About
Hello. Welcome to Janice Heck Writes: Power-up Your Writing! Build Your Writing Craft.
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator (special education, elementary administration) who loves to write. An AARP card holder and a life-long learner, she is still raring to go!
Janice has worked in school districts in New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, and Alaska. In Alaska, she lived on the Kenai Peninsula for ten years where she was the principal at North Star Elementary School, Nikiski, Alaska.
From 1993 through 2000, Jan enjoyed living abroad in Repulse Bay, Hong Kong where she worked as principal of the Lower Primary School, Hong Kong International School (700 students, grades PP through 2).
Hong Kong International School, Lower Primary School
After retiring from education administration in 2000, Jan attended Westminster Theological Seminary and got a Masters’ degree in Biblical Counseling. She kept her hand in education by teaching English, writing, and computer applications (Publisher, Excel, Word) one day a week in a residential adolescent drug/alcohol rehab program in Mays Landing, New Jersey. She also worked one morning a week teaching writing skills to students enrolled in the GED program in Millville, NJ.
She is now in her second retirement from these two part-time teaching positions.
Free Time in Retirement? No Way!
In her free time (whoever said you have free time when you retire? Wrong!), she writes for, edits, and publishes a 55+ community newsletter, On The Horizon; sings in the Margate Community Church choir; maintains two blogs; and collects old grammar books just for the heck of it. (Stop that snickering!)
Once a small-town farm girl, Jan loves to travel the world. Her motto is, “Any time, anywhere. Let’s go!”
2012 Israel/Jordan trip. Photo at Petra, Jordan. Didn’t President Obama stand in this very spot on his 2013 trip?
Despite being a world traveler, Jan prefers the beaches of Ocean City, New Jersey for short vacations. What’s not to love there? You, too, can come and be tempted by the sun, sand, surf, boardwalk pizza, caramel popcorn, curly fries, ice cream, monkey bread, coconut shrimp, and so much more. You can walk off all these calories from these goodies on a five-mile walk (round-trip) boardwalk, but you must touch the rails at each end of the boardwalk or you can’t count the five miles. Sorry. That’s the rule.
Family
Jan is a wife, mother, and “Grannie Jan” to thirteen sweet, adorable, intelligent, well-behaved grandchildren. (Could they be anything else?)
The grandkiddies climb all over Grandpa Ken (aka My-Heck-of-a-Guy, or MyHog for short).
Special Interests
Her favorite causes? The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life (every June in Ocean City, NJ); MS City-to-Shore Bike-A-Thon (she volunteers in the “Chicken Tent,” serving BBQ chicken dinners to bikers every September); the American Heart Association; and World Vision. She is on the fast-track for learning about eldercare with an older sibling, Adam, who is in a long-term care facility.
Relay for Life, Opening Ceremonies
Persnickety cats and cuddly kittens top the list of Jan’s favorite things. Traveling, reading, writing, blogging, taking pictures, gardening, walking, singing in the choir, and eating out are in her top ten all-time fun things to do.
Blogs
On her first blog, Janice Heck: My Time to Write, which she started in 2012 and still maintains, Jan has an eclectic mix: writing craft, grammar, quirky writing errors, travel, family, senior health issues, eldercare, food, current events, books, photo challenges, and news connections.
This new blog, Janice Heck Writes: Power-up Your Writing! Build Your Writing Craft will be focused on writing process and craft. Learning about the power that grammar brings to writing is a key component of this new focus.
New Jersey Christian Writers Society
Janice co-hosts monthly meetings of the Cumberland County Chapter of the New Jersey Society of Christian Writers along with Kathryn Ross of The Writer’s Reverie.
Over the years, Jan has given workshops on writing for schools, local and national special education and general conferences, and has published Evaluating and Improving Written Expression: A Practical Guide for Teachers (Janice K. Hall, Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1981; Pro-Ed, 1988, 1999). That book is now an OOP (out-of-print).
The Last Meow
Cats and kittens have a way of sneaking into many posts to complain or to garner reader favor. They are definitely cute attention-getters. I finally had to allow them to have their own little corner on the blog: The Last Meow. Here’s a little sampling of what they have to say.
Yes, we do like to sneak into Jan’s posts. We have to check her spelling and grammar, so we might as well get a bit of attention, too. Pardon me, but all this work makes me tired. It’s time for a nap. We look forward to seeing you again.
All tuckered out from all that editing!
Meow for Now. =<^;^>=
You can connect with Jan in the following places:
- Janice Heck: My Time to Write
- Janice Heck: GED Writer
- Janice Heck Writes: Power-up Your Writing! Build Your Writing Craft.
- Janice Heck on Twitter @janiceheck
- Janice Hall Heck on Facebook
Janice Heck Writes 
Hi Janice,
My father’s really big into ancestry. He told me he found a picture of his dad this morning on Google, and it brought him to your site. I don’t have the original picture he found, but you posted it back in August 2012. It was you as a baby with a man holding you named William Asbury Cooper.
The reason I write is on behalf of my father (he’s not very good with computers). The man in the picture is my grandfather. My great-grandfather was the minister at the Baptist church in Vineland. My father wanted to know if you have any information on his father, grandfather, the family or the church.
Any information would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to hearing back from you and thanks!