Test Marketing

Next year will be my 20th year of teaching. Since 20 years is a nice round number and shows I've been in the game long enough to have something to say about it, and since I'm nothing if not reflective to the point of self-indulgence, I've decided to commemorate this milestone year by beginning to write the book about teaching I've always known in the back of my mind I was going to write sooner or later.

The problem is I don't exactly know what shape it's going to take yet. Fiction? Possibly. I have a lot of ideas in the Vault, but I don't know if I should highlight the ridiculousness of it all, or show a more balanced version that mixes the comedy and the bureaucratic farce and the all-out life tragedies that too often are a part of the job. Or what about non-fiction? Maybe I could do another memoir, reflecting on my own experiences of the past 20 years, either as an anecdotal overview or a collection of events out of the past structured to follow a typical school year. And these are just a few ideas; I really don't know which way to go yet. One day I'll think, "Oh yeah, that's definitely what I should do," only to realize soon after how many reasons there are why it wouldn't be a good idea.

So here's my plan. Over the summer, I'm going to write a series trials -- short stories or essays, probably -- to serve as warm-ups, helping me find a voice to use, and an overall tone for the project, and just trying out what kinds of stories would work effectively for what I'd like to accomplish. However, I'm not going to post these here on the blog. Maybe some of them, but certainly not all; some of the stories I could tell simply don't need to be on the Internet, as anyone who has worked in public education themselves could attest to.

So instead, I'm asking for test readers I could include in a mailing group. Would you be interested in reading some of these stories? And would you be willing to give me a little feedback on them to help me find some direction for this project? If so, I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to be in my test-marketing e-mail group, just send me a message or leave a comment on the link you probably followed from Facebook to get here. I've also enabled commenting again right here on the site, but I'd caution anyone away from including contact information in any comments they might leave here -- the Internet is full of really bad people. To my still-puzzling hypothetical international readership -- sorry folks, but you'll remain out of the loop on this one. I'm really only going to share stories like these with people I trust.

I know a request like this goes against my tenet of not asking people to read my writing since I don't like feeling that desperate, but for something like this I think an exception might be warranted. I almost feel like I'm setting myself up for disappointment since I don't expect to hear back from many people, but you never know until you try. If you stop by the blog here occasionally, and generally enjoy what you read, you should have a pretty good idea of what you'd be signing up for. If that sounds interesting, I say go for it.

Okay. Head on back to Facebook and let the commenting begin. Let's find out if this is anything more than the sound of one hand clapping.