I like school. Of course, that’s easy to say since I never have to go to school again…

As a kid, I loved going back to school every fall. I also loved the end of school in the spring, of course! Going back to school meant new school supplies, new shoes, and new clothes. I still love having lots of ‘school supplies,’ although these days I refer to them as ‘office supplies.’ I have 9 different colors of Post-it notes, a variety of different colored Sharpies, markers, and pens, colored paper and construction paper, a big box of crayons, and I even have a bottle of Elmer’s glue. Hey, you never know when you’re going to need these things…and yes, I do use them…

There’s no longer the thrill of buying things for a new school year, so shopping for these things is a little less exciting than it used to be. If I want another set of markers I can afford to just buy them, whereas when I was a kid I could only purchase what I needed. Plus now I use a computer for almost everything. Which is handy, but not as fun as getting a new school box and writing your name on it every fall.

While I can no longer justify a shopping spree, I’m in week one of a six-week online writing workshop through WMG Publishing called Advanced Depth. In this context, ‘depth’ refers to how to pull your reader so deeply into your story that they don’t even realize they’re reading anymore. As a reader, I love when I read stories that accomplish this – like when you’re so focused on a book that you don’t even notice when someone is talking to you.

I’m looking forward to learning a few new things, plus I’ve found that the more writing-related things I have going on in my life, the more writing I’ll get done. This doesn’t mean I magically find more time. Instead, I’ve found that doing writing-related things in addition to doing the actual writing increases my motivation, and I end up accomplishing more. So by taking this class I will learn things, get inspired to write more, and the only negative is that I’ll be using a computer so I can’t justify buying a set of glitter crayons. Although I may just buy them anyway…

On a totally unrelated note, some of my non-writing time this weekend was spent at an agility trial with Jasper. We’re still beginners – he is fast and sometimes gets too excited to focus, and I am not fast and sometimes tell him to do the wrong thing. But we had a great time, and he won first place in our last event. Yay Jasper!!!