Tag: School

Writing Journal 8.30.2020: Two weeks of lollygagging around leads to not much to wrap up August. Also: class is back in session

So…

I’m back at school, with students. What that will look like, or if it changes, I’m not sure. I tend not to talk much political stuff or too much IRL stuff here, so I’m going to stick to that. I talk enough about that in other spaces to do it here. I’m just going to say that uncertainty abounds.

Writing went in the toilet for the past two weeks as I got mentally ready for the start of school – prepping the mechanism, I call it, getting ready for the weekly routines of the school year. It got more consistent the second week (I took a week off from the journal), but down by writing production.

I like it when I’m writing my stories, though. It really doesn’t matter where I’m living or what’s going on at the moment, because when I’m writing a good story, that takes away a lot of my worries and distractions. It’s one thing that makes me truly happy, and over the past year or so, I’ve realized that it’s got nothing to do with any definition of success other than my own. That’s been a nice discovery.

Anyway, here’s the damage from the past two weeks. I’ll come back again later.

Week of 8.16.2020:
+2,871 words written.
Days writing: 1 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for 0 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 1 of 7 days.

Week of 8.23.2020:
+1,321 words written.
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for 0 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 1 of 7 days.

Writing Journal 8.25.2019: School’s in session

Today is actually the last day of summer vacation before I begin teaching again. As I mentioned before, it is likely that this will be my last year at the district I’ve been teaching at since last year.

One of the things that I’ve noticed about myself (and if I might be repeating myself from earlier in this blog, my apologies), is that uncertainty is not something that I’m comfortable at all with. Not knowing how things are going to be for you six to 12 months out can be a highly stressful situation for people, and I’ve found that it’s a highly stressful thing for me.

It’s a situation that has been ongoing for three years due to several factors, including both my and my wife’s work, other professional prospects, and the impending high school graduation of my two kids.

Right now I’m feeling more stable than I have in a while. My son’s graduated and is moving on (though still in the house until he finishes trade school) and my daughter has one last year left in high school. She’s in the process of figuring out which of two universities to go to after being accepted by both of them.

So, I think I know what’s going to happen in the next year, and pretty much all of it I’m expecting to be good. But it goes back to my old journalism days, this feeling. You never can say with 100 percent certainty that you have a story done until you turn in all of the text and photos, have everything revised and edited, and send the lot of it in some sort of coherent organization down to the printers and/or the servers. It’s not in hand until it’s in hand.

How much all of this is going to have an influence on my writing is an open question. Hopefully, it will not be a significant factor. I never got anyone who ever said that they could only write if they were going through depression or a bad time, that negative emotions were the key to their creativity. In my case, whenever I get into one of those moods, all my mind wants to do is spin its wheels and distract itself by any means possible.

So, I am going to take the advice of my wife to keep positive, finish strong, and not beat myself up over every little thing. I’m hoping that time moves faster as it tends to do the older I get and that soon it will be time for me and my wife to live in the same place.

Well, that’s usually way more personal than I usually get on this blog, but maybe I needed to get into it tonight. I’ll do a quick mention of the projects and rundown the stats for this week. (Project details here.)

  • I have finished up Project S. I’ve now posted it on two fanfiction sites and am checking out some of the feedback. Right now I’m leaning toward actually sharing a link on here, but I’m not sure. I want to produce occasional content, but I could see fanfiction becoming a hobby and something that could spark my imagination in some ways.
  • Leaning toward getting Project C ready to submit for a poetry contest. I have no idea what chances I will have of making things work. But, I’m interested in seeing what might come of it, if anything.
  • Yeah, I know I set some goals for some of my other projects. We’ll see how that works out in the next few weeks.

Writing stats!

+410 words written.

Days writing: 1 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 7 of 7 for  360 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

Eh, I’ve seen a lot worse. I’ll save the analysis for later.

Thanks for checking in, by the way. See you soon.

Also, the photo for this entry is another shot of my library collection. I think I might keep doing this for a while. Shout out if you see some favorites.

Writing Journal 8.26.2018 Part I: Essentially took a break

Yeah, I didn’t get too much done this week.

I’ll post the numbers, such as they are, in a later post for either tonight or later tomorrow night – had some family obligations, etc., for during the day today. They won’t be much.

Reasons:

1. Just finished most recent revision on my WIP and I think I had to take a few days break from the story before diving back into it.

2. Toying with what, if any, of the projects I have in the virtual trunk that I should consider moving forward with as a rough draft. Not sure 🤔 of the answer to that.

3. My first (relatively) full week of school at the new district and getting ready for another week of a fully full week on a block schedule for my high schoolers on one hand and a totally different schedule for the middle schoolers on my roster. It will be an interesting juggling match.

So, those were the contributing factors behind the scenes. Hope to make forward progress this week. I’ll send the follow up to this post later tonight or tomorrow night.

Also, I think I’ll have an interesting midweek post (Friday, maybe, instead?) on a project that fell through – an attempt at a book length nonfiction title and the reasons for it.

That’s it for now; I’ll write more later.