We all started as pieces of fiction, and most of us began our relationship with language by lying, whether inadvertently or not. Something about being hungry or sad or hurt. Manipulation. It’s pretty universal to our kind.
But it’s one thing to love it, consume it, and teach it and another thing entirely to write it as an adult. Most of our creative faculties have by this time been drummed out of us.
Nevertheless, I began trying to write fiction relatively recently, and have now completed two novels (for which I’m seeking representation). I’ve had some luck getting parts of them published by literary journals, including:
My “curriculum vitae,” the academic world’s Latin term for “resume,” is — as is everyone’s — a work in progress. I like the Latin phrase, first, because it’s not the homograph that “resume” is, but more because it literally reflects the work-in-progress aspect of one’s life: “Course of one’s life” suggests that only when finished (at death) does the course cease. Anyway, click the thumbnail below to see the most recent snapshot of my location along that course.
If you’re interested in my briefer “snapshot” resume geared more specifically to writing, please click on the image below to download a PDF version of that.
I’ve published numerous creative non-fiction pieces over the last 40 or so years, including two books with my students. I taught creative writing in high school for many years, focusing on fiction, poetry, as well as creative non-fiction, including memoir. As a college student I wrote feature articles regularly for the Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s award-winning student newspaper, and have taught journalism units in my English classes.
My most regular creative non-fiction writing outlets have been the numerous blogs I’ve created over the years, including:
Chukar Culture: a literary/cultural exploration of one of the longest-running of my many passions in life, focusing heavily on (and often starring) the four Brittanys with whom I’ve had the pleasure of sharing my life since 2000.
Mr. McMichael: My Life As An English Teacher: being a middle/high school teacher is probably the most meaningful, intense thing I’ve ever done, and I’m proud of what I did with and for my students, much of which is documented here, along with some thoughts about public education and why I think it’s important.
The Virtual Bob McMichael: my first blog ever, featuring a random assortment of essays and reflections on everything from ticks to Grete Waitz.
Hells Canyon Beer: I created this blog in about 2015 to channel my excitement about getting back into home-brewing beer, something I’m still passionate about.
Eurovan Info: our road-trip and camping dream vehicle, which we’d planned to keep for a long time but didn’t — this blog featured many DIY upgrade and refurbishment projects as well as road trip and camping reports. Even though we (sadly) sold the van a long time ago, I still get questions regularly from people who found it and want advice on how to fix something.
McMichael Piping: even though this is primarily a website to promote myself as a professional bagpiper, it features a blog section with pieces I’ve written about piping.
Blogs aren’t considered by many to be “legitimate” writerly endeavors. I strongly disagree with this viewpoint, but I’ve also had success for a long time getting my writing in print (beginning well before the Internet and blogging became a permanent fixture of our lives). Below are a few of my creative non-fiction printed publications.
As the VP of Sales & Marketing for eight years in a small aviation company, I created all of the business’s business documentation, from press releases to advertising copy to highly technical equipment operation manuals to online and print catalog descriptions of complex aviation equipment, and more. If it needed to be in written form, I produced it. I had no experience in business before this opportunity, and the research and writing skills I developed from high school through earning a doctorate enabled me to use those skills to grow this company from a small mom-and-pop to an international market leader.
For the past 35 years I’ve written lots of other business-related documentation, including op-eds and letters to the editor, public relations articles, grant applications, annual reports, white papers, and non-profit organization newsletters.
All of this writing experience has helped me in each successive project. For example, most recently I’ve been a teacher (from 2012 to 2022); anyone who knows much about education knows that teachers don’t make a ton of money and never have enough funding for all of the projects they want to bring to the classroom. Thus, grants. I wrote applications for grants to improve technology not only for my own classroom but the for entire school, as well as for specific projects with specific classes of students. These grants totaled tens of thousands of dollars, from organizations such as the Idaho Humanities Council, Idaho Power, Idaho Rangeland Resource Commission, Northwest Professional Educators, and the Upper Country Educational Foundation. Apparently, I’m good at writing grant applications.
Click on the thumbnails below to see some of this material.
This sample of my academic writing was published in the journal American Music. It’s a modified version of a chapter from my doctoral dissertation, and is the result of a thorough peer-review editing process.
If you’re not familiar with this process, it’s pretty cool, and usually results in a vastly improved piece of work that gets published. Peer-reviewed journal publications are the gold standard in scholarly writing. The process goes like this:
The author or authors submit a piece to a specific journal or journals (in my case here, the journal’s editor knew of my work and asked me to submit a specific chapter of my dissertation).
The journal’s editor replies (sometimes it takes months to get a response), indicating whether the journal wants the piece, or not.
If they want it, they ask the author to list several experts in their field who might be good reviewers of the work (for this publication, I supplied the journal with five scholars in my field whose work I admired).
After several months, I received a reply from the editor with extensive comments from three anonymous reviewers, and I was instructed to edit my work based on their suggestions and criticisms. The time-frame for revision varies by publication, but in my case they asked me to respond with a revised essay within two weeks. I was also asked to provide the journal editor with a summary of my revisions, and any issues with specific comments from the anonymous reviewers.
After working hard on the revisions, I submitted the essay and summary letter to the editor. A couple of weeks later, after he and his editorial board reviewed my revised essay, they informed me they would publish it as is. Sometimes an author is asked to submit to a second round of comments/revisions, or the journal could decide to reject the work.
Once the “final” piece is typeset and ready to publish, some journals will provide the author a proof for a quick copy review to make sure that nothing obvious was missed. In my case, I caught a few typos and noted them.
About 9-12 months after initially submitting my work, I received a few copies of the published journal in the mail. The rigorous, lengthy process produced a piece of work that involved lots of minds and a few hearts and which was much, much better than the original. You can view/download the entire essay at the link below.
Writer's Doctor 