Pick up a pen, start writing

My heroes are writers. I’ve come to realize this in recent years, probably in some small part because of my experiences with this blog. It will be five years next month that I took the plunge and started collecting my thoughts and stories in one place. And I wish I had started it earlier than

Feelin’ Weasley

I recently got back from a few days at Universal Studios in Orlando. The main attraction at Universal is the Harry Potter section of the Islands of Adventure park. The park opened at 9 AM when we were there, but since we were staying on the property, we were able to get in an hour

A word count milestone

Early in the process of creating and maintaining this blog, I made a decision to keep tabs on how much writing I actually did. I started keeping an Excel file, and every time a new post is added here I record four things: The number of the post, the date it was first published, the

Understanding Cranbrook through the lens of Harry Potter

By now, everyone knows the story of Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling’s tales of the young wizard and his years at Hogwarts became runaway successes, the likes of which we might not see ever again. A generation of kids have grown up knowing about muggles and horcruxes and he-who-must-not-be-named. Writing these tales certainly changed Ms. Rowling’s

An old poem made new again

April 26, 2012 was National Poem in Your Pocket day. I wasn’t aware of this until I saw something on Facebook about it. After all, that’s what grabs our attention anymore, isn’t it? I’m not always a follower of this kind of thing, but I wanted to participate in this. It was probably the poetry