastian Junger (1962), Wendy Mass (1967)

Leonard D. White was an American historian and posthumous winner of the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for History.

Neville Shute was a British novelist and aeronautical engineer famous for his book “A Town Like Alice”

William Stafford was the US Poet Laureate in 1970 and Oregon Poet Laureate in 1975.

Robert Cormier was famous for his YA fiction, especially the often censored “The Chocolate War”

Sebastian Junger is best known for his novel “The Perfect Storm”

Quote: “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin

Tip: A lot of writers find that writing by hand with pen (or pencil) and paper gets their brain working better than typing on a computer. This then becomes the first draft that you edit as you type it in.

Jumpstart: Describe a person or place using only one sense – e.g. a kitchen using only the sense of touch, not smell.