Lila starts, awakening on the family room couch, a blanket noosed about her torso and legs. In her nightmare, a monstrous tree leafed in violent red thrust skyward along their yard’s furthermost edge, its roots mounded with freshly turned soil like a grave. Her grave. She’d grabbed a shovel. Advanced, then stopped. Poison ivy, her …
As I write, Thanksgiving is a few days away, but I’m already listening to Christmas music while cross-stitching ornaments. Usually I wait until after Santa arrives in Herald’s Square to start prepping, but this year I started early. The ornaments take awhile, and the music… I credit my son. Recently, my daughter accompanied me on …
Last week, I discussed how reading Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” deepened my understanding of two crossroads in my writing journey. This week, I want to discuss how reading literature with a writer’s perspective can inform and improve our own creative writing. To do so, we’ll again consider Frost’s poem (Read it here), and …
So in August, I finally made my new year’s writing resolution. Not for the calendar year, dear reader. The academic year. My resolution? To write and post an original microflash every Monday. Three reasons. First, I’m a very slooooow drafter and wanted to practice increasing my productivity. Second, I knew time would shrink even further …
Sometime mid-spring 2020, administration allowed faculty and staff to return to our building to retrieve personal belongings and teacher resources abandoned so abruptly when Covid forced school closures March 13. The four large totes I carried home contained the books and binders I needed to carry my classes through June, as well as two items …
For those of you unfamiliar with the challenge, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Beginning every November 1, writers of all ages and abilities set out to write a 50,000 word novel by midnight November 30. I planned to participate. I even signed up. I had a project and a schedule in place. Then …
The venetian blind Lady Liberty at the heart of “Bring Me Your Yearning” actually existed. In 1986, two days before the 100th anniversary of New York’s original Statue, she mysteriously appeared overnight in the middle of the Susquehanna River near my childhood home of Dauphin, Pennsylvania, seven miles north of the state’s capital. Her origins …
“Lesson Plans” was inspired in part by a series of conversations among my colleagues in various disciplines. Months before Covid-19, remote learning, and our country’s long overdue reckoning with systemic racism, we shared our difficulties about having enough time to plan and teach our core classes effectively, let alone fulfill an ever-increasing list of duties …
Recently, I was invited by StoryADay.org founder Julie Duffy to be a guest on her weekly podcast. I was honored, thrilled, and honestly quite a bit nervous about the interview. However, I needn’t have worried. Julie is a warm and welcoming host in whose care I felt immediately at ease. Chatting with her was like …
FOCUS. And no, its selection has nothing to do with the visual connotation of 2020, though I do appreciate the symmetry. Rather, its selection logically follows my 2019 word, SPEAK. A little context… I’ve been a writer almost as long as I’ve been a reader, but writing–and finding the time to do it well–has almost …
My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann 