Writing Without Fear

I’m writing a new book this summer. I haven’t written anything new in a long time, at least as far as fiction goes, so this is exciting for me. 

I’m also on summer break right now, which means that along with having more time to write, I have more time to read. This helps the writing, because the luxury of being able to read for long stretches of time lights up the linguistic part of my brain. After I read for awhile I’ll often find I’m automatically thinking in prose, describing the world around me, narrating whatever I’m doing, constructing thoughtful paragraphs about things as mundane as moving laundry from the washer to the dryer, sometimes without even being aware right away that I'm doing it. Reading a lot is definitely a key part of the writing process for me.

I was reading a lot earlier today. Normally this would get me fired up to start writing, but instead my reaction was the exact opposite. I got too far into my own head and hit a wall. Fear and hesitation crept in. 

I’m currently re-reading Chuck Klosterman’s road trip memoir, Killing Yourself to Live. I love this book. It would be fair to say he’s one of my influences, at least in some respects; anyone who knows this blog well and has read any of his books would probably pick up on that. I’ve always enjoyed how his voice comes across so honest and unfiltered, particularly since he’s writing about events that have happened to him and people in his life while fully knowing that someday those people could very possibly read what he’s written about them (even if he’s subtitled this book “85% of a True Story”). 

It got me thinking: I don’t know if I write with that kind of honesty. I’ll write about personal things, to a point. I’ll take occasional self-deprecating digs at myself, which are usually masking some level of truth, but I’ll rarely reveal too much, and there are absolutely topics I would never even think about exploring in an even semi-private forum. I think that too much of the time I’ll hold myself back, because I’m writing with fear. I’ll worry more about how a possible audience might react to an idea, and less about how to express what I’m trying to say. I’ll write in certain ways to make sure some person, or people, won't be bothered or offended by what I’ve written, just as sometimes I’ll write hoping my message will find specific targets, even if I know some of the people I’m considering are never going to read my books or my blog posts, or even my tweets or Facebook status updates. 

I also know that when I write something, here on the blog and hopefully someday in books, it could be seen by anyone. Because of this, I feel I have to write with a social networking mask, using a voice that perpetuates an online persona I’ve cultivated which, while still is a fairly truthful version of who I am, doesn’t pull back the curtains all the way. After all, anyone with an internet connection can read these posts. There aren’t safeguards or privacy settings when it comes to a blog. Students could find it. Their parents could find it. My colleagues or any school district personnel could find it, so I have to intentionally consider what I’m going to write and how I’m going to express it. I don’t want to actively make people angry or hurt anyone’s feelings, so I might not always reveal everything. I try to play it safe. I hesitate. I write with fear. Not crippling, lie-awake-in-bed-at-night fear, but more like an abundance of caution. 

I’m referring more to the blog when I think about this holding back, but I know I’ve done it in manuscripts as well. The closest I’ve ever gotten to using any kind of profanity has been “crap” or “suck.” Of course I’m not going to drop several payloads of f-bombs in a middle grade manuscript, but even when I think about using one of my PG swears, I wrestle with whether or not it really needs to be there. The same thing will occasionally apply when it comes to the content of the story. How much is too much? How cautious do I need to be? Take The Ghost of Lake Emily for example. I used that as a read aloud at school this year, as did my former teaching partner. I felt this was okay because these were kids I knew, and they came from families I knew. If one of the other teachers at school had wanted to use it as a read aloud though, I would have said no. I wouldn’t have known how their students would have reacted to it, and I wouldn’t have been able to predict how the parents might have responded. I didn’t want to take the chance I’d wind up having someone trying to get my book banned from my own school before it even had a chance to be published. In that instance I wasn't exactly writing with fear, but I was protecting what I'd already written from the same place the fear comes from.

As for this new book, it feels very different. For starters, this will be the first new thing I’ve written since I began working with my agent, so I already expect I’m going to occasionally hear her voice in my ear while I’m working. Also I've never started to write anything before that I felt confident was going to be making it to submission someday, if not publication. That's a nice plateau to be standing on.

But this story, while still written for the middle grade age group, is not at all lighthearted. It’s also unquestionably going to be the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried to create. 

For me to make it what I need it to be, I’m going to have to find a way around the fear. 

Getting the Job Done

When I was in college, my dad tried giving me a piece of advice — actually, it’d be more accurate to say he’s tried to give me advice for the better part of my life, especially in the years leading up to and during college; I’ve just always had this obnoxious trait of being certain I already had things figured out, so I wasn’t always the most receptive audience. This particular bit of wisdom came in the months before my graduation. He reminded me that even if I did get a teaching job (something that was by no means a certainty in the job market of the early 1990s), it would be a good idea for me to find some kind of work I could do during the summers, just to be sure I'd make ends meet. 

It wasn’t bad advice, because teachers certainly don’t get paid what they should, and back then we made even less. I had no intention of looking for a summer job, though. In my mind, summer jobs were for high school kids, not educated professionals. Back then my tendency for thinking I had everything figured out was dangerously magnified by several powers of ten (I was in my 20s, after all) so I listened to his advice and answered him in a manner that I’m sure came across more dismissively than I’d intended. 

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve got it figured out. I’m going to teach during the school year and write books in the summer.”

Surprisingly enough, he didn’t see my coupling one source of income that had no guarantees to it with a second source that was little more than a fantasy as a solid plan for the future. But this was me, so I had it all figured out. 

Years earlier, before I was even in high school, he had given me an opportunity to make some money at the drugstore he was managing. It wasn’t going to be a lot, really just a supplement to my allowance, but it was money. There was a small lot out behind the store that, even though it was parked right in the middle of a suburban downtown area, had gone wild with all manner of weeds, several of which were thick as saplings and waist high on me. I was to be paid by the hour for however long it took to get the job done, which I thought was great. I was excited for the chance to make some money, but even more excited because I had a brilliant scheme: The owner of the store figured the job would only take two or three hours, but I figured I could get even more money out of him if I worked slowly and made the job take longer. I shared this plan with my dad, thinking he’d appreciate my clever plan in a moment of “let’s stick it to the boss man” solidarity, but instead he was disappointed. And disappointing him was always worse than making him angry. 

He told me that wasn’t how it worked. “If you don’t show up to a job ready to work hard, nobody will want to hire you,” he said. “And if they do hire you but find out that you aren’t taking the job seriously, they’ll let you go.”

Since this was advice coming from not only my father but from the guy who was involved in managing a number of different stores, his words got past my Know-It-All barrier. Now, I’m not going to open up a can of revisionist history here and paint myself as someone who learned the value of hard work that very day and did all I could to live up to that expectation. But the seed had been planted. As I started getting jobs for real, the seed grew a little more. Once I started teaching, it took off like it had been saturated with Miracle-Gro. By the time I had worked my confidence up to try writing an actual book instead of just a bunch of short stories, it was flourishing. And nobody who ever tries to write a book is going to reach that goal without being ready to put in a lot of hard work.

So now when I draft a manuscript, and then spend weeks or months rewriting it, and then put in nine-hour stretches to edit it several times over, and remind myself to be patient while I wait for feedback from my agent, and hope for the day to come when we make a sale, I know I can do these things because I’ve reached the point where it’s a job now. And Rule #1 about having a job is showing up and getting the work done.  

So Dad, maybe it didn’t happen as quickly as my twenty-something self had thought it would, but I got there: teaching during the school year and writing books in the summer…although it turns out there’s a lot of writing that has to get done during the school year as well. But that’s okay. Because I’ve learned, from a lifetime of your example and expectations, that if I want to be taken seriously at a job, I’d better be ready to put in the work. That ethic will always have more to do with any achievements or successes I have than anything else.

Thanks for that. And Happy Father's Day.

The Archive of 4th Grade Zen

The 2015-16 school year was the first time I've worked with 4th graders since the Clinton presidency. That year my day was split between working with two grades: 3rd in the morning, and 4th in the afternoon. Next year will be a sort of return to that for me as I prepare to begin a year teaching both 4th and 5th grades, each for half of a day. This is all to say that this past school year has been the one time in my long and storied career that I've ever taught just 4th grade. Since next year will be split between two grades, here's the list of Zen Moments from the one year when I only taught fourth.

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AUTUMN
*The room is full of students finishing their breakfast during arrival. I walk in after hallway duty is over and say, "Whoa. It smells like yogurt, muffins, cereal, and humidity in here.” One kid looks up at me, confused, and asks, "What does humanity smell like?”


*While the class was lining up at the end of Media, I overheard Mr. Reed telling some kids how "A long time ago, TV stations would play the National Anthem at the end of the day, and then the whole TV screen would just turn to snow." To which one confused kid replied, "Even in the summer?”


*"I wonder what food coloring tastes like. I'll bet it tastes like hair.”


*Little girl: "This week went by really fast."
Me: "That's because it was only two days long."
Little girl: "Oh." (thoughtful pause) "Oh! Right!”


*For a warm-up yesterday, students wrote addition story problems. One student conscientiously handed this one in, a day late, today. Take it for what you will: "Lucas has 202 breastmilk bottles. Mom made 606 more breastmilk bottles. How many bottles does Lucas have now?”


*This morning during arrival, one of my girls handed me a coupon for a "Free Cancer Ribben," then presented a collection of 5, made of notebook paper and colored with markers. After I chose the color I wanted (red), she turned to Ms. Enge to offer her a ribbon as well. I tried to hand her my "Free Cancer Ribben" coupon but the girl quickly stopped me, saying it couldn't be used again. Instead, she handed Ms. Enge her own coupon...for 50% off.


*There's been a songwriting kick in class lately. The two competing for the top spot on the charts are "I Love Ice Cream, I Love Rainbows" and "French Toast from the West Coast.”


*Today was the first day back for a student who had been sick for awhile. He's not the most motivated learner and has some other challenges that get in his way. The first thing he did when he walked in to class was ask me for the homework he had missed, because he wanted to keep up. It's nice to see when sometimes the management ideas you struggle to think up actually work.


WINTER
*A girl greets me with this existential crisis first thing in the morning: "I feel...I don't know what I feel.”


*"I think it's my sister's birthday this weekend."
"How do you not know when your sister's birthday is?" I ask.
He shrugs and says, as if it explains everything, "She's older.”


*I told the kids we'd have desk cleaning on Friday.
"Good," one boy said. "My desk is so messy it looks like someone pooped in it.”


*A kid was vigorously washing his hands when I said, "Hey, calm down! You're going to splash soap all over my bulletin board!"
His friend asked, "Where? What bulletin board?"
"That big blue thing on the wall," I said.
"That is not a bulletin board!" he said.
"That is exactly a bulletin board," I replied.
"How can it be?" he asked. "It's not even made out of bullets!”


*This conversation today, with one of my girls: 
Her: "I have a question for you." 
Me: "Okay, great. What is it?" 
Her: "First: I love your shoes.”


*"I have an idea. It's an experiment with magnets we could do at school, but probably not, because it would have a high budget and it'd be dangerous.”


*Overheard by Mrs. Polston as my class walked into the media center: "It smells good in here. It smells like paper and dignity.”


*"My taco said her name was Stella. Then she said I couldn't eat her. But I did anyway.”


*"That was a horrible noise I just made.”


*Never trust a kid who says "Smell this.”


*As we always do on the first morning of the school week, we took time for the kids to share what they did over the weekend. One boy's response: "I ate a ton of pickles.”


SPRING
*"Have you heard of an old band called The Peach Boys?"


*This serves as a perfect example of the extraordinarily positive tone in my homeroom class. We found out at the end of the day we'll be having a new student joining us. One boy asked me at dismissal when his first day would be.
"He starts on Monday," I said.
The boy turns to walk away and fist pumps. "Yes!" he says to himself, with genuine excitement. "A new friend to have!"


*When the custodian walks out of your classroom and says, "Sixteen years, and I've never seen anyone throw up that much.


*I told the afternoon class that their book cover entries had been posted online and people had already started voting on them.
One girl got very excited. "People are voting on them?" she asked. "REAL people??!"
One deadpan little boy responded, "No. They aren't real people. They're made out of Play-Doh."


*We watched a short video featuring a geologist melting samples of rocks. The narrator said how the oven went up to 1700 degrees Celsius. One girl heard this and said, "Well, that'll burn your popcorn."


*"Clowns are scary." 
"No they aren't. Clowns are pointless.”


*We had a fire drill this afternoon. While waiting for the all clear, we saw a kindergartner wearing a paper crown of birthday candles run at top speed across the playground. One of my boys said with a complete deadpan tone: "Looks like someone has a birthday emergency."



*"I didn't kick him. I hit him with my foot."

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If you liked these, you might enjoy revisiting these links from the past: 

The Complete Listing of 3rd Grade Zen

The Compendium of 5th Grade Zen


Bring on summer break.