The Sound of Stars (free-writing prompt)

Among the books I’m reading, The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow, offers near-future dystopian adventure flavored with romance. An alien race, the Ilori, has invaded Earth and one-third of the world’s human population are dead. Those humans who remain live under the control of the Ilori, who have outlawed art, books, music: any type of creative expression.

“How are you feeling about this upcoming school year?”

I’m looking forward to a new semester in my graduate program. This semester, I am taking a course in “Culturally Competent Librarianship.” This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart, due to my intersectional identities as someone who is both autistic and nonbinary.

When My Heart Joins the Thousand

Among the books I am currently reading, When My Heart Joins the Thousand by A.J. Steiger is a particularly intense read. It’s a Young Adult novel told in the first person by main character Alvie Fitz.

“Who inspires you?” (Response to writing prompt)

Over the summer I’ve been helping out in a high-school English classroom. Each morning, the teacher assigns her students to work from a writing prompt and I decided to tackle those prompts myself. The writing prompt for July 18 was, “Who inspires you?”

Homebody by Theo Parish (free-writing prompt)

Over the summer I’ve been helping out in a high-school English classroom. Each morning, the teacher assigns her students to work from a writing prompt and I decided to tackle those prompts myself. We had a free-writing prompt for Friday, July 12, so I wrote about a graphic memoir that I had read recently, Homebody by Theo Parish.

‘Stories Alive’ at Bellview school

The “Stories Alive” story-collecting machine is at Bellview Elementary School, and will accept students’ contributions throughout the month of February.

Stories Alive transforms students’ creative writing into artistic performances. Throughout February, writer’s workshops are offered at Bellview for students in grades 2 to 5. Kindergarteners and first-graders are invited to writer’s workshops at the Ashland Public Library.

Actors will perform several students’ work during a school assembly on Tuesday, March 21. Students’ creations will also be compiled and published in a book.

Editors’ filters reshape authors’ worlds

At Huffington Post, Deborah Plummer examines the impact of an editor upon the radically different portrayal of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, compared to his depiction as “racist-rhetoric ranting, card-carrying member of the Klu Klux Klan” in Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.

‘Anything But Typical’ by Nora Raleigh Baskin

In Anything But Typical, 12-year-old narrator Jason Blake confronts the contradictions of the neurotypical world. His creative-fiction writing is a valuable strength that he draws upon for insight.

In Jason, author Nora Raleigh Baskin has given this reader a character with whom she found plenty to relate.

Anything But Typical was a recipient in 2010 of the Schneider Family Book Award, ages 11 to 13 division, which honors “artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.”

Anything But Typical and Erin Frankel’s Weird! trilogy are the newest additions to my list of recommended books for people on the autism spectrum. I curated this list to highlight books that I believe to be of value to an autistic readership.

TurnItIn identifies 10 ways to rip off others’ work

Detail from an infographic
by TurnItIn.com: The degree
on a scale of 0 to 10
to which types of plagiarism
are considered problematic

In an infographic, TurnItIn identifies and provides examples of 10 types of plagiarism.

“Each type of plagiarism has been given a digital moniker to reflect the significant role that the Internet and social media play in student writing.”

It’s worthwhile viewing for anyone who works with composing or editing of text.

“The Plagiarism Spectrum,” according to TurnItIn, “moves plagiarism beyond the black-and-white definition of ‘literary theft’ to one that captures the nuances of how plagiarism can take form in student writing, with a severity scale based on student intent.”

A full study, which presents results from 879 secondary and higher-education teachers, is also available for download.

Stars of Lake County: ‘Creative Expressions’ nomination

In an emailed message to the Lake Couty Chamber of Commerce, I nominated “Creative Expressions” in the Stars of Lake County’s “Best Idea” category. “Creative Expressions” debuted in February 2008. It appears twice monthly — on second and fourth Saturdays — in the Lake County Record-Bee.

“Creative Expressions” is due to the effort of Lake County Poet Laureate Mary McMillan and writers Sandra Wade, Richard Schmidt and Lourdes Thuesen. They solicit contributions and make the selections that appear in each edition. Through their continuing efforts, local writers have one more venue for their poetry and creative prose.

‘Creative Expressions’ is ideal outlet

For about half a year now, the Lake County Record-Bee has published “Creative Expressions” in some of our Saturday editions. This is a project organized by local writers Mary McMillan, our Lake County poet laureate; Sandra Wade, our immediate past poet laureate; and local writer Lourdes Thuesen. They solicit original works of poetry and prose, they make the final selections and then send them to me to lay out on the page.

Remembering the words of the creative Molly Ivins

There’s a game we like to play at the weekly Toastmasters meeting, 6:15 p.m. Thursdays at Sutton Associates Wealth Management across from Lakeport’s historic Courthouse Square. Somebody brings a vocabulary word and the rest of us try to use it during the course of the meeting. Imagine the flexible and creative thinking that this encourages in us!

Review: ‘On Writing Well’ by William Zinsser

People who write for a living (newspaper reporters and columnists, for example) will find this book to be of value, but it also has much to offer for people in any vocation that requires effective communication.

If you think clearly, you can write clearly, argues Mr. Zinsser, and then explains, step-by-step, how to do so.

Mr. Zinsser writes with a very engaging and approachable style. With the book now in its sixth edition, he has had considerable time to improve his delivery. The end result is a book that is very entertaining, as well as a valuable resource.

I have only one disagreement with Mr. Zinsser, and that is when he states, "Unlike medicine or the other sciences, writing has no new discoveries to spring on us. We're in no danger of reading in our morning newspaper that a breakthrough has been made in how to write a clear English sentence."

In my opinion, the English language is constantly evolving. Maybe sentence structure will remain the same, but our vocabulary will continually change as new words enter the language as slang and later become accepted terms.

Could anyone have imagined that "granny flat" would become part of our language? Or how about the examples that Mr. Zinsser cites in recounting his experiences upon the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary --"rambunctious," "trigger," "rile," "shambles," "tycoon," "trek" and "escalate."

Posted June 15, 2001 to amazon.com