The Outsiders’ Book Club: Weyward by Emilia Hart
Weyward was my introduction to Emilia Hart, as well as the beginnings of a beautiful friendship with a colleague of mine. Around the time when I had thought I would never read or write again with the same passion as I had as a teenager, I was invited to join a book club at my…
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Overcoming Creative Cowardice
When I was in high school, our art teacher wanted us to come up with a mural to hang in the school cafeteria. It was a design project, and we had to show and discuss the steps we took to create the mural. I was getting into political and philosophical ideas at the time, often…
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Writing a Novel: Eclipse
I finished my fist novel when I was sixteen. I got it copyrighted and remember the excitement when my certificate arrived in the mail. I once thought to query it, but I never did. Perhaps I thought it wasn’t good enough. Perhaps more work needed to be done. Twenty years later, and I never finished…
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A Perk of Being a Slow Reader
With school starting soon, teachers and instructors have to return to the headquarters for rounds of professional development. One of my friends and I attended a particular training on reading testing and diagnostics where we had to learn how to navigate an application that tested and recorded the Words Per Minute that a person could…
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The Outsiders’ Book Club: Harlem by Langston Hughes
A Reflection… My favorite poem of all time is Harlem by Langston Hughes. The cunning rhythm is heavy with the reality that dreams for the future are fickle and unpredictable whether chased or forgotten in an unforgiving reality. Even when they are achieved, they manifest as both gifts and curses, revealing our authenticity, whether that…
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An Era of Distraction: Thoughts on Distancing Oneself from Post-Modern Amusements
If I had a time machine and could send just one message to my past self, it would be, “Remove the distractions.” I hope you never have the horrible realization of how many days, weeks, months, or (heaven forbid) years summed up and listed on a STEAM gaming account. I probably don’t have as many…
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Rescuing a Side of Me
There is terror in this first step: writing about writing. I’ll never forget the award my 4th grade teacher gave me at the end of the school year. It was a blue ribbon that read, “Can tell a story with a single picture.” Although I no longer have that precious blue ribbon, the sentiment stuck…
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Galls & Walnuts 