Today is Valentine’s Day, and it also happens to be #ArchiveDay on Twitter, through which bloggers like myself share whatever blog posts (preferably older posts, hence “archive”) to drive some traffic to our site. I can’t help but notice a trend in the posts I’m seeing today. To summarize: Valentine’s Day is stupid. And here…
Anyone who’s spent five minutes in a writing group has heard it: that’s telling. You need to show it. I bet the writers among us are groaning a little. Everyone else is scratching their heads. Let’s start with the basics. Telling occurs when you, well, tell the readers what’s happening. Tim was angry. Showing gives clues…
My book came out last Wednesday, so naturally I’ve been tweeting and fb posting and blogging about it. In the sea of eleventy billion books, mine will easily disappear into the abyss if I let it. Here’s the rub, though: many of the authors of those eleventy billion other books are doing the same thing.…
I’m getting ready to start figurative language lessons with my group of second graders. Last year, I used a song or two to help them identify the different types of figurative language. It worked. I looked really good when a student announced to her classroom teacher, “That’s an idiom!” simply because the teacher said the…
Earlier this week, someone asked me why I started writing books. They might have meant what do I believe is the greater purpose, what kind of message do I want to send to the world, blah blah blah. The reality is, I started writing books because of a truck. My husband’s truck, specifically. For anyone…
Okay, it’s not really about homework. Because that wouldn’t be funny at all. I just needed a title. It’s about those funny things kids do on paper. It may or may not be homework. I’ve worked in a classroom setting for the past thirteen years; the first ten of those were as a classroom teacher.…
So my husband is a sweet man. He’s thoughtful and spends time looking for gifts that he thinks I’ll like. It’s common knowledge among people who know me that I love owls. I have many things featuring owls. I’m at this very moment wearing a shirt with an owl on it. See? So it’s no…
Today is my birthday. I find it extremely convenient that it falls on a Friday this year, as it offers a useful idea for a Funny Friday topic. Side note: Googling “funny birthday cakes” yields horrifying results. Horrifying. The portrayal of body parts and functions in frosting form and too many to count. Google: I said…
There’s a hashtag going around on Twitter today: #20ThingsIWantFor2015. I thought the presence of “20” was amusing, because who can write about 20 things in 140 characters? Fortunately, I have a blog with unlimited characters. MWHAHAHA! That sounded more maniacal than I planned. Anyway. I’ll count down from 20. Because New Years. Some are serious,…
I was recently watching some old Simpsons episodes, and the one where Homer becomes an inventor came on. Remember that one? He wanted to be a better inventor than Edison, but his inventions were…unique. Like all good satire, much of The Simpsons is based in reality. So naturally, I remembered some odd inventions I’d seen…
Allison Maruska 