Long, cold winter nights lend themselves to absorption in a good narrative and if you're looking around for one, you could hardly do better than Frankenstein which was published on January 1, 1818.  Continue reading...

Here's what boredom, blood and books have to do with great writing, according to great writers.  Continue reading...

Bob Dylan has led and still leads generations of us ordinary men and women through the day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out battle to keep our feet on the ground, our eyes on the stars, and our souls battered but unbowed.  Continue reading...

A couple of years ago I wrote a Visual Thesaurus column about writing song lyrics, focusing on basics: finding a storyline and a mood that many people can relate to, telling the story with simple words and painting the mood with vivid images, plus, without being vague, leaving plenty of room for romantic mystery.  Continue reading...

Figment is an online community for teens and young-adults to create, discover, and share new reading and writing. Figment enables its users to read amateur and professional content and create their own unfiltered creative writing to share with their peers on web and mobile networks. Since launching in December, Figment has more than 35,000 registered users and more than 75,000 individual pieces of writing. Check it out here!

Before the beginning of the school year, we heard from Teachers At Work contributor Shannon Reed about a grant she had received to incorporate playwriting into a high-school science curriculum. Now Shannon returns with an update on this innovative cross-curricular program, which she has dubbed "SciPlay."  Continue reading...