As to the first, I am a very happy, very tired man. I have successfuly completed the Oakland Teaching Fellowship. I've been hired to work at Frick Middle School way (way) out in East Oakland, where I'll (hopefully and probably) be teaching 7th Grade Life Sciences. This is a life direction that I am exceedingly happy with.
This doesn't mean that I'll be abandoning my writing or my blogging, though. In fact, both will likely get more important. Frick is a high-need school in a high-need part of a high-need city. Nearly 100% of my kids will be recieving free or reduced lunches - a common benchmark of a school district's poverty - and their neighborhood has a staggering murder rate. After a long day of working miracles, I'll need something I can do for me, and I can't always lean on the Abigail. She'll be starting work at the Homeless Children's Network at almost the same time.
That's the Abigail and me, living the Oberlin Dream: doing the most important work in the world for not enough pay, on not enough sleep, and loving it.
Furthermore, I'm convinced that my writing will get better because I have so much going on. There is nothing less inspiring than sitting in a coffee shop all day and looking for work. Conversely, if there's something more inspiring than working to expand the horizons of high-need kids and equip them to shake the world to its foundations, I don't know what it is. How will I find time for writing, you ask? Bah! Stuff and nonsense. You don't find time, you make it!
In any case, a counterpoint to my glass-half-full attitude is that I haven't done much writing or writerly-related things in the past six weeks. I've run and played very little in the way of roleplaying games, written very little in the way of stories, and gotten almost nothing done on my Rejection Letter Challenge. I did, however, finish one story, a neat little piece called The Weight of His Words. After I've had a chance to clean it up, it will join the others on the rejection letter front.
As to my various rooms - the Writing Desk, the Back Burner, and Threshing Floor - I don't even know where to begin. I'm going to do have to do some serious inner housekeeping. I can tell you that my first priority is creating short fiction so I can meet my goal of gathering fifty rejection letters. The Abigail and I have plans to do National Novel Writing Month again. Other than that... who knows?
Where is the Burning Zeppelin Experience going? I'd like to go back to posting every day, at least until August 31st, when school starts. After that... I just don't know yet. Continuing to post every day would be cool, but it might not be feasible.
We'll know when we know.
That's all folks. See you tomorrow.
1 comment:
I strongly recommend trying to keep up the post-a-day thing even after school starts, but with a catch: give yourself a time limit. The reason I suggest it is that it gets you good at a certain very useful kind of writing, namely producing something of short to medium length, of reasonable quality, in no time flat. Perhaps try it out and see how that particular writing muscle of yours grows.
Post a Comment