When I was fifteen years old, I picked up a book titled Mornings on Horseback because it was physically in my house and Mother Nerd recommended it. It was a work of nonfiction about Theodore Roosevelt and had been written by a historian my mother liked. The subject matter—the 26th president of the United States—was interesting enough, but the author and how he wrote captured my attention more. Thus began my own appreciation for David McCullough and his wordsmithing.

As this final month of 2025 is getting underway and I’m enjoying as much of the holiday season as I can, I’m also looking ahead to the new year. I’ll be doing something new in 2026, and I’m excited about it. Not only does it involve one of my favorite pastimes—reading—I’ll be doing it with Mother Nerd.

As I get settled following our recent, big move, I’m reestablishing my daily routine, and a key part of that is the time I dedicate to writing. Also, with the year winding down, I’m starting to think about what’s been working about my habits that I want to make sure I carry over into 2026. A question that emerges is this: Just how important are my daily word goals? Perhaps more significant is a related question: What’s the value of even having a writing routine?

Last week, I began my reflections on what it was like living abroad in Germany for a year. My three, big takeaways were meant to dig deeper than the surface just as what I’ve got for you today is meant to do the opposite. Quite simply, I want to share a few highlights. Five, specifically—four places and one animal!

After a year of living abroad, our time in Germany has come to a close, and we are back Stateside. Only seemed fitting, I figured, to share a glimpse of what our German year has given me.

There can be a certain perception of how artists, creatives, are. That we’re a touch spacey because we’re lost in our own thoughts with new ideas abounding. That we’re prone to being more go-with-the-flow. That we’ll wax poetic about common things because that’s how we see the world. Whimsical is the word that keeps popping into my head, to describe this perception.

Since we wrapped our Steering the Craft (Le Guin) series, I thought it would be appropriate to share a few of the things I wrote, as prompted by the writing exercises included in each chapter.

Our last lesson revolves around the idea of a story’s focus and trajectory. As authors, we must have a firm grasp on what we’re looking to convey—in other words, what’s the story about—and the arc everything is traveling in.

Here we are with the second-to-last chapter in our Steering the Craft read-through, and it’s got us asking: Am I telling a story, or am I just chaining together plot points—and is it expository or engaging? Le Guin would have us know there’s a big difference between the reading experiences that come from a proper story (vs. only plot), and a lot of it has to do with how you, as a writer, pass along information to your reader.

Welcome to yet another chapter on POV with Le Guin! This time we’re in Chapter 8 and focusing on what it can look like to shift POV in the midst of your writing.

This—considering the various points of view—is what Le Guin wants us to think about in Chapter 7. Choosing how you narrate and the voice you tell your story in is incredibly important, and “writers often find that a story they want to tell ‘sticks’ and won’t go right until they find the right person to tell it” (74-75).

What is your story doing? What are your characters doing? And by doing I mean to ask are they going, running, searching, crying, laughing, dying? The action—verbs—is being called to attention today as we dive into Chapter 6 of Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin, specifically their person and tense.

Another week, another chapter in Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin. This time it’s Chapter 5: Adjectives and Adverbs. If I thought any of the previous ones were short and sweet, they’ve got nothin’ on this one.

Week four of re-reading Steering the Craft (Le Guin) has brought us to the topic of repetition, so let’s get into this short and sweet chapter!

Week Three in rereading Steering the Craft by Ursula K. LeGuin has, naturally, brought us to Chapter 3: Sentence Length and Complex Syntax. We’re thinking hard about not so much what a sentence is and more about what it’s doing.

Bear with me, as we get into Chapter Two of Steering the Craft (Le Guin), because it’s focused on punctuation and grammar. I know. No one’s favorite topic.

Welcome, friend, to the first part of the series I’m doing this summer here on my blog: re-reading Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin and breaking it down one chapter per week!

Let’s chat for a bit about what’s important.

And by important I mean this: Why are the stakes of your story necessary, and how do you write them well?

Have you ever read On Writing by Stephen King? One chapter of the book, in particular, addresses the concept of writers having and developing a toolbox. The toolbox imagery, as King paints it, has a few layers, at least three levels—just like actual toolboxes are often multi-level.

Every writer must decide what tools they have and which ones they want to develop. This is your invitation to dive deeper into that!

In my previous blog, I took you behind the scenes for my first two completed manuscript projects—A House of Broken Chords (fiction, magic realism, YA) and Bold North (fiction, YA, light sci-fi)—and now I’ve got two others to tell you about.