Mentor Takeaways — The Process and Some Conclusions

A post about writing and a slice of my life today

This morning I wake up feeling happy to have my life. This July 2 I am glowing with results of sand, sun, and memories created in the rays yesterday. I am also reflecting on living the writer life. This morning I have done my freewriting with my prompt, meditation app playing and I am thinking about writing mentors before my run.

Last evening during the #teachwrite Twitter chat we discussed mentors. As a teacher-writer, I have education mentors and I have writing mentors. They overlap of course. There is always a takeaway from these people in an actionable way for my writing. For example, one of the assignments currently working on is emulating short story writers similar to my style to learn from their successes. Sandra Cisneros is on my mind. I am using her story ELEVEN and rewriting a version of my own. I sat at a baseball game last night rereading her story and manipulating the sentences for my own topic. It has become my own although greatly influenced by her words and flow.

I also admire Lydia Davis and am reading an article by her from the Paris Review. There are more takeaways here for me because I am struck by the elements of my life and how they influence my writing by reading her words. I am struck in the middle…