Leah, welcome to Homeschool Authors! Tell us a little bit about
yourself.
Hi there! I’m a 19
year old daughter of God and a homeschool graduate. I finished a bachelor’s
degree in Marketing several months ago, and now I’m taking some time to focus
on my writing. My two passions are writing and orphan care. You can find out
more about me and both these passions on my two blogs, Leah’s
Bookshelf and Teens
Interceding for Orphans.
Everyone’s homeshooling experience is different. What do you
think made yours unique?
This kind of makes me
chuckle because my homeschooling experience has become quite unique over the
past few years. My kindergarten through junior high years followed a pretty
normal homeschool pattern, complete with grade levels that confused the rest of
the world and the typical barrage of questions concerning “socialization.”
Things started getting different when Mom read College Without Compromise. At age 13, I took my first CLEP and
things progressed from there. I got to be the guinea pig in our circle of
friends and acquaintances for doing college from home. I love talking about the
experience if anyone has questions!
How did being homeschooled prepare you to write?
I remember crying
endlessly during Grammar lessons when I was in grade school. Diagramming
sentences and learning about pronouns seemed like a waste of time. However, at
the same time, I was writing (really bad!) stories about horses, dogs, and
homeschooled kids. When I was fourteen, my parents read some of my stories and
decided to let me write a novel for English class that year. Enter One
Year Adventure Novel, aka OYAN. The freedom of homeschooling to do OYAN gave me the
boost I needed to get serious about my writing.
What caused you to start writing?
An active imagination.
My brother and I entertained ourselves endlessly by making up stories together
when we were little. I’ve always loved to read and my parents read us lots of
books while we were growing up. As I mentioned above, the One Year Adventure
Novel writing course is what got me serious about writing.
What inspired Stories for God's Glory?
I wanted to tutor
someone in writing, so I started creating lesson plans. As I was doing that, an
opportunity came up for teens to sell their products at our local homeschool convention.
I wrote more lessons and put them into a self-directed curriculum format. Since
then, it’s undergone some major revisions to help it fill a need in the
homeschool market.
Would you give us a synopsis?
Most creative
writing/story writing curriculums are written by people who specialize in
essays. The rules of fiction are completely different than the rules of essay
writing, but this often isn’t recognized. Stories
for God’s Glory gives students a chance to learn the foundational elements
of writing fiction. It’s written for homeschool students by a homeschool
graduate, and for hopeful fiction writes from a fiction writer. Lessons include
easy-to-understand explanations about important elements of fiction writing,
stories that illustrate those elements, work-sheets to help students analyze
the example stories, and outlining sheets to help students plan their own
stories.
Who will enjoy Stories for God's Glory?
Homeschool moms and
their junior high students. There is some wiggle room on the grade range. Some
younger students who want to write stories may enjoy Stories for God’s Glory and high schoolers who have never learned
the rules of fiction writing will find it a good way to learn the basics. Mom’s
will like it because it’s self-guided and includes a teacher key.
Do you plan to write more books?
Yes! I’m currently
editing a futuristic story about the persecuted church. When I finish that, I’m
looking forward to combining my love of writing and orphan care into a
contemporary story about an orphan.
Do you have any final thoughts?
Don’t ever take the privilege of
being homeschooled or the ability to read good, God-honoring books for granted.
I know homeschoolers sometimes envy the perks of going to public school, but
the perks of having our parents investing into our lives in a godly manner will
last for eternity. And who knows how long we will have the freedom to read and
publish God-honoring books. Be grateful for all of it!
