Spinning Plates

There's an act you may have seen, where someone balances a lot of spinning plates on top of poles. They'll stay there as long as they're...

Reading History With a Teaspoon

Imagine there’s an ice cream factory. A really big one. Maybe it fills an entire city block. You’re allowed to go in and sample all the...

Going Live!

I spent weeks fussing with a green screen for my videos before realizing that my roll-top desk is prettier than the backgrounds I was...

Coming Up For Air

My wife and I used to describe the end of August as being like “packing for a transarctic submarine voyage” because of the way the school...

Once More Unto the Breach

Two years ago, a Writers’ Digest conference in New York City gave me a view into what the life of a professional writer’s life is like. I...

Gold Stars

This past summer, at my very first writers conference, I had an agent ask me, “If this is your first conference, how did you learn to...

Teacher and Writer

Two months have passed since I got back from the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York, and I feel like I’ve been swimming underwater...

The Hook, the Book, and the Cook...

One of the agents who spoke at the Writers Digest conference last weekend described the ideal query letter as having “the hook, the book,...

Just back from my first writers’ conference

It was wonderful…and exhausting. Here are a few highlights from my journal: Thursday– I’m completely alone tonight. Exploring the...

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