Nothing Human is Alien to Me

I woke Saturday morning to the news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. Oh no. Oh, oh no. Not now. I closed Facebook and that flood of posts. I opened it again. Channel grief into action, I read. I looked away. I have these elder heroes, people of those earlier generations whom I've imagined...

The Joys of Simple Writing Prompts–#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

This week's post forms part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop, in which writers at all stages of their careers come together to share knowledge. It's a good group. Check out the posts of others here. In this second week of school this year, our student creative writing group commenced. Two budding student leaders...

Parable of the Earth’s Crust

“Parable of the Earth’s Crust” might read like a metaphor, but I don’t think it’s one. We are forever our own frames of reference, laying the world out before us in bald human terms. In this short piece, let's try to turn that on its head. There it is again. Turning something on its head....

Tone and Mood: Emotion in Our Writing

The school year has begun, and with most students arrived and out of quarantine, things feel more normal than they have in months. I've taken on two second-year Language & Literature courses from a colleague, and in a lesson reviewing the myriad ways we might analyze texts, one lovely pair of words emerged that will...

Finding time to write

Work went from zero to one hundred more abruptly that it ever has. Two weeks ago, that last easy week of summer, I wrote an hour each day, completed consistent thirty-minute workouts, weekly video-calls with family and friends, eight hours of sleep each night. Two weeks, and I feel already wrung dry. Although they're all...

Register: Language Formality in Creative Writing–#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

This week's post is part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop where you will find a community of writers sharing tips and tools for the craft and business of writing. Do check them out! It wasn't since the impromptu graduation ceremony we held in March that I have had such a busy week. Staff...

The Story Journey

I'm starting to think that anything can be a story. My husband tells me about his job search after college. What a story! I am eating chicken surrounded by forty of the loudest teenagers on the planet. Story! It keeps raining and the pumpkin plant keeps blooming all the same. Story. Quarantined students are roaming...

Writing and Mental Health

I get wrapped up in my own head sometimes. I twist around my thoughts. Despairing at the world or spinning in moot worries, few things can pull me out of looping thoughts effectively as writing. Writing helps us process our emotions. It is a way to get outside oneself, as it is paradoxically too the...

Glaciers, Mountains, and the Virus

In the rush through of this so different summer, at last the rain has broken. Three days of sun erupted miraculously into the forecast, and in a fevered burst we made our travel plans. Covid-19 seems to be controlled in Norway. The country mostly reopened in mid-May, and new case numbers have held low at...

A Breath, a Break

I've slowed down. I'm typing a few lines this morning, with vague direction. I've written little this last week--a few brief edits to a short story, an idle look at upcoming submissions windows. What do I have today that I can blog about? Perhaps only that very hitch in my routine: the slowing down, the...