Katharine's Writer's Block

As a kid, I dabbled in writing Scooby-Doo fanfiction--before fanfiction blew up in popularity, might I add. As a teenager, I dabbled in writing skits that were performed by my church’s puppet team to an audience in the children’s program. Like the Scooby-Doo stories though, those skits may be lost to time as well, but the experience was still pretty awesome! Skits, a synonym of sketches, are typically just small-scale or abbreviated acting projects. The most defining charact

In October 2025, I took a cross-country road trip with my husband. A few days in, we parked overnight at a truck stop that had some cool postcards. I grabbed a handful to share as souvenirs for some kids back home and made a point from then on to check out any postcard inventory at most other stops we made. Little did I know that our road trip started just a few days after a recently implemented holiday that celebrates the souvenir of choice. If unfamiliar, postcards are spe

Think about the tools of a trade. Those in culinary professions have cookware. Construction works with machines and material specially for building projects. Many scientific fields use equipment that supports their research. Actors often have props, sets, and scripts. Meanwhile, many writers produce their work with a word processor. A word processor is simply a device or program that supports the act--and sometimes even the art--of writing, often on a computer or similar me

In the United States, late May through August is embraced as the prime time for leisure tourism, or summer vacation in simpler terms. Throughout this timeframe, most schools complete regular instruction, summer officially starts, and many worthwhile holidays take place. So families often undertake some kind of getaway from their daily grind for a little bit of fun, celebration, and refreshment. Depending on plans and preferences, summer vacation also takes and blends a handf

I got some wonderful kitchen gifts for my bridal shower! Among them were a fully-stocked, sixteen-jar spice rack and a Ninja Foodi grill....

NANOWRIMO 2024 created waves last month by attempting to voice a neutral stance on the use of writing with artificial intelligence (AI). NaNoWriMo neither explicitly supports nor condemns any approach to writing, including the use of tools that leverage AI. We recognize that harm has been done to the writing and creative communities at the hands of bad actors in the generative AI space, and that the ethical questions and risks posed by some aspects of this technology are rea