Writing education greats like Nancy Atwell have stressed the importance of writing in order to teach writing.  After all, if we are not familiar with the process ourselves, how can we instruct others on its best approaches? 

 Recently I decided that although I still come home exhausted, I am done with my Masters and with KTIP (Kentucky Teacher Internship Program), so I do have a few more hours to spare each week.  Why not take up writing again?  It began with this blog - I was conscious of the process by which I came up with ideas for posting, organizational format, sentence construction, development and my titles.  Awareness of my strategies aided me in planning lessons that would help my students practice the same strategies in each step of the writing process.  It helped me understand potential pitfalls and to be prepared with backup suggestions when one encountered frustration(s) or writer’s block.

Then, slowly, I began writing for myself again: poetry and fiction.  Out of nowhere I realized I possess this fathomless sea of creativity, and it’s quite pleasing to write.  I’m enjoying it like I did when I was in high school and college.  It’s also made my lessons more inspired, helped my students to see my writing, showed them that writing is something we can do our whole lives, put me on the more level playing field of “human” and “aspiring writer” with my students as my comrades in the pursuit of good writing. 

 Incidentally, I received news tonight that for the first time since college my writing will appear in published form in the winter issue of Eclectica Magazine, an online literary journal.  I’m very excited to show my students tomorrow that it is possible to take one’s writing all the way through the writing process to its actual publishing.  With the advent of the web, publishing is all the more accessible and democratic.  Tomorrow my students will see that as a reality for me and for them as I will have them submit their poetry to various online forums for publication.

 Wish us luck!