The Experience of Writing: A Guest Post by Ann Whitely-Gillen, and a Giveaway

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming a new author, Ann Whitely-Gillen, to my blog.  I hope to read her recently published book, Last Train to Omaha, within the next few months or so.  The book has gotten some wonderful reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.  If you'd like to win a copy Last Train to Omaha, a story about accepting the past and moving forward, be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of this post.  You may even get to read the book before I do!  

Ann's guest post is about the experience of writing.  Whether you're an aspiring author or a professional writer--or are simply interested in reading about writing--you'll find her words both eloquent and interesting.

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The Experience of Writing: A Guest Post by Ann Whitely-Gillen, and a Giveaway

Writing can be many things to many people, but to me writing has been unquestionably cathartic.  When we write about things, we can explore all angles of our subjects.  We can create new beginnings by dropping our thoughts and emotions onto a page and we can seal the deal on unresolved conflicts within ourselves and our relationships.  Human expressions printed on pages make us less vulnerable to our character flaws and frees us from the isolation we all feel when trapped inside of our own lives and personal adversities.  Writing is a means of giving and receiving knowledge, understanding, truth, love and fear.

In the words of French-born novelist Anaïs Nin (author of Little Birds and Henry and
June), “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

I certainly look to this quote as a means to not only write by, but to live by.

When I wrote Last Train to Omaha, I was recovering from breast cancer surgery and radiation treatments.  Creating a warm, comfortable environment to express myself through my book’s characters allowed me to reach the most pivotal point in my spiritual life.  Writing the experiences of each of my characters led me to the reality that I, too, had the ability to overcome my fears and anxiety not only about the inevitability of death--but more so, the challenges we all face when trying to weed through life’s hard lessons and pitfalls.  What I realized during the writing process is that life always wins over darkness.  We may not recognize this immediately, but eventually, life will present itself again with a new face and new opportunities.

By leading the protagonist of the book (James Milligan) through an incredible journey from the realm of darkness into light, I found myself holding on to him all the way.  You could say it was my way of tasting life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

Thanks for letting me share these words.

Ann and her family at the book launch

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Thank you, Ann, for your lovely guest post!  The quote by Anaïs Nin is superlative.

The author is graciously offering a copy of Last Train to Omaha as a giveaway (U.S./Canada only).

• To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment. 
• For another chance at winning, become a follower of this blog, or let me know that you're already a follower.
• For an additional chance, post about this giveaway on your blog, Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. 

Enter by 5 PM PDT on Monday, May 13. One winner will be selected randomly and announced on Tuesday, May 14.  Best of luck to my readers!

For National Poetry Month

It's certainly not your grandma's poetry.  Last week Gill Sotu and a couple of other slam poets performed in my daughter's high school English class, in celebration of National Poetry Month.  The students then attempted to write some slam poetry of their own.  My daughter enjoyed this workshop quite a bit.

National Poetry Month began in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, and is now held every April.  During the month of April, schools, libraries, booksellers, poets, and  bloggers throughout the U.S. celebrate poetry by participating in readings, festivals, workshops, and other events.


All month long, I've noticed numerous posts devoted to poetry and National Poetry Month on various book blogs, including Savvy Verse and Wit and The Parrish Lantern.  This morning, I encountered  book spine poetry on Leslie's blog, Under My Apple Tree, and decided to try "writing" a poem in this way.  The idea is to form a short poem using the titles of books.

I am the messenger

Dancing with gravity

Outside the ordinary world

Perfectly untraditional.

Creating a poem from the titles on book spines was harder than I thought it would be.  At first, I had the idea to use titles from books of poetry, but I found that the ones I had on hand (several chapbooks of poems by Sweta Srivastava Vikram), were too thin to show the titles.  So I decided to use novels instead.  I've read each of the books shown here, and reviewed three of them (I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak, Dancing with Gravity by Anene Tressler, and Perfectly Untraditional by Sweta Srivastava Vikram).

Have you been celebrating National Poetry Month? Your comments, especially written as poems, are welcomed.