that old-time feeling

NaNoWriMo, ,
20161105_205148
(please ignore this shoddy attempt to muffle its very loud chime with a dishtowel)

My husband just inherited a clock with Westminster chimes that used to belong to his grandparents. It’s now sitting on top of what our toddler son calls “the No-No,” aka a barrister cabinet.

Listening to the chimes every fifteen minutes is reminding me that my grandparents, too, had a (grandfather) clock with Westminster chimes; I had sort of forgotten about it until I heard this clock chime when I got home. When it went off, I got a very visceral wave of nostalgia.

aka Barrister Cabinet
Atop the No-No

People talk a lot about how evocative smells are–and I find that to be true, although I have a pretty terrible sense of smell (an asset for a high school teacher; high schoolers, as a group, do not smell great).

But the chimes got me thinking about memory in general (mine is terrible and so I rely on looking back at journals to remind me about stuff) and that sent me over to LiveJournal to peer back in time at me-from-the-past.  Continue reading that old-time feeling →

Words on Words on Words

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So, having spent the requisite half-hour noodling around with web design (I have definitely not kept up with advances in coding since the late 90s/early 2000s, y’all), I am now ready to stare blankly at a “New Post” window for a while before I knock out today’s blog post.

I happened to be putting around on Twitter earlier and saw some tweets from Cleolinda Jones,  which took me waaaay back. I read her LiveJournal (remember LIVEJOURNAL??) obsessively in college and just loved her writing.  In fact, that got me to thinking about how much I love recaps, because I actually… follow a lot of recappers pop-culture analysis blogs.

Continue reading Words on Words on Words →

Brevity is the Soul of Wit

American Lit, NaNoWriMo, teaching, ,

So, as I consider the specter of 50k words–and read blog posts about NaNo and beta the revised version of my friend Stephanie‘s novel that started off as a NaNo–it’s easy to get very excited. But it’s also easy to get scared – I mean, 50,000. Fifty. Thousand.

That’s… a lot of words.

And I’m not usually scared of words – I was that kid who tried to fudge my 3-5 page papers onto just five pages, not to get them up to three!

From 2014-2015, I wrote 150,000 words with a partner over the course of about a year and a half for a novel that didn’t even really have a clear plot yet.

So, clearly, generating words isn’t my problem. And, sadly, word count isn’t the end-all and the be-all of quality.

I’m reading a great example of this right now:

nat-turner-cover

Using hardly any words at all, artist Kyle Baker portrays Nat Turner‘s life and rebellion. When he does use words, he is often quoting from Nat Turner’s own confession, given in 1831 from his jail cell as he awaited execution.

natturnerinside

I’m only about halfway through; it’s both easy and incredibly difficult to read. Oh, it’s quick and easy to understand; but the things it shows are things that, as a human, I would really rather not know about.

Which is why more people really ought to read it.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund offers information for people interested in teaching the book. (LIKE ME!)

NaNoOHNO

my writing, NaNoWriMo, , , ,

failboat2So, it’s that time of year again…

The time where I debate whether or not to fail at NaNoWriMo yet again.

Don’t get me wrong–I love a good tradition! And I’ve been failing NaNo for, like, fifteen years now.

Some years I’ve even failed it professionally (they have a program where teachers can do it with students… Yeah, we all failed). I have buttons.

And remember that one time that I got a huge grant to write a manuscript in three months? “It can’t be that hard,” I said to myself. “Tons of people write a novel in a month.”

(The part where I had a baby right at the beginning of the three months did throw a pretty serious monkey wrench into that plan. And I wrote more than zero words, which puts me ahead of many years’ NaNo efforts…)

According to the NaNo website, my lifetime total is 8,729 words. So, this year–despite the toddler, the full-time (plus) job, the general chaos of life when one is, like me, terrible at saying no to things…

I’m doing it.

Not for the 50,000 words, or the winner badge (because, let’s face it, I am… not optimistic it can be done during this season of my life). But for the practice.

I’m going to write something, anything, every day this month. 

Please feel free to harass me via Twitter: @larkinplarkin

Here’s today’s effort. Wish me luck tomorrow…!

New Year, New Schedule… New Mistakes to Make!

teaching, Uncategorized, , , ,
COME ON
It’s possible that I am my own Iago

So, I’m back to school, and we’re on a new schedule (woo) and I’ve got new students (woooo) and I almost made it into the year with no new classes, but then a bunch of the nerdy kids were sad there was no AP Literature & Composition this year so… AP Lit & Comp club?? (Seven kids have expressed interest. This may well be the Best Club Ever.)

That got me thinking, of course, about all the

amazing classics we’d get to read once I put together a reading list.

Continue reading New Year, New Schedule… New Mistakes to Make! →

Blast from the Past

characterization, cowriting, Lilly grant, my writing, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Well, while The Baby is napping, and C’s off feeding a friend’s cats and picking up his brother’s dog, I thought I’d try to pop up a quick entry. I’m working on finishing up my grant report for the Teacher Creativity Grant that led to the creation of this blog (fellow educators, GO APPLY!) and will post that shortly. I’ve also been doing some literary archaeology and re-reading the big, sprawling, terrifying novel draft that I was working on with a friend for several years (but no updates since… yikes, January 2015!).  Continue reading Blast from the Past →

Long Time No See

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Well, I fell off the blogging wagon a bit, because, as T. S. Eliot tells us, “April is the cruelest month,” and also May sucks too when you’re a teacher.

I’ve mostly just been grading and grading and grading, but it’s not all bad.

I’ve also been reading blogs (like Janet Reid’s and Jenny Crusie’s) and just basking in all of the information they present. Crusie’s especially has had lots of good stuff about writing technique. Have I plugged her Writing/Romance blog here yet? It’s great, even if you don’t write romance.

And I’ve been reading ebooks from the library on my phone! I’m almost through Sarah Rees Brennan’s Lynburn Legacy trilogy, which I’m enjoying quite a bit (not as much as The Demon’s Lexicon trilogy, but quite a bit nonetheless). Brennan describes it as “a romantic gothic mystery about a girl named Kami Glass, who discovers her imaginary friend is a real boy.” What a gorgeous elevator pitch! Obviously the book’s about more than that–and I’m on to book three by now–but it’s amazing how compactly she manages to describe it.

OK, I have to get back to the grading now… or possibly just back to reading ebooks on my phone while I pretend to grade…

Imitation and Inspiration

American Lit, cowriting, fanfic, imitation exercises, Lilly grant, Poetry, teaching, writing exercises, , , , , ,

spoon river anthologyLast week in American Literature we did one of my favorite projects–unearthed from the vault, so to speak–based on Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. It’s a collection of poems, each written from the point of view of a former resident (now deceased) of Spoon River. The poems are intertwined, revealing the connections between the lives of the Spoon River-ers, showing town life from various angles.

What could be more fun, for a roomful of high school students, than to imitate that?  Continue reading Imitation and Inspiration →

All You Need Is Love

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The Kid, with his first Valentine ever (thanks, Mema!).

Last weekend, my husband and I hosted our annual Valentine’s Day party. This was the first year when my darling son could attend (him being currently nine months old) and even though he went to bed before the party had hit its apex, I think it’s safe to say everybody had a good time.

I started throwing these parties as small dinner parties the year we had my “fake kid” living with us, because I wanted to do some family-style activities and she had recently been through a breakup. My parents had always made sure to celebrate Valentine’s Day as a day about everyone you love–not just romantic partners–and even after I graduated from college I would occasionally get a package of conversation hearts in the mail from them.  Continue reading All You Need Is Love →