Lazyteacher

Can you handle the Trollope? I don’ think you can.

I’ve blogged for awhile but for the most part the only audience I cultivated was under-18. And they were compelled by the State of Washington to read my musings because I cleverly mixed them in with stuff like what the homework was or how to figure out the difference between a simile and a metaphor. This is my first foray into blogging for an audience who isn’t forced upon pain of a future digging ditches to read my work.

Which means I’ll probably have a small audience.

Still, this does give me the chance to write out some of my thoughts and impressions as I begin work on my novel. Like any other cliche’s English teacher, I’ve always thought I had a book or 7 in me and this summer I have a goal to get 200 pages into my first draft. I read a story about Trollope where he describes getting down his “alotted number of pages” even when he’s throwing up in his cabin on a sea voyage to France. Of course, Trollope says that he gets

The average number has been about 40. It has been placed as low as 20, and has risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went.

Yikes. I–not being a real man like Trollope–have settled on 3, 3 pages a day, unless I’m working out. And it’s working. I’ve got 18 pages and I’m trying not to think so much if they’re any good or if I’ll publish them or if I’ll die of embarrassment if someone reads them. The process of writing has reminded me how anxious writing can make you. Before I start writing, I’m fidgeting and getting shaky hands. Once I start, I’m fine; I hit the zone pretty fast. But afterwards the most common feeling is not “I’m proud of myself” but “dang, am I glad I finished that.”

Simultaneously, I’ve been watching Konrad Glogowski’s presentation on blogging and thinking about how he emphasizes the fact that teachers need to engage in some of the same assignments students work on. My AP rhetoric students constantly bugged me to show them writing. I demurred. Next year, I hope to show them some of the novel (bowlderized perhaps) and choose a few of the lessons to have students assign me. For instance, I always have students write My Turn like essays in Essay Fundamentals; it might work to have them assign me something, give them some choices and have a vote and then publish along with them. Scary for me; hopefully, empowering for them.

This is something I think the Google is making us stupid article misses. It imagines that the Internet is only of use a content inhalation device. When it’s good, the Internets gets us talking to others.

Image Credit: Harper’s Anthony Trollope