This Quarantine Is Brought to You by the Letter S

S is for the Sense I got at the grocery store on the first night that something had shifted in the way we all saw the stripped shelves. S is for last Sunday, when I stood in a church with nearly empty pews and led the psalm from the choir loft, just me and the

Adventure Time!

Happy New Year, reader-friends! It has been quite a while since I posted on this blog, but I had a busy year of writing in 2018: started some new projects, attended some fabulous conferences, won a couple of lovely awards, and completed a lot of editing and proofreading work. I’m glad to be back here

Sixteen Things to Tell My Sixteen-Year-Old Self

Today is my 32nd birthday, or as I’ve been thinking of it, my “double-sweet-sixteen.” And that’s gotten me thinking about my first sweet sixteen: who I was (and wasn’t), what I knew (and didn’t), and what I would tell myself if I could go back to February 2002. With that as inspiration, I’d like to

The Importance of “Show, Don’t Tell”

Three Sundays ago, I had the pleasure of attending a writers’ retreat. One of the workshops there focused on the concept of “show, don’t tell,” one of the bedrock principles of effective writing. “Show, don’t tell” means that a writer should describe characters and actions in ways that draw readers into the moment. A writer

Page One

This is the excerpt for your very first post.

Just A Chair

This is a chair. Just a chair. Its seat is made of straw. Straw is not a strong material. The first Little Pig built his house out of piled-up straw. He is presented as an example of recklessness and shortsightedness. For good reason—who would build a house with something so weak? Each piece of straw