Create Yourself

I collect quotes. I found one today while reading the magazine Where Women Create.

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

-George Bernard Shaw

This is an exciting concept to me! Why would you want to find something old, stale, and trite when you could create something new, bold, and exciting?

Do whatever it is you want to do.

Write. Draw. Paint. Sing. Dance. Compose. Take pictures. Knit. Crochet. Weave. Spin. Cook. Garden. Teach. Parent. LIVE.

Give yourself permission.

Say YES, I CAN!

And instead of finding yourself, CREATE yourself.

Have fun!

I’ll Be Teaching

A big part of writing, as I have always understood it, is teaching.

Most of the time, people read articles to learn something. Often, they read fact-based fiction (no, I will not call it “faction”) to learn something.

Many writers I know — Peggy Fielding, Romney Nesbitt, and Dusty Richards among them —  teach as a regular part of their writing.

It was around this time last year that I learned The Center of Continuing Education & Community Services at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, was looking for additional teachers to send proposals in for possible inclusion in the program.

I started working on a proposal, but there were a lot of unanswered questions for me. I didn’t know, really, how to go about getting the answers.

This year, I noticed they were still — again? — looking for teachers. There was a key difference, though. They were offering an informational class on how to do a proposal for the program. I signed up.

As a result of the class, I submitted a proposal for a class on how to make money writing. Unoriginally enough, I called it “Make Money Writing.”

One day last week, I found out that I will, indeed, be teaching that class this summer. It will be on Tuesday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00 June 2 through June 30. There will be a total of five classes. I plan to take participants through the process from finding ideas, finding markets, writing a query, and drafting the article.

Yes, there will be assignments throughout the class. Chief among them will be one I borrow from Peggy Fielding: Write at least 30 minutes every day.

A selling writer writes.

And, yes, I’ll be teaching.