I just started a new journey, combining my passions for writing, photography and nature. Please visit my new blog, now in bloom: “Lilacs and Light” to learn more, like the meaning of lilacs in the title.
![4290_1140951609985_7212585_n[1]](https://lilacsandlight.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/4290_1140951609985_7212585_n1.jpg?w=326&h=435)
“Words started to mean not just something, but everything.”
I’m looking forward to teaching The Book Thief, by Markus Zukas this semester. Reading and writing our way through trauma can save us, sustain us. Not just in the pages of an imaginary universe. In real life, too. I know books saved me many times.
We’re also be reading Fahrenheit 451 this semester. Our discussions will focus around knowledge & education, censorship, power and authority, fear, risk, survival, reading, story and identity. It’s going to be a fun environment with great discussions. There are so many parallels to contemporary events.
Why, for instance, do some people fear words, and books, so much so that they ban them? Why are 62 million girls out of school, globally? Why did the Taliban shoot Malala Yousafzai in the head to keep her from getting an education? What were they afraid of? And, perhaps just as importantly, why was a young Malala so willing to risk so much to go to school each day? Why wasn’t she afraid (or was she?). Either way, she risked her life to learn. To see.
We’re reading and writing about interesting other stuff too. But this is going to shape our semester.
Welcome to Spring 2016! ~Lisa
This is what I tell my writing students...
Every writer knows, that to make progress you have to take risks. To tell the truth and really leave it all on the page, you will feel vulnerable, like the turtle sticking it’s neck out.
Take risks.
But that’s the only way you’re going to get anywhere. Inch by inch. Little by little. Keep moving forward and you’ll get there. Your readers want truth and risk and all those messy bits of life on the page.
Happy Sunday to my collegereadycoach.com tribe.
xo, Lisa
Dream big.
“Experience is an author’s most valuable asset…”
