In 2011 I attended my first National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in Chicago, Illinois. I clearly remember sitting in a hotel bar at the end of the conference and a friend said to me, “When are you going to start a blog?” Another friend asked what I was taking away from the conference. My reply had been that I needed to write more.
As a teacher I’d always been a person who reads. It was easy for me to share my reading life with my students. But I was not a person who wrote. So, this blog was born. From it I discovered it was hard to share your writing with the world, which shed some light on why peer editing made some students want to vomit. I also learned how amazing it was when people connected with you through your writing.
This blog led to me joining weekly writing challenges like ‘It’s Monday, what are you reading?’ and ‘Slice of Life Tuesdays,’ just to name two. Writing here led to me writing for Choice Literacy, to contributing to several professional development books.
Eventually it led to me trying to write my own book for teachers. However, that was when I realized how exhausted I was in having teaching in every nook of my life. Enter romance books as a reader and, after some time, as a writer.
Without NCTE, I wouldn’t have had writing become a part of my life. I wouldn’t have published eight small-town romance books. I wouldn’t be able to give my students the advice from the standpoint of having been where they are as they write their NaNoWriMo stories. I wouldn’t understand deeply that there is no one-size-fits-all way of writing. I wouldn’t allow them the freedom that I do. And I really doubt I’d get thirty kids to give up lunch in the cafeteria with their friends to write in my classroom on a given Wednesday with me.
If not for NCTE, I would not be a writer. I’m celebrating that today.
