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Advice to Beginning Writers: Start By Telling Your Family Stories
Today in our second to last class of feature writing, the students had the opportunity to ask any remaining questions they wanted or make a comment about anything related to writing. During this session, they posed great questions, from how to find a good story angle to how to start writing in their spare time. My answer on the latter one was simple, and it’s one of the biggest regrets I have in terms of my family’s history: you should write down your family stories. As all of my grandparents and great-grandparents are long gone, so, too, are some of their stories. However, those stories that have lived on through…
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What Writers Owe To Themselves
Writers—Do you do some of your best thinking in the shower? Typically, my best ideas come to me at the most inopportune moments when I do not have paper and pencil handy, like when I’m commuting or observing something with a cart full of groceries or taking a walk through the neighborhood. Sometimes the creative juices flow when I’m not prepared to greet them, much in the same way a hostess of a party who is still in sweats and inappropriately dressed as her first guest rings the doorbell is not ready. These creative juices are important, and if we are lucky, they flow directly and consistently into our writing,…
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Sharing Some Good News
While I continue to wrap up the editing and preparation of my fictional work, “Baseball Girl,” and still strive to release it in August, more good news came to pass. Along with my colleagues at Stevenson University—Chip Rouse & Leeanne Bell McManus—we are about to embark on a new challenge: writing an Event Planning textbook. We signed our contract yesterday and celebrated. We’ve been working on this concept for the last year, and are now ready to begin this process and start writing. We are so pleased and are all ready for this exciting, new challenge. Congrats to my fellow authors, Chip & Leeanne. I am so honored to work…
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Academic Writing According to Calvin
While doing a little research for a paper I’m going to write this year, I came across this little cartoon. My kids are big fans of Calvin & Hobbes, so because of them and the research I’ve begun, this struck me funny today. Thought I’d share…
