Tag: grad school

Life! Will You Just Chill Out Already?

Aaaaaaaaaarrrgh! Life, my good man, please! Will you just chill out already? I mean, criminiddly, I am trying to be a writer over here!

In all seriousness, though, I have not be getting words onto the paper of late, and it is starting to make me feel a little crazy. There has been a whole lot of family stuff going on over the last couple of weeks. Kid stuff. Supporting my creative spouse stuff. Parent stuff. Pile onto that all the scads of “extras” that my teaching gig has been throwing at me. Then, just to see what my max lift in life is, cue my third submission deadline on October 2nd (which I only partially met).

It was legitimately too much. I felt like the kid who stuffed one too many peeps into her mouth and was realizing that the gooey wad of yellow sweet stuff was blocking her airway. (By the way, I’ve never actually done the peep challenge. I’m not that dumb. I did the chubby bunny challenge.) So I asked for an extension on my craft essay, and my amazing mentor gave me an extra week. Phew! What a relief.

That’s the bubble. Bursting.

And then I looked at my calendar for that week and saw evening obligations for my teaching gig that were going to keep me on campus late into the evening for four of the five weekdays. And school play and scouting stuff for my kids. And PTO meetings (which I skipped). And my writer’s group meeting (which I also skipped and felt super crappy about). And non-negotiable visit to my MIL’s house. And a scout-sponsored camping trip this past weekend.

Yep. That week-long extension gave me just one additional functional writing day.

But I got the draft done and got it turned in on time. That did feel good. A weight lifted from my mind, and I thought, “All right! Now to get back to the fun stuff! Back to my story. Back to writing!”

And then I took a look at my calendar for this week. Science team meet on Tuesday eats up that evening. College Rec letters are due on Friday. I have 52 trimester one indicator grades and comments due on Monday. One of my kids has an imminent birthday coming up that we really should do something about, since, you know… parenting and stuff?

*sigh*

*glances wistfully at the Scrivener icon sitting neglected in a corner of the desktop.*

I’m sure I’ll get back to you one day, WIP.

October 11, 2017
The NaNoWriMo Debate: Are You “For” or “Against” It?

The Debate Rages On: Is NaNoWriMo a good thing or not?

Emotions run high when this question is asked. I mean, folks get seriously heated. Fans of NaNoWriMo start heating the tar and gathering the feathers whenever someone suggests that maybe NaNoWriMo isn’t the best thing ever. Critics of NaNoWriMo sharpen their pen nibs in preparation to eviscerate the works produced by anyone during the event. It’s a little crazy, to be honest.

NaNoWriMo Explained

Okay, let’s pause for a moment. If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, let me explain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up. The acronym (which I’m too lazy to type yet again because of the annoy placement of capital letters) stands for National Novel Writing Month. Folks can go to the website, create an account, announce a novel project, and then attempt to write 50,000 words of material in a single month. That averages out to 1,667 words a day. I won’t bore you with the history of how this international phenomenon got started. For that story, click here.

For or Against?

I am FOR!

With some qualifications.

I agree with many others that NaNoWriMo is not a good fit for everyone. Justin Brouckaert articulated my feelings pretty well in his guest post on the Submittable blog titled A Case Against NaNoWriMo. Despite what the declarative title suggests, Justin is not vehemently anti-NaNo. He just wrote a horrible piece of trash (I’m paraphrasing him) in NaNo and thought he was going to go nuts from the pressure.

Different people have different writing processes.

Some folks absolutely adore extrinsic motivators, which is pretty much exactly what NaNo is. Other folks fold like a wet napkin in a high wind at the first sign of pressure.

Some writers thrive on establishing a rock-solid daily writing habit. I like to write every day, no matter what. (Not that I always get to do things the way I want to. See my earlier post about my kids for more details on that front.) Other people tend to write best when they produce work in a more accordion style, with long stretches of empty pages followed by rapid bursts of prolific words.

Some folks are communal writers. They love talking shop with other writers, joining up at coffee shops or in library meeting rooms to sit and write together, posting updates on all the social media platforms. Hooray for the global connectedness that is the internet! Other writers, though, are solitary people (when they’re creating, at least) and find the whole social, communal aspect of NaNoWriMo repellant.

My Own Experience With NaNoWriMo

All I can say is this: for me, there are more positives than negatives in participating.

For starters, participating in my very first NaNoWriMo taught me that I have the capacity for self-discipline needed to write an entire novel.

Also, the stamina. I mean, people! Writing a novel is like running a marathon. That might be too gentle an analogy. It’s like taking part in an Ironman competition. I went into that first NaNoWriMo all, “Yeah! I’m going to write a whole novel in just one month!” Well, that’s not what happened. I did “win” the event by writing 50,000 words in the month of November, but I was startled to discover that my book was far from finished. I continued writing (every day, thanks to the habit I’d cultivated during November) and proudly finished up my book in March of that year. It topped off at just over 96,000 words.

It was a disgusting beast of a first draft. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was a horrible piece of trash. But it existed. I’d done it. I’d written a full draft of a novel. If nothing else, I now knew that I had the sheer stamina necessary to write a book. I tucked that draft away in the bottom drawer of my writing desk, where I shall probably keep it until my dying day.

See, I think of NaNoWriMo not as a chance to pen a masterpiece, but as an opportunity to simply practice the art of writing. It inspires me. It excites me. Heck, it bolstered my confidence enough join the North Shore Writer’s Group to apply to the MFA in Creative Writing program at Lesley University. NaNoWriMo exposed me to new people and new ways of thinking and new opportunities.

So, yes, I think NaNoWriMo is a positive force for creativity, despite what some might say.

What do you think about NaNoWriMo? Have you participated? Will you again? Why or why not?

October 9, 2017
#IWSG – Adding Personal Details to Stories?

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means. Or, well, maybe you don’t. It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…

Have you ever slipped any of your personal information into your characters, either by accident or on purpose?

I sure have, but first, allow me to drop a plug for IWSG. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff. There’s a Twitter Pitch, which I haven’t checked out yet, contests, books, swag, conferences, and more. Be sure to jump over there and check them out!

Okay, back to the question. I often work personal information into my writing on purpose, but sometimes I do it unintentionally, too.

Here’s an example of when personal stuff just sort of slips in there when I’m not paying attention. This past winter, during one of my critique sessions for my Lesley University Low-Residency master’s program, someone pointed out that my main character sounded like she was from the Midwest. The story being workshopped was something I’d discovery written. I hadn’t generated any character dossiers and hadn’t fleshed out a background for anyone.

The comment left me agape. You see, despite the fact that was born and raised in Massachusetts and am surrounded by Bostonians with the classically difficult to imitate accent, I’ve been told multiple times that I don’t sound like I’m from the area. In fact, people often tell me I’ve got a midwestern accent and drop midwestern slang. I chalk that up to the my father’s influence. He was born and raised on a farm in Iowa, and we visited his family often when I was a kid.

Who knew my father had shaped my psyche so deeply that it was affecting my writing! In any case, I decided to have my main character be a girl who grew up on a farm in… you guessed it, Iowa. Why not just roll with it, right? So now my dad is a teenage girl fighting for her life in the Canadian wilderness. Fabulous!

More often, personal information makes its way into my stories on purpose. I’ve written stories that take place in my hometown, at my place of work, or that involve events I’ve lived directly. All fictionalized to varying degrees, mind you.

My current WIP is a young adult SciFi horror story about a group of youths trying to survive the elements (and other things) in the backcountry of Canada. As a teen, I was a wilderness backpacking enthusiast, and a couple of times I and my group members found ourselves in genuinely dangerous situations. I’ve incorporated fictionalized versions of those events in my WIP.

So, yeah, I draw on my life experiences to add authenticity to everything I write.

What about you? Do you slip personal details into your writing? How do you feel about it?

October 4, 2017
Beating the Cold Season with Some Good Books!

Every September, I get back into the classroom and, within a month, I catch a cold. I blame my students. They get it first, and then they proceed to coat every surface they touch with their contagion. Last year, the virus took up residence deep in my chest and overstayed its welcome by about six weeks. It was vicious. Several of my colleagues and even a few of my students developed secondary pneumonia. Thankfully, my family and I live in a state of lightly controlled squalor, so we’ve got exposure theory on our side. Our immune systems are primed and ready for battle, but I’ve got a secret weapon in my battle against the common cold: books!

And yet, here I am, all hopped up on cold meds (this might be a very interesting post), holed up in bed while the rest of the fam shares hot-wings and watches the Patriots game on TV. Now that I think of it, perhaps there are some perks to catching the annual back-to-school cold.

Books (in all forms) Make Everything Better!

Just look at all those lovely books!

If you’re anything like me, your “to read” list grows faster than your “have read” list does. One of the original Twilight Zone episodes that haunts me the most is “Time Enough At Last,” starring Burgess Meredith as a guy who just wants to be left alone so he can read his books. I won’t spoil the episode because it’s available on Amazon Prime (you should watch it), but the ending is tragic in a way that only a bibliophile can fully grasp.

Audiobooks have become a staple in my life these days, too. I check them out from my library, and I buy them via Audible.com. Whenever I’m in the car or out for a walk, I’m listening to a book. My students helpfully showed me how to overclock the reading speed to 1.25x, which shaves about 2.5 hours off of a 10-hour book. It’s amazing.

That said, as great as listening to books can be, it’s not quite the same as reading them myself.

I am a slow reader. A pathetically slow reader. And, since I’ve started up the Masters in Creative Writing program at Lesley University, my reading speed has slowed even further. Now I find myself reading at two levels. I used to read for the simple pleasure of getting lost in the story. Now, I pay close attention to word choice, verbs, description, pacing, syntax, structure, flow, et cetera. In other words, I read with a writer’s eye, which slows me down.

My current bout with the rhinovirus isn’t nearly as bad as last year. Last year, I felt like I was dying. This year, I just feel like someone has stuffed my sinuses with a soggy loaf of bread. Not pleasant, but it could be worse. It didn’t stop me from getting out to Barnes & Noble yesterday for a YA book event where I grabbed myself a few ARCs to read… eventually… when I find the time. (That’s them in the photo at the top of this post.)

Here’s what I’m currently reading!

I might be guilty of exaggerating my misery slightly so that my spouse keeps the kids at bay, but I’m not completely faking. I am in bed with a sinus headache, and I do have to rest up so that I can make it through teaching my classes next week.

But really, I just want to snuggle in and cherish this rare opportunity to READ!

Books make everything better. Aren’t they great? Have you ever used books to get through something unpleasant, like cold season?

September 24, 2017
I Teach, I Write, I Parent, I Busy!

Excuse me, Miss Granger? Could I borrow that time turner for a moment?

Yeah, Yeah, I know. We’re all busy. We all wear a lot of different hats in life. I teach, I write, and I parent. It doesn’t always happen in that particular order. Priorities shift daily. Time bleeds out of my as if I’ve severed some existential artery. Last night, I fell into bed at 9:00pm like a corpse. This morning I woke feeling not much livelier than an awkwardly reanimated corpse. Why in the name of Odin am I so tired?!

That was the question I had on my brain when I sat down to do my morning pages. [side note: I’m back at Julie Cameron’s self-guided course The Artist’s Way. Journaling daily in the mornings is part of the program]

…anyway, I just could not understand the level of fatigue plaguing me this morning after getting an amazing eight full hours of sound sleep last night. Is my thyroid slowing down? Am I developing a vitamin D deficiency (again)? Could low-grade depression triggered by the start of a new school year be the culprit? What? What am I missing?

So, I recapped this past week, I wrote everything out on paper. Once I saw it all, I was flabbergasted but had my answer. I am busy! Like, Hermione Granger with her time turner level busy.

Between lesson planning forward a few weeks (necessary to keep me from completely losing my mind) for three different high school science courses, scoring varsity volleyball games, prepping way too many solutions for a diffusion and osmosis lab, doing one-on-one check-in’s and phone calls with my new advisees and their parents, attending my bi-monthly meeting for the North Shore Writer’s Group, getting my eldest to Scouts, and meeting my Friday submission deadline for the Widgets & Wizards novel-writing class I’m taking as part of my graduate studies, I was in near constant motion. And, like a complete goober, I decided to start lightly restricting the ridiculous volumes of food I was shoving into my face so I might stand a chance of losing a bit of the weight I put on during my first year of grad school (you know, so I can fit back into my work clothes and not look obscene).

The start of a new school year always knocks me down for a few days. It’s the sudden shift in mental alertness that does it. This year, though, this year I feel like I’ve got a brutal case of jet lag mixed with seasonal allergies and a touch of the flu. And the load doesn’t look like it’s going to be lightening up any time soon. This coming week is even busier than last week was. Tonight it’s a PTO meeting. Tomorrow I’ll be back at the volleyball scoring table, and Thursday night I’ll be leaving the house at 7:00am and returning home from my teaching day at 9:00 pm thanks to it being “Parent’s Visiting Night.”

If I’m going to make my next submission deadline, I’m going to have to be on my organizational A-game. Part of that means MAKING TIME TO WRITE! Parenting might have to take a back seat to the teaching and writing this week. Thank Thor I’ve got a loving and supportive spouse who, because they’re a creative individual who went back to school to study their specific creative medium, understands and supports me and is willing to step in and pick up the slack when necessary. And this week it will be very, very necessary.

Last night, I added another 800+ words to my WIP. Today, I need to match that or do even better. I got a very encouraging note from my mentor this morning saying I’d nailed my MC’s voice in my last submission, so I’m feeling optimistic that I’m on the right track.

As for writing, [deep breath, cracks knuckles, swigs coffee], here we go.

What times in your year do things tend to pile up on you?

September 12, 2017
Life: It Happens to the Best of Us

It’s been my experience that a creative person’s goals–fragile, beautiful little things that they are–frequently crash headlong into the mercurial realities of life.

This morning, as I sit at my kitchen table to do my morning pages, I can’t help but catch sight of the wall calendar opposite me and notice that August 28th is a mere sixteen days away. Time appears to have sprung a leak this summer. Just a moment ago, it was June 16th, and I was attending the end-of-year faculty party.

Ah, summer vacation. The kids would be in camp all day. Hubby would be hard at work with his stuff down in his studio. I’d have two

A visual representation of my mental image of summer in all its leisurely, creativity-inspiring glory.

months crank out as much work for my graduate studies as possible. Heck, I might be able to knock off every third-semester assignment before the end of August when I had to return to my full-time job of teaching science to high-schoolers. The future looked bright.

Now, I have less than three weeks before I’m back in the classroom and my creative endeavors become relegated to a dimly lit, neglected corner of existence. What the heck?!

Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote in 1785, “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men go oft awry.” Isn’t that the truth?

Now, sitting here, faced with irrefutable evidence that yet another blissful summer of writing has snuck by me, shielded by the dust kicked up by the mocking chaos of reality, a couple of thoughts spring to mind.

First, I spend perhaps a bit too much time cursing J. K. Rowling for thinking up that damnable Time Turner from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Why, J. K.? Why did you have to tease me with that thing? I’ve never been good at math, but even if I were a genius with numbers I still wouldn’t be able to count all the times I’ve wished for things that don’t exist: the ability to fly, a non-evil and therefore helpful clone, a sable-coated prehensile tail… and now, I can add a time turner to that list. Garr!!

Additionally, I find myself thinking yet again of the first episode from the 1980’s reboot of the Twilight Zone. In “A Little Piece and Quiet” (directed by Wes Craven), a housewife with way too much stuff in her life and no time for herself digs up a necklace/amulet in her flower bed that gives her the power to stop time completely. It’s fantastic until nuclear war breaks out, and then it’s not fantastic anymore.

There she is, realizing that her fabulous discovery has just ruined her life.

Hey, it’s the Twilight Zone. Nothing ever ends well in the Twilight Zone. That’s what I loved about it and still do. The thing is, I first saw that episode as a rerun when I was fifteen or sixteen. That was… a very long time ago, yet it’s still with me. A magical necklace that can stop time! Not unlike that half-alien chick from the TV show of the same era, “Out of This World” (which, in stark contrast to the Twilight Zone, was terrible) who could stop time by touching her fingers together. The time-stopping amulet was way better because of its mysterious and potentially sinister origins.

Anyway, I think about Hermione’s time turner and that doomed housewife’s time-stopping amulet all the time. If only…

Well, I’ve finished nursing my cup of coffee. The tea kettle just whistled to let me know the water’s hot and ready for my post-coffee cup of Constant Comment. The kids are awake and ravenously ready for breakfast. And the home-repair project that ate up my entire day yesterday sits waiting to be finished. If I’m to be honest with myself, this day is probably already spent, and I shouldn’t get my hopes up regarding being able to sneak in any creative writing. That said, you never know what might happen. I could be picking roofing nails out of the lawn and stumble across the uncovered corner of an ancient rune-encrusted box containing a mysterious golden amulet. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she.

What do you dream about in the harried moments when life devours your creative goals and spits out their shattered little bones at your feet?

August 12, 2017
Finding Time to Write (or, My Endless Struggle)

I swear my kids want me to flunk out of grad school. They also might be psychic, because when I sit down at my desk to check email or indulge my Facebook addiction, they happily find quiet and unobtrusive ways to keep themselves occupied (okay, I have time management and procrastination issues). The moment my fingertips touch my keyboard for the purposes of doing some actual creative writing, the little demons arrive at the office door and demand my undivided attention. True, my six-year-old is my primary antagonist in this battle. My ten-year-old less so, but he is not an innocent bystander by any means.

Do I want to build with Legos? Do I want to play a board game? I’m bored. There’s nothing to do. I’m hungry. Can I get them something to eat? No? Well, then, let’s up the ante. How about a game of chess, Mommy? It’s educational, my youngest will point out to me in angelic tones. Do you know how hard it is to say no to a kindergartener pleading with you to play chess, for goodness sake?! You instantly feel like a terrible person for saying no to that one, and my evil little demon knows it.

If by some miracle, I manage to stay strong and say no to all of these requests, there’s always Plan B. Commence with Operation Escalation. They will begin to fight, loudly, about anything and everything. You’re on my side of the couch! I’m using that blanket! I was playing with that! You knocked that down/destroyed that on purpose! You’re cheating at this made-up game that has no rules! You’re punching too hard! The point of the argument is irrelevant, only that the battle escalates until one of them is injured and crying. Oh, yes, they are devious, diabolical strategists.

My husband does intervene on my behalf… sometimes. At other times, though, he retreats to his art studio in the basement and pretends not to hear what’s happening. I don’t begrudge him this. That’s a lie. I totally begrudge him this. In fact, I want to murder him in those moments, even though I simultaneously understand his reasons for it. The problem is that by the time I get home at close to six o’clock from a long day of teaching science to high schoolers, he’s already been on kid duty for three and a half hours, and our kids are human tornadoes in the afternoons. They’ve been pent up inside an elementary school classroom all day. Even the mile and a half walk home does little to vent their pressure-cooker energy. He can boot their butts out into the back yard on days when the weather permits it, but even then, he has to stay alert for sounds of outraged or injury-induced screaming. So, I get why he succumbs to the temptation to go “off-duty” when dinner is done, and the kitchen is cleaned up. That doesn’t mean I don’t mentally curse him to eternal damnation from my spot at my writing desk when I’m looking at a blank page, and my kids are screaming in the other room.

I want to yell at people when they lament that they can never “find the time” to write. Yeah? Well, neither can I. Why? Because it doesn’t exist. There is literally no time to write, no magical empty block with nothing going on where I can sit down with a steaming mug of cozy chamomile tea and put on some relaxing classical music and snuggle in my fluffy PJ’s and write. Nope. If I’m going to write, I must MAKE time to do it. I must set boundaries, barricade the door, and defend my selected hour like the violently seized territory it is. If I let my guard down, that time will be taken right back from me. There are 101 articles and blog posts that offer use struggling saps tips for carving out time in our busy lives for our writing. Here’s a good one from Writer’s Digest. I’ll let them tell you what to do, because (if you haven’t figured it out yet) I am a hot mess and shouldn’t be giving anyone suggestions on how to do anything.

Sometimes I literally leave. I pack up and head to the local library or to a coffee shop. That works, but it breeds resentment and strains marital relations, so I leave those trips to do-or-die deadline situations. More often, I will abandon my office space for my bedroom, which has a lock on the door and is upstairs from the chaos. I will put on my headphones and drown out all attempts at Plan B that may erupt below. My husband feels better because he knows that, should a genuine emergency occur, I am still close by. My children seem to be slowly adjusting to the fact that mom is in grad school and that grad school trumps their need for my undivided attention.

Maybe this will be good for all of us. My kids might finally learn how to self-sooth. My husband is learning the fine art of reheating leftovers (though let’s give credit where credit is due: he does 90% of the cooking already because I’m not so great at cooking things that are edible). Who knows? I might actually get my MFA in creative writing. I’ll let you know how it goes, but right now I’ve got some writing to do.

(I’ve been told that bloggers are supposed to end their posts with questions designed to jump-start a discussion in the comments thread. I’m pretty sure no one has stumbled across this secret little blog, but I may as well engage in best practice blogging, right? After all, when I’m a successful and famous YA author, I’ll probably have to keep an actual author’s blog where I can interact with my thousands of awesome fans… sigh. We have to dream, folks. Anyway, here’s the leading question(s): are you in a similar position as me? What things in your life vie for you time and pull you away from your writing? Are you able to resist? If so, what are your strategies? Do share!

August 9, 2017