"I'm a Driver, I'm a Winner...

Things are gonna change, I can feel it." These words from Beck (1993) kind of some up the last month or so for me. With all the craziness in my overstressed life, I often feel like a loser because I'm not catching up too quickly. That being said, I'm not going to throw myself in front of a bus or anything drastic like that. I'll just keep plodding along. And one day, I'll catch up.

To exemplify my losership, I attempted the NaNoWriMo challenge at the outset of the month. It started out fairly well. However, life and lots and lots of research reading and writing got in the way. I only wrote 10,911 words out of the 50,000 required. What a loser! That's only an average of 364 words per day. That's just over one page per day. What a schmuck! Right? Of course not.

Here's how I'm still a winner: If I calculate everything that I have written for my novel and my doctoral work, I estimated this morning that I'm up to about 38,000 words. If I consider everything else I have written in the course of my 1 1/2 jobs, I take it up to 49,000. If you count my blogs, FB, email, and other correspondence, any any other garbage I may have scribbled over the past month, I beat the 50,000 word count quite a while ago.

Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner Point #2: If I could have written instead have read over 1000 pages of research in the past four weeks, I believe I could have easily made my daily word count. On the two days when I actually had the time available to work on my novel, I achieved my goals quite handily.

So, you see, no soy un perdedor, Beck. I've actually accomplished quite a few impressive things this month. I've just taken to heart the advice of John Perry's article: "How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done." I might adopt this as my mantra. Not really, but it's fun to think about.

And believe me, this novel will be finished this school year. I'm going to try it again next semester when I'm only taking one class and will have a student teacher. "And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite, who's chokin' on the splinters."

Yep. I'm a Slacker...Sort Of.

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything on here, but it's also been a long time since anyone read this either, so nanny-nanny-boo-boo! No one even tried writing a zombie haiku for me. That's okay. The contest here had much higher quality than the year before even though not quite as many students participated. Maybe they were too bust fleeing from the undead hordes to stop and encapsulate their experiences in seventeen syllables.

Lately, I have also been "writing" research papers.

Enough said about that. The project that I am currently enjoying and stressing over and falling behind in is my first ever attempt at the NaNoWriMo challenge. I'm trying to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I'm having my 9th graders honors classes do it as well, although I let them set their own goals. I must say that for the most part I have been impressed with this group. Nobody transferred out. Then again, I kind of broadsided them with the project only a few weeks before we actually started the typing.

Anyway, if any of you have any suggestions for complicating a sixteen-year-old boy's high school social life, I'd love to hear from you.

So, there. That's why I haven't posted lately. I'm a slacker.

P.S. I also didn't celebrate the National Day on Writing. Some idiot thought it was a good idea to have Fall Break on that day. So happy belated Day on Writing. You should all go celebrate or join me in my NaNoWriMo endeavor.