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
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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
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
This morning I spent more time not writing at this computer than I did writing. Way more. I must have surfed and procrastinated for 45 minutes before I got myself going. And now I have to get in the shower to start my day. Often writing looks like for me. A lot of procrastination. A… Read more
A wise teacher once laid out all of the English tenses in a way that made sense to me. I am sorry to say that I don’t remember her name. She was a guest lecturer in a class I took through Seattle University. I remember, for some reason, that we were at Seattle Pacific University… Read more
When I was in Germany, I interviewed to teach English as a second language long before I had credentials. This was in (pause for effect) 1992. I had helped in a few EFL classrooms but never studied English grammar the way a second language teacher would. The young beautiful woman interviewing smiled as she asked… Read more
When my family and I moved into a new home, many of our neighbors greeted us. The two families on either side of us welcomed us, told us all about the neighborhood watch and made sure we had the phone numbers of the neighborhood on a gridded map. One neighbor noticed our dog Remington and… Read more