If you’ve been a writer more than ten minutes, you’ve encountered the steadfast writer rule: Show, Don’t Tell. It’s repeated so often, it could be a chant. And though it is excellent advice, it isn’t so easily heeded. Especially when we aren’t sure what it means. So how do we spot the big no-no in [...]

The other day my twenty-something son stopped by for a visit and decided to take a short swim in our pool. This was something unique, really, because he hadn’t been a steady presence in our pool since he and his sister were of elementary school age. Then with only just the two of [...]

Like the students who entered this competition, I started writing when I was quite young. I wrote a lot of poetry in my early teens. I wrote a novel when I was 18 and another when I was 20. Thankfully all of that was long ago put in the bin. Actually I lent the second [...]