There are four people in my little family.
We go to four different schools:
- four different first days,
- four different last days,
- four different winter breaks, and, usually,
- four consecutive spring breaks.
A predictable pattern of free summers and excruciatingly busy school years has been a part of my life since I was five years old. Still, I always find the slow-down in my writing life when I start teaching again to be a surprise.
But this year, I'm working with it. I'm pretending that the intensification of grading, appointments, illnesses, chilliness, rain, darkness, and grouchiness is the climax of a novel, and I'm trying to appreciate the unexpected inevitability of it.
I'm also creating, at a very tiny snail's pace, a kind of unexpected inevitability in the climax of my real novel. I've written just under 1,000 words on it since my last post over a month ago, and each one of those words has come at the price of something or someone who needed my attention: my bursting email inboxes, the sticky goo on my sink, my (ahem) family.
(My son, for example, having noted that I was not "doing" anything but typing, just moments ago asked if he could get something to eat, and I told him quite pleasantly that he could do anything he wanted as long as he left me alone--and that leaving me alone included not making strange noises from the kitchen that I could hear in the living room. He understood.)
So, I'm making very tiny snail-like goals for myself now. Twenty minutes of writing three mornings a week maybe. Or one hundred words a day for a least a few days in a row.
Or maybe even this: taking the evening before Fall Break to update this blog, to tell those of you who are following me (hi, Mom and Dad!) how much I appreciate your inevitable encouragement.
