Monday, September 21, 2015

Perpetual Student by Milou Koenings



 When I grow up, I want to be a student.  

children study butterfly
Okay, so I'm sort of grown up, but I still want to be a student.  Few things rev up my excitement more than a course catalogue.  I'd take it all: Philosophy 101, Make Up for Theater, Military History, Fashion Design, Advanced Biology ... pretty much everything (except math!)

High-school Russian?  Check.  Doctoral-level  music theory? Sign me up.

And with the advent of the internet, anyone can learn practically anything online, and mostly for free.  It's enough to make my head spin.  Do I want to enroll in the Masters in intellectual property law (of course!) or continue learning Python?

I often have fantasies about what profession or career I'm going to pursue next, before I retire.  (My retirement years, I've already slated for medical school. Why not, right?)
But the truth is that I already have the best career of all, one that allows me to pursue all of these interests, and lets me be what I really am - a perpetual student.

I am a writer.

It means yesterday morning I discovered Rai stones - thousand-pound stone discs that are legal tender on the Island of Yap. Actually, I simultaneously discovered the Island of Yap, which I had never heard of before.  In the afternoon, I was digging up medical journal articles about the impact of sleep on teenager's immune systems. 

Sweet Blizzard by Milou KoeningsNot long ago, I grilled a friend who is a drug rehabilitation counselor, consulted a physician about the after-effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, called my aunt for the accurate version of my grandmother's spice cookie recipe, and spend several hours discussing the pedagogical aspects of The Rainbow Fish with an expert on early childhood education, all in service of my holiday novella, Sweet Blizzard, part of the 19-book bundled set, Sweet Christmas Kisses 2, that we at Sweet Romance Reads are releasing later this month. September 29, to be exact, so mark the date!

Today, I was going through diaries of a sojourn in Lichtenstein, researching its history, and reviewing art auction procedures at Sotheby's, culling the details that will make my next story come alive.

So yeah, high school, college and graduate school may all have offered a cornucopia of fascinating courses, but nothing beats the constant learning and research involved in being a writer - with no final exam! 

Whether we write non-fiction or romance, blog posts, novels or magazine articles, authors can never cease exploring, observing and studying the world around us, or the worlds that we create in our imaginations.


Fortunately, our universe is so vast and wonderful, there's no way to ever run out of new things to discover!


Milou Koenings writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with a happy ending bring more joy into the world and so make it a better place.
 
Her sweet romance, Reclaiming Home, A Green Pines Romance, is available at AmazonYou can find her on her website, www.miloukoenings.com, on Facebook, or Twitter

sweet christmas kisses 2


Her newest novella, Sweet Blizzard, is included in  Sweet Christmas Kisses 2, an exciting anthology of  19 sweet Christmas novellas by award winning authors.  SCK2 will be released on September 29th, and is available for preorder right now!  


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7 comments:

  1. I love learning, too, Milou :) As I read your post, I kept nodding in agreement at all of the things you wanted to learn because I would, too. Any kind of Discovery or National Geographic or History channel click means I'm hooked for hours as I learn about something so obscure my husband scratches his head- wondering why I need to know THAT. And there isn't a good answer if it's not in research for a book. I just like to know stuff. Period. One of my favorite things to learn, as a writer, is the particular language/slang of a particular culture/profession/region. I'm over the moon excited when I learn how real firefighters/Coast Guard Air and Sea Rescue personnel/professional baseball players and so on communicate using language short cuts only they know. For example, did you know that in the North East, new firefighters are often referred to as Jakes? So interesting... and the fire hose isn't called a hose, it's the pipe or the line. Guess I'm a geek about words but it works for writing- lol.

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    1. I know what you mean - it's so exciting to discover the lingo of each field, it's like going inside a new little world each time!

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  2. I love learning too! It's nice to acknowledge the things we love!

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  3. Isn't it fun? Last night I was "in" Ireland, trying to find out how it would be possible to be stranded there, and what's the best way to have iPhone service. Silly things, and so easy to get distracted looking at historic homes that are now B&Bs.

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    1. Oh yes ... those gorgeous homes! That's something I love when I read your historical novels - imagining the lovely homes in which they take place!

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  4. What a great post, Milou! I totally agree - the zest for learning is part of being a good writer!

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  5. I like learning but not necessarily in a formal setting. Class courses don't get me excited. I like what you said about no exam. :)

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