I’ll be honest, writing a letter this month was an act of will. Last week I was in sunny Tucson, Arizona hiking across the desert, but since I’ve come back, it’s been work NONSTOP. And you know what? I’m thankful for that.
One of these days I’ll take a breather, but there’s still much to do. And since I’m always insisting my writing students show me what they mean rather than tell me, why don’t I get more specific and show you some of the things I’ve been cooking up too…or, at least hint at them.
Next month, I’ll be announcing something special, so you’ll want to keep an eye out on my socials. It’ll be BIG news. Who knows? Maybe more books are on the way or something. You’ll just have to see :)
But aside from that, it’s going to be Arab American Heritage Month in April! Amid what has been a tough few months for the community, we as readers, writers, librarians, educators, and bookish professionals have a real chance to rise above the unconscious biases we often succumb to. We can be more. And a place to start is by choosing to exude love and to show the Arabs in your community that you see them. That they’re valued.
In fact, you can show everyone you encounter that they’re valued. Smile at them, wave, whatever…winter has come and gone, and now we enter Spring, a period of rebirth. A time of new beginnings.
Choose to begin, therefore, with appreciation of each other!
Tangent aside, my Arab author friends and I have some FUN giveaways planned for next month. But there’s other things I’m cooking up…like doing more of my teaching. Much more.
First, there’s this Writing the Personal course with the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. In it, I’ll help writers unearth and harness their own experiences to fuel their storytelling. To connect more deeply to what they’re writing and, ultimately, become better at their craft because of it.
Beyond that, I’m also teaching a 10-week fiction course with Gotham Writer’s Workshop for those who want to meet other writers and have their work critiqued. Saturdays are about to get a whole lot better for those who register!
I’ll be hitting up a few school visits, conferences, and giving talks in the weeks to come as well, but I won’t go into detail about that right now. What I do want to get to is my monthly writing advice.
Let’s talk about making your words sound natural. Smooth like butter, as they say. The key to good writing in this sense is simply sticking to the basics—nouns and verbs.
Being conscious of noun and verb choice is the best way to write well. Relying on things like adjectives and adverbs will only add unnecessary words to your writing. While we shouldn’t outright ban them, we should focus on very good nouns and verbs, which will eventually lead us to use other types of words less. Moreover, it’ll allow us to show rather than tell, since we are using descriptive language. The more specific you can be, like using “dove” rather than “jumped downwards” or “scarfed” rather than “ate”, the more descriptive your writing.
Of course, how can you gauge if your writing flows? Read it out loud. As loud as you can. Hearing a story spoken completely changes how you experience it, and allows you to scrutinize the story from a different lens.
And that’s all I’ve got for March! However you enjoy the month, whether observing a religious event or a cultural one (like the annual basketball tournament), I hope that you are have a good time. I’m sure there’s good news on the horizon for you too.
Let’s all enter Spring with a fresh start.