Writing Maniac, by Sheree Fitch

The book:
Writing Maniac: How I Grew Up to be a Writer (and You Can, Too!)

After reading Kiss the Joy as it Flies (Ms. Fitch’s first book for adults), I had to read more of her stories. She mostly writes for children and young adults. This one stood out because I’ve been looking for somebody who gives creative-style writers’ workshops. I’m so happy I discovered this book — it’s a writing workshop for youth. Youth of ALL ages, apparently! (I’ve never grown up, still enjoying my youth at age 60.) I really enjoyed it and found it very helpful, full of writing ideas, ways to think and listen and watch the world every day, every minute, and then write about it. What I learned is that everything counts as something when it comes to getting going as a writer. I also learned that I am a Writing Maniac already; I just need to learn more about making stories appear on the page.

I recommend this for non-grownups of all ages who wish they could write. Well, OK, you grownups will enjoy it too.

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I just finished this book and enjoyed it enormously. It’s as joyful as it is serious; it unfolds stories, secrets, relationships, personalities, and a kind of coming of age too. Mercy Beth, a 48-year old woman, has all the best and worst characteristics I find in myself, so I really related to her. No hold backs; Mercy Beth can be a bitch as easily as she can be creative and funny. But she’s more or less coping, learning to open up and to love and to work through her list-of-10-things-I-gotta-do before I….

I appreciated the overriding notion and mood of this treasure-book, as captured in the book’s title and which comes from this thought by William Blake:

He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

Fine words, and especially pertinent and timely for me as I start working on my second attempt at retirement. (OK, ya, I know it’s probably not going to last long this time either.)

Sheree Fitch is a Canadian author; Mercy Beth is a New Brunswick gal. They both make us laugh, cry, and kiss the joy in wonderment. Go ahead, get deeply involved with the richly drawn characters. I did.

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“Predicted to become the new Google of dictionaries…marries the definitions of 1.7 million words with relevant information, images, and multimedia plumbed from Web 2.0…”

The creators and staff are well qualified, including
- Co-founder Erin McKean, former editor-in-chief for American Dictionareis
at Oxford U. Press.
- VP of the American Dialect Society.
- Two computational lexicographers, one of whom developed the Oxford English
Corpus.

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Real Life Twitter

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So I was very pleased to find this link to a plugin that creates a classic 2003 menu interface in Office 2007. (Thanks to this week’s WinXP email newsletter.)

Go here: Office 2003 interface in Office 2007 for one of the download sites, freewaregenius.com. If you’re interested, here’s the link to the originating site of the software creator, UbitMenu.

Click image to see larger version

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sundog (click image to see larger)

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Just watched the documentary, Encounters at the End of the World (2007). Wow! It’s a wonderful movie, full of fantastic images. I especially enjoyed all the video footage of and by the brave SCUBA divers who explore untethered below the vast, thick cover of ice. The music that accompanies those underwater trips is also amazing. There is also great footage of the active volcano that I didn’t know was there in Antarctica: one of only 3 in the world where one can look into an active lava lake. The doc is narrated with a quiet and friendly script by the filmmaker, Werner Herzog. His focus is on talking about the personalities of the people who choose to live and work in Antarctica and their reasons for doing so.

diving below the ice

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I’m in the process of retiring from my Educators’ Resources blog. So that the resources aren’t lost to my subscribers and site visitors, I’m passing the whole blog on to a colleague, Sylvia Currie.

Sylvia’s first post to the blog reviews a bit of our history. I had forgotten all the details of the online seminar in which we met, but Sylvia has posted some specific quotes from me. Wow, is it Very Strange to read myself from way back then when I was:

• new to the concept of virtual education and online learning, taking a seminar to find out what it was all about
• new to being an online presence/voice
• testing the waters with a (slightly strange) online persona & handle: PinkFlamingo.

Here’s what I just wrote to Sylvia in response to her post:

It was interesting to read what I’d written, because of course I have completely forgotten all the details. I was such an online newbie back then, but already showing what was to become of my online style — in person, an extremely shy and quiet person; online, a loud-mouth, opinionated, no-holdbacks blabbermouth. Too funny to see the beginnings of all that right there in print. It’s like peeking into a personal diary of some kind. Yikes.

I guess it’s a personal history lesson. It also confirms what we’re all warned about — taking care about who we are and what we do online. Whatever we do, write, post, are, or become, it all goes on record. It becomes history, like it or not. A lesson in taking care of ourselves and our profile at all times.

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fiddleheads developing

See the rest of my photos in my prePosterous blog gallery

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You can get back to it anytime: click ‘reference’ near the top of this page (in the horizontal line of links). Or just bookmark it once you’re there.

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