And the winner is....

It's been so long since I promised a contest that even I almost forgot about it LOL.

Plus, Jason the boy genius and I don't get the chance to cross paths too often these days, what with him keeping up with all his 11th grade AP courses and me trying to find ways to keep the classroom busy.

But he just chose a random date for me and, as luck would have it, it was a date with a post and a comment. August 12th, in honor of a USA Men's Basketball Olympic win (we are sports nuts in this house). The winner is a girl with a great name...Beth Morrissey, another wonderful freelancer. (You should check out her blog--I love it over there).

Yay Beth! I'll be sending you a package of writer's goodies, including the pens that started this whole contest thing...

And thank you so much to everyone who stopped by, passed on my blog link, made comments and sent me wonderful notes. Especially those of you who keep coming back to read. I know I've been horrible at posting over this last month but I do think I've gotten my teaching life under (some type of) control so I'm hoping to jump back into the blogging world soon. I really do miss it...

Hope you're all still writing...
Beth

...I think it's back....

The urge to write, that is.

I really have been grappling lately with this melancholy attitude toward writing. It's not that I've been blocked--I've been working (not as diligently as I should) on outlining a new story over the past several weeks, a baby bit at a time--but I just am not feeling the urge to write with any sort of passion.

It all started after I got back from camp and, until today on the way home, hadn't really let go. I did have two articles to finish for deadline after camp and I managed fine, but other than that, there wasn't any writing going on. I tried all sorts of tricks with no luck. Nothing stirred my interest or passion in the words that I'd spent my summer dreaming about. I couldn't get it going at all (even though the new story does excite and interest me).

Not until today on the way home, anyway. At the stoplight, a line from a book I'd read during free reading time with my 7th graders popped in my head, and immediately the old gears started turning slowly the way they always do when I get the spark of something good running around inside. By the time I got home (half a block) I had a whole paragraph of a new story to start, but had promised myself to finish the one I'm working on first. (I will this time if it KILLS me!!). I hurried to finish all my lesson prep and mom-duties so I could have some writing time alone tonight. I didn't get a massive amount done but enough to get me excited to come back tomorrow night for more of the same. ANd that's no small accomplishment.

I haven't forgotten you guys, my readers, either. I have lots of ideas planned on the calendar for various kinds of posts but haven't had time to zero in on getting those things together. I will, I will. Might be a little while but I'll get there. I feel like such a louse when I'm not posting here, but until the excitement came back, it was like pulling teeth to get the brain to cooperate. Hopefully this mood is here to stay....