Next to voice, the hardest thing to teach, practice, and master is point of view. When I first taught creative writing to high schoolers, things were much simpler. First person, major or minor character. Third person, omniscient or limited. By the time I started teaching creative writing to seniors at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, […]
I first started researching the 1900 Storm, the deadliest natural disaster ever to hit American soil, when I was 15 years old. In those pre-Internet days, research meant going to the library, reading books and other primary source materials (some of which was on microfilm and microfiche), and taking copious notes in spiral notebooks. […]
During the time I served as a school improvement consultant, one of the trendy instructional strategies was word walls. Whatever the subject, one could build vocabulary by splashing pertinent words around the environment. Student-generated word walls that spilled over walls, ceilings, floors, and out into hallways became the rage, and we even had contests and […]
I’ve traveled to two graduations in the past few weeks, and it’s been loads of heart-warming fun—but tiring! I wonder how I traveled for work 50 weeks of the year and still managed a home life, a social life, exercise, etc. Now when I’m out of town, I can’t wait to get back to my […]
One of my favorite jobs was being the Fine Arts Chairperson at Thornton Township High School, Harvey, Illinois. I came to the position in a circuitous way, since I had previously taught English. The school district had just restructured departments and consolidated the music, art, foreign language, and speech departments into a single department, labeled […]
Writing short has always been a challenge for me. I have an easier time writing a hundred-thousand-word novel than a ten-thousand-word short story. A five-hundred-word book description is even more difficult—how to capture the gist of a whole book in five hundred words??? But the hardest and most pressure-fraught task is coming up with a […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about book clubs, and I’ve known a lot of them over the years. Big ones, small ones, literary ones, social ones, online ones, in-person ones. I’ve belonged to a few, myself, but in recent years I’ve attended mostly book clubs where my books were being discussed. And even those have […]
When I was a junior in college, as an English major, I was required to take a course in John Milton. Taught by a professor who had made Milton his life’s work and who strove to model himself after the legendary poet, the course had the reputation for being the hardest one on campus. I […]
By Saralyn Richard Once in a while in the writers’ journey, serendipitous moments occur, and they seem magical. I’ve had three such moments recently and will share them with you. First of all, I’m writing an historical mystery that takes place in my hometown, Galveston, Texas, after the 1900 Storm, which is still the deadliest […]