Reading, Writing, Ranting, Recommending

June 4, 2024

It’s pool season at my house! My favorite time of year!

Hello! I hope you are well! I finished teaching this week and have about an hour left of work in my classroom before I get to check out fully for the summer. I am ready!

Reading

It’s been a good reading week. To start, I read The Lost Child by Julie Myerson. The Lost Child is an ambitious book: part story of Myerson’s journey to research a Victorian-era family who had many children, many of whom died of tuberculosis and part memoir of Myerson’s experience raising a teenager who was addicted to smoking a particularly addictive kind of cannabis called skunk. Skunk caused her son to be violent and cruel, to the point where Myerson and her husband asked her son to move out. I read it because of Myerson’s latest release, a novel called Nonfiction that is a fictionalized version of her memoir that also examines the responsibility of motherhood versus the writer’s ability or desire to write about their own family. When The Lost Child was released, it received significant criticism, with many people calling it a betrayal of motherhood. Personally, I didn’t feel it was a betrayal of motherhood, but rather a raw portrayal of the side of addiction that isn’t normally discussed: how hard it is to love someone when they are in active addition and harming you and your family. I’m looking forward to reading Nonfiction, because I spend a lot of time thinking about what writers owe those close to them in terms of what we write about, and I know that Myerson’s take will be fascinating and nuanced.

I also read Justin Torres’ brilliant We The Animals in two sittings, and wow. Nearly every writing teacher I’ve ever had has recommended this book to me, and I understand why. To start, Torres’ language is melodic and noisy. The book tells the story of three brothers growing up in a tumultuous house, full of roughhousing and violence, and the masterful way way he uses language to make sentences that sound that way as you read is incredible. Torres does a wonderful job of creating a world for his characters and inviting you in, making you feel like you’re growing up along with them. Each chapter feels like it’s own short story in a way, and while the events of the book are linear, it manages to feel fractured and chaotic in a way that matches the energy of the boys and their family. It’s a brief 128 pages, and I hung on every word. The ending is ambiguous and profound, and I don’t want to say much more. Read it.

Writing

Last weekend, I taught a class called “Writing In Five-Minute Sprints” for The Porch, and it was a lot of fun. I forgot how much I enjoy writing from prompts, specifically when I’m feeling stuck or need a break from the pieces I’m working on. I wrote 20 prompts for the class and while we didn’t get through all 20, I ended up sending out 52 more after class for folks to use later.

Obviously, many people have written prompts, but the five-minute sprint is a tip I learned from one of my favorite teachers and humans, Megan Stielstra. When I was in a year-long class with her, I would show up to class at times and feel like I had nothing to say or write about. Megan would, of course, have some brilliant prompts and would give us a set time limit (usually five or ten minutes) to write, and 20 minutes later, I’d have new work started, new ideas to build on, and feel like my brain had been unstuck.

Just for fun, I’ll share my favorite prompt from class. It’s a two-parter, and it’s meant to be simultaneously cathartic and silly:

1. Set your timer for five minutes.

2. Make a list of your irrational hatreds. Some examples of mine: journals labeled “JOURNAL” or notebooks labeled “JOURNAL,” animal sounds as ringtones, when people Facetune their photos to the point that they look like “smooth ghosts,” Paint and Sips, and people who make being a bicycle advocate their entire personality. I have many, many more, but these are the ones I feel comfortable sending out in newsletter form. If you feel moved, feel free to write for more than five minutes.

3. Set your timer for another five minutes.

4. Write the most ridiculous thing you can that uses as many of your irrational hatreds as possible. For example, I might write about being trapped at a Paint and Sip with a bicycle advocate who uses the dog barking sound for a ringtone. At the end of the night, the instructor gives me a notebook that says “NOTEBOOK” on the front and posts a class photo where we are all so smoothed out that we barely look human.

5. Extra challenge: write it all using dialogue.

If you have writing prompts you love, where do you find them? Or, if you have one that you return to, will you share it in the comments? Most writers I know need a little jolt sometimes.

Ranting

I took on a rather ambitious reorganization of my classroom for boring but important reasons (we are moving to a new site in the MIDDLE OF next school year — same school, newly built very fancy building, very exciting AND also a move during winter break is obviously complicated. I also have a teacher who is rotating rooms every period using my room and I wanted to clear some room for him so that he doesn’t feel like he has no space on campus) and it sounded like a good idea to laminate colorful labels and put every item into a tub and make everything look really great (and easy to pack) but it is taking FOREVER. I know I will be glad that I took the time to do all of this when I return in August, and especially when it’s time to move, but my god, organizing always takes a zillion hours longer than I expect.

For the record, if you’re picturing one of those scary classrooms that longtime teachers often have with filing cabinets and mimeographed worksheets from the 80s, you should know that my very first mentor teacher told me that her best advice to new teachers is to clean out your classroom before every winter break and before every summer break. I have faithfully followed this advice for the last 18 years of teaching, and I have very few things that are not books or student supplies AND YET.

Recommending

I’ve been holding back on this recommendation because it makes me sound deeply unwell, but can I tell you about the benefits of a laminator? I often refer to it as my “personal laminator” which I realize makes it sound like a very different sort of tool, but I love having a laminator both at work and at home. Obviously, in a classroom, there are eleventy bajillion uses for a laminator (Lists! Signs! Schedules — add magnets and hang them on your board! ENDLESS USES!) but I’ve been surprised at how frequently I use one at home. I like to use daily checklists, a reusable grocery list, a cleaning schedule, and other lists repeatedly. Laminating means I avoid printing the same thing over and over. I have also laminated recipes I use frequently, and I have a friend who laminates her children’s art work, chore charts, etc.

If you have kids, like lists, work in any job that requires schedules or reference forms over and over, I promise you’ll use it. I am deeply passionate about my PERSONAL LAMINATOR and I think it’s a great $25 to spend.

I have this little number at home, and it does the job well.

And before you ask, I do have actual, real-life, diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder if you weren’t sure.