A repost of one of my favorite anecdotes:
My brother and me, pre-sunburn Sunburns and the Power of Language
Growing up, we spent most of our family vacations visiting relatives in rural Ohio, which always seemed exotic compared to our suburban life. (They had horses!) But one year, my parents decided to take us someplace really exotic, someplace tropical. Not a big beach person, I positioned my towel under a shady tree and read Stephen King’s The Stand for hours. My younger brother played all day in the sun, without sunscreen (oops). When his severe sunburn kept us indoors during daylight hours for the rest of the trip, he asked me to tell him about the thick book I was so absorbed in. The Stand is an epic survival story about good versus evil, and I explained to him what happened, chapter by chapter, until he begged me to finish the book faster so we could both find out how it ended.
I realized, then, the power of language. The joyous idea of storytelling took hold, and over time—after an English major combined with a "practical" Computer Science major, an MBA, a detour in the corporate world, and hundreds of other books read—I finally wrote and revised some of my own.
Two of those efforts resulted in published novels: Pandemic and Black Flowers, White Lies, and several more were selected for anthologies. One of my favorite short stories that I've written is "The Third Ghost," a sibling story that was selected for the middle grade collection, Voyagers: The Third Ghost. My writing education continues today at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I'm currently working toward my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
Growing up, we spent most of our family vacations visiting relatives in rural Ohio, which always seemed exotic compared to our suburban life. (They had horses!) But one year, my parents decided to take us someplace really exotic, someplace tropical. Not a big beach person, I positioned my towel under a shady tree and read Stephen King’s The Stand for hours. My younger brother played all day in the sun, without sunscreen (oops). When his severe sunburn kept us indoors during daylight hours for the rest of the trip, he asked me to tell him about the thick book I was so absorbed in. The Stand is an epic survival story about good versus evil, and I explained to him what happened, chapter by chapter, until he begged me to finish the book faster so we could both find out how it ended.
I realized, then, the power of language. The joyous idea of storytelling took hold, and over time—after an English major combined with a "practical" Computer Science major, an MBA, a detour in the corporate world, and hundreds of other books read—I finally wrote and revised some of my own.
Two of those efforts resulted in published novels: Pandemic and Black Flowers, White Lies, and several more were selected for anthologies. One of my favorite short stories that I've written is "The Third Ghost," a sibling story that was selected for the middle grade collection, Voyagers: The Third Ghost. My writing education continues today at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I'm currently working toward my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
This week's links:
May is National Short Story Month! Do you have a favorite short story? I recently read an older one, Chicxulub by T. Coraghessan Boyle (published in 2004 in The New Yorker) and WOW. (Thanks to Sheela Chari for the recommendation.)
May is also American Cheese Month and National Asparagus Month, and I feel kind of bad for asparagus having to compete with cheese.
Mental Floss has an article about the benefits of reading every day, in case you had any doubt. :)
May is National Short Story Month! Do you have a favorite short story? I recently read an older one, Chicxulub by T. Coraghessan Boyle (published in 2004 in The New Yorker) and WOW. (Thanks to Sheela Chari for the recommendation.)
May is also American Cheese Month and National Asparagus Month, and I feel kind of bad for asparagus having to compete with cheese.
Mental Floss has an article about the benefits of reading every day, in case you had any doubt. :)
One last thing:
"The scariest moment is always just before you start." ~Stephen King
Start something amazing today!
Start something amazing today!
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