In the early 2000s when my kids were very young, I wrote a monthly column for a Los Angeles parenting magazine, but I also spent my free time away from teaching writing opinion pieces, narrative nonfiction, personal essays, political commentary, and anything else that interested me. Some of those were submitted to (and often published in!) a variety of magazines, newspapers, and even websites. Others were never sent anywhere but served as a means of honing my craft. After all, according to Malcolm Gladwell and his book Outliers, I needed to clock my 10,000 hours. So I wrote and wrote.