I forgot to say that our student community is for all kinds of creative writing, including novels, short stories, poetry, and creative non-fiction. We have many young writers who are currently working on novels, several who've finished at least one book, and even a published author! 😊 What kind of writing does your DD like to do?

I'm so glad your child had such a positive experience! Thank you so much! (That’s me speaking on the podcast! ☺️) Yes, our year-round community is by invitation only for students who have completed a six-weeks writing class—this is to add an extra level of safety for the students, and it ensures that everyone is there to encourage one another. There are a couple of other communities out there with a more competitive, every-writer-for-themselves kind of environment. Our philosophy is different by design. ❤️

I saw the post on the chat board first, so my reply is over there. 😊 Please feel free to ask me any questions on either board or PM me for details!

Hi! My DS is part of the student writing community at the Habit, and it may be just what your DD is looking for! 💕 It's a year-round community of young writers (ranging in age from 13-20) who share their writing regularly for feedback from the other writers on a discussion forum very much like the WTM. (It actually uses the exact same software and looks and functions a lot like the WTM community. We even have the same emojis and reactions! 😊) There are plenty of discussions (both writerly and just-for-fun), as well as classes, fun writing prompts, poetry month, writing challenges, collaborative storytelling, and even occasional book clubs. The Habit was started by author Jonathan Rogers (The Wilderking Trilogy, The World According to Narnia), who teaches the writing classes for both the adults and the students. I created the private, year-round student community on the Habit with JR's blessing, as my DS18 (15 at the time) was looking for a place to share his writing and to connect with other writers his own age. I moderate the forums and read all of the student content so that I can keep everything safe, positive, and fun. It's an amazingly encouraging place, and my son still loves it three years later!

Happy Saturday! I'm home from two long musical theater rehearsals, and I'm definitely ready for a break from children for awhile. (Except my own, of course! ❤️) Both groups made good progress today—the teens have the five big production numbers learned and choreographed, and the younger kids have learned and choreographed two and know the music on three more. But goodness, those littles are squirrelly! 😅 I checked on the writing forums just now, and the students are all happily chatting, so all is well there. I'm genuinely excited about this class—it's so fun to meet all the new students, and I love reading all their stories! DH and I are heading out the door to take a long walk, as the rain finally cleared out and it's only 82 degrees. It's not fall yet, but it's coming! 🍁😊

I've been on the computer for most of the day, and my eyes are so tired! I did take one break to drive and pick up DS18 from college. But I got both class discussion forums up and running, and I now have a bunch of happy teen writers writing their intros and welcoming new students. Quite a few of them have Hobbit characters as their profile pictures—I'm pretty sure we have all thirteen dwarves plus Bilbo and Gandalf! 😂 I'll be at musical theater practice for almost seven hours tomorrow, so that will force me to take an extended break from my laptop. I love working from home, but I'm not very good at remembering to take breaks. I did remember to eat lunch today! 🙃

We have this problem every time we need to wrap something non-Christmassy. One year our solution was to buy a huge roll of red and green Scottish plaid paper. It wouldn't have worked for a wedding shower, but it covered pretty much every other occasion. 😊 What color did you get? If you find them, would you mind dispensing some chocolate this way? It might help me finally kick this headache.

😅 I'll take your word on it then, but we don't have 400 mile roads with gorgeous trees in Texas. When we drove out of Memphis toward Nashville and the trees suddenly got so tall...❤️ I love trees, though. I might change my mind if I got to see them all the time, I suppose. 🙃 But yeah, the point of making the drives would be to stop and hike. I can't do the really steep hiking in the Rocky Mountains anymore, but forest hikes are wonderful! Also on the bucket list. 😊 DH and I (who are both rather obsessed with all things Scottish) are really hoping to go to the Highland games at Grandfather Mountain at some point, so hopefully then. I just looked this hike up. It looks amazing, but likely way more than I could handle with POTS. Any kind of significant elevation and my legs turn into lead weights and my heart races. Take lots of pictures if you ever do it! ☺️

So beautiful! I'd never been to middle Tennessee, but we went this summer for the student Gathering, and now I want to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway. ❤️ And of course, the Appalachian Trail has been on my bucket list for years. But someone else will have to do the actual driving!

It's still cloudy and raining, which means I've still got a headache. But it looks like this should clear out of here by tonight, and there isn't a high temperature above 90 degrees for the next ten days. 😊 Walking weather is almost here! Today is the one and only day of the week I don't have to drive anyone anywhere, so I'm trying my best to get a million things done today. I taught two voice lessons this morning, and now I'm working through my to-do list. Next up is getting the Writing with Hobbits class forums all ready to open for posting in the morning. Class doesn't start until Tuesday, but the students get to post intros and start chatting with their new classmates tomorrow. 💕 I might need to go to Trader Joe's. It depends on what I want to cook for dinner. I was thinking we might have pineapple chicken since I have everything I need to make that, but chicken gnocchi soup sounds better for this weather.

We got back home and had lunch, and now I'm hosting a Zoom writing room for the students while multitasking my way through an endless to-do list! I'm doing things, but more things keep adding themselves to the list! 🙃 DH just came home briefly from work to pick up the same thing he forgot twice earlier. He says he must be getting old, but I wonder if it might be sleep apnea. He's been super tired lately, and his dad got diagnosed around this age. We have choir practice tonight, so I need to figure out what we're eating for dinner sooner than later. We have four packs of chicken, so I'm thinking chicken might be involved...😂

I get that. I don't like driving into the city either. And neither of my guys are comfortable driving on the highway at all yet—Texas drivers are aggressive!

That sounds really rough! We're in a similar situation, in that the vehicle our boys are sharing is twenty years old. It's in the shop right now, as the mechanic broke the hood release cable while they were replacing the alternator for the second time in two weeks. We are hoping to keep this car running so that DS18 can continue to drive it throughout college, but it's starting to look iffy—and either way, we'll need to help DS21 get a much more reliable car by the summer. He'll most likely be driving across the country to his first real ecology job (there aren't a lot of those in Texas 😅), and the twenty year old Honda Civic isn't likely to make it. He's working two jobs and saving up money, so he'll be able to pay for part of it, but the odds are great he'll need us to help with the payments for awhile.

Good morning! It's cloudy, cool, and occasionally drizzling. It's the kind of weather that triggers my POTS symptoms and gives me a headache for three days. So yuck. But it is kind of exciting to have actual weather instead of yet another day of 105 degrees or more. Fall is coming, y'all! I've been up to my knees this morning planning for our teen writing class that starts on Tuesday. We're studying The Hobbit this time around, and the students are very excited. 🥰 It's a LOTR-loving crowd, so it's like Christmas is coming early this year to the forums! They are also thrilled because Bilbo's and Frodo's birthdays are on September 22nd, so everyone will be able to celebrate while the class is going on! 🥳 I need to get the class discussion forum ready to open on Friday, and we're trying out something new this time where the veteran students will each take a new student under their wing to show them how everything works and make sure they feel welcome. The students are all being very sweet and offering to help me in any way they can, but it still means lots of typing up housekeeping posts and replying to a small mountain of well-meaning questions. 🙃 I've got just enough time for a shower, and then I'm off to the college to drive DS18 to his tap dance class and then back to campus in time for his composer's meeting.

Hi Susan! Likewise! (And likewise! 😅) Aww, I'm sorry! I hope that October arrives very soon! It's amazing how much driving we still need to do with nearly grown kids, isn't it? My youngest still doesn't have his actual license, as he's pretty much always too busy to get his driving hours in. And since my guys share a car, having another driver wouldn't really solve our "everyone needs to be a different place at the same time" issues anyway.

Maybe if you tried a quick yellow wash to tone down the blue, and then did a bit more green? Almost like dying Easter eggs? That might be more trouble than it's worth, though. 🤷‍♀️ (And I'm not crafty at all, so I admire you for trying!)

Hi again! I'm jumping back in after another long break, with the hopes of sticking around this time. 😊 I've so enjoyed reading this thread over the years—y'all were good company when our homeschool days felt endless. (Both of my kids are spectrum-y and high needs so I was nearly always either overwhelmed or burnt out.) I don't think I ever did a real introduction, so maybe I should do that now! I'm Andrea, and I just officially retired from homeschooling. DS21 is a senior Biology major and DS18 is beginning his freshman year as a music composition major, both at our local university. They both have scholarships and are living at home to avoid college debt. They also share a car—which in practical terms means that I still end up having to drive to the college multiple times a week when their schedules don't match up 😅, especially since my oldest has two part-time jobs this year. I thought I'd have lots of time on my hands once homeschooling wrapped up, but life had other ideas, as I now have four part-time jobs. 🙃 My primary work is running an online student creative writing community (on a forum a lot like this one, actually), which is the biggest blessing in my life! We've got over 100 teenagers from all over the world writing and fellowshipping together daily, and I've grown to love those kids like they're my own. 💕 DS18 is part of the group, and it's been absolutely amazing to share this experience together. 🥰 My work with the student writers has also lead to some other opportunities, primarily book editing, which was a dream job of mine when I was a kid. I fully edited a book for one student author late last year, and I'm currently in the middle of line edits on another student's novel. They're both looking to publish sometime in the next year, and I'm excited to see what happens for them! I also teach singing lessons and just recently became the vocal coach for a local teen musical theater group. All of these jobs added together still don't earn me anywhere near a full-time salary, but I love kids and it's all genuinely fulfilling work, so I don't mind too much (most of the time, anyway!). Hmmm...what else? DH is a teacher and the tennis coach at our local high school. All four of us sing in the choir at our church, three out of four of us are writing novels, and we're all huge board game nerds. ❤️ Oh, and I like emojis more than is probably healthy. It's definitely a product of spending so much of my time talking to teenagers. 😊 I would love some conversation with other adults during the day!

Indeed! I was just sure it was Tuesday all day yesterday and was very disappointed to find out last night that it was actually Monday. Ah well 😅...Happy Tuesday!

Thank you! 😊 They are all each other's best friends and biggest encouragers, and it is amazing to witness! 💕

I don't think I'd attempt to teach college-level or professional singers online, because there are just too many fine details of singing that honestly need to be taught in person, but it works very well even for high school level singing. I can demonstrate techniques just as well online as in person, and I can hear my students and correct their mistakes in just the same way my voice teachers did. The audio is surprisingly good. The microphone I use is a Blue Yeti mic (more like what you would use for podcasting), but my students are generally just using their laptop mics.

Well, I've found that if the devices are good, the audio isn't really an issue. I'm on a MacBook Air, and my students use various types of laptops. I also have a microphone that I can use as needed. I teach over Zoom, and the audio is actually just fine as long as the internet connection is good. You just have to take turns. 🙃 As far as the accompaniment goes, it can't be live, unfortunately. For teaching a new song, I send the sheet music as a PDF ahead of time, and then I teach the voice part a line at a time by demonstrating live. (Most of my online students are middle schoolers, so it works well.) I then make them two tracks: one with accompaniment and vocals (me singing) for learning purposes and another with just piano for practicing. Or for Broadway-style songs, we might use a karaoke track (if I can find a good one). They sing along with the piano track for subsequent lessons.

This will be the first time in 14 years that I won't have a kid home with me, and I think I'm ready (at least, I hope I am! 😅) I'm sad about it, of course, but I'm also looking forward to finally having some for self-care. My kids are both pretty high-needs (ASD and OCD/anxiety), and things like exercise, sleep, and eating healthy have fallen by the wayside over the years. I'm planning to spend the next two weeks figuring out a new daily routine to maximize my time and wellness, as both my guys are going to our local college and will still be living at home. But I have a lot of irons in the fire at this point, so we'll see! Three years ago, my whole identity was tied up in my kids and homeschooling, and I just couldn't imagine what daily life could look like without it. I would pretty much start crying whenever the subject came up. 🥲 But two and a half years ago, I helped found an online creative writing community for teens—primarily as a social outlet for my younger DS—and it's grown more than anyone could have ever imagined. We now have well over 100 teens writing together (on a discussion forum much like this one), and they've truly become honorary kids to me. 💕 The students dubbed me the "Momerator" a while back, because they say I'm their mom on the internet! 😂(I moderate all the content.) I got to try my hand at editing a novel last year for one of the more advanced students who was looking to self-publish her second book. It was a wonderful experience, and now I'm editing a novel for another student and have two more in queue. Being an editor was one of my secret dream jobs when I was a kid, so this has honestly been a pretty amazing opportunity! I've also gotten back into voice teaching (middle school/ high school students) for the first time since before I started homeschooling. I started with a few online voice students last year, and I will start teaching my first in-person student in a couple of weeks. And I was just asked to do the vocal coaching for my son's musical theater group this fall! If you had told me three years ago about all the things I'd be doing today, I wouldn't have believed you. Life is an amazing journey, and you never know what might be just around the next bend in the road! 😊

You're very welcome! 😊 I forgot to put a link in my reply, but I just added it in.

My DS17 has absolutely loved the creative writing classes at The Habit. 😊 Each one is based on the writing of a famous author and covers a single novel. The students study writing through the lens of the writer—analyzing how he/she crafted the story and then writing scenes each week using the various techniques they're studying. There's also a very active student forum where the students have discussions throughout the week and post their writing assignments for feedback. DS17 has done classes there for the last two years, and between those and the writing he does on his own (he's working on two different novels!), I've awarded him a creative writing credit each year. They're about to start a new class next week on C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and he's super excited, as that's always been one of his favorite books! https://thehabit.co @Coco_Clark @Shelydon

That's a good thought, and it might be possible. It will likely depend on whether anyone from our group who lives closer to the Nashville area has a membership to either. We've got people driving in from all over the country (and a couple flying in from overseas, if you can believe it), and we're all meeting for three days at a state park near Nashville. It's like a huge family reunion, except almost none of us have actually met before! The plan (and it isn't much of an organized plan, yet) is to have all the families share the food costs and have a few parents take turns making big grocery runs for the whole group. (Breakfasts will be fend for yourself.) We will probably do sandwiches/chips/cookies en masse for lunches, and only cook out for dinners. But there will be three dinners, unless we decide to pick up pizzas for one of them. Right now, I'm thinking burgers for one meal, and hot dogs/brats for another, but I'm not sure what to do for the third. I'm thinking maybe something like tacos/burritos? I read that you can bake potatoes over the grill, but I'm not sure that would work for such a large group. We have some people staying in cabins/AirBNBs, so we might be able to pull off something with a bunch of crockpots! 😅 It's a good thing I have eight months to plan this thing!