Hi!
This post serves as introduction to me, Susan Ross, and to my forthcoming blog: Ruminations. I hope you’ll follow me or check in periodically and let me know what you (do and do not) like, what you want more (and less) of, and tell me about your own writing, or ask for my feedback. As quick background, it’s probably helpful to know that since the early ’80s (yes, the dark ages, I know!) I’ve been teaching, coaching, and editing the writing of others. Some were friends, others employee-friend-journalists, and then there are the hundreds and hundreds of English and journalism students I have taught in classrooms from Maine to Florida, North Carolina to California, Istanbul to Stockholm, and so many points in between.
It’s also my long academic career that is largely responsible for sidelining the work I love best: writing fiction and narrative nonfiction, developmental editing, and coaching writers. For the past three decades plus, my writing has been almost exclusively weighty scholarly studies of law and communication, the kind of “light” reading that even my colleagues (required to read “my file” before granting me tenure) said was “too dense and foreign” for them to dive into. That work had its rewards (including a regular pay check and the enormous joy of a student’s “Aha!” moment), but my passion lay elsewhere and eked out its meager subsistence from occasional essays or letter-to-the-editor rants on everything from news media’s escalating abuse of the English language, to quick interpretations of the
latest legal or political development, to personal observations of nature or oppression of the popular, democratic movement in Turkey.
With retirement from the university, some things have not changed. The subjects closest to my heart remain the struggle of “outsiders” to be seen and heard, the mechanisms of social, legal and political (in)justice, the healing and restorative power of love and kindness and nature, the beauty of language and the expression of an idea or emotion in a way that not only communicates meaning but prompts emotion, especially empathetic connection or remembrance of things unvoiced.
Today I work every day pitching my completed hybrid biography/memoir/cultural critique, Madwoman, and working on my first novel, a historical fiction based on my paternal family’s immigration from Italy in the wave of the late 1800s and their life in the United States. I’m also ready to begin working with one or two writers at any stage in their projects. So feel free to reach out to me. I hope you soon will become one of my friends/fellow writers so that we can help each other thrive.
Oh, and of course, I’m starting this Ruminations blog to share some of my previous unpublished writing and to help sharpen my own ideas and develop my projects. If you read Ruminations, you will find odes to nature and the solace of home, dives into familial mental illness, alcohol abuse and divisiveness, my struggles and successes in life and writing, and the questions big and small that wake me in the middle of the night. I hope you’ll follow me and reach out and that, before too long, we will be lucky enough to share some Aha! moments together. Happy reading and writing!
It’s also my long academic career that is largely responsible for sidelining the work I love best: writing fiction and narrative nonfiction, developmental editing, and coaching writers. For the past three decades plus, my writing has been almost exclusively weighty scholarly studies of law and communication, the kind of “light” reading that even my colleagues (required to read “my file” before granting me tenure) said was “too dense and foreign” for them to dive into. That work had its rewards (including a regular pay check and the enormous joy of a student’s “Aha!” moment), but my passion lay elsewhere and eked out its meager subsistence from occasional essays or letter-to-the-editor rants on everything from news media’s escalating abuse of the English language, to quick interpretations of the latest legal or political development, to personal observations of nature or oppression of the popular, democratic movement in Turkey.
With retirement from the university, some things have not changed. The subjects closest to my heart remain the struggle of “outsiders” to be seen and heard, the mechanisms of social, legal and political (in)justice, the healing and restorative power of love and kindness and nature, the beauty of language and the expression of an idea or emotion in a way that not only communicates meaning but prompts emotion, especially empathetic connection or remembrance of things unvoiced.
Today I work every day pitching my completed hybrid biography/memoir/cultural critique, Madwoman, and working on my first novel, a historical fiction based on my paternal family’s immigration from Italy in the wave of the late 1800s and their life in the United States. I’m also ready to begin working with one or two writers at any stage in their projects. So feel free to reach out to me. I hope you soon will become one of my friends/fellow writers so that we can help each other thrive.
Oh, and of course, I’m starting this Ruminations blog to share some of my previous unpublished writing and to help sharpen my own ideas and develop my projects. If you read Ruminations, you will find odes to nature and the solace of home, dives into familial mental illness, alcohol abuse and divisiveness, my struggles and successes in life and writing, and the questions big and small that wake me in the middle of the night. I hope you’ll follow me and reach out and that, before too long, we will be lucky enough to share some Aha! moments together. Happy reading and writing!
https://www.facebook.com/susan.d.ross.9
Today I work every day pitching my completed hybrid biography/memoir/cultural critique, Madwoman, and working on my first novel, a historical fiction based on my paternal family’s immigration from Italy in the wave of the late 1800s and their life in the United States. I’m also ready to begin working with one or two writers at any stage in their projects. So feel free to reach out to me. I hope you soon will become one of my friends/fellow writers so that we can help each other thrive.
Oh, and of course, I’m starting this Ruminations blog to share some of my previous unpublished writing and to help sharpen my own ideas and develop my projects. If you read Ruminations, you will find odes to nature and the solace of home, dives into familial mental illness, alcohol abuse and divisiveness, my struggles and successes in life and writing, and the questions big and small that wake me in the middle of the night. I hope you’ll follow me and reach out and that, before too long, we will be lucky enough to share some Aha! moments together. Happy reading and writing!
https://www.facebook.com/susan.d.ross.9
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Ruminations 