Procrastination and writer’s block can be big challenges for writers of many experience levels. Strategies for dealing with either are topics for whole books! The reasons we conflict with procrastination and writer’s block are also complex, and, likely, those complexities could be subjects of entire psychology books, if they are not already. One suggestion that […]
NOVEMBER Well, it’s November, which means NaNoWriMo has begun. The library is participating as a Come Write In location, and we’re offering a few writing programs to help spur our local writers. I’m also a huge fan of Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem a Day Chapbook Challenge that he hosts a few times a year on […]
I was surprised and relieved back in August, when I read a Front Porch Forum message expressing a neighbor’s feelings of being offended by two flags flown on private property in Vergennes. I, too, had noticed the flags a day or two earlier, been struck by a turmoil of offense, confusion, and wonder at why […]
The month of September is filled with writing workshops at the Bixby Library. I’ve given up the reins of the Thursday workshop for a few weeks again to Kris Johannesson MFA to lead the writers through what she calls “Writing Horror.” Three one-off writing workshops are taking place, too. On September 6th, Joni B. Cole […]
Our eight week session has come to an end, and on its final night we made zines, mini-books and pamphlets. RESULTS I neglected to capture a record of all the results of our group’s work last night, but here are a few of the blank templates I made, a journal of mine, and my finished […]
Our writing workshop group at the Bixby Library embarked collectively on individual writing projects several weeks ago. Each writer has produced a respectable amount of work to this end, and each seems to feel as though they want to write more. No one has a complete draft yet, so we plan to continue to write […]
So it begins! Our summer workshop will step through the process of a writing project. We’ve got eight weeks to create a book object. That means by August 17th, each of us will have created from start to finish a book that we can give as a gift or keep as a souvenir of our […]
Hey, big surprise! A librarian suggesting that reading makes the world a better place. Right? Well, I’ve been reminded serendipitously of late several reasons that reading can improve our world, and I want to share two today: reading fiction builds your empathy muscles, and reading helps resist the anxiety and fear many people feel at […]
This essay was published in the Bixby Buzz newsletter in November, and carried by the Addison Independent in their Community Forum column. “We know that censorship, ignorance, and manipulation are the tools of tyrants and profiteers.” So states the American Library Association’s (ALA) “The Universal Right to Free Expression,” a support document for the ALA “Library […]
I’ve recently been writing a monthly column for my library’s newsletter. The topics are library-world related, and also a place for me to think through some of the exciting developments in and around the Bixby Library. Since this website is a showcase of my “work” it might be appropriate to share some of those columns here. […]
Muir Haman 