Tag: WritersLife
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Nanowrimo 2025
It is November again! The best month of the year because it means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has arrived. The time has come to buckle down and write 1666 words per day in a new novel, and I am so ready! Last year I discussed some of the details of NaNoWriMo, but more importantly,…
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Becoming a Dad
It is my great pleasure to announce publicly that we are pregnant. I say “we” because even though I am not dealing with daily nausea and 40+ weeks of discomfort, I am involved in this process. Planning My wife and I have been talking about having a baby for a the past year or two…
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Inspiration: Terry Pratchett
Leave a surprise for your readers in every paragraph. This writing advice was gifted to me during my undergraduate creative writing fellowship, but I did not understand it until I started reading Terry Pratchett. His writing is brilliant, hilarious, and unique. I originally discovered Pratchett because of Good Omens, a clever and humorous take on…
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Tea, anyone?
Tea and warm drinks are one of the top rewards I use to motivate myself to write. But I love tea in general, consuming 2-3 cups per day — sometimes more when the days gets cold. Of course, each tea has a different time of day for drinking. Morning Black Tea #1 Chai is my…
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Setting Up the Classroom
After 5 weeks of school, I finally feel like my classroom is coming together. I have been adding color, positivity, and meaningful decoration to the room for the past few weeks. I talked a little about teaching last month, but I am proud of how things are turning out and wanted to show off some…
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Inspiration: Neil Gaiman
I have admired Neil Gaiman for a long time, partly because we have similar hair and partly because while he was with Amanda Palmer, they presented as a sucessful artistic power couple that could do anything. Who doesn’t wish to be that? Oh, and he was a pretty good writer too. Gaiman’s works have also…
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Writing Habits
Words haunt the dreams of authors, asleep or awake. They are finnicky, sassy, and beautiful. So I want to share a little about how I capture them. Where: My favorite place to go, especially when starting a new project, is a cafe. Recently that place has been Peet’s: great coffee and room to wade into…
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Back to School
This last week was Back to School week, and it was a doozy. For context, I taught for the past five years at a small rural Oregon High School with 120 students. This year I’m teaching at a large urban California Middle School with nearly ten times the number of students. Maybe that’s all I…
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The 3 Best Parts of Graphic Novels
I love graphic novels. Comic books are just another one of those nerdy things that have become more mainstream with the expansion of independant publishers and the wider circulation of Manga and Anime. Graphic Novels hit different. The visuals and color tell a story in a way that books and television can’t. The still frames…
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Audio&books
“Oh, yeah, I read that,” they say, before casually adding, “Actually I listened to it on Audible, but that’s basically the same thing, right?” To some people, this is a statement of horror, but I must admit I have been guilty of it myself. Others feel audiobooks may be the next step in reading evolution,…
Grant Pearson 