I don’t always discuss the specifics of my life, but these are too good not to share. If you have been reading as of late, you know that I am taking a year away from being a classroom teacher to focus on my writing. It is also time for me to reflect on my career…
Tag: writing
ideas I share about the act and process of writing
being accessible
I am away from the classroom, so I don’t have my captive audience, the people who had to listen to me, or at least pretend to. I tried hard to not be a teacher who was alienating or direct by tunnel vision, I designed activities and an environment to engage students with their own thinking,…
“I’m taking the year off…to…um…write”
I am embarking on a strange new way of living, one that is structured only by my own self-discipline, rewarded in a currency of my own making, and with a high possibility of some type of failure. After ten years of teaching in a formal high school classroom, I am leaving behind that structure to live amongst…
from the desk of Marlon James
The author posted this note on FaceBook and it instantaneously illuminated for me a sensation I hadn’t been able to completely define. Marlon James Yesterday at 7:50pm · So I’m on a panel last night and somebody asks, how does one write when overcome with emotion, mostly grief I’m assuming. How does one get words…
When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving
in the backseat of my car are my own sons, still not yet Tamir’s age, already having heard me warn them against playing with toy pistols, though my rhetoric is always about what I don’t like, not what I fear, because sometimes I think of Tamir Rice & shed tears, Source: When I Think of…
rest-abundant muse
The restless muse The term ought not be restless, rather it should be rest-abundant, my muse has been dormant for too long. Now it tugs and begs and cajoles and dares me to feed it. Where once I was content to do what had to be done, my inner imp continues to berate me with…
Escape is inevitable.
My universe has been tilting over the last year onto a new axis. Exterior markers that had defined my world shook and crumbled. Change in how I see myself is inevitable. Everywhere I turn signals point onto the next highway I am mapping. Five recent articles in major publications are all versions of pieces I have wrote,…
writing takes so much out of me. I am in a new land, with plenty to explore, but the words just follow me everywhere. Shame, queasy, face crinkled in confusion, seeking respite. I just want it to be over, I just want it to be done, and then what, stash it away or gasp share…
some of my truths
I am not sure I want biological children of my own I love being an aunt. I am terrible and know better but spoiling them is one of my favorite things. I love being a teacher, and I think that I am good at it. I want more freedom in my life. I am a…
only fools fall in love…with words
who would ever be foolish enough to fall in love with words, words are devilish, hiding among us waiting to pounce words contain dangers unforeseen, and we walk among them blind as can be words can communicate so much, or nothing at all. images, scents, sensations can be understood throughout this wide world. even numbers…
fear of mediocrity
I was a mediocre photographer. It was one of my creative outlets when I was younger, an outlet I thought could perhaps be refined and polished. I took a few great photographs, but I could not be consistent nor obsessive in the necessary way an artist must be. I learned the core components of a…
chick lit genres
As far I can tell and have encountered, the majority of books with female protagonists are tales of survival. The moral of each story being that a woman’s strength is like no other, and the reader can be inspired to find their own strength in the reading. Women survive it all, and sometimes thrive, but…
collective failure 