Author: Cathryn Free
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The Free Writer's Workshop Wednesday: Combining Sentences
As a teacher, I have seen my fair share of essays, stories, and papers. Some are good, some are bad, and some are very, very ugly. But there is one type of paper I find painfully frustrating: the B paper. The B Paper The B paper is easy to spot: very limited punctuation mistakes, adequate…
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7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Writers
Writers are weird. Now before you go and get offended, please understand that I think weird is perfectly acceptable. Wonderful. Necessary, even. I mean, you don’t create entire worlds, landscapes, and people without some weirdness. And writers have some pretty weird habits. Obsessively drinking coffee. Constantly jumping back and forth between: “this is brilliant!”and “this…
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Picture Book Review: Diary of a Spider
Title: Diary of a Spider Author/ Illustrator: Written by: Doreen Cronin/ Illustrated by: Harry Bliss Genre: Picture book, realistic fiction Year published: 2005 Summary: Funny book written in diary style about the life of a spider. Review: I love this picture book for so many reasons. First of all, it’s funny! This book takes a…
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5 Ways Create a Culture of Literacy in Your Home
“I just don’t like reading.” “I’m not a big reader.” “Reading is boring.” “Reading is hard.” The number of times I’ve heard this from both students and adults is staggering. Quite frankly, it’s terrifying. Reading is one of the single greatest skills you can give to a child to help them succeed. It improves everything…
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11 Places to Publish Your Short Fiction for Children
One of the hardest roadblocks I hit as I try and put my work out there is finding places to build writing credits. If you’re someone who wants to take themselves seriously as a writer, and plans to pursue this as a career or calling, you need to start building writing credits. My first writing…
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Free Writer’s Workshop Wednesday: Brainstorming
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any. – Orson Scott Where do your ideas come from? Writer’s often get asked that question as if they have a magical pool that provides them with limitless ideas…
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5 Steps to Get Your First Writing Credit
That first writing credit is like the first summit of miles and miles of a mountainous trek. It seems so daunting and yet so promising because without the first summit, you can’t go anywhere. I will admit, when I first started submitting pieces to magazines I only shot for the best of the best. If…
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You Are not in Control
I don’t know about you, but I had big plans for these quarantined days at home. I was going to work on my writing, including writing a first draft of a middle grade novel, submit numerous pieces to magazines, revise first drafts, get really consistent with my blog, start a YouTube channel for lesson in…
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Writer's Workshop Wednesday: Object Complements
Today’s workshop takes a look at object complements and how to identify them within a sentence. (Just in case Direct Objects and Indirect Objects weren’t confusing enough.) What is it? An object complement is a noun or adjective that occurs after the direct object. It renames or modifies the object How is it used? The…
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Free Writer's Workshop Wednesday: Distance Learning
Given the sudden shift in education due to the coronavirus precautions, I’ve decided to implement a new way of sharing information. I’ll will still be hosting my writer’s workshop here on the blog, but I have created a YouTube channel specifically to teach lessons in English Language Arts to offer resources to students and teachers…
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