Laura Smith Writer

Author: mslauraasmith

  • Abandoned Habits and Goals

     My goal at the beginning of 2021 was to spend time each day writing, either a short poem, a blog post, or an entry in one of the many journals strategically placed throughout my home. It is now April 11, and that goal has been thrown to the wayside amidst the stress of teaching in…

  • Creating New Habits

    How long has it been since I have written a post? The last few years have been filled with writing, with running, with teaching, and with learning. I completed a thesis about female writers and the power of phallocentric language. I began working on a master’s degree in creative writing and have been writing chapters…

  • Poetry fun

    Once every few weeks I play a poetry game with my creative writing class. I have a bin of words taken from various poetry books, random words that I like; dust, bamboo, spotless, sherbet…we each choose a word out of the box and use that word in a line of poetry. After the line is…

  • Finding My Play Again

    When my sister and I were little we had a swing set in our backyard, complete with monkey bars and slide. We would swing across the monkey bars, do front and back flips on the side bars, and spend hours pumping our legs, swinging higher and higher trying to touch the branches of a silver…

  • Writing Hiatus

    It has been a busy year. I finally landed the perfect job, and spent the last 9 months learning the ropes, preparing curriculum and teaching high school students some of my favorite books, The Canterbury Tales, Othello, The Hound of the Baskervilles, in addition to some modern short stories and poetry. So I haven’t been…

  • Be kind to your body: lizards and pigeons included

    A few weeks ago a woman posted a question on a social media platform. Apparently she had had a baby a year ago, was eating healthy, running and really trying to lose the baby weight. She had managed to lose most but the fat around her belly. How, she asked, could she get rid of…

  • Rough Road Ahead

    I stumbled upon this sign on my run the other morning, and I started thinking about how nice it would be if life came with warning signs. “Warning: Bitter Divorce Ahead,” “Death of Beloved Pet Soon,” “Job Loss Around Corner.” Would I live my life any differently if I knew when the rough patches were…

  • Bucket Lists for Dabblers

    Bucket List: A list of things to do before you “kick the bucket.” I was surprised (not sure why) to find a website where people keep track of their bucket lists, and find ideas and like-minded people: www.bucketlist.org . I don’t know why I have been thinking about bucket lists so much lately, possibly because I turned…