Theresa B. Cyr - Author Page

By, Natalie Goldberg Writer's Notebook In an earlier post , I talked briefly about using a writer's notebook. The book that inspired me to begin using one was Writing Down the Bones , by Natalie Goldberg. One of my English professors in college had recommended the book to me knowing that I was interested in writing. What's great about using a writer's notebook is that you can write whatever is on your mind without commitment. It's an exercise in brainstorming and getting any and all of your ideas down in one place. I liked the idea so much that I've even used it in my middle school classroom with great results. In The Classroom In my classroom, I would provide a prompt.  It would either be a word, a photo, a color, or even music. Then they are instructed to write whatever comes to mind. Here's an example. One of the first times I did this with my students, I wrote the word "blue" on the board. Of course, they were filled with questions. They've...

For most of my adult life, I've wanted to write, but my largest hurdles were  what to write about, how to go about it, and what to do with it afterward. Before going to college, which is a period of my life that I like to refer to as my "former life", I would write randomly but never seriously. I'd start stories that would be left hanging forever, never touching them again. But writing wasn't something that I took seriously back then, not like I eventually did. While I was going to college, I majored in English, along with elementary education, and became more inspired to write with all of the reading and writing I had to do for my classes. But anything I'd start would again continue to be left abandoned and unfinished. The pressure of staying on top of my classes and making it through each semester took priority instead. After I graduated from college, I started working. I juggled three jobs as an ed tech, waitress, and part-time legal secretary for nearly t...

I've been asked many times how I even got interested in writing. This has been a passion, or more of a strong interest of mine, for years. I've been wanting to write for a very long time, but life always got in the way and my priorities were different. Also, it helps to have moral support, too, but when I was first interested in writing, I was getting more discouraged than encouraged about doing any of the things I wanted to do. It all started in my twenties. I got one of those Brother word processors that they sold at Zayre or Ames. It  looked like a computer with a screen or monitor. It was as far as any computer that we have today, but the closest thing I had to one at the time. I did some writing on it, but I had absolutely no experience in writing seriously. I had a lot to learn. Years later, I ended up going to college as a non-traditional student. The bug to write came back, but I was hyper-focused on my studies instead.  However, I did major in English, so I had lots o...