Scratching the itch

Tasha, the other tall English teacher at Cedar High, and I are on a mission - we have the writing bug and want to (at least attempt) to get published someday. Tasha and I attended a creative writing conference at SUU about a month ago. The itch began. About two weeks after that, Tasha invited a high school friend who is now a published novelist (Allison Condie) to speak with her class. The itch got itchier. We've both enjoyed writing for a while now, but for some reason it has evolved into something serious and focused. While Tasha is a fiction writer and I am on the poetry end, we have agreed to share our stuff with each other and to submit it to contests. I have thought about doing this before but made all sorts of excuses why I shouldln't until last week when Tasha walked into my classroom and handed me submission guidelines to a contest and TOLD me she expected me to get ready because I only had two months left. That is the best thing she could have done because I am pretty darn good at self-doubt, if I do say so myself, and would have talked myself out of anything I would have found on my own. There is a goal now, and it is so much easier to do it when you do it with someone else! (Like working out, or so I hear...). I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the push, Tasha!!!

Oh, and there is a strange phenomena in the English department - we dress the same all the time!!! Kid you not, at least two times a week there are at least two of us with the same outfit on, as demonstrated by Tasha and I in this picture...great minds - and the English department has the greatest minds at the school - think alike!