Welcome to Who’s on Fourth where we interview one member of the YeahWrite community, and the interview will publish the fourth Monday of each month. Next in the series features Arden Ruth interviewing Margaret of Unfolding from the Fog.
YeahWrite on YeahWrite: Arden interviews Margaret
About six months ago, a teacher stumbled upon YeahWrite and dove write in to the grids, and she’s been a steady presence ever since!
I love the community, the kindness, the direct feedback, and the how-tos. All the information on improving my writing has been in bite-sized pieces. The first chunk I was given was eliminating word repetition, which immediately improved my writing, and I was hooked.
You can usually find Margaret on our nonfiction grid, but she’s been known to dabble in other genres.
I post on the nonfiction grid regularly, but Rowen’s Filk challenge lured me over to the fiction|poetry grid a couple of times. I like the microprose, but because my blog is nonfiction, I haven’t done well with the last couple of prompts. Maybe I’ll start a fiction blog one of these days…
Go for it, Margaret! We love to see our participants trying new things. As always, I wanted to know what advice Margaret would give to any writers out there who maybe hadn’t mustered enough courage to jump onto a grid just yet.
Lurk first if you must, but read the comments on previous posts. You’ll see there’s nothing to be afraid of and everything to gain. The worst that can happen is that you won’t win. The best that can happen is that you’ll get helpful tips to improve your writing and find your place in a community of writers.
Win-win, right? We need your stories, folks.
Like many of us, Margaret has been writing since a very young age.
I wrote stories from third grade on. Somewhere around seventh grade, I wrote to the editor of Young Miss magazine and asked if you could really make a living as a writer. She wrote me a lovely letter back saying you could. I got brave and submitted a(n) (awful) story and got my first rejection slip. Once I decided to become a teacher, it seemed like an either/or choice. When my daughters were babies, I became interested in writing for children and took the Institute for Children’s Literature course. I submitted work to magazines for a little while, but life got in the way. Then my husband retired, and for the first time in years I had leisure time. Suddenly I wanted to blog and found I had a lot to say. I love it because I don’t have to write for a market or please anyone else, although it’s encouraging when others read, like, and comment.
When Margaret isn’t writing, you can find her doing the next best thing: teaching.
For ten months of the year, you can find me teaching, preparing to teach, doing useless administrative tasks, or grading papers for about fifty hours a week. Now that it’s summer, you can find me reading, playing golf, traveling, tutoring, and catching up on all my friendships that get neglected during the school year.
After growing up in a big city, you can find Margaret living with her husband and tiny pup on two acres surrounded by cornfields.
Margaret, thank you for letting us get to know you a little better here at YeahWrite. We are so happy to have you in our community! Make sure you follow Margaret’s blog, Unfolding from the Fog. You can also follow her on Twitter.
Oh, you want more? Well here are five things you never knew about Margaret:
- If she ever does get paid to write, she wants it to be for children’s fiction, but she’s having too much fun blogging at the moment.
- She loves to travel, but you don’t want to be around her in the last 24 hours before a trip when she absolutely freaks out. Once she’s on her way though, she’s fine.
- Thanks to a tip from our very own Nathan, she’s part of a writer’s group called the Scribblers.
- The worst food in the world is candied sweet potatoes. The best is chocolate.
- During her first or second week at YeahWrite, Margaret emailed the editors with a question. She had a new computer and Wi-Fi issues, and the email wasn’t getting sent, so she sent it a second and third time. Each time, she explained the problem and asked her question. When the emails finally made it through out of order, Rowan answered her question three times, always patient and sympathetic with her issues and never seeming to question why Margaret couldn’t understand what she was telling her (but Margaret can imagine what she was muttering as she typed!). [I’m sure it was only wonderful things! 🙂 ~AR]
Are you ready for the YeahWrite #328 Weekly Writing Challenges opening this week? We hope so! Your badges await in the sidebar. Grab the code, paste into the text or HTML view of your post, and submit your post to the grids for a little friendly competition. We’re glad you’re here.
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