Writing and Teaching Writing

Every time I take in a set of essays, there’s some little lamb, two days later, who wants to know if I’ve graded them yet. I give them a week-and-a-half or more to write a single essay, and they want me to grade fifty of them in two days. I shake my head and give them a hard time. The most persistent ask, “When will they be done?” and I say, “When they’re done.”

So here I am with this big, fat reminder of what my students go through. I sent my agent sample chapters on Monday, and she still hasn’t read them. I mean, I’ve given her four days, and it’s not like she has entire manuscripts to get through for her other authors, most of them hundreds of pages long. Oh, heck! It’s just like that. In that four days, I’ve sent her two emails, one apologizing for the fact that my book is set in the spring and yet I just realized that, for some reason, I had my heroine and her fiancé watching football on TV, and another telling her that I’d like to restructure one of the chapters and, by the way, has she graded my paper yet? If I were she, I’d bop me on the head.

It’s funny how folks react to published writers. There’s a certain amount of esteem that is given to you (and I’m a teacher, too, so I’m not used to esteem), and you think, if you only knew what a bundle of insecurity I can be about this. I’m not used to insecurity either. I’m usually pretty confident. But when you’re submitting what you write for publication, you put a piece of your soul out there to be judged by agents, editors, readers, reviewers, you name it. Sometimes I can be very objective and philosophical about it, but there are times when writers really end up with their emotions all wound up in what they write, and then trust me, it’s just killer waiting to hear back from an agent or editor.

I figure I have one thing really going for me. I have never been under the slightest delusion that I’m perfect at anything. When I try a new lesson plan or new approach to teaching, I always envision it going beautifully, but I am in-tune enough to students to be able to read their reactions, and I face it if the lesson falls flat. If Kristin nixes this book, well…I’ll probably write it anyway, because I love it, and then print it out at Kinkos and give a copy to my mom, who will love it, too, because I asked her to. That’s what moms do. Then I’ll head back to the drawing board, probably a better writer for the experience, since I’m doing some really different things for me with this project.

There is a little consolation in that. I get to approach students with a more personal understanding. For years, I’ve told them that they should do assignments, even if they’ve essentially dug a hole so deep that they can’t possibly pull a passing grade out of it. (You know: there are three weeks left in the semester and they have a seventeen percent.) It’s not always about credit. It’s about learning. It’s about knowing a little more about what you’re doing when you take the class over in summer school.