 Prolific Children's Author, Megan Atwood The Irish have the gift of storytelling. It is intrinsic to their DNA. It is no wonder that Rowan University Professor, Megan Atwood has the magic for weaving a tale. The author of sixty plus books, primarily for children and young adults, Atwood will be at the helm this spring of a study abroad trip to Britain and Ireland with her Genre Writing class. Incorporating her lessons for the upcoming adventure, Atwood’s students have read, among other texts, British author Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and The Likeness, a volume in the Dublin Murder Squad Series by American-born, and long-time Dublin resident, Tana French.  Tana French, author of the Dublin Murder Squad Series “So, Tana French of course is my girl,” says Atwood, “she is just my favorite. There is also Lucy Foley, I think she is a British writer. And another Irish writer is Dervla McTiernan. There seems to be a spate of English and Irish especially murder mysteries, at least I get very into them. I’m loving understanding the way that different cultures work through a mystery as well. Because The United States has a very specific relationship to crime. And to all the context of the United States behind that and that is fascinating to read. And to look at that in a different culture, you can understand that culture in a better way too. There’s a full host of historical things that inform the way people act and even commit crimes and even are punished for those crimes. So, I was really into that Irish and English exploration.” During the trip, Atwood and her class will visit small towns in the English and Irish countryside along with experiencing big cities like London and Dublin. Always the educator, Atwood has woven the itinerary into teaching lessons specific to the syllabus from the spring 2024 semester. “Each place that we visit I’ll have a prompt that asks to look at things through the genre lens. So, is there some sort of mystery, convention, or trope that this place would lend itself. For instance we’re going to London and we read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and that takes place in the underground under the tube, under the London Metro. And so, like talking about where else in London where you could find some places for horror? Where could you find magic? And then of course with fantasy and sci-fi, we’re going to Holyhead in Wales and there is some connection with the King Arthur myths, and what else could you imagine in this countryside?”  Holyhead, North Wales, photo by Andrew Hall on Unsplash While the journey abroad is strictly scholarly, Atwood has personal connections that run deep in Europe. In addition to her English/Irish/Scottish ancestry, she has fond memories of a prior trip to England, and a profound long lasting experience from when she studied a semester in Spain the second half of her junior year as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa. Atwood said the semester in Spain was so transformative that it changed her perspective, changed her life, changed everything.  Photo by Johan Mouchet on Unsplash “I really want to give Rowan students a taste of that,” says Atwood. “Especially when it comes to creative writing, getting out of your own context is so important. And understanding that your lived experience isn’t everyone’s lived experience. I really wanted to give Rowan students a chance to step out of their normal lives even for a little bit. So, this is a way to do it without having to do it an entire semester. Yet, you still get the rich experience of seeing a different culture, seeing a different country.”  Back then, Atwood did not consider herself a writer. She thought of herself more as an editor. But seeing the world as a bigger place, becoming more accepting of other cultures and how people lived laid the foundation for her development that would eventually build an inner courage to tell her own stories. Says Atwood of her time living in Spain, “I was able to see this amazing art, amazing cultural artifacts. I was able to travel around Europe by train. Even taking different transportation was a whole new world. And at that time, there were no cell phones. I used a map. I figured my way through and had to be fairly reliant on myself. Just in every single way I grew.” The transcendence of moving through the world with only her own devices helped build her confidence, something that would shape her future career choices.  “I mean one of the things that I love about writing is that you’re always learning, you always have to put yourself in another person’s shoes,” says Atwood, “it’s an exercise in empathy in so many ways. Taking yourself out of your normal context and understanding the world in a different way helps you do that. I honestly believe that I wouldn’t have been able to even get into my MFA program had I not had that experience where I was able to step back and look at things in a different light. And that stepping back too is also important because of the writing. Revising is where the work is. So, being able to step back and look at something through fresh eyes, same thing as taking yourself out of your cultural context.” Some time afterwards, Atwood embraced her artistry for creative writing. To the gain of Rowan University’s Writing Arts students she parlays that craft to young minds. For anyone who has ever taken a class with Atwood the gift of her teaching acumen is memorable. The moment you walk into her class you feel welcome and safe to reveal your soul as a writer. There are no literary mistakes. She encourages you to take chances. For her class in Writing Children’s Stories, for example, Atwood encourages students to reignite their child within to inform what becomes the written word on the page. Now, with her genre students in-toe, she is excited for their upcoming journey. In addition to the exciting itinerary to England, Ireland, and Wales that she will share with the class, Atwood also has plans to stay on afterwards, and travel throughout Scotland.  Photo of Ireland, copyright Tom McCarthy, 2024  Photo of Ireland, copyright Tom McCarthy, 2024 What new and wondrous encounters will lure Atwood’s creativity to the next realm we can only wait with great anticipation. In the meantime, she is focused on the expansion of her student’s worldview.
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By Adam Buckley: I often envy the Amish, because sometimes, churning butter feels preferable to managing a Google Sheet. Nevertheless, technology is an integral part of being a writer in the 21st century. You’re reading this on a digital site’s blog page just as I’m writing it via digital software. Perspective is key: I’ll take Microsoft Word over the stone tablet any day. The modern writer has many tools in their digital toolkit beyond a simple word processor. Exploring and employing your various online options can make you not just a more organized writer, but a more creative one, too. 1. Google Sheets I know I was just ragging on it, but I’ve found Google Sheets quite a useful tool for story planning. For fiction writers, particularly the ambitious ones, plotting and planning encompasses a large portion of the actual labor of writing. If you enjoy crafting an immense cast of characters with their own sprawling plotlines across a large number of chapters, a Google Sheet is a great tool to track where and when characters are. In my experience, it's low effort and high yield to manage a Google Sheet like this. With some simple color coding and elementary school knowledge of charts and tables, this is a simple but effective way to track a large amount of information.  This is a screenshot of a Sheet of my own. I make sure to highlight which character appears in each chapter, that each chapter has its title and (spoilers) if a character died in said chapter. The vast amount of cells in a Google Sheet also allows for experimentation, as seen with the days of the week below the chart. I can track which chapters happen on which day along with everything else, all on one spreadsheet. In addition, with separate pages, one can map out distinct sections of their project, and whether that be “acts” or “parts”, Sheets gives you that flexibility. 2. Planning/Lore documents The next item is more a method of organization than a distinct tool. Creating specific folders for your different stories is a common practice, but I like to make a dedicated planning document separate from the main story document. Here, I give myself the freedom to explore whatever stray thoughts or ideas that come to mind in a dedicated space that I can go back and reference at any time. I use these planning docs as repositories of character backstories, concept/reference art, worldbuilding and potential chapters titles.  All of these different collections of ideas can be managed with Google Docs’ chapter system. I label a section in the document itself then change the text's type from “normal text” to one of the “heading” options. These headings then become hyperlinks on the left-hand side of the page that, when clicked, instantly take you to a particular section. It's an amazingly convenient way of traveling through your documents without having to scan every page for what you’re looking for. 3. Canva Graphic design is my passion, and Canva is my best friend. Canva has a premium subscription that opens up many of its more elaborate templates and design elements, but its standard free scheme is perfectly serviceable for writerly purposes. Canva is relevant to writers because it's incredibly easy to pick up and start designing logos for your fictional organizations or banners for your great houses. When creating a “whiteboard” template, you have a blank white field that you can do what you want with. I’ve used it to create timelines for my projects, and its easily moveable elements make it effortless to change things to your liking.  These services might not appeal to every writer, but they provide interesting ways to bring your ideas to life. Writing isn’t just the physical act, it's also these oddball ways of expressing yourself with your project in mind. Make some fake propaganda posters on behalf of your Evil Empire, or some in-universe internal memos or stickers with memey inside jokes you can slap on your laptop. Run wild, because who knows, it might open up the door for new ideas you wouldn’t have stumbled upon otherwise.
4. A.I. I do not endorse the use of A.I in any shape or form, but it had to be mentioned. At best, implementing A.I into your written work casts doubt upon your abilities and integrity as a writer, and at worst, you are a plagiarist. Ethically, I cannot and will not advise anyone to turn to A.I. at any stage of your creative journey. Is it tempting? Yes. Is it wrong? Also yes. Generative A.I. gathers text off the internet, without the consent of its authors, in order to spit out answers at any given prompt. Not only is that morally dubious, but there’s no guarantee that text will make any sense or even help you creatively. Many turn to A.I. in the idea-generation phase, when there’s no clear-cut story and only the germ of an idea. Many have said that it's possible to bounce ideas off an A.I. model, but none of these are replacements for genuine, human ideas born from your brain and soul that you’ve workshopped with other real humans. A.I. might have its uses, but none that I could condone in a creative space. 5. Other writers While flesh and blood human beings are not, in fact, digital technologies, they are supremely valuable during any creative journey. Cave paintings, medicine, and the Model-T all pale in comparison to humanity’s greatest invention: community. On campus, your friends and classmates should always be willing to give your work a read or workshop it with you. And if they aren’t, you should make new friends. Your professors and the Writing Center are other avenues to connect with other writers from whom’s experience you can benefit from. Ask them to look at your work but also pick their brain for strategies they use, how they organize their workflow. Don’t feel bad about picking up tricks from other writers; we’re all stealing from each other anyway. These five tools are ones that, as a writer, you should be aware of if you’re not using them. My only ask is that you try on some of these like a new jacket, and if you find that the sleeves are too tight, or that Google Sheets is being a pain, then move on to the next one and see how that treats you. Ultimately, creating a workflow utilizing methods that you find the most beneficial is the end-goal. If none of these suit your fancy, it's important to remember that the internet is a wild frontier filled with other writers sharing their methods and secrets. Keep an open mind and you’ll never know what might help you take your writing to the next level. As a passionate writer or creator of any kind, there may come a time when you find yourself overflowing with ideas, pulled in different directions by your imagination. As much as we may prefer to have too many ideas rather than no ideas, this can be overwhelming and halt your overall progress, and leave you with more questions than answers. Which project should you focus on? How do you narrow down your focus in order to decide? What should you do when you begin feeling overwhelmed? How do you deal with it all? There are a few common ways to deal with it, some agreed upon by professors in the Writing Arts department. So you’re very inspired and have come up with multiple projects, maybe two, three, or five, or ten. Maybe only a couple of them are narrative pieces, and others are focused on more technical writing, or another different form and/or genre. However many projects you have, trying to work on them all or decide between them can exhaust you and sap away your enthusiasm. You may become overwhelmed or burnt out. Trying to work on them all could also keep you from finishing any one of them, and instead trap you in a cycle of progressing little by little or not at all. While you could potentially juggle some of these projects and bounce back and forth between them, it’s still a better idea to narrow down your focus to just one or two. One of the best ways to start is to keep your ideas organized. You could keep journals, create folders, put your work in boxes, whatever works best for you. Take notes and make sure you know the gist of the idea and all the factors that get you excited about it. If it’s a fictional project, for example, you could be invested in the concept, the plot, the setting, and so on. Whatever it may be, write it down. You could also add things that inspire you or remind you of the project, whether they be songs, pictures, books, games, and so on. If you organize everything physically rather than digitally, make sure you keep everything together in one place. Your notes will do you no good if you end up just misplacing them. You will want to keep organized so that if you eventually come to work on one of the ideas you’ve put on the backburner, you can be easily reminded about its details and not get caught up in not remembering anything. I myself use folders, journals, the notes app on my phone, and comments in the margins of my WIPs to keep my projects organized. Once you’ve organized your ideas, you can begin to pick and choose which one you’d like to focus on. Each of the professors I’ve spoken to has suggested that you choose whichever one makes you the most excited, which one inspires you and ignites your passion. (However, in a case where you're busy with other things and don’t have the time or energy to devote to that idea, you should choose whichever idea is the most practical). Being passionate about what you're working on will keep you motivated and increase the likelihood that you’ll finish the project and give it 100% of your effort. If you choose one you aren't as passionate about, it may lay abandoned soon after, or you may grow to dislike the idea altogether. If you find yourself struggling or stuck with your chosen focus, the projects you chose not to work on could help reinvigorate your passion. You could carefully switch to another project for some time and then come back to your main project with fresh eyes. Looking back at your other projects, or whatever notes you have for your main project, can make you excited to write and give you time to come up with new ideas. If you’re overwhelmed by everything, it may be best to take a step back and do something unrelated to your project. Go for a walk, listen to music, read a book, play a game. Remember that taking time away from your project can be a good thing. Whatever you end up doing can both relax you and could open your mind up to new possibilities for your WIPs. To summarize, when you have too many ideas, break them down and take note of what’s important. Decide which ones are most attractive to you, which ones feel like you need to complete them. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the need to narrow down your focus or by whatever you’re working on, do something different and let your mind wander. Or, choose one of the projects you set aside and take a look at it. It may be just what you need. McKenna Harris-Colvin
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