I am finally coming out of the wilderness and returning to a more manageable life.
When I started the fall, I knew I had a full plate with my third year of teaching now coupled with a graduate course. What I didn’t anticipate was having a massive revision of Sherlock Holmes: Murder at Sorrow’s Crown to add into the mix. On top of that, Deb and I had several weekends already blocked off to get some ”us” time in.As we approach Christmas, I am happy to say that I seem to have gotten through the worst of it. The month began with the completion of my third grad class and receiving an A for the effort.Last night, I hit send and managed to get a revised manuscript off to my partner Steven Savile. I managed to restore pump up the word count, just about hitting the contracted 80,000 word count.On the way home from school yesterday, I shipped off all the gifts that need to be places.In other words, tick, tick, tick, things are getting done and the stress is leaving me. I still have tons of papers to grad and one or two lessons left to plan prior to the break but I actually feel it can all get done.
At school, our newspaper is finally gaining some heft as students are finally turning in more articles and I am now training them to do some of the editing, which will eventually relieve me of much of the burden. We’ve moved from newswriting to law and ethics and are now working on line and copy editing. We just need to spread the word and pump up our readership to cover a larger percentage of the student body and for that I need my students to do the social media magic they do so well.My other courses are proceeding apace. My Creative Writers really impressed me with some oral storytelling, a la The Moth, and revealed things about themselves I didn’t imagine. Now we’re well into my thoroughly revamped poetry unit and the results look good.I am also currently teaching two-three lessons I devised to replace several that I didn’t think worked well in the curriculum and I can’t wait to see how these turn out as we ready for the next major essay.On the writing front, I have a short piece for Back Issue! to finish by New Year’s Day along with one short pitch. Come January, all I have on my plate is the previously mentioned Planet of the Apes piece. After that, as the fourth grad classes preoccupies my free time, I will be looking forward to finally returning to my ReDeus novel, which I have not touched in a year.It’s all feeling pretty good right now, and it’s about time.
#Tags: Planet of the Apes, School, Sherlock Holmes