&            Home

&            History

&            Authors

&            Reviews

&            Excerpts

&            Q & A

&            Inquiries

Literacy Support Articles

     This section is devoted to articles focused on reading and writing. This includes advice, encouragement and tips to improve your reading and writing activities and interests. We also invite your questions, comments and any articles you may have relevant to literacy.

 On Becoming a Writer

By Carol Eversole

     The most universally accepted advice is for you to start writing! You may have a few letters, memos, and high school English compositions to your credit, but that’s not what this article is about. It’s really about helping you sort out reasons why you’re not writing. So, let’s begin by sampling the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a “real” writer.

      One prominent positive is your uniqueness as an individual. Like it or not, you’re different from anyone else, including your experiences and the way you see things in life.  That also means all of your experiences can translate into equally unique stories. Ask twenty people to write a short story with the identical topic, such as their best Christmas, and none will be even remotely similar to the other nineteen—promise. This suggests there are plenty of original stories in you that could be shared with the world.

Another plus is the well-documented therapeutic value of writing. Many psychotherapists today prescribe writing assignments because of their cathartic benefits. Psychiatrists used to call such writing “amanuensis.” In short, writing can be a real stress-reducer that makes you feel better.

Moreover, as you trade much of your passive TV viewing for writing (and reading) your brain will be rewarded with desperately needed exercise to offset the early senility that comes with brain disuse. It’ll also offer you a sense of purpose and self-satisfaction you may have lacked. Remember too, that being old is an advantage since it means more experience and more stories; and if you don’t think you have any writing skill, as one fine author put it, “if you can talk you can write.” 

Now for the downside of writing. It’s hard work! For the majority of even the most well-published authors there’s nothing easy about transforming their inspirational ideas into eloquent prose. Most novels take several years, plenty of frustration, and numerous rewrites before the final draft. It’s rare when an author completes a project after one or two writings.

There are also thousands of excellent writers in our nation who will never be published. The majority of today’s most financially successful authors are no more literarily skilled than their unpublished counterparts. In other words, to achieve a successful writing career requires infinitely more than an outstanding writing skill.

Whether you’re interested in writing as a career or just for fun, here are some essential tips for a successful experience:

1. Start by reading more than writing. Choose a variety of best selling authors in a variety of genres; enjoy their stories as well as their writing style. Get a feel for story-telling, different writing styles and you may even find a literary role model.
2. Start writing “for fun” and keep your regular job unless you, your spouse or significant other are well healed.
3. The uniqueness of writing is your individual style, as well as the stories you select. These are your personal signatures and define the art of writing. The mechanics of writing include grammar, spelling, punctuation and syntax. They are representative of a well-edited, professional book suitable for any reputable bookstore or library. Exploring, then honing the art in your writing is best accomplished by practice and feedback, available in any writer’s group. Acquiring the mechanics of writing is more straightforward. Take some community college basic grammar courses, read a variety of grammar and English composition books or hire a professional to proofread your work.
4. As suggested in 3, you need feedback simply because it’s hard to objectively judge the quality of your own artistic projects. It’s also tough to get an unbiased opinion from friends. There are, however, plenty of free writer’s groups, and if you can’t find one, start one.
5. Saving the most indispensable suggestion for last, the only way to become an accomplished writer is to practice, practice and practice some more. Write short stories, poems, articles, letters to the editor or whatever else motivates you to keep writing. Set aside an hour a day to write, and when uninspired, sit there anyway and think. Good luck.

 &   &   &

 Why Read?

By Shirley Kennedy

      Although I can give you endless reasons, here are a few teasers to get you started or restarted. Did you know that virtually all of the most famous authors were avid readers before they started writing? Were you aware that the all consuming habit of television watching is an unreflective, mindless activity which atrophies those cognitive brain cells that stimulate thinking and imagination?

Like the rest of your body, the muscle between your ears demands exercise in order to remain vibrant and healthy. This fact argues that prolonged television viewing can be dangerous to your mental health. Readers, on the other hand, become markedly better spellers, more articulate speakers, less prone to Alzheimer’s and more mentally alert and self-contained than their non-reading peers.

Unarguably, however, variety is the staff of life, and ideally, some purposeful television watching with equal reading time is guaranteed to thoroughly enrich your life by actually enjoying both. Let’s face it, too much television viewing can bore you to sleep, while alternating reading between watching television, keeps you aroused and entertained.

So, how does one return to a more stimulating balance of reading and television. 

1. Whenever you automatically turn on the TV with no specific program in mind, think mesmerizing rut and grab some reading material.
2. If urban noise, including TV, bothers you, find a soothing quiet place to read.
3. If music is soothing, turn on your favorite as you read.
4. There’s nothing more satisfying than reading on a nice day in the park, at the beach or out in the country.
5. Begin reading by choosing material matching your reading skill and interest, e.g., newspaper funnies, sports, want ads, magazines, novels, mysteries, romance, westerns, science fiction, how- to books, etc.
6. Develop a habit of reading at least an hour per day. The amount you read isn’t important as long as you're enjoying the hour.
7. Look up words you don’t know.
8. As you read, you’re using your imagination, a pursuit of knowledge and the active processing of information.
9. Share what you learn from reading with others, maybe through a readers' group.
10. Ask any question and there’s a book in your library or bookstore with the answer.
11. Want to learn a language, how to cook a roast, use a GPS, understand rugby, have a more satisfying sex life? There’s a book waiting for you to read.
12. Try reading aloud to your kids, spouse or companion. It brings you closer as you learn, laugh and even cry together. 
13. Follow these simple suggestions and you will happily enhance a prolonged life with new skills, achievements, interests, and self satisfaction.

 Look over the recommended books below. They’re all easy to read by anyone with a ninth grade reading skill. Depending on your interests, they are exciting, suspenseful, funny, tearfully sad or inspiringly uplifting. They’re also free for your pleasure at most libraries. Just browse through libraries and book stores. You’ll be amazed at what you find and learn.