Packet in the Mail...

...now can I give myself a day off? I doubt it!

Fall-ing

Getting ready to send out my September 'packet.' It's been a rough and crazy ride, ideas flying out from the horse's hoof's like gravel. Dinah Lenney is a wonderful teacher (have I said that before?), pushing me, asking the difficult questions, but kindly. Marvelous, painful therapy, and the words get clearer every time I sit down to write. Direction? Onwards.
My son, now in first grade, has homework -- eek -- and it is a real lesson in patience and a reminder that writing is always, from the start, a hard process, but that as it comes, it brings great pleasure. The questions I ask him: "Can you think of another word?" "Would you like to say more about that?" "How do you end a sentence?" are the same questions I ask myself.
And my daughter? She's taking it all in from a distance. Can't wait till they are both off and writing stories and poems. Shame about the math genes!

Weekend stops play

Soccer, ballet (theirs only, alas) and grading (mine) ...and fifteen minutes this morning with Natalia Ginzberg -- I just can't wait to get back to it, though my little girl's fever may further postpone my selfish endeavors...Oh, well, it's all good gathering time. And I did finally get to yoga this afternoon -- always good for creative thinking when I'm supposed to be emptying my mind!

Going Everywhere Fast

So, armed and dangerous with what I've been learning, I went back to my original book length manuscript and began really re-en-visioning it. Revelatory and so much fun. It's probably a good thing (I wrote 'god thing'!) I have to pick the kids up at 2.30pm or I'd never leave my desk. I'm just having too much fun. Beginning to daydream just a little about publication, if that still exists by the time I get there! A soccer practice and a bedtime meltdown kept my feet where they belong!

Revise Revise

Finally produced some 'free standing' essays thanks to some contests that forced the issue. Writing madly all morning then picking up the kids or teaching in the afternoons. I am suddenly very, very tired. My sweet little first grader also has homework these days, which means of course I have homework, but the relative independence of 6 and 4 is a gift.

Now Totally Confused

Project sparking off into several different ones -- I now have about 4 or 5 books instead on one, but here's the joke. None of them are finished. All part of the process, I s'pose!
Dinah Lenney is amazing. So are her reading recommendations. Why had I never discovered Mark Richard or Bernard Cooper or Jo Ann Beard or Abigail Thomas before? Worth every penny of the tuition in itself!

Progress?

Went back through the first 50 pages of my manuscript and still liked it (today at least) -- a good sign, I suppose. Also working on adapting a chapter as an essay for a competition. Suddenly feel like I might actually have work of sufficient caliber, or maybe I'm kidding myself...

Dragging

Worked like crazy last week and then spent this Labor Day weekend in a state of completely useless exhaustion. Can't read or write another word...