I shared an image of my social media calendar on Instagram earlier this month. I thought it might help some of my fellow authors to keep better track of their social media reach and habits.

Now I’m in the middle of this awesome 30 Authors, 30 Days event. And it’s all about learning how to use social media better. I’m having a ton of fun with it, and I’m making contact with some awesome new writing friends.

I’ve learned that if I have a set plan for what I want to share on social media it frees my brain. Because I often fill my Buffer account in the evenings after a day of writing and day job and kids, my brain is often not working. If I’m not careful, I’ll just fill up my whole Buffer with Tasty videos and songs by Lindsay Stirling. Anyone who follows me on any social media knows that to be true.

So I wanted to do a breakdown of how I create my social media spread in my bullet journal. It’s actually going to change now that I’ve learned so many new tricks. Lots of love and credit go to Lucinda Moebius who wrote a wonderful book for writers who want to see their work, suggested many of the social media techniques I’m going to talk about in building my SM spread. Here’s a link to her book, if you want to check it out.

Deciding what to share

The thing that has helped me the most with my social media is to make a list of things to post. This enables me to be on auto piolet when I’m making my lists.

Your list is going to look different than mine, of course. But here’s what I do. Again, many of these were suggestions from Lucinda.

• Post a writing prompt.
• Post a promotional tip.
• Share an image.
• Link to a good article that I’ve enjoyed and found helpful.
• Ask a thought-provoking question that will encourage other people to respond.
• Post a link to my book.
• Post an inspirational quote.
• Post a WIP excerpt.
• Share a quick poem or tiny snippet of a writing example.
• Share an inspirational image.
• Share an image of my WIP.
• Link to my newsletter signup sheet.
• Ask for reviews of my book.
• Give a progress report for my WIP.
• Do a Twitter share thread.
• Give a writing tip.
• Do a Facebook fan share thread.
• Link to my book.
• Link to a video I’ve enjoyed recently.

So with that list in place, I can just go right down it and post just that.

Deciding where to share it

I definitely suggest not spreading yourself too thin with social media. You don’t need to be everywhere. First of all, you are going to get more traction from posting more often on one SM account than posting infrequently on seven. For the most part, I post on Facebook and Twitter. While I do post on Instagram and Pinterest, I do that more because I enjoy those formats and they take less time.

If you’re not a fan of social media, pick one that you can tolerate and commit to it. When you get accustomed to that, or if you use Buffer and can post to two accounts at once, do that.

Deciding when to share

For Twitter and Facebook, this is easy. Buffer will figure out for you when the best time to post for your area is, and schedule your posts accordingly. The big thing, then, is to decide how often to post.

I generally post five times a day to Twitter, three to Facebook. I also try to take one Instagram picture a day, excluding Sundays.

Building the spread

Finally, the fun part. This is how I build my Bullet Journal spread, complete with mock-up pictures. For the sake of this post, I’ve designed a nice page in my bullet journal full of fake info. Enjoy.

First, we’ll set up the page just the same as if you were starting a new month in your bullet journal. I do fit this into my monthly set up.

Next, I’ll schedule in all of my blog posts for the month. I try to at least know what I’ll be posting for the month before the month starts.

Then I’ll notate any days when I’ll be promoting a book launch for another writer, or announcing something exciting of my own. If I’m publishing fiction, that goes on the list, too.

As I publish posts and share them on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest I’ll highlight the posts.

Finally, I’ll add three columns. They’re labeled SM, Buff and Insta.

SM stands for social media. That indicates whether or not I’ve shared my post for the day on social media.

Buff stands for if I’ve filled my Buffer feed for the day.

Insta is for if I’ve posted a picture on Instagram.

These can all be personalized depending on how you use social media.

I’d love to see your social media spreads on your bullet journals! Feel free to tag me on Instagram or Twitter to share. I’m @nicolecluttrell86 on Instagram and @nicolecluttrell on Twitter.

Often poetry is bright. It’s a warm morning curled up in bed, or a piece of pie shared between two kids who normally fight nonstop. It’s a celebration of our bodies, or a glorification of the fleeting minutes in our lives. Poetry seems dedicated to the greatness of life, the depth of life.

Life’s not always great. Sometimes, life is horrible, dark, unhappy, depressed. That’s where Dark Poetry comes into play.

I love Dark Poetry, because I love honest poetry. I love a real moment, shared with someone else. And when you think about it, a dark poem is a quite intimate thing. It’s one thing to share your great, bright moments with others. That’s something we do all the time. Social media is full of the bright moments. The birthdays and big wins. The bright new lipsticks and after gym pics.

We don’t share the loses. The nights sitting in the emergency room, waiting for any kind of news. The bad test results. The failures.

It’s the lump your mother found and didn’t want to tell anyone about.

It’s the bottles of vodka vanishing faster and faster.

It’s a trip to the casino. Then another, then another.

It’s a bruise on your friend’s collar bone that she doesn’t want to talk about.

It’s a dog that’s getting older.

It’s a phone call to your wife that was sent to voice mail.

It’s the bills with red letters.

A dark poem is that thing you don’t talk about, don’t think about, don’t act on. Until it acts on you.

Don’t be afraid to write dark poetry. Because art is honest, before everything else. We, as authors of poetry or prose, need to be honest too.

Here’s a quick rhyme

I ran out of time

I was busy riding my home of grime.

My edits and rewrites

were stacked ten feet tall

So I couldn’t write anything new for you all.

Sorry for the crappy poem instead of a post. If I had time to write a good poem, I could have written you a story.

Have you heard of Hygge yet? It’s this awesome new lifestyle concept that apparently I’ve been doing my whole life already.

If you haven’t heard of it, here are the basics.

• Comfort and warmth are the cornerstones of this concept. So anything that is comfortable and warm is hygge.
• Candles are a must. Since I’ve moved out on my own, I’ve had a candle lit in my house almost every day.
• Baking is big, but not difficult baking because this is all supposed to be very soothing. My recently discovered butter cookies are working really well for this.
• In the colder months (so not right now, that’s for damn sure) knitting and weaving are big things. Making it, wearing it. Cuddling up under blankets and reading.
• Warm drinks like coffee, tea, hot chocolate, warmed wine. Hot chocolate mixed with red wine. These are all things that I love.
• Warm food like stews and chili. Really any good meal cooked at home.

Really, there are only two things about hygge that I don’t love. One is the focus on fresh cut flowers this time of year. This one is personal for me. I’m a Unitarian, and we generally don’t believe in killing things without good reason. So I don’t approve of killing flowers just to brighten my house when I can buy silk flowers and be quite happy with them.

The second issue I have with hygge is the focus on lessening screen time. I’m a huge tech geek, everyone in my family is. And I couldn’t do any of my hygge things without my computer or tablet.

Here then are seven ways I use technology to practice hygge in my house.

Watching movies in bed on my computer with my kids.

I’ve always considered having a TV in my bedroom to be a very bad idea. Of course, I’ve only owned one tv at a time my whole adult life, two TVs total.

For the most part, my family is really happy with this decision. TV watching is a family event, no one in the house watches it alone. But sometimes I do want to watch movies with my kids in bed. While I don’t want that temptation to watch TV all night, I do like bringing my laptop into my room, cuddling together, and watching something on Netflix.

Attending church service online.

As you may know, I’m a Unitarian. There isn’t a Unitarian church around here, so recently I found an online service.

This has been wonderfully cozy. We watch service, with a candle lit for our chalice, sitting together on the couch with my computer on my lap. While it would be really nice to have a church to attend, this is a pretty comfortable way to worship.

Keeping in touch with family who live far away.

This isn’t one that I practice personally but using online communications to spend time with family is pretty amazing. While some might say that if you miss your family just pick up the phone, I say why just talk when we can talk and see each other.

Finding stories to read by the campfire.

We love having fires in the summer. We also love reading scary stories to each other by the fire, which can cause some major damn eye strain. Reading scary stories on a tablet is a lot easier.

Reading in general.

I know a lot of purists don’t like reading on tablets. To you, I say, “I can carry the whole Harry Potter series around in my bag, including the screenplay of Cursed Child. Can you?”

So many a cozy afternoon has found me curled up on my couch or back porch reading on my tablet. Could I do it with a book? Sure, but it’s a lot less convenient.

Looking up recipes and crochet patterns.

I do not own a single damn cookbook, nor do I want one. When the time comes for my husband and me to send our children off into the world, armed with a dirty sense of humor and all of our family recipes, they’ll be in an Evernote document.

The same goes for crochet and knitting patterns. I love looking up new patterns. I also love being able to locate them again. If they’re on a piece of paper that’s just not going to happen.

Using my tablet and a coat to make a waiting room cozy.

This one’s going to go a little personal. As you all know, my family has some health issues. Not so long ago, we found ourselves in the emergency room. This time it wasn’t a life or death situation, my mother in law broke her leg. She’s absolutely fine, don’t worry.

But we were in the waiting room for awhile. Any amount of time in a waiting room at night is a long time. But this really was a horribly busy night. So while my husband was back with his mother, I was in the waiting room with the kids. They were scared and the room was just full of people. Including one person who was exhibiting drug seeking behavior.

So I staked out a couch. We bought a couple bottles of orange juice and a cup of coffee. We used our coats as blankets and I pulled up Youtube on my tablet. We cuddled up together and watched Youtube for hours, making that couch our own little hygge oasis in a sea of really unhappy people.

We as people are evolving and technology is a big part of that. I am all about using every tool I have to make a cozy, happy environment for my kids. But I’d love to hear what you think! Do you practice hygge, with or without technology? Let us know in the comments below.

So, July was going to be a quiet month for me, for the most part. I had a podcast interview (that’s still happening), some 4^th events, (still happening) and two major projects to finish (also still happening). Since the whole rest of the year was going to be mad, I was really happy about a quiet month. After performing my midyear review, which cemented the fact that the second half of 2017 was going to be major event after major event, I really was happy about July.

Then an event came along that was so exciting that I just had to surrender my quiet month.

I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot about this over the next month, but I’m participating in an event called 30 Days, 30 Authors.

For you, it’s an opportunity to meet 29 other indie authors that I love and have great respect for. If you’re not already following me on Facebook and Twitter, now is the time to do it. If you’re already following me, get ready to see me posting fun new things, really experimenting with new ways to talk to you. I’ll also be sharing a bunch of fun things from the other authors participating in the event.

For me, it’s an experiment in new social media techniques. I’ll be doing things I’ve never done before, including going live on Facebook daily (ack!). I have no idea what time I’ll be doing this, but I’m sure that the replays are going to be available on my Facebook page every day.

As always, I want to hear from you. What do you have planned this month? Are you just kicking back and enjoying the Summer? Or are you hustling like me? Let us know in the comments below.

So, finances have been a struggle this month. My rent went up, and overtime has not been offered at the day job. Another revenue source went down by about $50.

We had already been discussing moving, but we’ve been having trouble finding another house to rent.

Then we thought it might be a good idea to buy a house instead. Really, it won’t be much more expensive than renting. So we’re looking into it. And the sequel to Broken Patterns is coming out soon. That means lots of production costs on my part.

All of this combined means I’ve been devoting a lot of time to tightening our budget. I started where I always start, Pinterest.

Now that I’ve crawled out of the giant rabbit hole I went down, I have knowledge for you. I tried a lot of suggestions, with varying degrees of success. Here’s what I learned.

What didn’t work.

Ibotta doesn’t work on tablets. Funny story about that. I really thought that this was going to be something I was going to like. Maybe I’ll like it better if they ever get their act together and put their damn app on tablets!

Saving change and small bills doesn’t work if you don’t use cash. I’ve found if I keep cash in my wallet, I’ll spend it. This is a great example of how important it is to know yourself before taking money advice.

Some things I tried to replace with cheaper alternatives didn’t work out for me. Maybe I’m just spoiled, but I don’t like anything but felt tip pens. And the best pens I’ve found are Le Pens. (Not a sponsored post. But if Marvy wants to send me some free pens, my favorite colors are oriental blue, royal blue and black.) Likewise, I really like Starbucks coffee. I don’t go to the shops, but I do purchase the grounds to enjoy at home. Maybe I’m selfish, but I don’t think I should have to compromise on everything.

No spend times, I’ve found don’t work for me at all. If I try to do it for a whole month, I’ll never make it. Then, once I’ve spent money on one thing I might as well keep going. Already broke the seal, right? If the time is too short, it doesn’t work because most days I don’t spend money. I go to work and come home.

One suggestion that continues to piss me off is cutting out take-out coffees. It’s a great example of an expensive luxury that helpful money articles suggest cutting out. Things like buying expensive clothes, eating out all the time and purchasing new furniture. I’m not doing any of that shit anyway! I don’t have the money to be getting a cup of coffee every morning on the way to work, are you kidding me? We might eat out twice a month. And when we do it’s fast food, unless it’s someone’s birthday.

Coupons are my enemy. Here’s the thing, most coupons are for things that I don’t buy anyway. Usually, the name brand is still more expensive than the generic even with the damn coupon anyway. Or you’ve got to buy a stupid amount to use the coupon. Really, I save more money just buying the store brand to start with.

What is working.

Dollar Tree has become my best friend. I actually found some decent shampoo there, and body washes that everyone in the house likes. I was amazed at how many good things I found there, saving me a ton of money. Also, if you keep an eye out you can sometimes find some legit makeup there. I probably won’t be buying foundation, but I got some decent lipsticks. I’m officially only shopping there for toiletries from this point on. In fact, I’ve started shopping there first, and only going to other stores for things I can’t find.

I’ve started making more stuff at home. The biggest thing that’s been helping me out here is dry shampoo. It’s a simple blend of corn starch and a little chocolate baking powder. You need more or less chocolate powder, depending on the color of your hair. I also started making these awesome cheap cookies. They are delightful, take next to no time to make, and are super cheap! I’ve also made homemade therapy putty and pancake mix.

I really am sitting down and making a budget at the start of the month. There are lots of different methods for doing this. Find one that works for you and stick with it.

We are using some coupons if it’s something I would buy anyway. The ones that save us the most money are usually for fast food places.

Dave Ramsey is amazing if I’ve never mentioned this before. I started on his baby steps, focusing on building that $1,000 emergency fund right now.

Again not a sponsored post, but the darling husband and I started using the Dollar Shave Club. (#fuckthepinktax.) It’s three bucks a month, and we get four razors. He doesn’t shave that much and I only kill two blades a month, so it’s great for us. That is so much cheaper than buying razors anywhere else.

Finally, I think I finally messed up enough that God stepped in. No lie! I’ve been looking for an online Unitarian service for awhile now since there isn’t a real life service near me. I finally found one that has a different theme every month. Here’s a link to the website. The theme for May? Being more mindful about how we spend our money. I don’t think that timing is coincidental.

So that’s how I’m taking better care of my income. What are some ways you manage your money?

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I just finished coaching my kid’s volleyball team at the Y. It was the first time I’d ever coached anything, and the first time I’d ever been in charge of kids besides my own.

It was… and experience, to say the least. It’s not one that I was especially fond of if I can be completely honest. And I guess if I can’t be completely honest here, where can I? Well, in a private journal, but still. Work with me here, people.

So here’s what I learned, coaching volleyball.

Knowing and accepting my limitations is important.

I’m pretty open and honest about who I am here. So you probably know that I enjoy sports, both playing and watching them. I like kids, and I think it’s important to teach them things.

But you probably also know that I’m an introvert and really get anxious in new social settings. This leads me to second guess myself and get super upset. I also get really tired when I have to be sociable for extended periods of time. Especially when I have to not swear!

Now let’s add the fact that the games were Friday nights. My day job requires me to be at work at 7:00 am on Saturday. Friday is my Sunday, also. And the day I usually clean my whole house.

Do you see the problem with my plan to coach? That’s good because I didn’t see it until about three games in. No, that’s not true. I saw it right away. I just didn’t admit it to myself until three games in.

I actually remember how to play volleyball, and it’s kind of fun.

I was almost on the Jr. ROTC volleyball team, did I ever tell you guys that? Well, it’s true. I tried out and got on the team, but it was too much of a time commitment for my mom. A lot of things were too much of a time commitment back then, but that’s not the point of the story today.

But I did actually like volleyball. I was pleased to find out that I’m still actually pretty decent at it.

Teenage girls are nicer than I remember.

So let’s be clear, my kids weren’t great at volleyball. The other kids on the team were pretty good, but not always. There was a lot of messing up. Right along with that was a lot of teasing.

All of it was in kindness, though. There was no bullying. The girls were all really nice to each other. I was happily surprised. The whole team was full of really good kids. I may not have been thrilled to be there, but it was an honor to coach them.

If you don’t think you can do a thing, fake it really hard and it will mostly be okay.

At no time did I think I knew what I was doing. I was not prepared, not at all. I had no sort of training plan, no plays, nothing.

What I did have was a confident attitude and a big old smile on my face as I faked it really hard. And you know what? We actually won the majority of our games. So, I guess faking in until you make it actually does work for something.

Sometimes I just don’t want to know some things.

My darling husband decided to wait until we were leaving the last game to tell me that some of the parents had been saying unkind thing about me during the games. Since these were the same parents who were cussing on the sidelines and sitting on each other’s laps I really don’t care. Actually, I really didn’t care at all. I was the one who’d gone through the whole training process and volunteered to do this mess. They hadn’t. So I shut down my husband before he could repeat any of the unkind things that had been said. He himself wasn’t trying to be unkind in telling me these things. He was angry that they’d been complaining, and when he’s angry he needs to talk about it. I get it, I’m the same way.

The requirements to work with children are way stronger than I realized, which is a mixed blessing.

In order to volunteer to coach volleyball, I had to have a full background check, including a Children’s Service check. I also had to become a mandated reporter. That certification training is three hours of my life I’ll never get back.

On the one hand, this is good, because it tells me that the people who are around my children at places like the Y are looked into, and held to high standards. On the other hand, mandated reporting is scary. It puts people in the uncomfortable situation of having to report behavior that is probably nothing as though it’s something or risk jail time. It’s kind of 1984 esq, if we’re being honest. Everyone’s job becomes tattling on everyone else.

Not all experiences that are good are necessarily good for me.

While I did get a lot out of this experience, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was good for me. Nothing is good for everyone, except maybe water. The water we can all agree is good.

This could have been a really good experience for some people. I was not one of them. Please don’t take this to mean that I think it’s a bad thing to do, or that I’m in any way bad-mouthing the Y. This was a great program that my kids did enjoy and did get a lot out of.

This just wasn’t for me. So now is when I bow in thanks for the lesson and move on knowing that I did the best that I could.

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I’ve been going to my local theater for some time, watching amateur plays. I take the kids, trying to force some culture into their little brains before they decide that nothing I like is cool. I am, after all, in my thirties.

The husband doesn’t go with us, and that’s fine. Sometimes my mother in law goes, sometimes it’s just me and the girls. Sometimes it’s just me and my older one.

The last play of the season, before their long Summer break, was Flowers For Algernon. Yeah, I took a twelve and thirteen year old to see that.

My husband thought I was crazy for going. He’s not a big fan of sad for sad’s sake. “That’s such a terrible story!” he said. “Why would you want to go see something that has such a sad ending? It’s just going to upset you.”

He also pointed out, as lovingly as possible, that I have depression. That at least one of our daughters also has depression. That maybe seeing a play about a man who goes from mental retardation to superhuman intelligence and back again might be a little more than my depressed little soul could take.(Please don’t take offense at my use of the phrase mental retardation. It is the actual medical term given to the character, Charlie, and is not intended as a slight in any way.)

Fun fact, a whole rainbow of elderly dementia illnesses run in my husband’s side of the family. They don’t in mine. In fact, my two great grandmothers’s lived to their nineties. Both of them held my older daughter, their great-great-granddaughter. In fact, one of my great grandmothers attended my daughter’s third birthday. All of this means that I’m awfully sure that I’ll watch my husband decay mentally one day, then live for another decade or two. Sharp, right up to the end, which will just mean that I’ll remember every emotionally crippling moment of my beloved husbands decent. So, that whole watching someone lose their mental capacity right before my eyes thing? It might be my final chapter.

Before we throw too big of a pity party for me, let me tell you that my husband is in his early thirties, showing no signs that this is actually going to happen, and I might get hit by a car tomorrow and die before him anyway. I really might, I read while I walk.

Well, I loved Flowers For Algernon. So did the kids, thank you very much. It was a beautiful story, and I cried right there in public.

Funny story about that play. At the start of it the main character, Charlie, is a mentally handicapped man. As such, his character behaved as someone of that mental condition would act. In some cases that was comedic. The rest of the audience laughed at some of his antics. I, who have had some small experience with people who suffer from disabilities, didn’t. In fact, I hated the other patrons a little. At the end of the play, when Charlie lost his small reprieve and sank back into his illness, not a damn soul in that theater was laughing.

I think that has a part in why we, as a society, seek out these stories. A sad story, one where everything doesn’t come out neatly, changes how we view the world. I think we’d all like to think that everything is going to work out for the best. I mean, it does in most stories, right? The lovers fall in love. The orphan finds a family. The poor man improves his position. The good guys win.

When is it, I wonder, that we realize that the good guys don’t always win? That sometimes life is just cruel? Life will teach us that lesson, over and over. But sometimes stories do too. Old Yeller, Where The Red Fern Grows, Forest Gump (the book), Boys On The Side. All of these are examples of horrible things happening for no good reason. The characters in these stories weren’t bad people. They were, in fact, often good people. They didn’t deserve to have their dogs die, or get sick.

No one deserves to have these things happen. You’re an adult, I don’t need to tell you that bad things happen to good people.

But in most cases, life goes on after the bad thing. Maybe not for everyone involved, but for some. After a death, or a fire, or a loss of a job, we have to keep on living. Groceries must be bought, carpets vacuumed, dishes washed.

In some cases, the bad thing is temporary and we have to fix it. A lost job, or a house burning down. When my older daughter was kidnapped. It was a bad, horrible, terrible thing. But it wasn’t the end, and I had work to do.

In other cases, the bad thing can only be accepted. A death is usually the most obvious example.

This, I think, is why I enjoy a sad story or a sad song. When these horrible things happen to us we must react. We must feel our emotions and we must grieve. We must cry, or scream. Throw ourselves on the ground, just break right down.

But eventually, we must get up, brush ourselves off, and keep on going. Otherwise, we become the bad thing that’s happening now to someone else. Either because we become impossible to love, or because we make the final decision to take our own lives. Let’s not do that.

Let’s just sing the sad songs, and make it better.

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Hey, everyone.

I was so fortunate to get an advanced copy of this book to review. And I have to tell you, it was awesome. The world is well thought out, the characters were endearing and the magic set up is highly structured.

Here’s a quick blurb from the book.

Compelled to obey the dark god he pledged his soul to, Darien finds himself tasked with delivering the people of the Black Lands from under the curse of darkness which shrouds the skies. With the enemy mage Azár, Darien sets out across a barren darkscape to assume his place as the leader of a people who despise him.
As he journeys deeper into the shadowed waste, Darien is confronted with difficult truths that force him to question every loyalty he has ever held. For there, in the brutal proving grounds of the north, Darien will be inexorably forged into the most dangerous adversary the Rhen has ever faced.

Of course, if you follow me on Goodreads you already know what I thought of the book. But if you don’t, here’s what I said.

When I started this book, I had a fairly clear idea of who the bad guy was. I had a clear idea of who the bad guy was at the end too.

The depth of the characters in this book is really what makes it stand out from other fantasy stories. Absolutely worth a read. I have to catch up with the first two, and can’t wait for the next.

Here’s a link to the Goodreads page for the book. I definitely suggest checking this one out.

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Last month I wrote an open letter to a teacher I wasn’t thrilled with. Unless you’ve been very lucky I’m sure you have at least one of those teachers in your past.

Unless you’ve been very unlucky, you also have a teacher like the one I’m going to tell you about today. He was an English teacher of mine. For privacy reasons, I won’t be sharing his name.

I don’t know where he is now, or if he’s even still alive. But this is the letter I would send to him if I could.

Dear Mr.

You taught English to Eight graders. That’s a damn thankless job, let’s just throw that out there right now. By the eighth grade, most kids have lost the joys of hearing a story. They’ve reached that sad, depressing age when they think themselves too old for such thing. Pity on them.

You taught English, and I loved you for that alone. By this time I knew that I wanted to be a writer, and so I valued English as one of the only classes that could teach me something that I would need for the rest of my life. As you can see, I was as dumb as the rest of my peers, believing that the rest of my classes had nothing to teach me. If I had gone in with a more open mind, I might have gone away with more than I did.

Or maybe not. You and I both know that we deserved better than that school. It’s sad, but a fact’s a fact.

At any rate, you taught me English. But you taught me more than that by far.

You taught me the importance of being able to give good directions. I remember so clearly the day you explained that, for whatever reason, people tended to stop and ask you for directions to a place. I was really bad at that. I still sort of am. But I’m getting better. I see it as a mark of belonging. If you can tell an out of towner how to get to the nearest gas station, or how to get back onto 422, it marks you as someone who lives here. Someone who has lived here awhile, long enough to have roots. It also marks one as a capable, competent adult. Something I still feel like I’m trying to prove to myself I am.

You were right, I can now guess the endings to most movies, books and tv shows. You said that when you heard enough stories, you started seeing the clues early on. Almost no endings surprised you anymore, you said. And you were so right. I’ve gotten better at solving ‘Who’s the Killer’ sort of shows over the years. Not because I’ve gotten better at deductive reasoning, but because I’ve learned to look for storyteller cues. This only works with stories that aren’t based on real events, though. No one can guess what’s going to happen in real life. This past election was proof enough of that. This ability to see the ending has led me to treasure the endings I don’t see coming. I have striven to write that kind of endings. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded every time. But I have tried.

You told us why we were writing what seemed like stupid essays that lacked any originality. Actually, this is how the whole directions thing came up. You never just said, “Here’s what we’re writing about today.” You explained why this sort of writing was important, really important. Not just to people like me, who tell stories for a living. When I was in your class I was an elitist, believing that only professional writers really needed to be able to write well. But I was wrong. Writing is a skill that everyone needs. Thank you for trying to tell us that. I hope I wasn’t the only one who got it.

You taught me a new sense of patriotism that I hadn’t understood before. I’ve always been proud to be an American. But before I met you I’d only ever seen our country painted with two colors. The first was the blind love of a fanatic who will refuse to see faults. We are the best country in the world, damn everyone else! All other countries are inferior to ours. The second was a sort of creeping self-loathing, that tended to meld with a good helping of narcissism. It was the point of view of someone who saw our country as bad and flawed. But this person wasn’t like all the rest of us. This person had a world view that was greater than that of the US of A. They saw America for what it really was, and found it wanting.

You didn’t see us that way, and neither do I. We’re a complex place, with grave issues and lots of infighting. But we’re good too, and creative. Our country is our people, with good and bad all mashed together until you can’t tell where one starts and the other ends. Just like every other place.

You shamed me into sharing my writing. It was a lynchpin moment for me. You asked me to share a piece I’d written, reading it aloud to the class. I was fourteen, can you forgive me? I refused, the first time I’d ever said no to a teacher. I didn’t really understand why at the time. I had read plays and stories out loud. I was always eager to give answers. But to read my own words out loud? To the class? No way, someone might laugh.

After class, I apologized, because I was a good student who wanted her teachers to like her. And you said to me, “Don’t apologize. If that’s how you’re wired, that’s how you’re wired. I just didn’t think that’s how you were.”

You were right. That’s not how I am. Fortunately, I changed my wiring. And when I hesitate to hit the publish button on a project, I think of you. I changed my wiring, sir.

Maybe that’s why you said what you did when I got the courage to share my work. You told me my writing was good. And I bet you didn’t know that you were the first person ever to do that.

Thank you.

Nicole

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