Teaching Life

Here's the thing.

I had every intention of continuing to update this regularly now that I've come back to it. But it's nine o'clock at night and it's the first time I have available to me to actually sit down and write anything out.

And really, I sat down in order to work, but I saw the link to the blog and thought I would say something instead.

I think that's why I just can't subscribe to the belief that to be a writer I have to sit down and write everyday. I want to sit down and write everyday, or otherwise work on my manuscript. I'd actually LOVE to sit down and revise every day. But most days I just can't.

I could let this get to me - but I won't. I have to take care of me, and sometimes "taking care of me" means allowing myself to step away to take care of my have-tos - grading and planning and facilitating - so that I'm better able to take on the want-tos.

And when it comes down to it, I'll be a better writer and editor and reviser - and TEACHER - when I allow myself to drop the ball sometimes. Because the ball is always there and ready for me to pick it back up.

I won't grow to resent the thing I love most - my writing - or the career that I truly believe is a calling - teaching.

And soon I'll have a rhythm to my schedule and it will be easier for me to carve out time for what really matters - me.

This is me! #PitchWars mentee bio

I'm a little in shock that it's been two years (and one month) since I've last written in my blog, but then again, I'm not. I stopped writing in this blog EXACTLY when I moved to Lake Havasu City and started teaching again.

Here's my new(ish) home:




(Photo credit: http://retiremaxcdn.retirethere.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/arizona-lake-havasu.jpg)

I honestly don't believe it, either.

During the day I teach all of the high school Social Studies classes (World History, United States History, Government, and Economics) at a charter school. I'm my own department and collaborate really well with myself. Yes, I believe that teaching is as much a "calling" as it is a career. I love what I do even when it's difficult, and I live for the light that shines in my students when they make connections.

I just got the shivers - did you?

By night I write young adult novels, typically contemporary, but as a history teacher, you can bet I want to branch out into historical as well. Here is my WIP Wish List:

• Historical set during the Glorious Revolution 
• Historical set during the Salem Witch Trials
• Historical set at the Buffalo Exposition (where President McKinley was shot)
• Contemporary marching band rock opera
• Sequel to Prom, my debut novel

I graduated from high school some time during the 21st century and went to Arizona State University where I majored in Broadcasting. I was a member of the Arizona State University Sun Devil Marching Band in the Auxiliary (flag line) for one year, but a mistake in my original construction caused me to quit after that first year. I worked at Borders Books, Music, and Cafe (light a candle) while earning my degree and then put my broadcasting skills to good use making closing announcements on Friday nights as the Merchandising Supervisor at my store.

I also volunteered as a teen crisis counselor while earning my degree, and then took a part time supervisor job there, where I worked until I started teaching in 2009. I miss it every day.

After a year I left to work as an assistant at the Office of the Governor for a year, and then a communications staffer for another year. To that end I've been published many times, but never under my own name, as I wrote on behalf of my boss.

I left the Office of the Governor to go grad school and earn a Master of Education, Secondary Education Curriculum and Instruction - or in layman's terms, I went to teacher school. I graduated in 2009 and taught for less than a year, and then threw in the towel in the hopes my students would be willing to learn something by anybody who wasn't me. I worked at a university for three and a half years as an academic counselor and earned a Bachelor of Arts in History in the process.

Miraculously, in 2013 I was offered a teaching job for the 2013-2014 school year, months before all of my paperwork expired. I moved to Havasu from Phoenix and never looked back. (I look back sometimes - those memories are often the foundation of my writing, and my teaching failures and successes remind me of the importance of perseverence.)

Here is a list of things I love, because this bio is getting to be way too long:

• My cats, Pippin and Lucy
• My family
• My Ryan Adams Pandora playlist
• Once Upon a Time
• LOST
• Sarah Ockler, Morgan Matson, and Jessi Kirby (their writing and their friendship)
• Arizona State University and the Sun Devils
• Arizona sports (even you, Rattlers and Mercury!)

My goal is to write here more often, if for no other reason to continue to review the books I'm reading when I'm finished reading them. And I may just document the process of writing the next WIP and (hopefully) querying/agenting/revising/selling Prom.

If my life were like a novel...

I'd meet the man of my dreams while eating this sandwich. Every time I take a bite I get all this goop all over my face. It sends fitting and not at all outside of the realm of my existence.

I'm Not Actually Writing...

... but I felt compelled to check in anyway. I've been doing a ton of reading late late late into the night so I can walk around like a bleary-eyed monster during the day. I've been taking an online economics course that fiiiiiiiinally finished on July 3. YESTERDAY WAS MY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!! (This is why my reading was limited to late late late into the night.) And I've been looking for a place to live, as I start a new job in three weeks and I still have no place to live. :[

If I've read once, I've read a gabillion times that writers need to write, and we need to make time to write, and so-and-so wrote her first novel by getting up at 3am and writing for two hours straight while, I'm assuming, she was hooked up to an IV of coffee and meth. I'm assuming it's in my genes to feel guilty about things I'm not doing, like getting up at 3am to write for two hours before I trudge off to work or for not setting aside my econ homework after two hours in order to read notes for an hour.

The thing is, the more I feel guilty about it, the less likely I am to come back to it, because I'm going to hide from whatever it is that's making me feel guilty. So instead I'm facing my guilt and my writing head on and I'm saying that I need to focus on finding a place to live, because my book will either be published or it won't... but whether I get up in the morning hours after I've turned off the light or not, it will be published or it won't.

So I can either make myself feel like crap about it, or I can focus on things I need to focus on and stay out of the bubbling cauldron of self-loathing that is typically created by all that guilt.

I've made my choice, and I'm sticking with it.

Book Rec: Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

So last week I went to Changing Hands Bookstore for the Summer Lovin' 2013 book tour primarily so I could hear Suzanne Young talk about her amaze-balls novel "The Program." But she's a super awesome local teacher here and wasn't able to go, so I was forced to hear other amazing authors talk instead. Of the bevy of books I purchased while I was there, the first I opted to read (to be honest, the one I picked up without hearing anybody talk about it), was Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson.

In the book, Amy's been left home alone for a month in California while her mother moved to Connecticut to start a new life and her brother went to North Carolina for some *ahem* academic enrichment. While alone Amy finished the last month of her junior year, starred in one last school musical, and turned into the veal that Sandra Bullock was afraid of becoming in While You Were Sleeping. Amy's mom decides she needs the car that was left in California, and enlists her friend's college-age son Roger to drive the car and Amy across the country, in the kind of naive mistake we all wish our moms had made when we were 17. As the title suggests, Amy and Roger have an epic detour on their journey that sends Amy's mom into a fury, Roger's ex-girlfriend into a tizzy, and Amy into situations she wasn't ready to face. Also, the detour sent them on a food journey that should be recreated as a special on the Travel Network, which I would totally watch.

Matson did an amazing job toeing the line of pathetic, but not too pathetic with her characterization of Amy. She's sad, and she's angry. She's lonely, but she doesn't want to deal with people either. She's pretty, and she used to know it, but now she doesn't feel pretty, so she's not pretty anymore. Matson could also teach workshops on the slow build and slower reveal of a trauma. I'm sure I'll return again and again to this book for personal enjoyment and for a reminder on how to Do It Right.

Also, as I wrote about Amy, I thought of my favorite Jessica Riddle song, Indifference.

I promised myself I'd read a few of the other books I picked up at the Summer Lovin' Tour, before buzzing through my other Matson purchase right away, so I won't be reading Second Chance Summer right away. But I'm excited to read it, and I'm excited to read whatever Matson has next up her sleeves.

GO NOW. Read this book. Kindle link. Nook link. He's so zazzy.

Book Rec: The Program

I actually finished The Program almost a week ago. It was released on April 30 and I devoured it in two sittings. Well, layings. Whatever. It's taken me this long to find it in me to talk about it, and I'm still not sure if I can do the novel justice. To be perfectly honest, I've had this window open for over an hour, and I just keep struggling to find the right words to use to talk about it. With my friends I can just shove my hands in their faces and say "read it" a lot and that works.

This is a little trickier...

In Suzanne Young's novel, suicide is the epidemic and The Program is the solution. The Program takes place in an Oregon school district where The Program is being used as a pilot to combat the teen suicide epidemic that is spreading all over the nation and all over the world. We follow Sloane as she navigates an increasingly dangerous high school landscape doing what she can to stay home with her friends and family. But will she be able to hold on until she turns 18 and can refuse to go into The Program?

To make a long story short, The Program punched me right in the feels. As someone who has struggled with depression all her life, I found the characters real and their world devastating. I'm pretty sure at one point I fell asleep reading it, because I couldn't put it down to go to bed. A week later I'm still haunted by the  characters, their story, and the damned epilogue that kicked me in the face while my feels were still hurting. .

Do yourself a favor and read this one if you can. Obvious triggers for suicide, depression, self-injury, and the like, so it's not a book that everybody's going to be able to get through... But if you can, you should. If you've never this type of crippling depression, read it so you can get a better understanding of it. If you have suffered, read it as a reminder that you are not alone.

BUY THIS BOOK. 

Here's the trailer, which I pulled form Suzanne's blog and is also found on Youtube.

Inspiration

I was watching the PBS presentation of Les Miserables (and sobbing my eyes out) today and it occurred to me that I may have gotten my obsession with revolutions from that musical. Hear me out! What's my favorite moment (after every single Eponine moment)? "Do You Hear the People Sing" and how they're all RAWR let's go make a revolution! Since then I've enjoyed learning about revolutions and people changing governments. Which inspires my current manuscript and my reading choices. It's not so much the idea of a dystopia or utopia or anything else - it's the fascinating idea that there's a way to say, "Things are wrong, let's change them." And I'd rather read about it in fiction than know that people are getting hurt fighting that same battle. (I'm looking at you, Syria.)

Anyway, that reminded me that I haven't written in the blog for a little while, which also maybe slowed down because I haven't been as inspired to write in general as I had been. But not writing here felt a little like hiding - since I hadn't been working vigorously on any particular works in progress, I should somehow not bring myself around here to say anything.

But after watching today's performance (I wish I had found it on youtube!), I at least want to get back to writing some more. Or maybe it was just watching Eponine singing again. Who knows?