The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: work

  • Time and Teaching

    Once, when I was in teacher-training school, my class had to read an article about English teachers and writing. This article expressed the belief that such teachers should not pursue their own writing projects, because any time spent on self-centered expression was time taken away from lesson planning and grading, the true purposes of life for any educator. My classmates and I condemned this concept vociferously, both from a personal sanity perspective and from an educational perspective. For how does one teach a process that s/he does not experience? How can adults model a literary life they do not have?

    Alas, now that I am a teacher, I understand the article’s perspective, even as I disagree with it. Teaching is a time-consuming job. In the current environment we are asked to do more work with less funding and less time, and the powers that be would rather we think of every moment we are not teaching or preparing to teach as a moment stolen from the kids. Several educational consultants have even suggested that if we do ever go on vacation, we must record the vacation and turn it into a lesson for the kids. Of course the kids deserve the best education I can possibly offer them. But it’s easy to start thinking of myself purely as a work machine, here to revise lessons endlessly and integrate new technologies seamlessly and innovate constantly to improve. The constant admonishments from the media and neoliberal organizations about the dangers of bad teachers ring in my ears every time I sit down with a book, every time I pull out my keyboard, every time I journal rather than grade. (more…)

  • At Least My Friends Don’t Sit On My Face

    Prioritizing is a pain in the ass.

    There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. Something’s going to get pushed back until tomorrow… which comes with its own to-do list.

    Some things are easy to put first on the agenda. Obviously I’m not going to go into work naked because there just wasn’t enough time to get dressed after my shower—my office is COLD. (more…)

  • Blitzkrieg! (followed by inevitable Hibernation)

    Writing fiction has, for the most part, been a seasonal occupation for me, centered around the month of November when NaNoWriMo happens. During the month of November, I churn out something between 50,000 – 80,000 words. Sometimes that effort spills into December, and this year that effort has spilled into January (I should probably admit that it’ll be February, but my peer reading group will kill me if that happens).

    While I’m on my novel-writing binge, I write anywhere and everywhere. The office, the coffee shop, the library, my home office, the back patio. It all depends on my mood. Sometimes I crave distraction, while other times I need a quiet refuge. Certain settings will inspire me to churn out words, while others will provoke deep thoughts about particular aspects of my story. Sometimes I need the comfort of home, while others time I need to escape my cozy surroundings and force myself to experience my writing from a different, and often less comfortable, locale.

    Everything I write happens on a computer, and Microsoft Word has served me well over the years. I also usually cook up a pretty sophisticated spreadsheet that helps me track daily wordcounts, character names, scenes, plotlines, research notes, and any other information I may need outside of the actual manuscript itself. I keep Wikipedia open at all times to keep my thirst for quick-and-dirty research slaked throughout the process.

    While I’m writing, I often use music to inspire me and eliminate distractions. Wordless musical scores work best: sweeping orchestral pieces, somber trance music, spirit-lifting soundtracks. Sometimes, however, I find that music isn’t the answer, and that silence is golden. But on my best days I can sit in a noisy restaurant and let the clamoring voices of customers wash over me without effect, because I’m so lost in the zone that the outside world can’t penetrate the world I’m crafting in front of me.

    When I’m in that zone, what really matters is that I have hours (and hours…and more hours) to write every day. First thing in the morning, in between the classes I teach, before and after dinner, and then late at night before I collapse in exhaustion into my bed. Every hour of the day is a moment I could be writing, or thinking about writing, or fixing what I already wrote. It’s a consuming experience, which is why I’ve failed to ever keep it going beyond a month or two. But I promise, when someone offers me millions and millions of dollars to write books, I’ll stretch out my efforts to at least three months of the year.

    …Okay, two-and-a-half. Maybe.

    Is it time for my nap yet? All this excitement is wearing me out!