Listen to The Writing Life with Ann Kroeker Episode 2: Rescue Lost Time When over the past week might you have rescued lost time to work toward a writing deadline? What tool or tools might you use to start rescuing lost time? Learn more about: Google docs Voice-to-text feature on phones (some people use dragon, but I just use the dictation feature on my … [Read more...]
On Being a Writer – Surprise!
A week ago, I accompanied my dad to several appointments, muting my phone to comply with the doctors' office rules. To stay focused I left it muted all day long, so from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night I was only vaguely aware of texts and notifications. I'd glance at the phone when I was able, to identify the person and level of urgency. I let calls go to … [Read more...]
How to Form a Daily Habit: Don’t Break the Chain
My junior year in college, I started scribbling each day's to-do list the night before. I'd always include "wake up" so I would have the pleasure of marking off one item first thing in the morning: a visual sign of accomplishment. I've always joked about how pathetic it was to include "wake up," but I needed to see that I made progress. Decades later, I want to … [Read more...]
Coming Home to Scotland – The Poetry of Place
Until 2001, my mom thought our genealogy traced to England and Germany, but that year she and her brother discovered to their surprise that the ancestors they presumed were English actually came from Scotland. After tracing our family name to Kirkcudbright, where Robert Burns visited the Selkirk Inn and offered the famous “Selkirk Grace” (offered at the beginning … [Read more...]
Book Response – Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis
As an editor and writing coach, I quite happily end up with a lot of books. I'm going to introduce you to some of them. These won't exactly be reviews, however. I'd say these posts will read more like a response to each book. Today, I'm offering my personal response to Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis by Kimberlee Conway Ireton. __________________________ One … [Read more...]
The 2013 Writing Life Workshop
*Ding* On Wednesday my phone alerted me to an appointment. I glanced at the time: 2:00 p.m. What did I schedule at two o'clock on the day before Thanksgiving? I swiped the screen to check my calendar. Ah. It thought I was supposed to be sitting at my computer for what had been known for the past 12 weeks as "office hours." I forgot to tell my phone that "office … [Read more...]
Writing and Editing: Handle Words with Respect
I've been writing and editing for decades, starting in my college years when I signed up for poetry classes that often "workshopped" assignments. Writing and Editing Workshops We'd turn in a poem to the teacher, who collected them all and passed out copies for us to read and annotate so we could offer our peers helpful input. On the day of the workshop, we critiqued the … [Read more...]
