Rachel Starr Thomson

It’s a new semester! When the starting gun fires, I get to engage in a battle of wits (er, coach students in their writing) with a whole new class. I’m so looking forward to it :). Yesterday, the Web people over at WriteAtHome took my old class rosters down, and probably because I haunted the site so breathlessly, they put a new roster up by that night. At last count I have 60 students, though that may change slightly in this first week. It often does.

Officially, class starts tomorrow. Unofficially, this doesn’t involve any work for me other than answering the occasional email from new students or their parents. The first papers will arrive for me to read and mark a week from tomorrow, on September 11.

Let the games begin!

(I often refer to the staff folks at WriteAtHome as my bosses. However, we coaches are not actually employees; we are independent contracters. Which makes the staff folks what, my contractees? I think I’ll stick with "bosses.")

There’s an Irish song called "Catch the Moments As They Run"–I love that. I love the way the title itself runs, and the way it pictures all of life as a river flowing by. Some days, when I’m writing, words flow like that. They run all around me like water, and all I have to do is catch them. Other days, they run more like molasses, or tar, and trying to catch them creates a big sticky mess. Yesterday I was trying to write an article for Boundless, and even though I MADE myself stick with it until I’d typed out the requisite number of words (too many, actually), all it really needed to get worse was a good dousing of feathers. (Tar and feathers, get it? Ok, I’ll quit belabouring my own joke.)

Today I sat down to revise the sticky thing, and the words ran. They ran so well that I rewrote the entire article, start to finish. I really like it now. And I wrote another one, too, and this blog post, and some emails. Sometimes the water even sparkles :). It was a good day.

Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled Interview, Part One
Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled Interview, Part Two

Jonathan Lewis of Home School Enrichment interviewed Carolyn and I about Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled recently. Crosswalk.com picked up the interview, so you can read it here! (I also recommend picking up the magazine. I copy edit for them, so I can tell you from an up-close-and-personal perspective that it has a lot of really great information, encouragement, and ideas!