Category Archives: resources

Tidbits for Writers from the 10th Annual Creative Chicago Expo

Creative. I love the sound of this word. As a child in the forties and fifties, I don’t think I ever heard it. In fact, the first emphasis on being creative that I encountered was in the late nineties when I read, then taught, Julia Cameron‘s The Artist’s Way.

Reading Cameron opened my eyes to the notion that creativity lives within each of us. All I had to do was tap into it. And she gave dozens of specific exercises to follow to find it.

As a result, I still don’t draw, paint, sing, or play an instrument. Nor do I design mosaics, work with metal, or cobble my own shoes.

But I could have learned about these creative pursuits, plus more, at the 10th Annual Creative Chicago Expo held at the Chicago Cultural Center last Friday and Saturday. Instead, as an author and blogger, I migrated to workshops on writing, my most favorite form of being creative.

At the workshops, my ever-present purse-sized writer’s notebook filled up with scribbles. Maybe some of my scribbles will be of interest to you.

From the workshop How to Get Published, presented by the Society of Midland Authors:

1. Amazon takes 62% of the retail price of a book; Ingram and Baker & Taylor take 55%.

2. China prints books much cheaper than we do here.

3. The Big Six publishers are used to working with agents.

4. Using Kickstarter to fund your project is becoming a new normal.

5. Traditional book reviews are much harder to get today because of newspaper cutbacks.

6. You are not finished when you finish your book. Next step? Stand by your art. Promote.

7. Templates are available that convert a Word document to a publishable form.

8. Amazon and Lightning Source offer POD (print on demand).

9. Your words are your ideas. (In other words, they are powerful!)

From the workshop WordPress in a Nutshell: Your Website, Security & More, presented by GIZMO Design:

1. Back up your blog routinely.

2. Change your password frequently.

3. Change your login to something besides  “admin” — make it harder to get hacked.

4. There are endless customization possibilities on WordPress blogs.

One man told Tall Tales!

One man was telling TALL TALES!

For more information on these topics, you really had to be there to experience the nuances of each of the presenters. Plan to join this comprehensive expo next year.

Meanwhile, read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and get inspired to explore your own creativity. You will not be sorry.

Nurses Week 2012: Free Chance to View Nursing Journals!

Here’s an opportunity to peruse an array of nursing journals for free! Scroll through NOW–you may find one or a few helpful to you in your practice. This free offer ends on May 12, the final day of Nurses Week.

Thanks to publishers Wolters Kluwer / Lippincott Williams & Wilkins for this professional recognition during Nurses Week.

 

Welcome: Marianna Crane and Nursing Stories

Fun Friends Forever 7/11

If you’ve read Caring Lessons, you know Marianna. In Chapter 7,  Finding a Friend, she’s the “Red Hair” gal I spotted in a class I was taking and determined, immediately, that she ” could be the friend I wanted. A friend with an insatiable mind for learning” (p. 78).

It was Marianna who first inspired my memoir writing. She had written creative nonfiction long before I did, so it was natural when I flew to visit her, that I’d see, and read, all these luscious books on writing that lined bookshelves in her guest room. It was there that I met people like Natalie Goldberg and Robert Pinsky for the first time.

Not long ago, Marianna joined the blogging world, focusing on her nursing career as a nurse practitioner and nursing issues in general. Please help me welcome Marianna Crane.

Marianna’s post yesterday gives us an informative take on the nurse’s role under the Affordable Care Act and also an introduction to the healing Reiki practice of one of her nurse practitioner friends, Jane Van De Velde, DNP, RN.

I’ve listed Marianna’s Nursing Stories blog under My Favorite Blogs on the sidebar. After sharing many experiences together for over thirty years, it’s delightful to be WordPress colleagues now!

2011 Printers Row Lit Fest

Front entrance of the old Cook County Hospital.

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re a reader and/or a writer, you would love the free, two-day Printers Row Lit Fest, the largest literary event in the Midwest, sponsored by the Chicago Tribune. Read details here.

With 200 booksellers, 7 stages, and more than 100 free literary events, I spent an evening scouring the schedule in the Tribune’s insert, and then reserved free tickets online for events requiring them.

Each year, I look for events in which I can learn something—about the author, the book, or the writing process. Here’s a snapshot of the five moderated author sessions I attended and a one-liner about what I learned:

Deborah Baker, author of The Convert: A Tale of Exit and Extremism, the story of a young New York woman in the early 60s who becomes obsessed with Arabic culture and moves to Pakistan. Baker, a biographer, stumbled on letters by the protagonist, and they piqued her interest to write the woman’s story. I learned that I must be aware that I bring my bias of my own religion to my encounters with religious views that differ from my own.

Alice LaPlante, author of Turn of Mind, a literary novel/mystery that was inspired after a visit with her mother who has Alzheimer’s.  I learned that a painful personal experience can be turned into something that will provide insight into the mind of a person with Alzheimer’s.

Richard Ford, editor of Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work, stories that include showing how the language of our work spills over into our personal relationships. I learned that, as a nurse, I had better watch my use of medical terminology at dinner! My word choice probably would be more appetizing if I’d become a chef.

Dr. David Ansell, author of County, a parallel story of his training/practice at Cook County Hospital in the context of Chicago’s political clout in 70s and 80s. I learned to take more notice of how our system of health care is “designed” to be unresponsive to the poor.  When asked his ideal system, Ansell responded that health care must be “socially integrated.” Rich people should lie next to poor people in hospitals and receive the same level of care.

I particularly enjoyed Ansell’s presentation because I spent three months at County for my psychiatric nursing rotation in the early 60s. I saw my experiences in some of his examples—overcrowded wards, lack of fresh linens, no call bells for patients. See the photo above for County which still stands but is not in use.

Robert McClory, author of Radical Disciple: Father Pfleger, St. Sabina Church and the Fight for Social Justice, a biography of a priest’s work and mission on the south side of Chicago. I learned never to underestimate the power of what one person’s passion for social justice can accomplish for a community.

I promise, that if you come to this Lit Fest, you will be enriched in ways you would not anticipate. For each one thing I learned that I’ve stated above, there were at least five others!

Fighting the Stigma of Mental Illness

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.  If your loved one is diagnosed with mental illness, would you know where you and your family could go to learn about the illness and how to be of help to that person?

When I was a med-surg nurse and encountered questions about living with a mental illness, I didn’t know how to respond. Half way through my forty-year career, armed with a new master’s in psychiatric nursing, I began teaching mental health nursing to senior baccalaureate students. As I was planning community support groups they could attend, I stumbled upon NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And I’ve been hooked on their mission ever since. As their publication, NAMI Advocate, says, “NAMI is…the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of individuals and families affected by mental illness.”

The Spring 2011 issue of NAMI Advocate features an interview with Dr. Joyce Burland, founder of NAMI’s Family to Family education program. Finding a lack of informational resources when her sister became mentally ill, she, as a PhD in clinical psychology, discovered and got involved in NAMI. In the interview, among many misconceptions people have about mental illness, she adds, “Mental illness is the illness where you never get a covered dish” (p. 15).

I stopped short when I read this quote. How true! Friends come running over with dinners when you have a baby or have your gall bladder out or have ongoing chemo or radiation treatments. But, mostly due to the stigma of mental illness, persons and families living with mental illness often suffer in isolation. “Don’t tell anyone at church that you saw me here,” I remember one of many patients saying when I was with my students on a psychiatric ward. “I don’t want anyone to know.”

The Family to Family program was set up to have families help other families. Family members are trained to be the teachers of the 12-week education course. Burland says, “There is a huge amount of information, generally unknown to those outside of this experience, about things we found that will help us in this struggle” (p. 15).

A friend of mine, Barbara Doyle, has co-taught the Family to Family course many times and has trained teachers.  She’s been a member of NAMI since 1983, and, among other offices held, she’s also a past president of NAMI Illinois. She sent me a few responses from course participants. One response summarizes them well: “I have benefited immensely. [The course] educated me about mental health disorders. More significantly (for me) is being sensitized and empathetic to the individuals in my life.”

And that’s what we need in the U.S. from all of us—to get the facts and to become sensitive to and empathic toward families and persons living with mental illness. These are essential first steps to erasing stigma.  Seeking out NAMI and what they have to offer is a good place to start.

Note their national convention meets in Chicago from July 6-9, 2011, at the Chicago Hilton on south Michigan Ave. Come, empower yourself to join the fight against stigma. Plus, take a run along the lake in the morning, loiter over a latte at a street-side cafe, and enjoy my city!

Countdown – ZERO Weeks Until Publication!

Order Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor’s Journey of Faith and Self NOW! It is here; scroll down to see a pictorial review.

Make check payable to: Trinity Christian College
(On the memo line, write “Book/Roelofs Freshman Nursing Scholarship”)
In the amount of $16.50 ($13.99 per book, plus $2.51 S/H)
Mail to: Lois Roelofs, PO Box 81574, Chicago, IL 60681

When I receive your check, I will mail your book(s).

Some people have asked about donations to the scholarship fund. Any monies given above the cost of the book and S/H would be tax deductible, so the donor would receive a written acknowledgment for any amount over $16.50/book from Trinity Christian College.

Please note: if you order the book from a bookstore or an online bookseller, we are also donating these proceeds to the scholarship fund. (About a dollar per book at most.)

Please forward this information to anyone you think may be interested. I’ve had a few schools of nursing express interest for use in the classroom, especially in any course that addresses career development, and I’ve had women’s groups ask about its use for their book clubs. Or just snuggle up under an afghan and lose yourself for a while in another person’s “nurse’s aide to professor emerita of nursing” forty-year career.

Now for the pictures:

I got the call from Con-way in west Chicago around noon today. The office buzzes us through a security gate.

Marv unloads while I play sidewalk superintendent.

All 720 pounds unloaded. I can now pose for a picture…

The boxes have my name on them. They must be copies of MY book!

We are home. Marv gets help from our always cheerful PM doorman.

So where does one store books in a city condo? The bathtub…

and the guest half-bath.

Now Caring Lessons has come full circle, back to my study where, at my computer, it has survived many iterations.

Questions? Email me at caringlessons@aol.com (Thanks! An exciting day…!)

Countdown – 1 Week Until Publication

If shipping goes as projected, Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor’s Journey of Faith and Self should arrive here within a week. This morning, on a (famous) writer’s website, I read about her mad scramble the week of her book’s arrival. I can identify. I’ve sent emails to lots of friends and family for pre-orders, and the checks are arriving daily.

This is the scoop I’ve promised you: My husband and I are donating an unlimited quantity of books to Trinity Christian College. They will be using all of my books in conjunction with nursing fundraisers. Because the IRS stipulates that no “goods or services” can be received for donations, we have designated the cost of the books (and S/H when appropriate) to be donated to a nursing scholarship fund that we have named the Lois and Marv Roelofs Freshman Nursing Scholarship. Four freshmen receive this each year.

So, if you’d like to purchase Caring Lessons:

Make check payable to: Trinity Christian College
(On the memo line, write “Roelofs Freshman Nursing Scholarship”)
In the amount of $16.50 ($13.99 per book, plus $2.51 S/H)
Mail to: Lois Roelofs, PO Box 81574, Chicago, IL 60681

When I receive your check, I will mail your book(s).

Some people have asked about donations to the scholarship fund. Any monies given above the cost of the book and S/H would be tax deductible, so the donor would receive a written acknowledgment for any amount over $16.50/book from Trinity Christian College.

Please note: if you order the book from a bookstore or an online bookseller, we are also donating all proceeds to the scholarship fund. (About a dollar per book at most.)

Please forward this information to anyone you think may be interested. I’ve had a few schools of nursing express interest for use in the classroom, especially in any course that addresses career development, and I’ve had women’s groups ask about its use for their book clubs. Or just snuggle up under an afghan and lose yourself for a while in another person’s “nurse’s aide to professor emerita of nursing” forty-year career.

Any questions: contact me at caringlessons@aol.com Thanks! And check out this week’s EXCERPT from “Chapter 21 – Getting Organized” about my fun challenges as an assistant dean.

The Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition)- Debut

For $65 you can now buy the newest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. Maybe you’ve never heard of it, but maybe you also have communed with it for hours trying to figure out the “correct” use of commas, quotation marks, capitalizations, etc.

In college and in grad school, I used APA format (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association) for writing my papers, a thesis, and a dissertation. But embarking on writing creative nonfiction, I had to become acquainted with what the Chicago Tribune yesterday headlined the “nit-picker’s bible.” Luckily, a writing friend loaned me her copy. I spent hours hunting up the nitty-gritty of punctuation. And then if the book gave two possible ways to do things, I’d get exasperated.

And then I got a series of editors from my publisher–Deep River Books. On my. What a joy and relief, if not work, to get every word and paragraph into proper style. But now there was a knowledgeable expert on the other end of email to walk along with me in the process.

I cannot say enough good about having a content editor, a copy editor, and a senior editor in charge. If not for them, my measly editing work would have turned out hundreds of errors that my eye missed over years of proofing. Yes, you read that right. Years. But I wonder how many more years my editors have slaved over this editing guide that the Trib says is so familiar that it’s simply called “Chicago.”

Countdown – 3 Weeks Until Publication

That’s right. Three weeks from today I should have a stack of books stashed into the corners of my life. On one blog, another new author has put up a jubilant picture of himself with his stacks. I may do the same!

It’s almost fall and that means school is starting soon. Even though I’ve been retired for ten years, my body still works on an academic calendar–July to July. My mind simply doesn’t work on a January to January time frame. And I still like to stock up on personal items with the thought that I won’t surface again until Christmas break.

With the thought of starting school, I checked out nursing faculty vacancies. I know many of us have “grayed” and retired, while others, with advanced degrees, have decided to enter more lucrative positions. Guess what I found. An Illinois site lists about 30 openings, while a national site lists around 300. Wow, I would not want to be a nursing dean or chair right now, days before school starts and students arrive.

I’m hoping, that in some small way, Caring Lessons can stimulate readers to think about becoming a nurse, then to consider teaching, and will encourage nurses who are already teaching nursing.