Category: About Reading & Writing
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The Challenges of Writing Historical Novels
F.M. Deemyad Guest Author F.M. Deemyad’s debut novel, The Sky Worhipers, will be released on March 2, 2021 Covering the trials and tribulations of the people who lived decades or centuries before our time is both challenging and rewarding. Indeed in history, there are lessons for future generations, and that is the underlying reason why…
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NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) occurs every November. Since 2011, I have participated four times with my sixth grade students. While my goal was always 50,000 words, going along with the adult site, my students set their own goals with NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program. When they finished editing their novels in December, I published an…
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Five Tips for Loving Yourself
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank In my novel, The Aloha Spirit, the main character learns that in order to find aloha in the world around her she must first find it in herself. People are all capable of learning to…
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Write What You Don’t Know
(first published August, 2020 by Women’s Writers, Women’s Books) Many writing teachers tell new authors to write what they know. That has value if you are describing a setting, for example. It helps to know how the place looks, feels, smells, and sounds. But what if you write fantasy? No one knows what it’s like…
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Banned Books Week
Since 1982, the last week of September has been designated Banned Books Week by the American Library Association. Books for children (especially young adults) are banned by parents, libraries, and schools for issues such as race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, mental illness, and disability. Nowadays, though, adults are encouraging each other to open difficult…