...and it hasn't closed any roads in our town yet again. (Emphasis on "yet.")
So I am in transition once more. Between semesters, though I never really know how to answer the question: "Are you done with your semester?" The answer is yes...and no.
I am currently writing my 15 to 20 page paper on my teaching practicum, which is due when I attend residency at the end of the month. Along with that I will also include a number of samples including lesson plans, syllabus, proof that I actually taught Advanced Feature Length Scriptwriting this semester, a letter from an observer--a fly on the wall who was not only kind enough to visit my class for an hour early in the semester, but to also compliment my teaching abilities, oh, and there are the numerous samples of student work to include (wouldn't you students from my class like to know whose work I am featuring!).
And I am also supposedly rewriting my outline for my feature spec script. Those of you who know me well know that I do not believe in Writer's Block, and actually I haven't been suffering from that. More like Writer's Exhaustion. And yet the more days I go without writing creatively the more like the weather I become...dark and overcast. (My family physician says I am melodramatic; perhaps he has a point...but hey, I'm a writer!)
But those of you who also know the personal chaos that has been going on in my life know that I have been struggling to keep it all together. One chapter just ended this past Wednesday. The book won't conclude until the end of the year, but at least we successfully scaled the latest hurdle. (Those of you who are confused by my code speak...I'm not actually doing it to confuse or annoy you, it's just to protect all the parties involved.)
Anyway, that has led to a rejuvenation in my writing, which yesterday led me to complete all my notes for my paper and today helped me pen ten pages. Yahoo! Plus, I am excited to feel rejuvenated and ready to dive back into my creative work tomorrow morning. Onward and upward.
I still have a few other projects: a new client sent me a script that I will dive into this weekend; my nonfiction book proposal is almost complete and I will first send it to my summer intern for editing and then to my agent for submission; I am still in the running to be a writer for a new TV series that looks like it may be greenlit soon; my intern and I are copy editing the 13-episodes of the TV pilot that we wrote together as a class about a year ago and getting ready to pitch it to...well, that will be revealed if they pick it up; and, well, there are a few other hundred things I'm working on because that's just what I do, I guess. I've always done that--worked like crazy--only now it seems like I feel a stronger urgency. I hope that's not my age showing through, but I have a strong feeling that's what's driving me lately. Ah well, we can't all be 23 forever now can we? (Can we?!)
Okay, the pasta buzzer just sounded, meaning my mom dinner duties are kicking into high gear. I'll be back. Probably "reporting" from my next grad school residency.
Thanks for stopping by! Stay dry. Well, on the outside anyway.
Cheers,
Dana
2 comments:
Sounds like a lot on the plate! I haven't been getting as much done in the fiction writing realm as I'd like either. Not writer's block, for sure, but time block. By which I mean, every last little square of time in a day seems blocked out -- from the about 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. I wrote more before I had a career and kids. But I found that a lot of that time I used to write (after work time) is now occupied by the kids. And I'm sort of coming to terms with that. Given the choice between being a good writer or a good father, I'll take good father. There will be time to write when the kids are older, and hopefully this forming of young minds and hearts is as creative a job as writing novels. All that said, I'm still looking for time to carve out for writing... and I feel just as you do, that when too many days go buy without doing it, my mood is affected...
Yes, I say continue with the good father route. It's amazing how fast their childhood flits by. Plenty of time to write when they're onto other things in their teen and young adult years.
When mine were that young I wrote stories for them, usually inspired by my kids. It was a good marriage of my need to write and their need to be entertained and have my full attention. They still love it when, after they utter something incredibly clever, I scribble down the line for future use.
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