Hats, Boots, & Chocolate

    If you're having any struggles, successes, or anything else you want to share about your writing, feel free to drop them in the comments here! :)

    I was talking with my sister and her husband the other day, and we hit on an idea that I hadn't thought about much before, so I wanted to share it here and get some other folks' thoughts.     Have you ever thought about how, in America's more and more individualistic culture, there are a lot of people who all look really similar in the way they act and dress? Take a high school, for example: even to an uninitiated person like me who doesn't care much about school politics, when I was walking the halls of the high school, I still knew about which cliques different people belonged to based on how they dressed and acted. I couldn't have told you what the cliques were, but had you lined up a bunch of kids in the school I think I could have worked out with reasonable  confidence which ones were in similar groups.     My brother-in-law suggested that perhaps part of the reason why this is is because of the way we're taught to make friends. I've been work...

    I recently took up a new hobby: Acrylic painting.     As a certified word nerd (TM) and grammar-stickler, this isn't something I ever really thought I'd do. I've lived my whole life comfortably within the bounds that I Don't Art, because I Can't  Art.     Then I went to preschool.     For those of you who aren't already aware, I am a homeschool kid through and through. As such, I never went to a traditional preschool with centers time and large- and small-group activities. I never went to kindergarten, or elementary school, or had to sit in a desk for hours every day while some adult I didn't care about droned on at the front of the room. My whole life  was school, and most of it revolved around math and play, with a massive amount of reading in my free time because I enjoyed it.     Now, to be fair, my experience isn't that stereotypical homeschool experience where the kids do their school online (or don't do school at all...

    Have you ever wondered what it's like for young children who are just beginning to learn math? I have, especially since I started working on my Early Childhood Education Associate degree.     While some people try to show this concept to college students training to become teachers by forcing them to use a different number system (such as base 8 instead of base 10), I'm not that mean--I'm much, much meaner.     See, while using a base 8 number system for the first time will mess with your head after a lifetime of using base 10, kids aren't transferring from one number system to another--they're learning a number system for the very first time, plus a whole set of new-to-them terminology that they have to memorize. So, in addition  to giving you a base 8 numbering system to work with, I am also going to provide you with new terms to use. However, I'm too lazy to invent new symbols to represent my numbers, so you're just going to have to work with th...

    "Play is the highest form of research." -- often attributed to Albert Einstein, but this is apparently incorrect ; N. V. Scarfe appears to be the person who said this first.     Regardless, this is one of the primary quotes in use by my professors this semester, because I have been studying early childhood education, and, at least in the UVU community of early childhood professionals, play is considered one of the most important elements of a quality early childhood program, which is often left behind in favor of greater academics both in preschool and during the elementary and high school years.     I kind of already knew this.     Because of my job at Thanksgiving Point, I have seen firsthand how play-based learning can work. Kids beg their parents to go to Thanksgiving Point, whether it's to go see the butterflies, to go ride the ponies and the train, or to climb the giant playground (each different elements of a few of the venues at Thanks...

    In the last eighteen months, I have been on a journey of exploration. Ever since I wrote the first official draft of The Noble Thief  (the novella I'm revising right now, and hope to publish in the next [couple] year[s]) and realized that there wasn't a lot of magic in it, I've been questioning whether I can really call myself a fantasy writer. After all, if your whole magic system is nothing but a volcano that can understand people's intents, that doesn't feel very magical--or very fantasy. In fact, the most fantasy-like part of The Noble Thief  is the plot, which follows the classic fantasy plotline of a runaway/exiled/kidnapped princess who reclaims her throne. Where have we seen that before? Oh, yeah, fairy tales and fairy tale retellings:  The Goose Girl  by Shannon Hale, The Golden Braid  by Melanie Dickerson, The Fairest Beauty  by Melanie Dickerson, etc.     This questioning has raise a lot of insecurities for me--I call myse...