How to write and manage a full-time job: 5 ways to finish your book.

Let’s face it; unless you’re in the upper echelons of the writing business, you’re quickly discovering that writing won’t make you rich. I’m a full time math teacher in Nashville. I learned early on that writers, by and large, are one of the few professions that make less than teachers. So, until you become the next J. K. Rowling or James Patterson, you’ll need to manage your writing efforts in conjunction with your day gig. Here are some steps on how to do that.

1. Never ever, ever leave the house without a way to record your ideas. Inspiration for a new book, a change to a scene, or even a character’s distinguishing feature strikes at the most inopportune time. Keep pen and paper, or a voice recorder, your smartphone, something with you at all times.
2. Take advantage of small moments. Let’s be realistic. If you work a full-time job and have any kind of life, sometimes small moments are all you’re going to get out of a day. If you’re in the doctor’s office (okay, that may be a large moment), or waiting for your kid to finish his/her oboe lesson, or chilling during halftime of your NFL team’s latest victory, you have time to write. Remember: It’s like eating an elephant. Case in point: I’m writing this in the lobby of the high school where my son is trying out for the mid-state orchestra.
3. If you can’t give it your best, then give it what you can. There are a lot of days I feel like I’ve left it all in the classroom and I’m totally convinced that anything I write will be worthless. So why bother? Because it’s not worthless. Granted, it may not be Leo Tolstoy. Heck, it may not even be Leonard Nimoy, but it will have value and there will be something in there you can use. And if not, hey, you know what not to write next time. Nothing is ever wasted.
4. Train your mind to think like a writer. If you want to write, you have to adopt the Sherlock Holmes credo of life: notice everything. I write epic fantasy which requires a lot of world-building, but even within the freedom that offers, I still have to find new ways of describing things we’ve all seen and read about before. The next time you’re at a meeting (teachers have lots of meetings) or function that’s more of a requirement than a joy, take time out to observe, really observe, the people there. Then play my favorite game: take a photograph in your head of what you’re seeing and try to put it into words so that we see what you see.
5. Make writing a priority. I’ve wasted more time on a momentary game of spider solitaire than I care to admit or remember. Thirty minutes for me is the equivalent of three hundred words or more. If that’s all I could do in a day, I’d still have a full-length novel at the end of a year.

So do it. Set your mind to writing. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

I’m a Ramblin’ Wreck…

I’m a Ramblin’ Wreck…

In 1982 an intramural team from Towers Dormitory, a collection of individuals not sought after by the more powerful Independent or Fraternity teams managed to win the Flag Football Championship at Georgia Tech. They went on to compete in the National flag Football Championship held that year at New Orleans University.

30 years later…

I’m in a nice upscale sports bar with my teammates courtesy of our team captain, Marcus Lewis. We’re hanging out for an extended time and covering every topic under the sun. “So whaddya been up to for the last 30 years?” The subject turns, as it must to our academic experience at Georgia Tech. This is a sore subject for me because it’s one that hits me in one of my biggest character flaws, grudges.

Georgia Tech kicked my academic butt for five years. It never let up, it never slowed down and to be honest, after a while I started to feel a little persecuted. Stories abound: I made an 80 on a calculus test and was informed that was a ‘D.’ I show up for a TA session in Physics that’s supposed to last an hour and the TA shows up to tell me I should “meditate on these problems” and then leaves.

I’ll admit it – even after graduating, I felt a little bitter. It felt personal.

I shared some of this with my teammates that night and they just smile and nod. Marcus looks at me and says. “My professor for my senior project told me I was going to make a sh**** engineer.” Marcus is VP of a chemical engineering company, a very successful guy. As a matter of fact, all of my teammates are successful, and in a variety of ways – in their marriage, as husbands, and as fathers.

But Marcus says this and my individualized persecution complex got blown to pieces. It must have shown on my face because John Tight (offensive end, ran a cool flea-flicker play) says something to me that still resonates. I wish I had said it.

“Your unique experience is common to us all.”

I don’t have any teaching/writing wisdom to add to this. Yet. I just thought I’d pass this one on and let ya’ll think about it.

Hey John, is it okay if I use that line in a book?

Now, it feels real.

Finally. It happened.

I started this journey a little over ten years ago when I began writing a YA series entitled “Not Quite Super.” I wrote three books on that series (it never sold). Toward the end of the last book I began writing a new series, older, much more serious, which eventually became “A Cast of Stones.” At one point I had written four chapters that I really liked and then stopped.

The story was fun, but I just couldn’t see to the end of it. It was like going out to dinner and eating a dish that was good, but knowing it could have been great if it just had one more, undefinable ingredient. But I didn’t have a clue what the ingredient was.

So I shelved it. Then I edited it. Then I threw it all away and started over.

In the fall of 2010 I took a couple of personal days of vacation from teaching and hitched a ride with Kaye Dacus and Kathy Harris (both excellent published authors) to Indianapolis to pitch my work. I had a lot of hope. While I was there, I had a lot of caffeine. Which would explain some of the strange looks I got during appointments with agents. I even stalked this one guy, Steve Laube, for a couple of hours in the hotel bar. He’s my agent now.

My road to publication started in earnest when I had my appointment with Dave Long of Bethany House. I  understand editors better now. But at the time, when I was pitching my baby, I thought he hated the idea. Then he surprised me by asking for the first three chapters. Now I realize how tough the editor’s job is. They go to conferences where a long line of emotionally overwrought, heavily caffeinated writers see them, hoping for affirmation. Wow. If they didn’t play it close to the vest, they would end up getting every writer excited only to have to dash their hopes later. Because we’re that amped and hopeful and angsty about our stuff.

I sent three chapters. Then I sent the full manuscript. And then I responded to concerns.

Then I got a contract in Aug. of 2011, almost a year after the first meeting.

But it still didn’t feel real. Even after all the phone calls and the contract and the edits that came later, I still felt like a school teacher pretending to be a writer. Until last week.

I’m not sure why this last set of edits became the turning point, but I think it might be because I had to read my book one more time and submit any last revisions. And it clicked. I smoothed out some of the voicing, caught a few grammatical bugs, and caught a couple of inconsistencies.

And it worked. At the end, I knew I was a writer – not just this wannabe guy.

A Cast of Stones will release in just a few months on Jan. 15th. Like most books that end up getting published, it was a long road.

It finally feels real, a little weird in some ways, but very real.

Cool.

It’s like the Little League World Series…

In about fifteen minutes the Little League World Series will have its final game for this year. Japan will take on a team from Goodlettesville, TN, a small town on the outskirts of Nashville. My connection to the game is through our school security officer, whose son plays on the team.

But the biggest part of this story for me has already been written despite the fact that the ultimate winner has yet to be decided. It was written yesterday in the tension-filled moments when Goodlettesville took a ten run lead into the bottom of the last inning only to have the team from Petaluma, CA come back and tie the game.

I believe sports can be an invaluable teacher. I’m saying that as a professional educator who dislikes the pre-eminent position sports have taken in our colleges and society. However, we can all relax because I’m going to save that particular rant for a day far in the future. Instead, I’m going to focus on what yesterday’s game taught me about myself and my writing.

Mary, MAW (my amazing wife), was watching the game with me. She sat by my side as the team from California ate its way through that ten run lead like waves obliterating a sand castle during high tide. When the team from Petaluma pulled within one run, I left. I simply could not take it anymore. My heart was pounding with and my blood was rushing with empathetic adrenaline and the team I was rooting for was about to do the unthinkable — blow a ten run lead in the bottom of the last inning.

So I went upstairs to get away from the TV set. What did I do?

I turned on my laptop. Then I opened my web browser. Then I went to the ESPN sight to check on the game.

As bad as it hurt, as much as I wanted to be free from that tension, that feeling of dying a thousand little deaths, I HAD to see how it ended.

You probably know the story. It’s been everywhere. The kids from Goodlettesville scored nine runs in the top of the first extra inning, held the Petaluma team to one run, and won the US Championship. Wow. How do you go from the emotional death of seeing sure victory slide inexorably toward defeat and then summon the courage and fortitude to keep trying?

You do it by being a hero.

The latest trend in SFF (Science Fiction/Fantasy) is one that I applaud, but at the same time makes me wary. The characters are no longer black and white, they are gray, complicated men and women. The best of them are deeply flawed and the worst of them contain motives and actions that are all too familiar to us.

But you need good guys. We need to be exhorted in our reading. We need men and women who, faced with the logical and easy choice of giving into despair and defeat, find a way to keep fighting and somehow wrest victory from and unforgiving day.

As writers our job is to evoke the emotions in our readers that a game played by 12 and 13 year old kids evoked in me yesterday. We need to make our readers so uncomfortable they have to put the book down…only to come back to it a moment later.

Because they simply can’t stay away.

As I work toward the final, climactic moment in my third and last book of The Staff and the Sword, I’m striving to create that emotional environment. Hopefully I’ll succeed, but even if I don’t, it won’t be because I didn’t know the emotional state I was striving to create in my reader. I saw that yesterday. I felt it.

12 and 13 year old heroes showed me the way.

Good luck today boys.

…with the end in mind

For three years now I’ve worked on the trilogy that’s come to be called “The Staff and the Sword.” I thought I had the ending in mind, but as the rest of the story unfolded, I came to realize that my planned ending just wasn’t going to work. So I wrote the first book and finalized it. It’s going to be released Feb. 1st of next year. Great. Then I wrote the second book last year. I just turned in the edits for that book a week or two ago. Also great.

For last few months I’ve been working on the last book of the trilogy. Not great. So so so so not great. Because my planned ending wouldn’t work. This is the kind of stuff that bothers me. I think it’s because as a relatively new writer I’m not very confident in my ability to be inspired on a deadline. The whole idea of being inspired on a schedule is oxymoronic to me, or maybe just moronic. For the past few weeks I’ve become concerned. I’m nearly halfway through the last book.

But then it happened. I think I was in the middle of shampoo, rinse, and repeat when the ending came to me. It might have been the conditioner, but at any rate, it came. The great thing about this is I still have time to tweak the first and second books before their release to make sure the story has the hints and foreshadowing correct. You see in writing, it’s the end that determines the beginning. The future writes the past.

And on reflection, my day gig of being a math teacher reflects that as well. The end for all of my students (I hope) is to absolutely conquer their end of course exams or final. That can’t happen without keeping the end in mind. A school year has a tendency to stretch interminably out into the future, but the truth is it’s a spring that’s over before you know it. One of my teaching partners, Ms. Sharon Smith, is a master of keeping the end in mind. She is absolutely dedicated to ensuring the schedule works so that our students are prepared and ready.

I’m really fortunate that my vocation and avocation support each other so well. I’d like to encourage you, whether you’re a student or a writer (or both), to begin with the end in mind. Einstein may not be on board, but the future determines the past.

Until next time.

React

It’s funny how difficult circumstances can reveal so much. Or maybe not so funny.

I found out today that my job is going to entail the implementation of a new policy. With a little time and distance, what I find most interesting about this is not the policy, but the various reactions from my colleagues. What’s great about this is that it can provide such a wealth of ideas when writing about conflict in a story.

So let me set the scene for you. Instead of something small, like a policy change, your character is placed in a situation where circumstances have become truly dire. The fate of the kingdom is at stake!

1. She’s given a task and at the same time, she’s constrained so that achieving the task is impossible. (Seriously, this is an entire book right here).
2. He’s asked to do something that goes against every moral principal he stands for, yet if he refuses, the evil baron still wins.
3. Your heroine, a spy, is asked to participate in a vast CIA sponsored cover up.

If you’re like me, you’ve already taken one or more of these ideas and your brain is weaving the plot of what happens next, then next after that, and so on. But let’s slow down for a minute. Because as fun as it is to give the horses of our plot their head and let them run away, we can give our work more depth by considering how our character might react. After today’s policy meeting I reacted with the passionate side of my brain.

That’s a nice way of saying I got really irritated. I was probably half a step away from being angry – maybe less than half a step. In that moment, I assumed everyone else would react the same way. It made perfect sense to me, but that’s not what happened (thankfully! or else I wouldn’t have much to write about now). Here’s a quick run down of the various reactions.

• Anger
• Discouragement followed by weary acceptance
• Shock followed almost immediately by strategizing
• Acceptance and peace
• Damage control

Now, take your set of characters, have them confronted with the same desperate circumstance and instead of having them react in uniform anger, despair, discouragement, etc., have them react differently. Mix their emotions like oil and water and let the conflict between protagonist and antagonist spill over into conflict between protagonists. They can’t understand each other’s reactions.

In the meantime (back in the real world), I’m going to take a page from my incredible colleagues. I’m going to peacefully strategize and come up with a way to succeed.

Until next time…

PWC

A bruised reed…

There are many times when teaching yields something so unexpected that I feel compelled to use it in my work as a novelist. Scenes within my books often don’t mirror life so much as copy it. Since I started teaching a little over five years ago, I’ve had the same scene with a student (or students) play out each year, with little  variation.

One of my favorite quotes is “A bruised reed I will not break and a smoldering candle I will not extinguish.” When I first came to teaching, I brought a perspective to it that reflected my own upbringing. I came from an intact family and though we had our share of tension in the house, I knew my parents loved me. I assumed (what a tragic word that can be!) that my students, these fun-loving rambunctious kids aged 12-16 had a similar experience. Like most assumptions this one was so far off-base that it wasn’t even in the same ballpark.

This last year the scene that repeats itself played out with a student I will call Susie. To my recollection, I’ve never had a student named Susie. I’ve taught my entire five-year career in a metropolitan school system. You can imagine some of the home environments my students have. Well, despite a less-than-ideal home environment, Susie was an incredibly motivated student. She worked hard – she asked questions – she came for tutoring.

And she just wasn’t getting it.

Ever.

For the whole year.

By sheer effort, Susie managed to pass, or come close to it, each nine weeks. But at the end of the school year, she came to me, this tough-as-nails kid, with her frustration apparent. I’m sitting in my windowless classroom, slogging through a mountain of Geometry tests and projects to grade, and my student wants to know the answer to this very important question: Where’s the reward for my hard work?

At the beginning of every year, I give the speech every teacher gives about how hard word and persistence lead to success and good grades and a good college and a great job and fulfillment and happiness and blah blah blah.

And it hadn’t. Susie hadn’t succeeded. She’d barely passed. No college was going to look at her geometry grade and recommend her for academic scholarships.

So I look at Susie, who’s wearing her protective armor of controlled anger, who’s looking to me for an answer. Because that’s what I do all day is show kids how to get the right answer. And in this situation I’m so lost and desperate, I tell her the truth. The same truth I’ve had to tell some students at the end of every year.

“You’re not very good at geometry. You know that. But there comes a point when school becomes less about the grade you can make on a test and more about your character. I’ve watched you struggle all year. No matter how many times you made a bad grade, you never gave up and you never quit. Math teacher is probably not going to be your career, but your character is more important than your math knowledge. I think you have great character. I wish I had more students like you.”

And then it happens, as it always happens when I genuinely praise students who are tough, who fight failure and self-doubt on a daily basis and never crack no matter how hard life gets, no matter how many times they get knocked down (either metaphorically or literally).

Susie cries.

Not because life finally got too hard, or because her failures became too numerous or severe. But because someone did something unexpected. They praised her in the way that counted most. And it was true.

I love this job. I wouldn’t trade Susie’s tears for all the perfect test scores in the world. What a privilege to really speak into someone’s life, to cut through the layers of school and hardship and affirm someone at their deepest level. To know that she heard me.

What a great job.

This is the scene, repeated every year, written to fit my story, I knew I had to include in my writing. And because it was powerful and true and unexpected, it worked.

Striking a balance…

If there is one thing I’ve learned–or relearned–during this summer vacation, it’s that I need the balance of teaching to go with the solitary pursuit of being a writer. Each balances the other. As a boisterous introvert I’ve discovered that I need the interaction of the classroom to balance the somewhat lonely task of taking the stories rattling around in my head and putting them to paper.

Our summer vacation this year is shorter than most. We finished up school on the 25th of May (I think) and will return to the classroom for in-service on the 27th of July.  We don’t usually go back until Aug. 10th or so. Two weeks may not seem like much in the overall scheme of things, but for teachers it can make a big difference. The school year is in many ways a study in attrition. By the time teachers get to the end of it, it takes a long time to recharge and be ready to go back into the classroom. At least, that’s the way it is for me. Introverts can be very energetic around people, but we get tired. We need solitude in order to recover.

Given this, I figured being a full-time writer would be perfect for me. Wrong. Even during a short summer, I find myself needing interaction with real humans, not just characters in my head. Some times the real humans are almost as entertaining.

So what about you? How do you strike the balance? I’m going to posit it as a given that you need to, whether you’re an introvert, however exuberant, or an extrovert. If you find that your writing is going flat, maybe you need to get away from it long enough to restore the balance within your mind. As for me, you’ll find me back in the classroom on Aug. 1st at Martin Luther King Magnet High School (that’s a mouthful) trying to entice students into a love of math.

But I’ll be striking the balance while I’m at it. Who knows? One of them may inspire a character in my next book.

- Patrick