"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.

Zombies Reborn!

For our wordplay activity today, I introduced zombie haiku. I also figured that I hadn't posted anything for a while. Happy October!

chewing with your mouth

open will reveal someone

else’s inner self

Zombie counts digits

for his haiku syllables

and ends up snacking

escaping zombies

requires keeping your head

quite literally

Hard Reading Lesson

I had an experience in sixth grade that I believe both helped and hindered my reading abilities and interests. I had an amazing teacher; her name was Mrs. Saiki, and I had her for both social studies and reading. She was a short, loud Hawaiian, who loved to express her opinion. Her voice was mesmerizing to the point that she could get a slug excited about taking a salt shower, and she did that for me in social studies, awakening a sense of wonder for world civilizations and mythology. She was the one who taught me how to research and how to write my name in hieroglyphics. She was the one who exposed me to a shelf in the library that I had never dared to explore before: the award winners.

Granted, no right-minded ten year old boy would ever go to that shelf and self-select a book. Now this was in the mid-eighties, and all the award-winners up to that point (at least in my experience) involved mushy relationship stuff, death and sadness stuff, or even worse—both stuff. But Mrs. Saiki made us read Newberys and leaf through Caldecotts all year long, different ones each week, no repeats aloud. So I had to say goodbye to my classic monster movie and animal nonfiction picks. No more comic books or miscellaneous sports trivia that had been the clutter on my bedroom dresser. I had to read (and be tested on) books that were “good for me.” And because of that, and for the next few years, reading was not fun any more. It was more like taking vitamins or eating my spinach—good for me, but not something I looked forward to.

Sure, I gained new insights and knowledge and my eyes were opened to a different perspective on the world, but from that point until perhaps about tenth grade, reading in school became a chore. In fact, I only recall two books with John Newbery stickers that were thrust upon me that year that I even remember the basic story line: John Fleischman’s The Whipping Boy, that year’s winner (1987), which Mrs. Saiki read aloud to us, and The High King, which was the first book I stayed up all night to read, but that’s a different story; not to mention the fact that it wasn’t on the list of ones approved to read, Plus I didn’t find it at the school library.

Perhaps that heinous reading task planted a seed in me because to this date I have read most of the winners and honor books since that point in my life. In fact, I have searched them out since I graduated from college to unearth the ones I missed. And believe it or not, I find more and more gems. True, they are still not my favorites on the whole, but they still have value, and perhaps that’s what Mrs. Saiki was trying to teach us. They get a sticker for a reason, and it’s not always because the dog kicks the bucket. I see the connection between them and other classics I was forced to trudge through in high school and college courses. Human nature, interpersonal relationships, changing perspectives, making connections, growing up—they’re all important in the grand scheme of things, but they’re not always the most exciting. And such is life.

This year, I required my soon-to-be honors 9^th graders read five classics from a list of 116 over the summer. When school resumed we had several class discussions in which we did not discuss the books themselves, but rather questioned the value of reading and studying the classics. What is a classic? Who determines which books achieve classic status? We listed pros and cons of delving into their pages. Students brainstormed characteristics of the titles they were supposed to have read. And as our lists expanded then became more refined, I had them write me a persuasive paper about whether or not students should study classics in school. They also have to propose a “new” classic and defend their reasoning. The papers are due next Friday, and I’m intrigued to see if these students have more insight to life than I did as a sixth grader. And whether or not my mind was possessed by a short little Hawaiian woman for a year is yet to be determined. I hope so; because somebody needs to give this world more hope and promise than I ever could. Sometimes you have to wade through a few years of turmoil and trudge through the ash and darkness (Thank you, Mr. McCarthy.) in order to see the true light that lies within the connection between the pages and your miniscule place in the universe.

More Alliteration Fun

I've decide that every other Friday my class will play with words. It's a designated playtime in junior high. Some might argue against my logic, but if you want the proof, come to one of my presentations or ask me for the research.

Anyway, this past week we played with alliteration. Here are the off-the-cuff one-liner examples I did 6th period:

Barney burst the bratty baby’s balloon.

Baby’s big brother brained Barney with a baseball bat.

Bob bought baked bagel bites.

Bitter badgers bothered both Betty and Bubba.

Behave, or Buster the behemoth bulldog will bite your butt.

Bill barfed big bits of black and blue bologna and bacon.

And here is a quick five-minute thrown-together paragraph example:

Hefting his hairy heinie onto a heap of Hostess Ho-Hos, Harvey the humongous hamster hungrily helped himself. Hellbent on hoarding heaps for the hereafter, he hesitated for half a headshake before hurriedly hurling himself heavenward, hoping he’d helicopter higher. However, he high-dived and hit the hearth headfirst. Hungover, he could not halt the hacking and hawking of half the Ho-hos, hairballs and all.

This alliteration has been brought to you by the letter H and by my 20-sided letter die from Scattergories.

I'd like to see what you can do. Post an alliterative one-liner or two...or a whole paragraph if you feel so inclined.

Saving Face

Okay, so I'm really only writing this blog post to save a little face. I haven't posted anything of substance for quite a while. You who question if I have ever posted anything of substance might not be too far off. Just duck when I throw something blunt and heavy at your laughing mug.

Life is passing at warp speed, and I feel like I'm just trying to hold onto the starship by means of a tow cable. Re-entry might cause complete burnout, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Another semester of my Ed.D. has begun, I'm teaching 4 preps, 3 kids are in soccer (and I got suckered into coaching a sport I don't know much about--yes, again), I continue my second job as an independent study grader, I'm trying to wake up early to lose some flab, and list goes on. But I still don't think I'd trade what I have for anything else, even if it included a Baconator or two. For more about my weight-loss battle, check out my other blog: Fatty's Blubber Blog, which is long overdue for a story or two.

Come to think of it, there are about 6.8 bazillion topics that are overdue for me to write about. Anybody wanna give me a prompt or an idea that will kick me off again? Or do I stick with the Dickinson parodies I started (but never went past the second one)?

I do actually have an idea to write about, but I want to save it for NaNoWriMo. I'm going to attempt it with my 9th graders. It scares the pee pee out of me, but I'm plunging in anyway. I'm looking for something quick and easy to keep the rust from building up. Writing papers and student handouts isn't really doing it for me.

Now that I've rambled, and secured a second post for this month, I'll shut up so you can hear the crickets in my mind. (The hamster is on strike.)

I'm NOT Writing about Vacation!

So you’d think that now that I am done with this (endless) summer semester, and now that I am free from grading papers for two weeks, that I’d actually have time to write something exciting or half-way interesting on my blog. Well, looks like we were both wrong.

You get stuck with me not writing about burning my leg on a motorcycle. This is also me not writing in detail about capsizing on a trip down the Provo River with my friend, who I hadn’t caused trouble with for many, many years. My solitary drives up the local canyons will stay trapped foe my five senses only. I’m also not going to chronicle watching RSL destroy San Jose or the road trip to Atlanta with Zac, my father-in-law, and my brother-in-law to sit through a rain delay only to end up losing to the Pirates. Nor am I going to complain about how much the World of Coca-Cola tour cost. And forget about me sharing the several trips to the beach with the family. It’s just not going to happen.

I have to save some material for when I write with my students in less than three weeks. Holy crap. There will not be any adequate pacing or zooming in on details or revision, or anything of the “what good writers do” practices until later. Maybe I’ll do another Dark Emily installation later. Any requests?