This is something I wrote on my other blog about being a mom and teaching. The struggle is real in teaching right now, and we often get vague ideas as to why. No one is talking about the depth of it. I finally lay my story down in the hopes someone will get something from… Continue reading Monsters in the Closet
Category: Journalism
Shifting Focus
I won't always have a lot of time to write, not like when I was in college the first time. It's spring break. Much to my family's terror, the long buried artist has returned to make the claim on time and writing. For so many years, I've pushed down my first love, writing, so… Continue reading Shifting Focus
Remembering Confidence
I am still here. I am even writing again. You: You mean you stopped? The Craziest Best Professor Ever Creatively, yeah. There was a situation. Something about working extremely hard for an insane professor who said, "You need to forget everything you've ever been told about writing," and a professor who gave straight A education students Cs… Continue reading Remembering Confidence
The One that Keeps Showing Up
Courtesy of http://www.thecommunityarchitect.com/2009/07/29/online-communities-are-key-to-landing-a-decent-job-in-a-down-economy/ Write. Write about … Write about one subject. It seems impossible in a time when everything intermingles. In a class which scares me more than Calculus called literary criticism I've remembered something. Some of the ancient Greek and Roman writers club believed "poets" should focus on one subject. A painting of a… Continue reading The One that Keeps Showing Up
Friday Night Lights: The Thing about Why
Shots echo. Not many. Just enough. Congress votes down new gun law. Children dead – six year olds remebered from Sandy Hook. Once smiling faces not enough to move men and women in big boy and big girl suits. Yesterday, an armed man threatens the school where I used to substitute. The police… Continue reading Friday Night Lights: The Thing about Why
Write like a Turtle, Edit like a Fox
Courtesy of http://fadingamericans.wordpress.com/featured-animals/green-sea-turtle/ The sea turtle, box turtles and large land turtles take their time getting somewhere, but they choose different paths, have a hard shell and get where they're going. Courtesy of http://www.frmheadtotoe.com/2012/10/fox-halloween-tutorial.html The fox watches, waits and listens. Those are essential to editing. When you think you're ready to send a piece out,… Continue reading Write like a Turtle, Edit like a Fox
Courage to Face the Ocean
Journalists require the who, what, when, where and how. Writers need inspiration. Inspiration does not need to be place and time, but a photograph, portrait or a beautiful memory painted in the mind. Writers will work with it. Sometimes the task seems too big and rejections too many. We do not realize all we need… Continue reading Courage to Face the Ocean
Remembering Sandy Hook Elementary
The story is everywhere. You flip from one channel to the other, and you see the broadcast reporters in the same place: Newtown, Conn. The questions are the same. Why would someone shoot twenty children and six school staff? How could this happen? As artists, we seek to discover a character's motive for an action… Continue reading Remembering Sandy Hook Elementary
What to do When Nervous Strikes
Courtesy of http://cartoonstock.com Faces transform into other appearances and shapes. They change from circles to ovals with a rectangular jaw. One after the other—I feel like I watch a parade of constant change goes by. I did watch a parade go by Saturday. By that afternoon, my gut turned green from changes in my schedule… Continue reading What to do When Nervous Strikes
I Will Remember
I will remember beyond the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month. I will remember. Great Uncle Durgin's plane was shot down by the Luftwaffe. His body, never found. His 19 years will not waste away in the Mediterranean Sea. One day—when the time is right—my second child will be named for… Continue reading I Will Remember
Corrie's Season 