(Content warming: suicide) I originally wrote this post (and shared it in my enewsletter) close to the start of the school year, when a tragedy struck my small town: A teenager had disappeared and was found dead. It had a huge impact on everyone in my community, even those of us who didn’t know the… Read more »
Writing Tips
Story Bite 27: Shifting Perspective
My writing tip for this month is shifting perspective: describing something that might inspire a strong negative reaction in people with positive words. This can be a fun linguistic game, but also a chance to think of how we view things beyond our own initial perspective. In this exercise, we’re going to: Describe something disgusting… Read more »
Story Bite 26: Starting a Story (With Just Three Words)
For many students who struggle to write, coming up with an idea—or even a sentence— that feels like a good one is one of the biggest challenges. Often, writers are told to just get words on a page, and the rest will come. But what if your initial words look pitiful and nothing else comes?… Read more »
Story Bite 25: Using Mentor Texts
Mentor texts are books that inspire us, books we love that bring great pleasure to our reading—but also can help our writing too. In this post, I’ll explore some ways to use a mentor text to inspire an idea, or just help you with a scene. 1. Choose a book you love, one that inspires… Read more »
A Writer’s New Year’s Resolution
As I’m about to start the New Year with my third book coming up and another new book on the horizon, I want to vow something to myself as a writer. This is something I’ve struggled with from time to time over the past two years, and I know other authors struggle with it too…. Read more »
Story Bite 13: The Very Beginning (Part 2)
In the last story bite, we came up with an idea. Now we’re going to put that idea on the page. And what we’re looking for is…an opening line. First, I want everyone to know that it is extremely rare for a professional author to nail that opening line in the first writing of the… Read more »
Story Bite 12: The Very Beginning (Part 1)
One of the hardest parts of writing is getting started. This is true for a lot of students I speak with, but also for professional authors. This Story Bite (the first of two) will help you with one part of getting your work of fiction (or nonfiction, though my examples here are fiction) underway. This… Read more »
Year-End Writing Tips
These tips (which I first posted on Twitter tonight) are meant for people writing middle grade fiction. They come from discussions that I’ve had with my son about the books we’ve read and the books I’ve written. He’s an avid reader of middle grade fiction, and the first reader of every one of my books,… Read more »
These lilacs have the most glorious scent, but are pretty modest in their way. The former colleague I lost over the weekend to cancer would have liked them for both those reasons.
#flowers #grief #lilacs
It’s been a tough week. A moment with a few flowers can make a difference.
#flowers #azalea #springflowers