Today I attended the Celebration of Teaching and Learning in New York City. It was an all day event in which educators from all over came to share their love of what they do... and get free stuff.

One of the highlights of the day (and there were many) was getting to hear Frank McCourt speak about what it means to be a teacher and writer. Long before Mr. McCourt won his Pulitzer Prize for his novel Angela's Ashes, he was an English and Writing teacher in New York Public schools for over 25 years!

McCourt was born in Brooklyn and his family moved to Ireland when he was very young. There, he endured grim poverty, witnessed horrific illnesses, and suffered an alcoholic father. One of the reasons McCourt is such a respected writer is that he illustrates who he is and where he comes from with such shameless honesty and humourous bravado that, in reading him, you feel as if you are walking alongside him through his life.

When he returned to New York from Ireland at the age of 19, McCourt set out to become a Writing teacher. After a few bumpy years of rooting out the teacher he so wanted to be, McCourt began to light his students' creative spark by asking them to pen the pages of themselves. "I tried to show my students the significance of their own lives which they sometimes thought insignificant," McCourt once said. "I hoped they'd realize the value of their own lives, that they were good enough to write about. So they took the plunge and they wrote and some were willing to read to the class and I think they were glad they did."

That is what makes an effective writer of non-fiction, my friends. When writing about your life, hold nothing back. Be unafraid to delve into the deepest sections of your heart--so deep that even you have yet to find them. You can discover the most wonderous things about who you are, once were, and who you aim to be, just by writing. And it can be as secret or public as you like. You can write your innermost fears and desires in your journal and lock it away under your bed... or write what makes you happy and share it with all your friends and family... or write what makes you different from the rest of the world and submit it to a popular magazine--perhaps one that has a blog (wink wink :).

However much you care to disclose is completely up to you. Just remember to never be ashamed for who you are and never ever lie about yourself when you are attempting to get at the real you in your words. You're in there. Don't deny it. Write it.

You can purchase and/or read an excerpt of Frank McCourt's new book Teacher Man here.