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Michelle Claus
I'm in love with writing. I'm in love with words. I'm in love with art.
In high school -- 24 years ago -- I started composing poetry. I was inspired by the poetry and prose in my senior-year Engli...view moreI'm in love with writing. I'm in love with words. I'm in love with art.
In high school -- 24 years ago -- I started composing poetry. I was inspired by the poetry and prose in my senior-year English Literature tome. Sonnets, couplets, metaphor, alliteration ... I was totally hooked. I "published" my first poem in the high school chap book of student writing.
Throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies (in psychology and counseling, respectively), I continued to compose poetry -- some formal, some informal. During my one year off in-between undergraduate and graduate college, I worked as a Freelance Writer and Associate Editor for a weekly newspaper.
After graduating with a Master's degree and spending some time as a counselor in the mental-health field, I became increasingly aware that my true love rested with writing. During my free time I'd dive headlong into classic literature and poetry, allowing these great works to spark works of my own. By this time, I was dabbling in personal essays and short stories. I also was discovering how very much I enjoyed making visual art. The two endeavors, writing and art, transported me beyond Ego and ordinary cares of daily life. True freedom. This feeling was born in me ever so clearly when I internalized the melismatic music of Lisa Gerrard. The creative life, it must be.
In the ensuing years until now, I married and became the mother of two wonderful children. My dedication to family and home put full-time writing and creativity in the background, but not away. I spent one full ice-hockey season, in fact, crafting haiku after each game played by the PIttsburgh Penguins (hockeyhaiku.wordpress.com). That was a blast! Now that the kids are getting older, it has become easier to devote more and more time to writing and art.
Hence, The Marshmallow Test. I love this story. It's my first published book. The idea for this story came to me when I was simultaneously exercising and listening to an interview on National Public Radio. The interviewee talked about the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Walter Mischel). I took the idea of the marshmallow test and ran with it on my computer keyboard. One never knows when inspiration will strike. ...view less