Free for a Fortnight!

I don't think kids realize how much teachers look forward to breaks, too.  I am just ecstatic that I can get away from the school ratrace for a couple weeks.  I have a couple more chores to do, such as print up homework stickers and type up a new spelling center, but other than that, I'm out of there!  Whoot!

The last couple days were a zoo, naturally, but I survived and so did the kids.

During this break, in addition to the holiday festivities, I plan to continue working on Bird's Eye, the tale about the parrot and her boy.  The plot has hit the point where I was when I aborted the last attempt, and I'm having trouble with it again.

See, the characters traveling a lot right now, and the story sounds repetitious.  Even shenanigans from the bad guys sound like the same thing.  I have some ideas for breaking the monotony.  One is just to jump forward in time to when the reach the next city and just take a miss on the how-did-they-get-there part. 

Fortunately, drafts are cheap and easy to revise, so I'll keep going, look for interesting ways to make it more interesting, and go back and edit the junk out later.

In other publishing news, I never heard back from either publisher on the two I sent off just before the school year got rockin' and rollin'.  I think that's a "no."  Hey, at least they're both still in business. I've had a few opportunities where I've submitted something ... then the company went out of business.  Oops.

Not Safe for Humans out There

Wow...  So far this month, someone's helped me check my brakes twice, I was almost side-swiped by a grandma who didn't check the next lane before she moved into it, and I've gotten pushed out of the way and all but knocked over by people in a rush while I was doing crazy things like trying to run errands.  People are in a terminal rush to get here, grab that, and get on to the next thing on the list.

Nah, this isn't going to turn into a harangue about the real reason for the season.  Wouldn't do any good anyway.  Everybody's heard it and most give it intellectual assent even if that doesn't show up in their actions.  The rest have bigger problems, like doing the Christmas thing because it's a tradition, not because they have any belief in the little baby born in a manger (probably in September/October, not December, but *shrug*)

There really are 12 months in a year.  How about instead of getting all stressed out and just about killing people in December, spread the holiday cheer out.  Do some of your shopping in January or even June for the following December.  Don't worry, the holiday themed stuff will be available.  After all, in most stores, you can tell it's almost 4th of July when you start seeing the Christmas decorations for sale.

Maybe if folks did that, I wouldn't have to get squashed by lunatics in the store while trying to collect my groceries for the next week.

The End of NaNoWriMo

It's official.  I got to about 55K words and validated, so I'm now an official "winner!"  Whoot!  The story isn't finished, but my adventures in NaNoWriMo are for this year.  My next goal will be to finish the story and get it edited and published.  The first two parts aren't so hard.  That won't happen in the month of December because I have other priorities, but it'll happen.

The last one?  Maybe it'll take a while.  Maybe it won't.  That's in bigger hands than mine.

NaNoWriMo Update

With only 9 days to go, I'm way ahead of the slope.  I'm at 40K words.  There's no way the story will be finished at 50K, but that's all right.  It doesn't have to be.  The deal is to write 50K words of a novel, and that I can manage.  I may have another 50K to go later, but that's later.

For now, the two POV characters have met one another and aren't sure what to make of each other.  The two human characters haven't exactly met yet.  One of them was injured and still working toward recovery.

I got that far ahead for a very unfortunate reason.  I can't take flu shots because I react to eggs, so I had to get my antibodies the old-fashioned way.  I got the flu.  So, in between naps, I worked on NaNoWriMo. 

I'm doing much better now.

Off to go enter the next installment of the novel.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is a grand adventure .  The challenge is to write 50K words toward a novel, which amounts to about 1.7K words per day.  The way I write, that's 3 typed, single-spaced, 12-point, 1" margin pages.

When someone suggested I give it a shot, my first thought was, "Are you kidding me?"  I didn't think I could keep up with the pace, what with the hours I keep for work.  So far, though, I'm actually a touch ahead of schedule. 

I had to make some changes to the way I write.  There's no way I'd have time to write it by hand, which I normally do as a concession for a wrist injury many years ago, then type it in, so I'm composing at the computer.  That means I have to take a lot of breaks so I don't blow my wrist apart again.  Taking breaks means I can't just get the idea and go with it.  I have to stop for a few minutes without losing track of where I was.

It's working out, actually.  Hammering out the ~1.7K words per day is taking about 1.5-2 hours.  I really can't say it's my best writing, but the whole purpose of editing is to straighten out all those irritating little glitches.

One week down ... 3 to go.

Oops ... Missed a Week

That's okay.  It was a typical week with the usual shenanigans at school. 

Some good news there, though.  I think the graffiti artists have decided to call it quits for now.

I did actually get the "dog ate my homework" excuse.  I told the young lady that her excuse was old when Moses tried it.  Sadly, I got the blank "Huh?" stare for that one.

My paperwork reduction experiment is working.  I didn't get a lot of extra time to write, but I did use the time to do a bunch of other wacky things like setting up a computer to replace the one that was gradually experiencing more and more hard drive problems. 

I'm going to embark on a new story today.  I have the prewriting stuff done already, except the plot mapping.  I had tried it once already, but I didn't like where it was going and how it was getting there.

To fix that, I'm going to try doing something a little ... odd.  I'm going to try to tell the story from inside the POV of a parrot.  No, I'm not going to have the parrot be a small, feathered human.  I want to have the parrot act and interpret things as a parrot.  I have an excellent model: my Timneh African Grey engineer bird.

This may be rough for a couple reasons.  First, I'm not very good at telling a story from just one character's POV.  If I run afoul of problems with this, I'll make the parrot one of the POV characters along with the two main human characters.

Second, I'm not a parrot.  I'm only guessing at what goes on through their cute, little heads.

*Shrug*  I'll try to write a couple test scenes and see what my crit group thinks.

I have to catch up on my crits for the week before I dive in, but before even that, church.

Speaking of which, I'd better go see about breakfast.

Graffiti is not just an alternate form of expression

The district where I work just built a new elementary.  They needed to.  The old one has been falling apart and the district is experiencing a population explosion.  Sharing space with the middle school and high school wasn't an option any more.

So, now we have a nifty, new facility.  Lots of color.  Lots of space.  Lots of new technological wizardry funded by a grant ... and now lots of new graffiti.  Some 2nd-4th grade gooberhead has mistaken the walls and floors in the privy for a writing tablet.  In the girl's restroom, it's a lot of girl-drama along the usual lines of "I hate ______ because she likes _______."  In the boy's restroom, it's an expletive written over and over in large letters ... and spelling incorrectly.

It isn't just there, though.  I have other, probably different, gooberheads writing all over stuff in my room, too.  In my room, though, the writing has been confined to folders, science journals, a clipboard, and someone's paper.  I positively identified one of the perpetrators, and she was dealt with by me and by the parent.  So far, nothing new from her.  As for the other, I'm pretty certain I know who it is, and I've contacted the parents about the incidents I can absolutely link to him.  Although I know in my head that he's responsible for the rest of the incidents in my room, what I know and what I can prove are not the same thing.  So, unfortunately, one rotten apple is making the whole room stink, and now I have to get much more strict about movement around the room.  Not the way I like to run a class, but I can't afford to be constantly replacing stuff because someone decides to write all over things.

My paperwork reduction experiment didn't work, but then it was the end of the 6 weeks, which involves unit tests and a flood of incoming redos and missing work as procrastinators decide all of a sudden that maybe they've missed enough recesses for their missing work and all those zeroes aren't going to improve their amount of playtime at home.

So, the experiment continues next week so I can try to recover more time than just Sunday afternoon to work on my writing.

I do have news most fabulous, though!  Virtual Tales reviewed my book proposal for Remnant in the Stars and requested the full manuscript.  Whoot!  They tell me they'll need a couple months to review the book and decide if they want to offer a contract.

This could get interesting!

Paperwork to HERE!

A few years have passed since the last time I did 4th grade self-contained, and I'm finding it's everything I remembered: lots of drama and lots of paperwork.

The only thing to do with the drama is deal with it as it comes up.  This week's adventure was annoying and time consuming but ultimately, I think it'll be fixable and we'll get on with life.

The paperwork, however, is something I have some control over.  After getting swamped yet again this week, I spoke with many of my peers and my supervisors, and now there's a plan of action to get my work done without pulling 16+ hour days 6 days a week.  It'll be an experiment to find balance between doing a good job and driving myself past endurance.

In my writing adventures, with the help of my critique group buddies, I've figured out how to close the enormous plot hole in Lines of Succession.  Like a lot of things, I'd missed the obvious answer by staring too hard at the details.  The fix isn't going to be a complete cakewalk, but it'll definitely be easier than some of the options I was coming up with on my own.

Once I finish here, I'm going off to work on LoS and start getting the thing ready to go again.

I find writing to be a relaxing and stress-relieving hobby.  I'm hopeful that as I readjust my weekly schedule, I'll have more time to write or do craft things and thereby dodge the hazards of burn-out.

Funny but Incorrect

At school, the first round of tests has just passed.  Don't worry.  More are coming.  For each of these tests, I give bonus questions so the kids can earn some extra points.  The district policy has decreed that tests count half of the final score for the 6 weeks, so every extra point to be had on an exam could be worth its mass in gold.  As usual, I put one question in the set that has the answer built into the question.  All the kid has to do is read the question correctly and the answer is right there.

On the math test, I put the question, "If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how much does one pound of butter weigh?"  The funniest answer was "On Tuesday."  Yes, it was Tuesday, but that doesn't answer the question.  The best answer was "16 ounces."  Yes!  This one can read and do measurement conversions.

The science test had a different set of bonuses.  For the reading comprehension one, I put this question, "When was the War of 1812?"  The oddest answer was "The Alamo," which actually came from multiple kids.  Unfortunately, even if The Alamo qualified as a "when," the major Battle of the Alamo was in the 1830s.  The best answer, of course, was "1812."  No one got the end date, but this is a good start.

I polished off the ubiquitous paperwork last night, so this afternoon, I get to work on my writing again.  I'm still hashing out Lines of Succession, but so far all is going well.  The crit'ers I work with online must be busy or else they're finding a lot that needs fixing in Wind Herding.  I haven't heard anything back from the 2 chapters I posted for review.  That's okay.  I know they all have lives that don't revolve around my writing.  I'm not in a hurry.

A Weird Paradox

How is it that a short work week can feel like it drags on forever, but a full work week can just zip on by?  Last week was only four days of teaching kids -- along with a full day on Saturday to catch up on grading paperwork -- but it felt like ten.


I've been so badly swamped with paperwork this week that I haven't had a chance to do any writing.  I'm hoping that this afternoon when I get back from church and finish errand running, I'll have a chance to tackle something, if only working on Lines of Succession.  I want to finish that before I take on one of the nifty ideas for new works that are zipping around in my head like dust motes in a hurricane.

A Long Weekend!

Whoohoo!

I don't think kids realize that teachers look forward to holidays as much as the students do.

The school year is settling into a rhythm.  The kids are learning that 4th grade is more independent than 3rd and lower, so I'm there to help, but they have to nail together the courage to ask for it.  One parent was concerned about her son's failing marks, and I explained that the child didn't follow directions for assignments and never asked questions.  The next day, and every day since, he asks more questions than any 12 other kids, and his work has seriously improved in just a week.

One of my coworkers has a sign that reads, "If at first you don't succeed, do it the way your teacher told you."  Amusing but accurate.

My writing adventures also continue.  Working a few minutes at a time and longer on the weekends, I completed an edit for a tale called Wind Herding.  Unfortunately, I've been hashing and rehashing this one for a couple years, so I'm not sure I could find any errors if they all tap-danced and held signs. I've submitted the first couple chapters to a critique group I play with, and while I wait for their answers, I'll try to fix the killer plot hole I found in Lines of Succession.

2nd One Out

After sending Remnant on its merry way, I set up another one and sent it out.  Drug War is a little longer, so it's headed for a different publishing house.  (I'm putting these eggs in different baskets.) This one has about the same reporting time, so I should hear back in a few months, if all goes according to Hoyle.

In the meantime, I'm working on other projects.  I have a couple works in progress that are in the editing stages.  I thought one was finished, but then I reread it and found a plot hole I could fly a 747 through.  Oops.  I'll fix it then get some advice from an online critique group I've started working with.

Unfortunately, the school year has started and that cuts way back on my writing time.  Teaching is not the 7-3, 5 days a week for 9 months a year that many think it is.  During the school year, pulling an 80-100 hour work week is average.  So, my writing time is down to Sunday afternoons and perhaps a few minutes in the evenings if I'm not completely swamped with paperwork.

I have a good class this year, really.  They're awfully chatty, but they'll learn that there's a time and place for all things.  Most of them read at or above grade level and the ones who don't are awfully close.  Half of them can't spell to save their lives, but we'll work on that.

I teach 4th grade self-contained, which means that I get all subjects for the same bunch of kids.  There are advantages and disadvantages to that.

The good news is that if I have some really nifty lesson planned and I need more time than the allotted amount on the schedule, I can reshuffle my schedule a little without affecting anyone else.  Less time is lost to transitions, too, and the greater stability helps some kids. 

The bad news is that I have to teach all subjects, not just the ones I'm more skilled at.  I have to be a master at all things instead of just teaching the things in my specialization.  This increases the prep time for each teacher.

I've done this whole self-contained 4th grade thing for 2/3 of my career, so while I wouldn't have chosen this for myself, it's not a new phenomenon.

Trying it again

I seem to be the master of choosing publishers that go out of business.  That's happened a couple different times so far, but I suppose that's the hazard of submitting only to little(r) publishing houses.

So, now I'm sending one of my novels, Remnant in the Stars to another publisher.  They have quite a few works out and some listed as in progress, so that gives me some hope that this one won't go out of business.

Stay tuned.  I'll let you know how it goes.