Year: 2020

So, 2020 … a great year all around, amirite? Muse: Go sit down. Yeah, it was a rough year for a lot of reasons. But since my better half is always (rightly) encouraging me to be more positive and not such a pessimist, I thought I’d pick out something...

Death is waiting for everyone. Each one of us will some day experience dying, whether after aging, through sickness, or suddenly. There is an inescapable inevitability to death and many choose to live their lives ignoring the end as much as they can, as though it will somehow prolong...

Here is my year in review for 2020 stories and poems. I don't usually make a big effort trying to garner interest in nominating things for awards, though I probably should. But mostly I want everyone to have a chance to give these stories and poems a r......

Photo by Valentin Balan on UnsplashMy story "The Bridge Fugue: Variations on Emptiness" is out in today's DSF.I wrote this last January (before anyone around here started talking about lockdowns....). Some of the comments I got from othe......

A few months ago, I wrote about teaching my AP Literature class sans grades (at least as much as possible). De-Grading the AP Lit Classroom One of the main benefits has been a refocusing on the actual standards that the students need to master over the course of the...

We appear to be living in limbo. Everyone looks like Batman's nemesis Bane (the masks), and what used to be my friends are now walking contagions I have to keep 6ft away from (still my friends though). Holidays cancelled... music festivals unlikely... ......

Okay, I did a thing. I read Twilight. (NOTE: There are some mild spoilers below.) Pause for collective sharp intakes of breath. Before I elaborate on anything, a little background. Five or six weeks ago, I was on the phone with my mom. Mom is interested in my writing...

(Beth Turnage Blog)  I’ve written several posts on Quora on writing and thought I’d curate some here. You can call it laziness, but really it’s a lack of time since ghostwriting is keeping me very busy. Really. 😉 How do word count limitations affect what you can fit into...

I’ve begun to notice more and more a disturbing pattern in which ideas that don’t coincide are automatically assumed to be in direct opposition to each other. This leads to either/or thinking, often on topics that are far more complex and cannot be generalized into just two opposing camps....

(Beth Turnage) I’ve written a number of posts on Quora on writing, and thought I’d curate some here. You can call it laziness, but really it’s a lack of time, since ghostwriting is keeping me very busy. Really. 😉 When writing, how do you grab your reader’s attention as...