Every few months I like to assess my writing and see where I’ve struggled. Did I have problems developing plot, creating relatable characters, or perhaps building a fantastical world? Where ever my struggles may lie, I choose one to try to improve upon. As an educator, I’ve come to appreciate that there are a few fundamental tricks when it comes to teaching (and thus, learning.) First, the same approach doesn’t work for all students, so approaching the material in different … Read More »

Lost in the murk of pandemic this April is our annual Earth Day. It shouldn’t be. The health crisis is the new baseline for discussion of almost everything, including environmental issues, and by extension, writing about environment. We all want COVID-19 to just go away and stop killing and let us get back to the business of living. Yet a captivating side effect of the virus has arisen. Earth, it seems, has gotten a chance to draw a breath. In … Read More »

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world. This is our 24th year of praising poetry in April. The poet and physician William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963) expressed poetry’s value this way: “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” … Read More »

I don’t know about you, but my writing has gone downhill since COVID-19 starting making its ripples felt here in the good ‘ole US of A. Within days after spring break, my university closed its doors to in-person instruction, and I’ve had to transition my entire curriculum to an online format (a rather arduous task, I might add.) On top of that, I’ve been busy with everything related to COVID. It’s been an exhausting few weeks and the uncertainty of … Read More »

While we are all stuck in our houses and busy stressing out, wouldn’t it be great if there was a quick way to improve your health with the tools you already have at home? There is, and it’s not just free weights. It’s free writing. If you have a pen and paper or a keyboard you have everything you need. We have thirty years of social psychology and physiological data to prove that simple journaling can have an immediate positive … Read More »

We’ve entered a sudden new reality which will dictate our lives for a while. Certainly for weeks, maybe months. Maybe more. A switch flipped and we find ourselves in strange times, careful of how we move, touch, work, eat, and—well, just about everything. Many of us are self-quarantining. We think about what it all means. Many of us will express those thoughts in our fiction and poetry. A classic novel of the 19th century provides one writer’s unflinching approach to … Read More »