Sometimes it’s easy to see the bad things that knock me on my knees or the good things that are so tremendous I don’t feel like I could ever compare. I am not talking about natural events out of our control. I’m talking about what humans are doing to make each others’ lives better or… Read more
2012
In the motivational and educational world, people babble on about writing goals. I ask my students to think about their goals. I ask them to focus on success in their goals and picture what success looks like. We fill out papers that the state tells us we must and I try to infuse the classroom… Read more
I listened to THE BOOK THIEF by Marcus Zusak in the audio book format read by Alan Corduner. Set in Nazi Germany, it’s a somehow new twist on the same tale of Germans living in a repressive regime, sometimes going along and sometimes rebelling against the fascism and murder. Here are the things I adored… Read more
In the days and now a week after NaNoWriMo, I’ve set the novel almost completely aside. I say almost because I’d be fibbing if I said it wasn’t on my mind. It lurks back there and pesters me with ideas about how it could be better. It also growls sometimes about how painful it will… Read more
It seems appropriate that my family should all get the flu the second week of NaNo. My toddler struggled this week with his stomach, I went off food for two days, my husband fell to the bug midweek and the nurses office called me Thursday to rescue my teenager from the office after he lost… Read more
This week I learned a few things. Some I suspected and some I did not. 1. It helps to have many people out there trying to do the same thing. Writers have probably always formed groups and I suppose this is because writing is so lonely that we all want to know someone else is… Read more
I suppose it’s not good to blog about cheating but I’m going to. I just signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Write a Book in a Month) for a novel I’ve already started. I’m using NaNo to get me through the last two thirds of the book. I know. I’m supposed to start from scratch. I… Read more
This post may not appeal to many people who speak English as a first language. But as I explained for the bazillionth time (probably an underestimate) this week how English speakers use those three little words a, an and the, it struck me what a miracle of meaning those three little words convey. So here… Read more