A few summers ago, I took a class on personal essays at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival with David Bouchier of NPR fame. His dry humor and engaging personality led to a lovely week of pushing us to thinking deeply about seemingly mundane influences in our lives. For example, he had just scratched out an …
Category: writing
Countdown – 10/6 Weeks Until Publication!
Why the 10/6 today? Because the projected publication date for Caring Lessons was ten weeks from today - 10-1-10. But since we're now running ahead of schedule it's been changed to six weeks or even less. So it feels like having a bona fide book in my hand is really going to happen! Back to …
Stashing Away Book Stuff
I'm making progress in my clean-up before Caring Lessons comes out. To encourage you writers that an end can be in sight, here's a stack of eight drafts that I printed off of my book (thousands of pages went into recycle along the way) and three five-subject spiral notebooks that I used to chronicle every …
Ode to a Massage Therapist
For many years I went to the most special massage therapist. And older man, formerly in business, in his second career who wanted to give back to society. And give back he did, generously. He charged only $40, would not take tips because "You don't tips as a nurse, do you?," and readily overflowed the …
Writers: Take Time to Purge
Boy, am I having fun today. Shredding, filling up the recycle box, setting aside stuff to share with other writers. With Caring Lessons off to the printer, I can finally PURGE this mess around my desk. Piles of drafts, stuff to be filed, books... Writing-related guides, for instance. I have guides to everything it seems. …
Countdown – 11 Weeks Until Publication
Surprise. Surprise. I didn't know I still had another "edit" coming. I received a final (I think) edit of Caring Lessons itself. And, to my chagrin, this wonderful editor found yet another 32 things she could correct. I have a totally new respect for editors! I appreciate beyond words their nitty-gritty attention to every hyphen, …
Great News! Final Proofing Finished
Last night I did the final proofing of the cover of Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor's Journey of Faith and Self. On to the printer! Caring Lessons can be used in the classroom (especially appropriate for RN-BSN students and beyond) and for simply a look at how a suburban sandbox mom eventually got a PhD …
Countdown – 12 Weeks Until Publication
Well, I'm on the final, final trek to get Caring Lessons off to the printer. Have been working on refining the wording on the back cover. Have a great editor helping me make my nursing jargon understandable. I'm so used to talking as if everyone knows what I mean. Not so. It reminds me of …
Writers: The Power of Three
During a recent road trip, I became aware that I was seeing the passing scenes in threesomes. Three geese. Three picnic tables. Three goats. Why wasn't I noticing foursomes and twosomes? My mind roamed around until I found my answer--the power of three I'd learned in writing classes. How a repetition of three--words, short sentences, …
Countdown – 13 Weeks Until Publication
Caring Lessons will become a reality soon! One more page-the back cover--to proof and it's off to the publisher. Today I was shredding stuff (still working on those boxes) and old evaluations were among the pile. Evals, we called them, that we as faculty got from students (almost every 7 weeks of the nearly 20 …
Write Along with Me 