Before I go into my next post that covers literary versus genre, I wanted to take a step back and evaluate the purpose of this blog.

I’m not writing this blog to tell you how to write. I’m not even blogging to teach you how to write. I’m here to share what I learned while attaining my MFA, what I learned from other writers, what I learned throughout fifteen years as a high school English teacher, and what I learned from my years before that in the Navy and as a carpenter and maybe even before that.

My hope is that those who read this blog will be able to gain something from it and make it their own.

If there’s anything I miss from the past two years attaining my MFA, it’s the academic discourse that came with it. I loved learning from other students and professors. I loved reading and analyzing literature. I loved emulating other writer’s writing. I even loved workshopping other writer’s writing and having my own writing workshopped.

So, beyond sharing what I’ve learned, I suppose this is my way to continue that academic discourse in hopes that others will benefit from it and that I too will benefit from it. Because, for me to ignore the impact academics have had on me means I would be ignoring a large part of what I love about writing.  

I might go off the beaten path at times, but I’ll always make it relevant to writing.