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Blog Posts
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Winter Tries to Slow Us Down—And We Need It to Do So
January always hits hard in my part of Kentucky. If it’s not the weather in this part of the world doing so, then it is some other force looming over us in negative anticipation or expectation. Perhaps I have been spending too much time reading Walden while I have been at home due to the
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End-of-the-Year Post: Make 2026 a Year of Poetry
As I worked to take care of many activities during my break that I do not have time for during the rest of the semester, the days slipped away from me as they often do during periods of rest, and I noticed that 2025 almost slipped away from me, too! I never mean to go
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When in Doubt, Write it Out
I made the mistake of glancing at our academic calendar after returning from a few days of Fall Break to discover that we had several weeks until our next sizable break other than the standard weekend that I rarely have free. I don’t ever recommend looking at the calendar if you can avoid it, but
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Resistance is the Enemy: A Review of The War of Art
Although I cannot remember where exactly I read the first reference to the book, sometimes allusions to a work of art sound again and again throughout other written works until we must face the original source. That constant reemergence describes my journey to Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win
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Craft Post: Filling in the Gaps with Your Imagination or Extensive Description?
One writing choice that I feel like I am struggling with currently has been the decision whether to provide just enough description to allow the reader to fill in the world with their own interpretations of my words or provide such an extensive description that every aspect of the world has been decided for them.
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Journaling: Or How I Found My Way back to My Source
The beginning of the school year can be filled with many tedious get-to-know-you activities that often suck the life out of the very relationships we are trying to foster with our students. I know this fact and accept it as true, but knowing this truth does not stop me from wanting to know enough about
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The One Keeping the Light On
On a recent nighttime trip back from a cousin’s wedding, I experienced those rare first few minutes in the car where it took me larger than normal to fall asleep. Perhaps the reason was the bag full of cheese curds I had just eaten or the thousand thoughts that crowded my mind after a beautiful
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LexPoMo: Try Something New Even If It Terrifies You
Like many other modern humans, I am guilty of becoming complacent in my daily and professional lives. Even though I have been absent from this space for quite some time now due to several professional commitments, I have not abandoned writing or my search for a sustainable writing practice. After spending so much time around
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Thinking about All the Seeds of Spring
I make no effort to hide the fact that the change in seasons always make me pensive, but sometimes sorting through all of the thoughts that result from flipping the calendar day to the next one make me wallow in possibilities. It does not help me that I started this post on the first day
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What Are Sundays For?
Most weeks during the year I find myself dreading Sundays. Since I find myself working six out of seven days a week many months of the year, Sunday is the only day where I can pretend to relax, where I can spend a little time by myself for myself. While I would love to laze
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A Review of Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice
I have a horrible hunger for stories about writers. Whenever I visit a bookstore, one of the sections I feel the need to visit every time is whichever one has the writing books. Even though I used to grow frustrated with biographical information that seemed to get in the way of the writer’s connection to
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Assessment—A Little More Work on the Instructor’s End May Help Make Assessment Reporting More Meaningful
As I gathered resources for the upcoming semester, I had to address everyone’s least-favorite aspect of the educational experience: assessment. My dislike of our methods of assessment is not even centered around the stresses that scores induce in students, parents, and teachers, especially near the end of an instructional term; my main source of discomfort
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The Piling-Up of Small Winter Words
Winter has always been magical for me, and snow represents the peak of that magical feeling. Not only is the accumulation of snow literal crystals congregating on top of our dirty world and refreshing it, but everything about the world feels different whenever a fresh snowfall settles. Each snow event and the situations that lead
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A New Year, A New Year of Writing
I despise the tradition of making New Year’s Resolutions. The only times I ever succeeded with my resolutions were when I made them sufficiently vague enough that I could meet them. This looks like making a resolution to “read more” or “exercise more” or whatever, yet most people do not stop to comment upon the
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A Philosophy of Writing
One exercise that I have had writers do the last few years centers on students defining some of their beliefs about writing and learning by putting some of those thoughts on the page so that they could form a writing philosophy of sorts. Even though I have spent a lot of time thinking about some
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