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...]
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...]
My Writing Life: Beginnings – Identity, Pt. 1
My mom, a journalist, was talking with a friend. She beamed at my brother. “Charlie, he’s the writer of the family. And Annie? She’s...” Here, I felt my mom hesitate. Then, “Annie’s the athlete.” My brother excelled in everything involving words—from composing song lyrics and essays to dominating Scrabble games and inserting witty comments into conversations at just the … [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...]
Writing Conditions are Never Perfect
If I waited for perfect conditions to develop my writing life, I’d still be waiting. Back in the early 1990s, I did manage to explore writing as my work, as a way of life. I wrote and submitted a few magazine articles and met with businesses to launch a career in corporate freelance writing. Then we started our family. Our first three children were born within four … [Read more...]
