Trying Something New

I have been a fiction writer for as long as I can remember, but I’ve been an educator for 20 years. There has always been a pull to writing something about education, but I have always wondered, “What do I have to offer?”

This weekend I had the privilege to present at the CATE Conference 2019 to a group of California English Educators about building a creative writing program. I have been teaching creative writing for so long and taken roughly a decade to design an effective and rigorous creative writing program. I don’t want to be boastful, but I honestly believe it’s a damn good program and I am extremely passionate about it.

I also had the privilege of reconnecting with Mr. Burke, but my sophomore English teacher. He was the first teacher to assign a short story to me for a grade. It was empowering and exciting to create something so different than anything I had ever done before. He inspired me then to write and he inspires me now to write, but this time he inspires me to write non-fiction.

So I’m trying something new. I have downloaded a template for writing a non-fiction book proposal and will be working on that until it is complete. This is scary and to be honest, I have anxiety about it, but it feels like God placed Mr. Burke in my path for a purpose. It’s time that I write something I genuinely feel like I know a lot about.

I’m still going to query my novel, BACKSTABBER, but my focus is redirecting. God help me.

Have a great week. Any comments are appreciated.