Tribute to Wendell Berry a Week After His Death. Wendell Berry died last week. He was 92. There is a small handful of authors who have fundamentally changed the way I think about important things. Wendell Berry is one of them. Berry was a small Kentucky farmer who wrote books about farming, place, family, […]
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Seeking Truth to Write About It. Some people know something, so they write about it. Then they want to keep writing, but they already said the thing they know. The work then is to seek out the truth and write again. Maybe you started a Substack and you were excited about
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Writing is the Dangerous Way to Tell the Truth to Yourself. Followed by a Call for Christian Ghostwriters. “You can’t handle the truth!” Remember that iconic moment? From that one movie where Tom Cruise plays a military lawyer and Jack Nicholson plays the colonel who despises him? Who just tricked him into admitting that he ordered the
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Voice in Singing, Acting, and Writing. Learn Technique, Find Your Voice. I can’t remember if I ever told you I was an opera singer and voice teacher in my younger days. Lately, I’m beginning to sing again as a hobby, and it’s got me thinking. As a singer, one of the hardest things to do
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The Art of the Memoir. My favorite book of all time is Open. It’s a memoir. But it revolves around a strange central tension: Andre Agassi hated tennis. “I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have.” Now suddenly the story has
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A Powerful New Learning Method. Why Do We Expect Every Student to Think the Same Way? We say students are unique. Then we give them the same material… and expect the same response… on the same day. Something does not add up. Sara Worley has spent decades teaching from coast to coast and working with
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Adopted (and Why Stories Like This Matter) At some point, every child wonders: Where did I come from? Who do I belong to? Why am I the way I am? For most, those questions fade into the background. But for adopted children, they don’t. Those questions come up again and again as they search for
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Shakespeare Pt.2: Craft Over Self-Expression Leads to Self-Expression What Hamlet Teaches Us In this short series, I am presuming to draw on Shakespeare to write about writing. I have to search for quotes, as I am not well enough versed in the Bard, though I did play Katherine’s father in a one-act of Taming of the Shrew
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Writing Begins with Seeing Lessons from Shakespeare, Part 1 There is a blank page or screen and pressure to produce. An idea waits to be turned into something clear, helpful, and worth reading. I think that is a false starting point. And I think Shakespeare would agree. For the next four weeks, I want to learn from
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How a Whiny Toy Poodle Confronted My Bias 5 Steps to Fight Confirmation Bias (and Wild Turkeys) By Angie Reedy I’m getting closer to cresting the hill, the dreaded one that makes a person “over the hill.” It’s the week of my 49th birthday and while I might occasionally forget how old I am,
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