Summer's Over and I'm Not Ready for School to Start

 

I still love teaching. Helping kids find their way in something they're trying to learn, getting to know the future generations as people . . . these are deep joys. Still. After 26 years of classroom life. That's saying something. 

But here, four days before my first teacher workday of the new 2021-2022 school year, I am absolutely not ready to go back. 

Teaching is always exhausting. Getting through to kids requires huge emotional investment, and the system is set up to undercut teachers at every step of the way: paying us so poorly that we struggle to make basic ends meet, trying to legislate things that should be professional decisions, piling on extra documentation requirements without providing time in the schedule to do the work, blaming us for every problem a child faces without giving us the corresponding credit when a child succeeds. 

Luckily, 90% of the time, it's just me and kids in my classroom. Their parents, school administration, and politicians may try, but they cannot really intrude on that relationship . . . not at the level of spending they're willing to do anyway (spies, whether digital or in person, are expensive). They're simply not there when the rubber hits the road. The kids and I are on that journey alone. 

Last year, teaching was a whole new kind of exhausting. 

One thing I value about the work is the predictability. Kids, of course, are not predictable, but generally, my classes meet at the same time every day with the same people in them studying the same things. I know when I can go to the bathroom and if I'm going to get to eat lunch or not (yes, that is often an "if"). I need those parameters to work within. 

Starting in March 2020, there was no predictability. I was sent home from school with directions to prepare for 3 or 4 weeks of asynchronous teaching and didn't start working in a classroom again for a year (and even then, it wasn't "normal" since I had to teach kids at home via zoom and kids in my room at the same time, with all new health precautions and the rules changed roughly every three days about what was and was not allowable). 

And 2021-2022 promises more of the same. 

I've been handed a set of parameters for 2021-2022. Who knows if these are the rules for three minutes, three months, or three years? 

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I'm glad, at least, that it appears I will no longer be asked to teach in two environments at the same time (online and in person). Just just looking at this list of restrictions depresses me. 

I'm trying to trust that my immunization will keep me from becoming too sick (like hospitalized, life-threateningly sick), but I have little doubt that I or my child (starting high school this year) will catch it this year. 

There are roughly 600 kids in my school building, 200 of whom do not qualify for immunization yet. There are roughly 1020 students in my kid's high school, all of whom are eligible for immunization. If county stats average out among children, 78% of them are immunized (Hurray! Last I heard, we only need 60-70% for herd immunity to help, if it's going to help with this).

Our district's year-round elementary school has already had several cases (I'm vague on numbers because there isn't very good transparency: the district is trying to ride that line between sharing information to allow people to protect themselves and avoiding causes panic). A colleague who just put her baby back in day care so she can return to work just found out that her baby (not old enough to be immunized) has caught it (thankfully, a mild case, so far). 

I'll do the best I can, of course, to give my students a good experience within these limits, but it's challenging. Finding a spark of joy and enthusiasm is difficult. I already feel snowed under and I haven't started. 

I took my summer as slowly as I could, trying to balance taking some rejuvenating opportunities (like seeing my family and attending author events) with self-care. But eleven weeks wasn't enough to find my balance and recharge. I can't even imagine how my colleagues who took on summer work must be feeling (luckily, my husband gets paid better than me, and funds my nasty teaching habit, letting me stay unemployed during summer hiatus). 

So, to all the teachers out there, take care of yourselves. Push back when the world pushes too far--you know they'll eat us alive if we let them. Keep working on the balance between dedication and burnout.

To all the kids and families of school children, remember that teachers are people, and when you feel you need to advocate for your children, do so with kindness and a heart to help, not blame. 

For everyone else, pray for us, if you're people who pray. Vote for us and policies that support us, if you're people who vote. Remember that these kids will take care of you in your old age--don't you want them to grow up whole, hale, and educated? 

IWSG: Craft Books: Thinking ABOUT writing, or writing?

  

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

August 4 question - What is your favorite writing craft book? Think of a book that every time you read it you learn something or you are inspired to write or try the new technique. And why?

The awesome co-hosts for the August 4 posting of the IWSG are PK Hrezo, Cathrina Constantine, PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, and Sandra Cox! Be sure to check out what they have to say, and visit other writers in the blog hop!

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I don't read a lot of craft books anymore, though once I did. They are a pleasure, and can be inspiring and encouraging, as well as instructive. 

But I don't read them very often anymore. 

It's not that I don't still feel like there's a lot to learn about writing life. I definitely do!…it's more a matter of time management and HOW I do my learning these days. 

Since my first novel was published in 2015, I've considered myself a professional writer. Currently, I stuff a full time writing life into part time hours, working 1-2 hours a day during the school year and 4-8 hours a day during summer hiatus, so that my day job (teaching middle school) can provide money, insurance, retirement plans and other staples of stability. 

It's not enough time for all the work of writing, rewriting, networking, marketing, etc., but it's what I can afford (literally, in the dollars in the bank, sense of "afford"). Plus, I'm finding there's something to be said for "hands-on" learning or "on the job" training. Theoretical consideration and hypothetical situations will only take you so far. 

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So, while I loved Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Stephen King's On Writing and Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones when I was younger, it's been years since I read a book on the craft of writing, though there are plenty of them on my bookshelves still.  

That's not to say I'm not studying. I just tend to combine that with other tasks these days. When I get stuck, I read a few articles or posit a question to one of my writing communities to get real-time advice from others in the thick of the struggle themselves. I learn by doing and by talking to others who are doing. 

For Lamott, King, Goldberg and other giants of the field, my level of struggle is a memory. They no longer worry about building an audience, navigating the shark-infested waters of publishing, or balancing quality with quantity of output to keep a career from languishing. 

For others in The Writing Tribe, Works in Progress, or Area 42 (three of the writing communities I work with), that battle is being fought right now, and for that reason, the advice is very pragmatic. These groups linger less over the philosophy and ideals and concentrate more on the practice. 

If I let myself wander down those philosophical paths too long, I find I just stay there. I spend a lot of time thinking ABOUT writing instead of actual writing, and that might feed my practice in the long run, but it doesn't feed my career here in the short run. 

So, once again, I'm back to seeking a balance, this time between thinking and doing. 

How about you? Do you fall into research rabbit holes as easily as I do, and spend too much time thinking ABOUT what you want to do instead of doing it? Or have you found a better balance of learning and doing? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments! 

July Reading

 

I missed the end of July! Here we are already three days into August before I noticed it was August. 

To be fair, I WAS at a convention all weekend (Galaxy Con, Raleigh). I barely knew what time it was, let alone what day it was. 

Me with all my book babies at GalaxyCon

But I did want to tell you about what I read in July, because I read some excellent books :-) (as always, you can click on the link in the book's title to see my fuller review on Goodreads--I don't review on Amazon anymore because Amazon decided I was up to nefarious things and won't respond to my queries . . . apparently writers aren't allowed to also be readers?). 

I started off the month by finishing The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, which I began in June because I wanted to talk to play along with the #WeeklyLitChats #BuddyRead over on Twitter with Manuela Sonntag, DB Carter , and the rest of the regulars. It's one of those books that everybody knows in a sense, because it's so steeped in our culture, often adapted and parodied, but I had never read it. I found it a bit disorganized by contemporary standards, with plot lines dropped for a hundred pages and then picked back up, but the characters I knew and loved from popular culture sang on the page and it was well worth the read. 

After all that bro-mance, though, I was ready for something very different, so I picked up Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a book that had been in my TBR since its release. LOVED it. So much great Gothic atmosphere with extra layers of horror in the form of colonialism. 

Monster, She Wrote by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson was probably a dangerous choice in that it added a hundred or more books to my TBR. It's a historical overview of women in speculative fiction and there are so many more things I now need to read! 

Becky Chambers has become one of my automatic purchase authors. When I need a boost of optimism and hope, she's just the ticket. Her newest is a short book, A Psalm for the Wild Built, which takes place on a far-future, post-factory earth and chronicles a friendship between a human man and a robot. 

I finally finished Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit. I started it some months ago as an audiobook, and the narration was so flippant that I found it off-putting. While there is certainly some snark in Solnit's book, the narrator read it like it was a rom-com, so I put it down. When I came back to finish it on Kindle, I liked it much better, though I still it's a bit "feminism 101" for a woman like me, now over 50 and hardly new to the battlegrounds of feminism. Maybe better if you're a newb? Still, more power to Solnit for getting a whole book out of a single funny/sad incident at a party. 

I wasn't sure what I felt like reading after that, so I went to my Audible library, organized by "not yet read" and "by length" and picked something short: The Dispatcher by John Scalzi. I have enjoyed all of the Scalzi I have read, and this one was quite interesting, too. Noir-esque, but not so very gritty. Very interesting world/central concept. 

Then, I realized that Lucy Blue was about to release a new romantic mystery in her Stella Hart series. Lucy and I share a publisher, and I've been hearing such good things about her books, so I figured this was my moment to check them out. I read Guinivere's Revenge and The Passion of Miss Cuthbert back to back. They're short, fast-reading, and delightful. 

They're set in the early 20th century and combine mystery-romance-historical elements into witty and charming stories. I LOVE Stella and George, and appreciate romantic stories that aren't all about prolonging the chase, but instead let the romance progress. The third is next in my TBR, so tune in next month to hear about that one. 

After that, I was once again unsure what I wanted to read, so I went to short books already in my Audible library and found Nim's Island, a middle grades adventure story with shades of Pippi Longstocking and Swiss Family Robinson. I'd seen the movie some years ago, and enjoyed it, and I also quite enjoyed the book. Light and fun, whimsical. 

The last book I finished in July was Yo-Yo Ma's A Beginner's Mind, a short memoir combining recordings of his performances with anecdotes from his journey as an artist. It made me wish I could invite myself to Ma's house and just listen to him talk for a few days. He's such a kind-hearted, open person, with quiet grace and I was already a huge fan of his musical performances. His mini-concert videos on Facebook were part of what saw me through the pandemic. 

I tried and failed to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude for my First Monday Classics Book Club. Too free-wheeling and unmoored for my mindset right now, and I finished the month still in the middle of two books: The Wharton Gothics by Edith Wharton and Dr. Watson and the Ladies' Club Coven by Alexandra Christian. Tune in next month to see how those shook out for me (spoiler: I'm really enjoying both). 

What did you read in July? I'd love to hear about in the comments! 

Introducing: The Newest Bryants

Friends and followers might remember that we lost our boy-o, O'Neill, back in February. He'd been part of our family for twelve years before cancer got her claws into him, and we were broken-hearted to lose him. 

Since then, we've been talking about when we might feel ready to open our hearts to a dog again. The kid-still-at-home was all for adopting a new dog immediately and funneling grief into love for a new dog, Sweetman needed longer to heal, and I was somewhere in the middle. 

But we finally agreed that July was good timing, since the kid and I will be mostly at home for several more weeks yet (until school starts) and can devote time to training and acclimating our newest family members. 

So, let me introduce you to Pumpkin and Ghost!

In the car for the ride to our new home!

These boys are about three and one half years old, both rescued from the same home, where an elderly woman had become overwhelmed by the work of caring for too many dogs. Before CARA (Carolina Animal Rescue and Adoption) came into their lives, they had never seen a vet. They had also never been house trained, leash trained, or learned to respond to names. 

O'Neill had also been a rescue dog, found wandering in the woods with his brother. We sometimes wondered if it might have been better if we had also adopted his brother when we took him in, so he would have had his brother when we couldn't be with him, so we decided to look for a pair of dogs to adopt together this time, if possible. 

Neither Sweetman nor I have ever had a small dog. These guys are both Jack Russell Terrier mixes (mixed with what? I dunno . . . other dogs?). Ghost is around 17 pounds, and Pumpkin around 20, which means the two of them together is still less poundage of dog than O'Neill had been. It's a different ballgame, having small dogs and having two dogs. But I think I'm going to love playing. 

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They are quite playful and surprisingly comfortable with people overall, given their lack of previous socialization. They like women better than men so far, but I know Sweetman will win them over to full trust. They are also cuddly little guys, and it's definitely handy that I can just pick them up if I need to (without needing to visit the chiropractor afterwards). 

So, there they are: the two additions to our family. Wish us luck!

 

Flung Back Into the Universe

Wow! That was fast. I mean, after nearly eighteen months of hardly going anywhere and seeing only the people in my bubble, you'd think I'd be ready for some travel, some parties and gatherings, etc. But I feel like Wile E. Coyote just after the giant rubberband has snapped, realizing that I've got no control over my speed and trajectory: 

I know, I know. I'm in charge of me and I can say no, but it's not that easy to do. Can I really say no to all my family when they want to see the hubby and me and our kiddos in person at long last? Can I really turn down chances to get back out there at live-in-person author events building some momentum for my life's dream of living off my writing? 

I can . . . but I probably won't. 

That won't stop me from whining a little bit though. I was out of pocket 11 days in June and I'll be out another 9 in July by the end of things. Thankfully, the July stuff is a little more spread out and I'll get 13 days in a row of being close to home between things. 

The tricky bit for me is that I WANT to see all the people and take all the opportunities, but I also rely on time at home during these non-school months to make some serious progress on my writing goals during days with fewer commitments than school-year days. 

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I'm also finding that I'm seriously out of practice. I've always need a bit of introvert recovery time after a big get-together, but my recovery period is longer now, like my social muscles have atrophied. I had barely recovered from my mother's birthday party when it was time to hit the road again to welcome a new baby into my husband's family. 

Thank G-d for coffee. At least my drug of choice is legal. 

As always, I'm seeking balance, because the truth is that I want it ALL but there are only so many hours in each day and only so much Samantha to go around. 

So how are you guys managing the world opening back up? Is it a relief or a new kind of stress for you? 

I'd love to hear about how you're doing in the comments! 

Never Going to Give It Up!

 

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

July 7 question - What would make you quit writing?

The awesome co-hosts for the July 7 posting of the IWSG are Pat Garcia, Victoria Marie Lees, and Louise – Fundy Blue! Be sure to check out what they have to say, and visit other writers in the blog hop!

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About the only thing that could make me quit writing would be loss of cognitive function. Meaning, I would quit writing if I found I actually could no longer do the mental and physical work of it. It's too important to me to ever just let go entirely. Sometimes I feel like I'm incapable of understanding the world around me except by processing it in writing. It's how I see. 

Now, quitting publishing, on the other hand…that's a different kettle of fish. Publishing is not nearly as fulfilling or fun as writing. It's time consuming, whether you're working with traditional publishers or taking on all the work yourself as an indie writer. It can drag you up and down emotional roller coasters and leave you feeling bruised and sick. 

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But I persist. Writing itself is the most important part for me, but I also want an audience for my work. I wouldn't be content to leave all my words unshared. So publishing is part of the writing life for me, even when it is less than fun or takes an ugly turn. 

I'm a stubborn sort, so I wouldn't give it up easily. I'm not going to be that person who rage quits over a bad review or publishing politics or anything like that. I read threads all the time about someone who just chucks the whole thing when things go badly and I can't imagine making that decision. I'd just seek another way. 

My professional writing life has been pretty short. I've only been at it for six years. But in those few years, I've had a range of experiences with publishing from the affirming and joyful to the disheartening and upsetting. I had a publisher fold on me, I've collected quite a little pile of rejections, I've had bad reviews. I've also been recognized with an award, received money for my creations, and made some great friends who really understand this part of me. 

So, I expect to always be a writer and to always seek publication for my work. The good outweighs the bad. I'll remain the Rick Astley of the writing world, refusing to give it up. 

June Reads: Short, but not Sweet

Here I am halfway through the year, and I've already nearly met my yearly reading challenge. I always plan to read 52 books: one per week. Generally, I read a bit more. This year I'm already at 41 books. 

I read nine books this month, though to be fair, they were mostly quite short. I found my attention scattered, what with end of school year burnout and a suddenly very crowded social calendar with family obligations and writer-life opportunities now that vaccination has re-opened some possibilities. I was out of pocket for 11 of June's 30 days which is quite a lot, especially after my homebody habits of pandemic life. 

I started with Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys, a choice by my neighborhood book club. I had previously read his Underground Railroad, and liked it overall, but was a bit put off by the intermixing of fact and fantasy. This story was much more succinct and tight and I think that's part of what kept me engaged a bit more. Now that I've had a little time to think it over, I think I prefer Nickel Boys which stuck closer to actual historical events and realistically likely events. But it was a heartbreaker. 

So after having my heart broken, I picked up Un-Girls by Lauren Beukes. At some point Audible had offered me this book and others in the Disorder series for free or at low cost (I don't remember), and since I already admired Beukes's Broken Monsters, I accepted the offer. I found both these works horrifying and creative, taking angles I'd not seen before. Her body horror is shudder inducing. 

Having peeked into the series, I became curious about the other five books in the Disorder series and quickly read the rest of them: the twisty and ever-changing The Beckoning Fair One by Dan Chaon, the fascinating but inconclusive Loam by Scott Heim, an Edgar Allen Poe retelling in Will Williams by Namwali Serpell, the all too realistic Anonymous by Uzodinma Iweala, and the deeply sad Best Girls by Min Jin Lee with its echoes of Thomas Hardy. I recommend the entire series. Each is 1-2 hours long and each takes on horror from an unusual angle. 

After that horror, I was ready for something lighter so I chose The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by RA Dick (the pseudonym of Irish author Josephine Leslie). I already knew and loved this story from the 1947 movie edition.

I was happy to find that much of what I loved about the movie was also present in the novel and was especially touched by the plight of "poor Lucy" who had to learn to stand against that most difficult of obstacles to an independent life: people who love you.  

Quite a charming and romantic story which also has a lot to say about the importance of taking charge of one's own life. 

I finished with Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, a story I knew from the 1983 movie, but had never read. It, too, was a relatively short work I had purchased some time earlier and found waiting in my Audible library when I sought short books to read. 

I have really enjoyed a lot of Bradbury's short stories over the years, though some of them can feel "quaint" these days in that they are less cynical and less concerned with startling and unpredictable plot twists. His mild paternalistic misogyny can be annoying, but like Asimov, he mostly avoids the problem by having very few female characters and never focusing on them if he does have female characters. 

In trying to describe this one, I said: 

"This book is a celebration of that cusp moment of childhood into adolescence (particularly for young boys--one of Bradbury's consistent failings is creation of meaningful female characters). It's a meditation on aging and regret. It's nostalgia brewed into a fine tea that, while faintly bitter, still pleases the senses."

I finished the month with Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, which I have not yet finished, so I'll have to tell you about it next month. So far, I'll say that it holds up quite well and that much of what you know and love about these characters from all the movie and television adaptations came directly from Dumas's pen. 

How about you? What did you read this month? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!