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Janet Ruth Heller's Blog

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Dec.12.2010
I joined my first critique group for writers when I lived in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s.  I had met the other members of my group when we all co-edited the literary journal _Primavera_.  We did not have time during our editorial staff meetings to discuss one another's creative writing.  So five...
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Oct.28.2010
On October 26, 2010, the U. S. Department of Education released an excellent letter to schools about the need to take a more comprehensive approach to combating bullying.   In general, schools often view bullying as isolated incidents, rather than perceiving underlying patterns of discrimination...
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Sep.04.2010
Recently, Sarah Palin mixed the words "repudiate" and "refute" to create the neologism "refudiate."   While I am impressed by people who use polysyllabic words correctly, I doubt that anyone is impressed by individuals who try to sound educated by using long Latinate-...
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Jul.12.2010
As a big sports fan, I watched LeBron James's ESPN interview last week with fascination.  James had the whole nation in suspense about which NBA team he would join.   I kept thinking that good writers also deserve media attention. When Wordsworth and Coleridge were alive, British newspapers and...
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Jun.13.2010
I write many poems, some about children.   I find that the poems about kids are very hard to publish.   Why is this so difficult?  My theory is that many editors, especially men, believe that poems about children are overly sentimental and thus unworthy of publication.  But we can easily refute...
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Jun.04.2010
In 1999, I went to a writers' conference where one editor claimed that books for children must have the child hero or heroine alone completely solve the problems raised.   I was astounded by this narrow-minded claim, which would nullify the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories, the Harry Potter novels, the...
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