Do you have trouble coming up with words to describe emotion from your character? I know I do. On the blog, Writers Helping Writers, there’s a brief post on Showing Emotion: Moving Beyond The Face. The article by Angela Ackman poses the question: “The face is the first thing we notice in real life, and the focal point during any conversation. We connect to a person’s gaze, paying attention to how their eyes widen, squint, focus inward or dart. We also watch their mouth, noting lip presses, teeth flashes, frowns, smiles and pursed lips. Eyebrow lifts, the forehead crinkling and relaxing…each facial micro movement is a message, a clue to what the person is thinking and feeling. So if we focus on face-reading in real life, should we then center description on it when trying to convey our character’s emotion?”

Read on to find out.

I am currently attending a three-day poetry workshop, which I am really enjoying. I’m hoping to go back and revisit a collection of poems I’ve written over the years but haven’t really done anything with them. Sometimes we need to get out of our comfort zone and try something new. Wish me luck!

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years.” To read is to voyage through time.” ~ Carl Sagan

What would you call “writing success?” I guess those two words mean different things to different people. I found the blog post, “A Ramble: The Elements of Writerly Talent and Improvement, by editor Brooklyn Arden a great read. She addresses the questions: “How much of writing success is talent, how much perseverance, how much conscious education in craft?”

What is your definition of writing success?

The Institute of Children’s Literature is sponsoring an Early Reader Mystery writing contest. The deadline is July 18, 2015. Take a leap of faith and send in that story that you’ve written. Last year, I submitted to them a short story that I had filed away for ages. Guess what? I won first place! You can too!

Genre: Refers either to a general classification of writing, such as the novel or the poem, or to the categories within those classifications, such as the romance novel or the sonnet. – Writer’s Digest Weekly Planner

I met a wonderful group of young writers who just finished writing an anthology, “Capture.” These are middle grade students at Rhodes Middle School. I’ve been reading some of their short stories and poems and am very impressed. They are budding authors!! What makes it even nicer for me is that Rhodes is the middle school that I attended way back when. It was great being there again. All the credit goes to Ms. Sheryl Lew, ELA Instructional Coach, who was instrumental in guiding the students in this creative writing project.