I'm a laissez-faire teacher, which is something out-of-control teachers say to make themselves feel better. The truth is, I'm more comfortable allowing my students to talk, so long as I can get them to say, with some degree of accuracy, what I was going to say anyway. Today we did a little self discovery. I …
Tag: on writing
How to be a Writer in November: Show up and Throw up
Want to be a writer? It's as easy as show up and throw up. Write stream-of-consciousness. Write garbage. Write your dreams, your fears, somebody else's fears... What often happens in the show-up-throw-up process is: something awesome makes its way onto the page. Inherent in the process is a throwing-off of the shackles of self-loathing and-- …
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Writing Conference Memoirette
I just attended the Lorain County Library's (awesome!) writer's conference led by Chuck Sambuchino. The most interesting moment of the conference was when Chuck read manuscripts and murdered them in front of us. Until that moment, I'd never actually experienced group tension in the flesh. It was like an invisible spider web stretched across the …
The Things I Carry
"What's it like, being dead?" "...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading." - From Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. This quote bowled me over. Not just because it's a fresh look at death, but because it captures my feelings. While I'm writing I Trespass, I'm "inside a …
The Proper Care and Feeding of the Writers in Your Life – Volume 1
Sometimes you stumble across a literary landmine. Blown away. Can I be infused with this man's sense of humor and word sense? Source: The Proper Care and Feeding of the Writers in Your Life – Volume 1
Flash Fiction for Carrot Ranch
I'm trying to leave my novel alone for a few weeks so I can read it with "fresh" eyes and polish it. Again. This polishing will be the fourth draft on I Trespass. Since I'm not actively writing my novel, my schedule is different. Like: Who moved my cheese? Normally I pick up a thread …
Sherman Alexie and Me
Sometimes you read something so profoundly affecting, you want to grab your bull horn. Not having a cosmic bull horn, I give you, deep, dark, droll reader, some thoughts on Sherman Alexie's powerful education essay "Superman and Me." My reading origin story begins in Title I (translate: "girl's-not-getting-it" or IEP before such things were a …
Zeroflash Fiction: Chernobyl Romantics
On this journey to publishing my novel I often take little tangents, usually in the form of writing competitions. I love the immediacy of the feedback and the stretching prompts. Zeroflash's August competition garnered me an honorable mention from the talented Jan Kaneen. I can't tell you how uplifting it is to have a writer whose work I …
Versatile Blogger Award
ver·sa·tile able to adapt or be adapted to many different functions or activities. A fiction writer must be versatile, if only for the toggle between fantasy and reality. I once woke to the reality I was due to teach a class in ten minutes. What's the big deal? I was an hour away from said …
The Shot: Fiction for Microcosms
Like all the outliers I've covered, this planet was named for some dead Earthian. Back then you could have a star named after yourself for less than the cost of a decent dinner. This man had a hundred stars named after him. Trump XV looked no different than all the others. When the infrastructure goes, …
KL Griffiths 