Reading and Writing

I like to read what my high school aged kids are reading in school. Some of it is revisiting classics I read at their age, like To Kill a Mockingbird and Brave New World. Then there are those that I missed or weren't classics yet maybe, like The Power of One: A Novel and The Things They Carried. I love that my kids are reading and talking about important things like racism, individuality, and war.  I love my Kindle Fire for the instant gratification of buying a book from home.
Reading is one of the things that fuels me for the creative work that I do. I recently finished a great book by a local author The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac. The author, Sharma Shields, said she wrote 3 drafts to get to the final book. That encourages me. It makes me think of one of the games we used to play at Comedy Sportz. You improvise a scene and when the whistle blows, you have to change the last line you said. We usually find that the 3rd time is the charm. Shields takes her novel in some crazy directions that I imagine came from that kind of improvization. I look forward to trying it in my next creative writing session.  I am not good at book reviews because I do not want to give anything away, but if you do not read The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac, you will soon find yourself in a room with well read people all giddy about the book and you will feel like an alien. Another great read that none of your friends will have read, so you can be a trail blazer, is the play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang. It won the Tony for the best play of 2013, so maybe some of your Tony-er friends saw it.
I do write more than sewing patterns. I will be in the cast of a little show in Spokane called Listen to Your Mother. We read things we have written about motherhood. It is on Mother's Day. You can read about the show and see the other cities here: LTYM . If you have a city near you, I highly recommend making Listen to Your Mother a yearly tradition. The website has videos of past talks. This was my reading in 2011. This year, my topic is serious. I will post the story here after the show and before the video is available.
Disclaimer: When I post links to things that I like they are sometimes affiliate links which pay me a small commission on purchases. I never pretend to like something in order to promote it. I just think it makes sense to collect 20 cents here and there when I am posting a link for your convenience anyway. If you have a blog, you should look at this book Amazon Associates: 7 Steps to Earning $2,000 per Month through the Amazon Affiliate Program in Less than 20 Hours a Week! (Amazon Associates - Amazon Associates ... for Beginners - Niche Website - Amazon). To be clear, I have not read that one, but I probably should. I earned a whopping $27 last year in the program, LOL.