Blogging Out My Laziness

So as you can see, I haven't updated this blog in two years.

TWO YEARS.

My goodness, what have you missed? Let's see. I got engaged, changed jobs twice, wrote two more books, under contract for three more, started a PhD, dropped a PhD, started an independent publishing company, adopted a handicapped dog, and pissed off an entire town.

I've tried a number of times to maintain a blog or even keep a journal and I've learned one very important thing: I suck at it. Do I write every day? Absolutely. Do I have the discipline, hell the organizational skills, to blog or journal every day?

OBVIOUSLY NOT.

However, after a false start with a PhD that made me miserable (more on that later) I decided I wanted to finish my MFA in Creative Nonfiction instead and classes start on the 27th. I was looking over the syllabus for one of my classes and realized there was a module about blogging which necessitated either maintaining a current blog or creating a new one and let me tell you, I panicked. Hard. The only reason I'm even able to update this blog is that it's tied to my Google account otherwise I don't think I ever would have remembered the login info. I'm not kidding.

Now here I am, writing an entry for the first time in two years so I don't look like the laziest grad student ever (I'm not-- I promise. I just have literary ADD) and I don't even know where to begin! I started the MFA in CNF two years ago, shortly after my last post. Originally I had started in Creative Writing-- pure fiction- but the program wasn't what I was looking for. I finished and published my first novel in between that program and the new one but I had always loved nonfiction and wanted to learn how to make my work more accessible to wider audiences.

Here's something you might not know about me: I like asylums. No seriously, it's true 😂When I started writing in 2006 I was determined to write just nonfiction. I wrote very clean, very fact driven accounts of each asylum accompanied by full-color images that I had taken. My first book, Behind the Walls: Shadows of New England's Asylums was exceptionally well received. It sold out every time we printed it and it became a worldwide bestseller. It launched my career and got me a lot of press, but I noticed a rather disheartening thing: the people who attended my lectures were the same folks over and over again. They were nurses, psychiatrists, teachers, professionals in the mental health field. They were the people who were already used to talking about mental health every minute of every day. No matter what I did, I couldn't seem to broaden the scope of my work, this book I had worked so hard to produce, that I was so proud of, that was now held in college libraries up and down the East Coast.

I eventually realized that it was my writing that was the problem. I was the problem. My approach was dry, factual. I was never really able to convey what it felt like to walk into one of these buildings with nothing but a camera and walk the halls of some of the most infamous buildings in human history. So I turned to fiction instead. I wove my favorite asylum into a novel using as much historical fact as I could while weaving this tale of mystery that could have happened on the wards of Northampton State Hospital in 1959. Hospital Hill also became a bestseller and eventually won a regional literary award; I suddenly saw a shift in the folks who were coming to my lectures, who were now willing to talk about mental health in the context of a cozy mystery. They connected to Valerie, my main character, and they reviled the evil doctor who made her life miserable. They wanted more.

So I wrote another novel. Another asylum. Another mystery. But I wanted to do more with my writing. I wanted to go back to my roots and write more nonfiction, but I knew I didn't want to produce another textbook. I wanted to write something that people would enjoy reading, like a novel, while learning a whole ton of random stuff about asylums and mental health.

Enter the MFA in CNF. It was the kick in the ass I needed to learn how to write for a reader, a real reader like the ones who might pick my book up at the bookstore. I stretched my own weird reading boundaries (very weird, trust me) and started reading writers like Cheryl Strayed and Ariel Levy. I picked up memoirs by my favorite actors like Lauren Graham and missives on writing by Stephen King and Charles Bukowski. I even got up the nerve to cold call some of my favorite authors and bend their ears about their own books.

Am I babbling? I'm babbling. Dammit.

Long story short, my goal this semester is to keep this up to date and let you all in on my writing life. I'm beyond excited about this particular class this semester and for completing my thesis, but also about the next few books I have on tap. I realize too that I'm not the only one going through this process, especially the process with my current publisher, and it might be nice to share with other writers. Who knows, maybe I have some wisdom to impart! Let's hope...

Do come back.
xoxo
Poison

Let's Pretend This Never Happened

So apparently Jenny Lawson and I have a freakish amount of stuff in common. Well, aside from the fact that I didn't grow up in Texas. And my father didn't torture me with strange wild animals. Though he did make a rattlesnake out of his fingers and chase me around the house with it.

Now that The Prince knows I blog about him I can tell you his name is Bruce and our beagle is named Daisy (remember that because you'll need that information later). This story begins this past Christmas when Bruce decided to get me a Kindle. I hadn't moved in with him yet but I had actually made the mistake of taking him to see my storage unit. This was a bad idea mostly because I had just gotten done convincing him that I'm not a packrat, but the wall to wall shit in my 10' by 15' unit told a different story. It also gave him a peek into my minor book obsession.

"How many crates of books are stacked in that corner?"
"Um...seventeen."
He nodded. "Seventeen. Plus the book case at your mom's house, the books under the desk at your mom's house, and the ladder that's being used a book case, and the books piled on the floor."
"Don't forget the two boxes of books in the closet. Oh and the one in the trunk of my car. The guy at the car place said that's probably why the back end of my car scrapes the ground."

I'm pretty sure that conversation ended with him saying something about me being allowed to move in but since there are only four bedrooms in the house I'd have to scale back on my books. I almost left him that day...

So I got a Kindle for Christmas. Which was a bad plan on Bruce's part because he also wanted me to watch "A Christmas Story" for the first time with him. He was utterly disgusted with the idea that I had never seen it and he felt that I had missed out on a key part of my childhood. The only problem being he had handed me an electronic gadget (I love gadgets) that was connected to millions of books. Did he really think I'd be able to watch a movie instead?

Fast forward to my birthday. My mother didn't know what to buy me so she gave me money. And I bought another Kindle. Bruce came home to find me sitting on the couch reading my new Kindle and he gave me a funny look.

"Didn't I give you a Kindle for Christmas?"
"Yes."
"And you bought another one?"
"Yes."
"Why? Oh I see. You got the Kindle Fire. So my poor black and white Kindle isn't good enough for you now?"
"No. That's not it at all."
"Then why did you get another Kindle?"
"Um....I filled the other one up already."
He looked dumbfounded at this answer.
"You filled it up? Doesn't that thing hold like thousands of books?"
"Mhm."
"Then how the hell did you fill it up?"
"I downloaded 7,000 books this morning."

And then he walked away.

But of course the first thing I downloaded on my new Kindle Fire was "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson. And now I have an author crush on her because we should so be friends.

"Wouldn't it be great if your 'stache could smell like watermelons?"

Generally I hate Mondays. Today was no different. It's the second day of spring and in the middle of reading  to my 5th graders I looked up and snarled, "IT'S SNOWING!" The poor kid in front of me looked like he feared for his life. I think I had a little Linda Blair crazy eye going on. I was planning to start Robert Frost today but I do believe the imagery of walking in the woods would have been lost on the 6th graders. "Two roads diverged in a wood...and I forgot to bring a shovel."

So I know this happened a number of weeks ago but I've been busy and am just getting around to commenting on the teacher in Pennsylvania who was let go for ranting about her students in her blog. Now many of you have been reading my blog since it's inception a few years ago. I get thousands of visitors from around the world and so far have only managed to piss off a select few. However, I have a bit of advice for Natalie Munroe (of course I do hehehe).

Every teacher in the known universe is frustrated with their job in one way or another. We're frustrated with the changes in society, the shifts in education, and the lack of priorities demonstrated by many of our students and their families. However, that's never an excuse to vent publicly and refer to your students as "lazy whiners".

Here's a tip: if your job makes you that miserable, it's time for a career change. Or better yet, change the way you teach and find a way to push these kids out of their educational rut. Did you ever think that part of the problem might be you and the way you present your class? Now, before everyone gets all nutty, I don't know this woman from Adam. The only snapshot I have of her and her personality is from her blog and her highly publicized firing. In fact I was so disgusted with her that I didn't even bother to read the rest of her blog. Hell, she might very well profess to love her job more than she loves her lousy haircut or crummy fashion sense (like how I worked that in? ZING!). However, if you are that negative about your students, it's time to rethink your position in education.

If it turns out that teaching is truly your passion and you simply can't make heads or tails of your kids' behavior, here's another tip: DON'T BROADCAST IT ON YOUR BLOG! If you have issues with your current job, tell your mom. Talk to your therapist. Vent to your cat. They won't tattle on you!

Or better yet, talk to your supervisor, your lead teacher, or your principal. Make suggestions, ask for help from your colleagues, shake things up and turn the kids on their ear.

Look, I love being able to share my every thought with all of you but it's time the world realized that what they perceive as the relative anonymity of the internet isn't some sort of magical invisibility shield. There is always someone out there in the world who can connect you to your virtual self, your online personality. Right now there is some computer nerd in a giant server room registering my IP address every time this blog entry auto saves on Blogger. Chances are there's also some white collar criminal sitting in his crappy one room apartment doing the same thing. All it takes is one person to point the finger and your anonymity is shattered, your job on the line.

I love teaching and I love sharing my stories with you all. I've shared the laughs, the triumphs, the frustrations, and the anger, but I have to say, I would never pull the kind of stunt this woman pulled. I hope for her sake that someone out there is willing to overlook this major faux pas and give her a job in the future. Then again, knowing our nation's priorities, someone has already called asking for the rights to her story so they can make it into a Lifetime movie. Damn my misplaced sense of responsibility towards my job....