Our first stop after a full day of writing at sea on the Writing the Waves cruise is the exclusive island of Labadee, Haiti. Labadee is located on the north side of Hispaniola and offers pristine beaches, plenty of activities and local flair. The warm, clear waters are a perfect match for aquatic activities. You can rent personal watercrafts or…
In the last month, I’ve had the great pleasure of spending time with genealogists in Flagler County, The Villages, and Sarasota. Many of them have been researching family history for thirty years or more; one woman dedicated much of the last sixty years to discovering branches of her family tree. That’s a lot of names, dates, and places, but it…
I am a West Virginia native, the great granddaughter of a slave and a Cherokee Indian. Having lost both parents by the age of three, my grandparents raised me. There are no siblings. After earning an M.F.A. in art from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, my career transitioned into textbook publishing, then continued into the digital publishing environment. I’m an avid sports fan (basketball…
Call to mind a photograph of you as a child that is familiar to you. It may be one that hung on the wall of your home throughout your growing up years or possibly, an image of your young self you’ve recently seen for the first time. How old are you in the photograph? What are you doing? Who else…
Good writing requires good editing, and putting pen to paper is just the beginning. It’s time to take your writing from promising to polished! Editing: Make Your Stories Shine Workshop March 16, 2013 9:00 am – 4:00 pm Lake Fairview, Orlando, FL You have a heap of stories in front of you. You’ve worked long and hard to get them…
Today, let’s write about love. Who is it or was it in your life who taught you the most about love? What did they teach you? How did they teach you about love? Pay attention to the first name or image that pops into your mind. It might not be who you expect, but don’t immediately push it away. Consider…
Thank you so much for the warm welcome to The Villages Genealogical Society. I was quite impressed with your group and the quality of writing in the few exercises we read. I’m sure yours was wonderful, too. Here’s a link to a copy of the poem I read, “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon and some of the responses written…
You’ve been looking at those boxes of information, the binders of data you’ve so painstakingly assembled over the years of researching your family history. You wonder if your children or grandchildren will treasure all the copies and photographs and documents as much as you do. Unfortunately, they probably won’t. That’s why it’s so important to take the information you have…
Yesterday, I decided I needed a little visual help in promoting my book, Eating an Elephant: Write Your Life One Bite at a Time, so I ventured into a Toys R Us store for the first time in my life and searched until I found just what I was looking for—Alphie the Elephant. Alphie is so soft and huggable that…
We rely on our senses—sound, sight, touch, smell and taste—every minute of every day to navigate our lives, but those senses can also be a vehicle that takes us back to long ago times and places. Think about the “taste” of your childhood. What were the foods that defined your early years? What were the non-foods that also ended up…
