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What Matters Most: Reflecting
When you’re about to launch another book into the universe, you have to keep yourself grounded. You can’t set your expectations too high, and you can’t set them too low. You have to keep your feet firmly planted where they are and do the best that you can to spread the word about your books and your writing because it is all about choices: you have chosen this path of self-publishing. When I begin to become frenzied and nervous, I remind myself over and over again why I do this type of challenging work on the side and why I invest so much time in it. I have to remember…
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The Case for Teaching: Inspiring Students AND Inspired by Students
It’s Sunday morning, and I’m sitting on my porch writing this post and looking at this glorious day sipping my cup of coffee from my Yeti (which keeps it INCREDIBLY hot, let me just say). In a little while, my daughter and I will head to my parents’ house and sit by their pool and spend time with my brother and his family who are visiting. My son and husband will go play golf–a ritual they’ve tried to do on one day of the weekend. I love that they do this, as my son has one year left of high school before he enters college. I love my summers; they…
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Celebrating 6 Years of Blogging with “The Best of” Steph’s Scribe
* * * We all say it. Time flies. Before you know it, my kids will be done with high school and college and I’ll be retired, sitting alongside my husband on a beach somewhere sipping something with an umbrella in it and attempting to play golf. Well, that’s the dream, at least. Yesterday marked six (6) years of blogging. Six years. It kind of blew me away this morning, but it reminds us what a love for something and a little discipline can do for us. At the minimum, I blog one day a week; most weeks, I blog twice. It’s not always easy coming up with things to…
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White Hot and Passionate
I’m one of the lucky ones. Today, as it often happens when the semester begins, and as I was lecturing about feature writing and discussing the introductory chapter of our textbook, the reality of what I do for a living hit me. It often hits me over the head as a big, huge reminder of how lucky I am to have found my niche, my passion, and a sense of happiness that one doesn’t always feel from a job: I have a career I love. Helping students become better writers, more appreciative readers, and better analyzers of the written word makes me happy. As I presented the list of award-winning…
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Why You Will Fail to Have A Great Career
I only have time for a quick post today as there are only hours left in our spring semester, but this was on my mind. If you’re like me and you love learning, you may be addicted to the Ted Talks at Ted.com. I’ve found these 15-30 minute speeches on a variety of topics educational, thought-provoking, and persuasive. There’s a certain sense you get when you’re watching them that they are uniquely Ted–they are uniquely asking you to consider something. As a final exam in our magazine class, I asked two pointed questions. The first was about Larry’s Smith’s notion regarding his thoughts on “Why You Will Fail to Have…
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20 Years and Counting The Pleasures
I distinctly remember Beth, my neighbor at the time, and the assistant in the Humanities department, asking me the question: “Could you teach a public speaking class?” “Yes,” I said. “I was a mass communication major with a minor in speech communication.” It was the Thursday before Labor Day, and the course at the community college was scheduled to begin on Tuesday. In a matter of days, I read the textbook, outlined the goals of the course, and wrote my first syllabus on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland, my friends encouraging me as I scribbled in my spiral notebook and they helped me brainstorm ideas. On Tuesday night of…
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The Fortune Teller: A Piece of Flash Fiction
What is Flash Fiction? It’s telling a short story in a limited amount of words. Some call Flash Fiction a story in 300 words, 500 words, or under 1,000 words. There are varying degrees of word counts for this type of writing, and some Flash Fiction definitions include a word count of 1,500 words. In today’s case, I’ve told a little story in 586 words. Usually with Flash Fiction, there is a clear beginning, a middle, and a wrap up. THE FORTUNE TELLER “That boy loves you,” the old woman next door calls to me as she sees Sam drive away. She is sitting on her stoop in the 98…
