Hi YARN friends! It’s great to “see” you again! Okay…I can’t really see you, of course. I don’t know what you look like, or what you sound like, all I know is that the YARN community brings us together…this is the beauty of the internet. And in the past few months, I’ve developed a new [...]
About Shannon
Website:
Shannon has written 12 articles so far, you can find them below.
Blog
To MFA…or Not to MFA…
At some point, I think most aspiring writers face the MFA conundrum.
On one side of the scale, a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing provides the opportunity to hone your craft, receive valuable feedback on your writing [...]
Interviews
Interview with Dorothy Hearst
YARN is thrilled to offer our readers an end of summer treat: an interview with Dorothy Hearst, author of The Wolf Chronicles Trilogy. It’s been said, by the legendary author Jean Auel, no less!) that Hearst is doing for wolves what “Watership Down” did for bunnies. That’s some pretty heavy praise indeed [...]
Blog
The Great Summer Re-Read
Happy Summer! Ready to get your re-read on? I don’t know about you, but summer is my favorite time to re-visit my favorite books. I mean, don’t we all have a stack of books we re-read from time to time simply to hang out with the stories we adore? (I’m not the only one having [...]
Blog
It Ain’t All Double Rainbows, Folks…
(The following is a response to “Darkness Too Visible” by Megan Cox Gurdon from the perspective of high school teacher and YARN editor, Shannon.) Yesterday and today I was treated to 70 commencement speeches by my senior students. I make them write and give these for their final exam in English. When I pass out [...]
Blog
Writing With Restrictions
Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Rules to dampen your creative spirit? Restrictions to cage your inner writer’s voice? How can this be a good thing? Well, I find that my writer’s voice is much like a child. It proves to be most productive when given set expectations, boundaries, rewards and consequences. I bet yours does too. [...]
Blog
Revision Madness!
Actually–my title is sort of incorrect. Revision just makes me mad. Think about it. You work your butt off writing and writing. You finish a story. You feel good about it. Then, you have a moment when you realize that it’s not quite perfect…it could get better. Much better. (Perhaps you’ve already sent it somewhere [...]
Blog
Graceling: A Call to Action
I’m late to the party. I know I’ve been hearing vague whispers that “Graceling” by Kristen Cashore rocks…and I don’t know why it’s taken me over a year to pick the book up. But now that I have, I’m going to have to add my voice to the mix. (FYI: This blog will include some [...]
Blog
For the love of…
Practice makes…why does it have to make anything? It’s easy to forget to practice as a writer. Sure, many of us have writing schedules that we desperately try to stick to…and perhaps we describe this type of writing as “practice.” But for most of us, this time is usually devoted to writing and revising a [...]
Blog
Fear. Search and Destroy.
“That suggests that what you fear most of all is – fear. Very wise, Harry.” Professor Lupin, “The Prisoner of Azkaban” I don’t fear ‘scary movie’ fear. I dread it. I avoid it. I scuttle around it. But I understand it. I fear the type of fear that lurks in the corners of your brain [...]
Blog
Suck Less. Write More.
Through no fault of my own, I became my high school’s official Speech and Debate coach for the last month of school. We competed in our first and only tournament last weekend and we practiced for less than four weeks prior to competing. No surprise: many of my students received a fairly solid ass-kicking by [...]
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