TC Spotlight: Paul Frost

Paul Frost
Paul Frost

For our first MWP Teacher Consultant Writer Spotlight, we’d like to introduce you to Paul Frost.  Paul attended the Maine Writing Project Institute in 2006. Since that time, Paul has been active in a writing group on MDI and has published poetry and op-eds in the Bangor Daily News.

Paul, on the highlights of the MWP Institute:

 “From the get-go I felt energizing connections with each member of my writing group. These connections rooted in our rich authentic responses to each other’s writing. They grew in our dialogues about Ralph Fletcher’s What a Writer Needs and Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. They blossomed in our celebrations of our pieces and, frankly, of each other.”

On how MWP influenced Paul’s life as a writer:

“Writing without response ceased to be an option, and I learned responders brought different gifts. I began to feel comfortable deciding which responses worked for me as writer.

I discovered that marginal drafts and promising drafts could happen on my laptop when I was fresh or driven, and they could happen on my lined pad when I was tired and reflective.

I became compulsive about reading drafts out loud. I read “hard-fought-for” paragraphs and entire pieces as soon as they were written; I read them a half hour later and the next morning. I learned each “read aloud” enabled me to cut “clutter” and advance my quest for Bill Zinsser’s favored elements, “precise nouns” and “powerful verbs.” “Read alouds” remain a treasured tool.

I came to believe most of my writing is something I live with for a while, not something I make time to get done.”

Current writing endeavors:

“I’ve written poetry, grants, and a couple of op-eds. Currently in my writing group on MDI, I’m writing whatever stories come up about my childhood as I look at furniture transplanted from my parents’ home.”

The following is a current list of Paul’s published writing:

Poetry: “25 – 65” Maine Writes Issue 3, Volume 4, October 2006

“Dual Worlds” Maine Writes

Op-Ed: “Confronting Cultural Genocide, Maine Leads Nation,” Bangor Daily News, March 22, 2012

Op-Ed: “To heal we must learn: a mandate for Wabanaki child welfare, Bangor Daily News, September 6, 2012

The Maine Writing Project is proud of the work Paul is doing!