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Drowning in the Shallows

I admire John's eager love for the beach, the ever churning ocean waves, and the recklessness of swimming to far out islands and buoys barely visible from the sandy shore. A wildness comes out in him at the beach, when the sun is high and hot, the water cold and rushing up past your shins. He's extremely playful like a Labrador set free in a dog packed dog park, but I was so timid and downright terrified when first standing in the damp, cool sand.

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“It Was a Creative Shut Up”

I was sitting in our senior capstone course under the direction of our program's director. It was the course to help guide us towards our capstone presentations to showcase either a research paper or creative project based upon our knowledge and showmanship of what we had gained at Oklahoma City University. It was an easy …

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What Does a Wayward Writer Write?

My life hasn't gone how I planned. Who can say differently, though? When I was a know-nothing kid, I thought that things would align easily. The teachers made it seem like things would, so long as you behaved and got good grades, though. Everything will just fall into place. So I made an age-marked goal …

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Simple Steps

Have you ever started plotting out a draft, story, dream journal and found yourself with too complex and heavy of an idea meshed with dozens of other ideas that make you go, "Man, this needs to be an entire series!" But then you start, and the idea of creating no only one book for a story idea but three, four, or even five and you're feeling heart palpitations every time you sit at the keyboard. That anxiety is unnecessary, and what is the rule for unnecessary items in a draft?

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Sticks and Stones AND Words WILL Hurt You

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me!" That's what they taught us to use as a quick response to bullying, more so name-calling and verbal teasing. I doubt this would be effective when placed in a headlock and enduring a noogie. Whenever I'd run tearfully to my parents after a sibling made a bullying poem about me (it actually was well made but at six this was not appreciated as of yet), my parents, tired from full time jobs and three kids, would say "sticks and stones, sweetie. Go back and say that to them."