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Reading Books and Writing Words

WHAT DOES A WRITER DO?

WHAT IS A WRITER? WHAT DOES A WRITER DO?

TELL STORIES

INVENT CHARACTERS

                                          “This is Polly. She’s from Romania and she just moved here today.”

                  Polly

Emmie’s best friend

Emmie O’Brien

Teen girl  Red hair Green eyes Short, thin

Loves to sing, write, draw, ride bikes, explore, detective shows, cook, go to church & school

Friendly, smart, curious, imaginative, helpful, good

Small group of good friends

Loves her sisters, mom and dad, people, going to school

Moved from suburbs to inner city Different type of people

Feels a bit lost and insecure Mom’s drinking

Sees Dad only on Saturdays Not much income

Evil people

Create Beauty With Words

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” – Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore

“I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.”

― Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

“Dance with me.”

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet her saw her like the sun, even without looking.”

Anna: If you have any thought for me, you will give me back my peace.”

Vronsky: “There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.”

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy     https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0198748841/

GIVE MY OPINION

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Elie Wiesel

TRAVEL TO FAR-AWAY PLACES

“Travel is the best way to be lost and found at the same time.”

THINK

“You may think I’m small but I have a universe inside my mind.” 

   Yoko Ono

Write a self-help book, psychology text, or an inspirational blog.

“And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” 

“Perhaps some day I’ll crawl back home beaten defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak beauty out of sorrow.” – Sylvia Plath

 “We never always saw eye to eye but we were always looking at the same thing.”  William Faulkner

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

– Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

TEACH

‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.’ –William Butler Yeats

“ONE CHILD, ONE TEACHER, ONE BOOK, ONE PEN CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.”

MalalaYousafzai

You Can Write A Book About Teaching!

Out Of Our Minds by Ken Robinson

Visible Learning & The Science Of How We Learn by John Hattie and Gregory Yates

Developing Minds by Art Costa

 What Are People For? by Wendell Berry

Teaching What Matters Most  by Richard W. Strong, Harvey F. Silver, Matthew J. Perini

INSPIRE

MOTIVATE

Entertain

Let’s all go to the theatre!

n. a writer of plays; dramatist.

n. a writer of dramas or dramatic poetry. 

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

Victor Hugo

Les Miserables

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”                Blanch DuBois             A Streetcar Named Desire
“All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”                William Shakespeare      As You Like It

Biography: an account of someone’s life written by someone else. Similar: life story life history life memoir profile account bio                 

   “Every life is worthy of a novel.”
― Josh Steimle  

READ

Read a book, a play, a poem, a memoir, a how-to-do-something book, cookbook, adventure, and on and on!


“The world was hers for the reading.” – Betty Smith

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin

Write About Yourself


Frida by Frida: Selection of Letters and Texts

Frida Kahlo, the writer? In this new expanded edition of the painter’s writings, art critic Raquel Tibol gathers letters, poems, notes, protests, confessions, brief messages and longer texts written by Kahlo to her friends, her lovers and others. In her writings, Kahlo employs, in Tibol’s words, an “unreserved, imaginative language, heart and intimacy laid bare,” that reveals her taste for neologisms, colloquial turns and the crossing of linguistic boundaries. The freedom of her language is a path towards sincerity, the origin of Kahlo’s pictorial universe, with its recurring motifs: the tramway accident that left the artist physically maimed at the age of 18; her anguished and demanding adolescent passion for Alejandro Gómez Arias; her complex and fascinating relationship with Diego Rivera; her illness as destiny; her political engagements; and her uncompromising quest for liberty. Here the reader will find Kahlo “swinging back and forth between sincerity and manipulation, self-complacency and self-flagellation, with her insatiable need for affection, her erotic upheavals, her touches of humor, setting no limits for herself, with a capacity for self-analysis and a deep humility.” By gathering this material, until now scattered in archives and various published sources, Tibol offers us “a tacit autobiography and the placement of Frida within the intimate, confessional literature of the twentieth century in Mexico.” This is a Frida Kahlo far removed from the distorted image so often found in films, plays and supposedly serious writings and studies–a beautiful book about Frida, by Frida.   https://www.amazon.com/Frida-2nd-Expanded-Kahlo/dp/9685208468/

Or I Could Write About Me


The title of my first novel is Emmie of Indianapolis. The idea for this book came about when my nieces were visiting me. They were teasing me about living in the last century. Casey, who was eight at the time, wanted to know if refrigerators had been invented yet and did I have one way back then. Ten-year-old Frankie asked me about vacuum cleaners and stoves. Jamie, thirteen, wondered how I did my hair. Did they have hair dryers and even shampoo? The list went on and on until the subject of popcorn came up. Microwaves weren’t invented yet, so my mom, their grandmother, cooked popcorn on top of the stove in an old metal pot. Their eyes became very big and were so amazed as I demonstrated with my hands how you had to shake and keep the pot moving over the flame or the popcorn would burn. The girls were thrilled that they caught me with evidence of being old.

I told them other stories about when I was a young girl in Indianapolis. Even though they lived in the suburbs of Indianapolis, they’d only been downtown a few times for football games and Christmas shopping. I think it’s important for people to know their family history and the place where they live. I began by writing down a list of names, birth dates and other information of our immediate family members. As I created the list, the idea of turning the list into a book became something I felt called to do.

https://www.amazon.com/Emmie-Indianapolis-Kay-Castaneda-ebook/dp/B07G2S9MTP/

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Goodreads

Writers

Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Juan Rulfo
Juan Rulfo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
George Orwell
George Orwell
Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon
Gwyneth Lewis
Gwyneth Lewis
Gwyneth Lewis poet
jennifer Wong
jennifer Wong

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Kay Castaneda, Author

Kay Castaneda, Author


AUTHOR

Kay Castaneda, Author
1 week ago
Kay Castaneda, Author

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Kay Castaneda, Author
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Kay Castaneda, Author

Why I Keep Trying Even If I’m Too Sick to Go On

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Kay Castaneda, Author
4 weeks ago
Kay Castaneda, Author

Now is your best chance to find my book, Emmie of Indianapolis: The Story of an American Girl, available for $1.49 at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale! Find my book and many more at www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/ all month! #SWSale2025

www.smashwords.com/books/view/1388065
... See MoreSee Less

Now is your best chance to find my book, Emmie of Indianapolis: The Story of an American Girl, available for $1.49 at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/ all month! #SWSale2025 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1388065
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TWITTER

Kay Castaneda Author Follow 621 1,844

Author of Emmie of Indianapolis, historical fiction set in the Midwest. WIP is a mystery series. Go to @kay_castaneda for my opinion on the world. 📒👩🏻‍🎓🎄

KCastanedauthor
KCastanedauthor avatar Kay Castaneda Author @KCastanedauthor ·
2 Jul 1940297338461069648

Now is your best chance to find my book, Emmie of Indianapolis: The Story of an American Girl, available for $1.49 at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale! Find my book all month! #SWSale2025

Image for twitter card

Emmie of Indianapolis: The Story of an American Girl

In 1963, a young teenage girl moves with her mother and sisters from the suburbs to the downtown of a Midweste...

www.smashwords.com

Reply on Twitter 1940297338461069648 Retweet on Twitter 1940297338461069648 0 Like on Twitter 1940297338461069648 2 Twitter 1940297338461069648
KCastanedauthor avatar Kay Castaneda Author @KCastanedauthor ·
10 May 1921127392782733584

To the Young Who Want to Die. Remember, green's your color.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Beautiful, beautiful.

To the Young Who Want to Die.  Remember, green's your color.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Beautiful, beautiful.
preorder FENESTRATION @Othuke__Umukoro

Remember, green’s your color.

—Gwendolyn Brooks

Reply on Twitter 1921127392782733584 Retweet on Twitter 1921127392782733584 0 Like on Twitter 1921127392782733584 6 Twitter 1921127392782733584
KCastanedauthor avatar Kay Castaneda Author @KCastanedauthor ·
24 Nov 1860608229870272810

What Should We Name This War?
I hate war
Yet rich men love it
I am right
you are wrong
guns tanks bombs your side my side
only death and blood

Kay Castaneda

Shadorma-a Spanish poetic form of six-line stanzas, or sestets, and a syllable count for each line: (3/5/3/3/7/5).

Reply on Twitter 1860608229870272810 Retweet on Twitter 1860608229870272810 0 Like on Twitter 1860608229870272810 6 Twitter 1860608229870272810
KCastanedauthor avatar Kay Castaneda Author @KCastanedauthor ·
24 Nov 1860602754378478048

Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge, Specific Form, Shadorma, 11/19/24 - BOOKPLACES

BOOKPLACES Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge, Specific Form, Shadorma, 11/19/24

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Reply on Twitter 1860602754378478048 Retweet on Twitter 1860602754378478048 1 Like on Twitter 1860602754378478048 5 Twitter 1860602754378478048
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