Today we were reading the part of Julius Caesar (Act 2 Scene 1) when Portia has a conversation with Brutus. It was fine reading it with the previous class; they are very mature kids and they get it. They get the unfairness of a woman's life being completely turned upside down beyond their control, and that Portia's fate lies entirely in Brutus' hands. They understand the ideas behind Roman culture, wrong or right. They respected Shakespeare's portrayal of Portia--her demand that Brutus respect her as his "other half," and her insistence that she share with him. I love Portia in this scene. She confronts him in his mood, and Brutus tries to give excuses for his inner turmoil. Portia doesn't buy it. She insists, and she's smart enough to know that hooded men coming to her house at night mean something, and maybe she even gets what it means but is waiting for him to say the words. "Dwell I but in the suburbs of thy good pleasure?" she asks. "If it be not more, Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife." (Forgive my lack of quote formatting to reflect the poetry.) My second class was a bit more difficult. They tend to dislike reading and get a bit antsy. They play around with pens, tape, whatever they can get their hands on. They will look for excuses to get up out of their seats--use bathroom passes, walk to the trash can, look for hand sanitizer, get a tissue... I walk around the room staring kids down, shoving aside the pens they're trying to play with, closing books or notebooks with math and history homework, stopping frivolous conversation at the grassroots. And midway through Portia's scene a kid gets up to throw something in the trash can. Except he doesn't. He begins to pace around on the way to the trash can. I steer him outside the door. I tell my students: "In Rome, Portia has no voice. Plutarch barely mentions her. She's not important. Shakespeare greatly expands her role as a woman, but even so she is only afforded this one scene. Are you seriously going to interrupt her one opportunity to be heard so that you can play with pens, do other homework, or involve yourself with all of these other distractions? Listen to what she's saying!" They quieted down somewhat and focused. They began to get into the passage. They got a little more involved when I explain how Portia is proving her worth, her intelligence, and her right as a married woman to be heard by her husband. The girls start to pay attention when Brutus basically calls Portia his lifeblood and prays to the gods to be worthy of such a noble wife. How romantic, they think. How tragic, I think. The entire carpet is ripped out from under Portia. Why doesn't anyone ever want to listen to her? Why can't we listen to her even now? There are so many women in this world who are powerless to change their situations, and we allow it to happen. We just don't listen. Culture just runs roughshod over us as our women eat coal.
So I was having a difficult time finding someone in Panama who knew something about gubernatorial campaigns in the U.S. My solution was to Facebook my request for contacts, and two of my friends found me people who may be willing to go back and forth with email more in-depth as I am actually doing the writing. Hooray for technology! Also, I am rather happy because my struggling student gave me a proposal for her research essay that I was a little worried that she wouldn't complete. We had an entire conversation--no tight lips, no tension, all normal. Hooray! The bad news is that I am swamped with grading. I have to grade short stories, essays, journal entries and somehow get grades out by Monday. I have a long weekend ahead of me, thank God, but it's very hard to get work done with my daughter around. I get MAYBE 5 hours straggled throughout the day to myself which also includes cleaning the house, doing laundry, etc. I really have no idea how I'll slug through, but I am determined to finish the revised synopsis of my political campaign short story as soon as possible. A student of mine also gave me the graphic novel V for Vendetta that I am itching to read, and apparently I'm the first of a waiting list. He's dying to find out what I think of it because I used a quote from it to discuss the proles of the novel 1984. You know, the one in which V says that people should not be afraid of their governments, but that governments should be afraid of their people. Granted, Alan Moore is an anarchist and Orwell/Blair was a democratic socialist, but it worked.
Today my mind kept drifting to potential story ideas. I thought about a young pre-teen girl who was forced to do various therapies with her psychologist mother during her growing up years. I imagined a dialogue in which she was using her puppet to try and explain to her mom exactly why she doesn't wish to have a conversation with her about her feelings over her growing breasts and her new training bra. Then my struggling student from the previous post skipped my class today, worrying the crap out of me. Turned out she was supposedly in the nurse's office which the nurse couldn't fully confirm her presence for the entire hour and a half of my class. Obsessed for a bit, wondering if she's avoiding me. Then felt guilty because I had to tell the counselors and the principal, who subjected her to a bit of an interrogation, however gently done. Thought about writing a story about a teacher who knows about a student issue that leads to a suicide eventually. Imagined some good dialogue based on research I'd done. Then I went back to the story that I'm working on--the story that is STILL at a standstill because I can't find anyone who knows about political campaigns enough to answer my questions about it so that I can write in a way that makes sense!! I'm really determined not to let this one go. There must be someone out there of my acquaintance who has another friend who has another acquaintance who can messenger me on Facebook one day and stay in touch for brief messages and ideas as I write in the details. Then I taught Julius Caesar and wondered whatever happened to the daughter of the crazed barbarian Gaul that he supposedly captured after killing her father and mother. Did he take her all to Rome? Was she as crazy, war-bred as her father? Thought it would make a great romance novel. Except that Julius Caesar is destined for a stabbing at the Senate on the Ides of March. Other than that.
So I was in discussion with the art teacher today, and I was telling her about my dilemma with choosing settings for my short stories, and how I find "write what you know" a bit limiting. "Well, what settings do you know?" she asked me. "Well, I grew up in rural NY, I'm a mom, and I'm a teacher. I guess I just find these aspects of my life so boring that I prefer to imagine different settings--even those which I would never experience in my lifetime." "Why don't you write about a teacher who has a fantasy life, then? That's the kind of thing that bestsellers are made of," she told me. (literal words, hence the ending in a preposition.) "That could be a bit dangerous," I replied, and as I said it I felt rather foolish. What is literature if not dangerous? I guess that gives me some food for thought. I also thought about times when I talked with students, learned about them, their lives and some of their issues. At times, I feel so powerless to help them, and other times I want to be their mothers, to protect them at all costs. A student told me the other day that she had been cutting herself to relieve anxiety, but that now she was in recovery. I knew that she had not been turning in work, but I didn't know why. When she told me, I just cried. And then she cried, and then we were both standing there crying. What do I know about pain? Sometimes I wish that I could just absorb it in my own body like a sponge and rid them of it once and for all. And to hell with the damn classwork. So many times, however, I think about being a teacher and I'm bored to tears. Teachers are usually depicted in literature and movies as authoritative lunatics who impose their own will on students and therefore ruin their lives. Others depict this passionate, inspiring teacher who bends over backwards and transforms as if by magic this impossible group of students. I am neither of these descriptions. I work best with students who are naturally and intellectually curious, those who are open to building relationships with me as their teacher. I'm a disaster when dealing with students who reject authority and hate my guts from the get-go. I don't know of one single student of mine who became an English major due to their experiences in my classes. So many of them, scattered out there, and I don't know whether any of them were inspired for one moment by something they read in my class. I hope this doesn't mean I've been a failure.
So far, my protagonist has changed into a completely different person. (Too bad, because I really liked the other protagonist's name.) I have been researching people who are involved in a political campaign. I've also tried to research what kinds of crimes take place in a political campaign, and have completely changed my scenario. The only thing I wish I could do is actually work within a political campaign or even visit one just to see what the energy is like, what the people are like who work on a political campaign and how they handle a particular crisis. I've been doing my best to contact people via Twitter or via the www just to see if I can understand this world a little better. My research is taking much longer than I expected, and my synopsis has entirely changed. It's still coming together because there are so many different aspects of this setting that I still don't understand. I don't want to have to ditch the story because the way people behave simply doesn't make any sense.
Well, I guess I set myself up for this. I was just so happy to be writing again, and so happy to be figuring out the revision process that I think I was just a little too enthusiastic. I didn't anticipate the negative feelings that ultimately happen when you get a good (and honest!) critique. It's all good. It's all ok. I'll have more vacations, and more opportunities to write. Somehow I'll find a way to rework this story that has given me computer neck and occupied my thoughts and even caused me to wake up in the middle of the night with a new idea or a new scenario. So even though I'm feeling now like the world's worst writer, I'll pick up the pieces and get it together. It's part of the growing pains of learning to write well, and write something worth publishing, and if I don't develop a tough skin, I'll never succeed. I just wish it didn't hurt so much, or that I wasn't battling these feelings that all I'm doing is wasting my time, that I should just stick to what I already know, that I'll never amount to anything except being a mom and holding a steady job. How do you fight off these demons that whisper in your ear?
My short story, Gilded Lilies, is now called Smokescreens. I'm not sure how I feel about the title. I am still considering it a work in progress. This week has been wonderful for me to really focus on this short story. I really don't think I will be done revising it anytime soon, but at least I'm getting to participate in the process. When I did creative writing at the university level, the revision and editing process was far more painful. Comments from teachers were designed to be helpful, but since grades were attached to them, and the desire to please professors was far too high, I usually ended up feeling like the worst writer of the lot, a fact that definitely was not true. I really am loving this process now because I can see the changes that are taking place. I'm mature enough now to receive constructive criticism and not take it too personally. Above all, I'm actually learning so much from this that I wish I could employ a full-time editor to do some line-by-lines with everything I write! No wonder the publishing industry requires so much experience before hiring editors! They are truly some talented people! I won't say that I'll always feel this happy about ripping apart my work, but at this moment in time I am truly happy working on this piece of work.
As I have been exploring the site more and more, I am gradually discovering all of these really fun tidbits about the creative writing forum, including this little blog here. I'm hoping that this will help me get back on track with my writing and ESPECIALLY my editing. Sometimes I feel as though I just don't have a freakin' clue, and I've even wondered if I should take a creative writing course just to get some further training. A lot of my writing is just intuitive, and I'm even wondering if I'm giving correct feedback to my students. So far, as I've been on here, I have been inspired to send out a couple of short stories--you never know unless you try! And I'm beginning to revise a new one, and learning quite a lot in the process. (Thanks again, mammamia!) Literally, here in Panama I have felt so bereft of a writing community that I wasn't sure even where to begin to get some of the information and help that I needed. I have spent countless hours on the web researching and researching contests, writing tips, etc. but no vague article online can do what clear and personal feedback can. Hoping to post something at least once a week even if I can't find time between work, baby and husband to get some writing done. I'll work it in somehow! So far, I have three short stories that I've been working through and 1 novel that is sitting on the shelf awaiting some knowledge for proper editing. All are in the Crime/Suspense genres, with the novel somewhat of a Romantic Suspense.