Category Archives: Ask

Complete Your Book

Posted on 11/30/2013 by Jeff May

Do you have a memoir, autobiography, or novel you cannot seem to finish? Or an idea that needs jump starting? Sometimes all it takes is someone who understands the writing process, someone who can guide you around pitfalls to successful completion, or someone who can get you started and set you on your way, available as needed. I can help you find your voice and develop your unique style regardless of topic. Rates are fair … Continue reading →

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The Essence of Teaching and Learning

Posted on 12/27/2011 by Jeff May

I remember when my eighteen month old son toddled up to me, put his little finger on my shirt button and said, “That’s a button!” His first complete sentence. Made me proud and excited. The potential. Somehow he had learned language. When I taught English to teenage outcasts, I established a complex relationship with my students and a similar interplay of teaching and learning occurred. With my students, it was more direct. It was my … Continue reading →

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Confessions of a Failed Fiction Writer

Posted on 11/17/2011 by Jeff May

As I was hiking along the Meramec River (St. Louis, Castlewood State Park), I mulled over a sort of memoir concept that I’ve been thinking about for over a year now.  The only thing stopping me is that I know I will expend lots of time, energy, hard work, getting it as perfect as I can and it will go nowhere.  That is the crux of the story.  As I near 60 (I’ll be 58 … Continue reading →

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Romantic Musings

Posted on 10/25/2011 by Jeff May

After all the flashes of anger and scenes of violence, all the perversion and political foolishness, the aging body limping but still climbing, the steady diet of Halloween horror movies and romantic comedies, I will settle for a cool afternoon run along the river, through the woods, and will create nothing short of my own reality so that at least for one elusive moment, I can believe in an illusory, romantic, selfless merging of spirits … Continue reading →

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“Dry Fly” of the St. Louis Ozarks

Posted on 09/29/2011 by Jeff May

There’s no “matching the hatch” when I fly-fish clear Ozark streams near St. Louis, Missouri.  While I am interested in insects, bugs, and so on, I’m more interested in catching smallmouth on my fly rod.  I also enjoy seeing snakes slither acorss the water’s surface.  So I’m often asked the common question, “What are you using for bait?”  No worms, no stinkbait, or mechanical gagets, but simply “poppers.”  My first choice is a yellow popper, followed by … Continue reading →

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The Panic and Pain of Mind-Body Dualism

Posted on 09/10/2011 by Jeff May

In the opening scene of the classic semi-autobiographical comic novel Three Men In Boat, the writer Jerome K. Jerome is looking for a hay fever treatment when he casually begins reading about other diseases. By the time he’s finished, he concludes that he has every disease on the list. “I had walked into that reading-room a happy healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.” He goes to his doctor, an “old chum” who gives … Continue reading →

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Muddlehead

Posted on 05/05/2011 by Jeff May

Informal typing straight into the blog site. Something new for me, as usually I rewrite and organize and work too hard to get it as perfect as I can approximate.  But it isn’t about perfection, is it? It’s about success, about talking to the online void.  For I am sure no one is reading this anytime soon.  I’m two weeks into quitting alcohol and caffine and feel as muddled and lethargic as  I imagine a … Continue reading →

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