mimsy and outgrabe

My first post for 2019 is about my third complete micro-sabbatical. It's nothing short of a miracle that it occurred, too, considering that my family traded viruses and recovered from illness for no less than three weeks following New Year's Eve. For real, peeps. It was gruesome. But it's over now (knock wood) and we're moving forward. Kind of. I mean, everyone's sniffly or coughy, but roughly back to our normal schedules. So anyway: micro-sabbatical. It was really micro this year, as I could only spare mornings for the writing. I had to use my afternoons to prep for spring classes. But I kept a log each day inside this blog post, after I worked toward each day's primary project/aim, and here's what happened. Essentially: Day One: Tuesday, Jan. 22: I used my early-morning writing hours to read and also write my micro-sabbatical plan. I am nothing if not last-minute, as the rest of this sentence will prove: after putting the kids on the bus (and do...

"There is a great deal that either has to be given up or taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work." -- Susan Sontag Another quote written down in my (former) journal, along with a bunch of other writers speaking to the power of habit when it comes to creation. I must have collected them from some interweb source -- maybe Brain Pickings again, or some other writer's blog. Anyway, Steinbeck's in there, and Samuel Johnson, and Italo Calvino, but Sontag's striking a chord the most. I've been feeling kind of beat up lately, like something's been taken away from me, but it hasn't really been taken away from me in the way that Sontag's talking about here. She's talking about sacrifice. I haven't really sacrificed anything. Well, that's not true. I've sacrificed a lot but in the wrong places and probably for the wrong reasons. I suppose that's what's got me low. I fucked up, like in a big way, ...

I wish I could say I have exciting news or profound thoughts about writing or teaching but I've hit that mid-semester wall of grading and deadlines for various things (sabbatical application, paper for conference) and it's just been a bit of a grind lately. I had to put my books and my writing aside for the moment because every morning I'm getting up early to do damage control. It's not great. Today I have two meetings in the morning and then I intend to divide my time between that Very Important For My Professional and Personal Sanity Sabbatical Application and the 30 lbs of grading I have stacked in a tote in my living room. That's right -- I have a small-child's worth of grading to do this weekend. The worst thing is that some of it IS graded but has to be entered into my online grade books in Blackboard, and everything is so jumbled together from being carted between classroom and office and home repeatedly that it will take at least an hour to make sen...

So, for now, more numbers. I am really trying to spend every spare moment in the morning on this poem -- ignoring email, Facebook, my treadmill, those dishes in the sink from last night, and the fact that I haven't made the girl's lunch yet -- in an attempt to do this right, and get this revision finished in the next two weeks.  Hopefully, once this is done, I can write some reflective posts for this blog that are a little more interesting and useful to a general reader. For now, here's the diary of my progress: RE: Fairy Tale Poem Stanzas revised Wednesday:1 Stanzas revised Thursday: 2 Stanzas revised Friday: 3 Stanzas revised Saturday-Sunday: 1 Stanzas revised Monday: 3 Stanzas revised Tuesday: 5 Stanzas revised Wednesday: 2 Stanzas revised Thursday: 3 Stanzas revised (total): 65 Stanzas that need revision: 26 (That's right. My counting skills -- you know, those skills my four year old is acquiring right now -- are not so good. There are 91 stanz...

Once again, the blog isn't getting much attention. The rest of my life is, however. I'm using spring break as a way to kind of tune-up areas of my life that have been a little neglected as of late. I'm getting more sleep, and I'm running again (in anticipation of a 10K in June, no less.) I spent yesterday at the office taking care of creative writing festival tasks, and today will be filled with a mixture of grading, more festival business, and getting the truck inspected. I've been writing, well, minimally. Yesterday morning's writing time was spent putting together and then sending out submissions to literary journals, so I'm not beating myself up too much, because submissions are a necessary part of my writing life as well. I'd planned to spend this week revising my fairy tale poem, but like most of my best intentions, that was a bit too ambitious. I need to have my head clear of these tasks that are screaming for my attention right now . . . and I...

This may seem a bit extreme -- two posts in one day! -- but I'm going to post my sabbatical report here. One, it's my way of putting the sabbatical to rest and saying, finally, "I'm done." Also, I thought it might be of interest to anyone who is thinking of going on a sabbatical and/or anyone who struggles with the writing process . . . and in particular, with the process of writing poetry. WARNING: THERE'S LOTS OF SHOP-TALK HERE. YOU MAY FALL ASLEEP. THIS POST IS PROBABLY A GOOD SEDATIVE. So . . . *deep breath* . . . here it is. REPORT FOLLOWING SABBATICAL Name: _Sarah Kain Gutowski_ Campus/Department_Ammerman/English__ Period of Sabbatical__Fall 2011__ Attach the Statement of Purpose as approved by the Sabbatical Review Committee. A. Narrative on Activity and Findings While my sabbatical started officially with the Fall 2011 semester, I began work on my sabbatical projects in July of last year. I took a graduate course titled “Meter and F...

Well, I've officially begun work on the verse drama. (Two weeks before the sabbatical report deadline! I am GOOD!)) This past week I finished revising three scenes and putting the language right, to some extent. All in the all, the experience was rather like rearranging furniture in a room, and it made me realize -- or re realize (sure, let's pretend that's a word!) -- that something written in meter does not a poem make. Or something like that. Anyway, writing a play with poetry is difficult (to which statement, my eloquent-as-ever-inner-critic says duh! ) and will take me much longer than I anticipated. I don't see it as an insurmountable task, but I do see several drafts in my future. Right now, each scene is very brief, very sparse. I don't have that many extended speeches or monologues, and that's something that needs to change -- not simply because they'll help each scene last longer than a blink of the eyelids, but because there are moments that n...

Today it's difficult to get out of bed. It's raining outside, and I'm exhausted (coming down with yet another cold), and the dog makes a good nappin' partner. But I shall get out of bed. There are children to be wrangled, assignments to be graded, and a class to be taught. Into the rain I shall go. I received an email yesterday that says the deadline for turning in our sabbatical reports is March 15. This is either a saving grace or a trap . . . I was prepared to have my report ready for March 5, but now I have ten extra days! I realize that the probability of using those 10 days to create a stronger, better written report and/or have more of my play written is very small, but I know I'll take them nonetheless. I'm not turning anything into the committee until I absolutely have to do so. I've written two poems this week and yesterday I sent out another submission, after having received a rejection that freed up some poems for sending-out. Those are good ...

It's probably not healthy or wise to think about this, but lately I've been overly concerned with the thought that the next time I get to be a full-time writer will be at the butt-end of this decade. As my colleagues post end-of-semester raves and rants on Facebook, I'm forced to acknowledge that this rare moment is almost over. I am a wee-bit depressed, to say the least. This is a completely ungrateful and sorry-for-myself attitude to have, I realize. I know that I'm ridiculously lucky to have had this opportunity at all. I'm just wallowing in a little bit of post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas, pre-final-weeks-of-sabbatical depression, methinks. It's probably time to lay off the caffeine and get back into exercise. I don't have a lot of time left to wallow, after all. Just a few more sweet weeks of writing until I return to teaching. (And really, the teaching I kinda look forward to -- it's the committee meetings and grading that I would rather not deal...

I begin the weekend with a rare feeling of enthusiasm and optimism about my work. It's not that I usually start my weekends feeling pessimistic and ambivalent -- about life in general OR about my writing. It's just that I have absolutely nothing going on this weekend but hanging out with my kids. Since my husband's out of town, I'm going to attempt productivity in the downtime I have (early morning, nap time, those odd moments when they're playing with one another peacefully, and after they're in bed.) After writing for the past two days, I believe I've found the happy middle ground with my accursed fairytale poem that I've been searching for, in earnest, since August. It's not time to rest on my laurels can, either. (I don't have laurels. I do, however, have a can. A can in desperate need of some treadmill time, too.) I am all too aware that I made a pledge in my last post to be finished with this manuscript by the end of the month. Of cours...

This week's writing challenge: The plague. In my eye. Monday was productive because I spent my morning writing and then the rest of it catching up with committee work that I actually care about . . . namely, plans for the Creative Writing Festival (CWF) our college holds every year in the spring. We're going to add some nice little incentives for our panelists and workshop leaders, and the idea is that we'll attract more attention that way. Additionally, we made plans to streamline our operations (again). Every year this monster runs a little more smoothly -- and I'm hopeful that having a little more time and flexibility in my schedule this fall will allow us to really run this year without any of the headaches that usually afflict us. Tuesday was good because in addition to a little more CWF planning, I managed to write for another full five hours. I took a step away from the fairytale and worked on two new poems for the myth section of the manuscript, and began a ...

It's kind of amazing how a couple of hours, or a stretch of them, can change one's perspective. This is probably a good concept to remember in my everyday interactions with people, and particularly when I'm having a bad day, but most especially when I'm writing. I was having a bad writing day on Friday. I ended my morning writing session in a funk because I spent the bulk of the time revising my fairytale poem -- the one paltry strophe of it. I wish I could recognize my uphill battles when I'm engaged in them -- while the three lines I finally settled on are keepers (for now), the rest of my scribbling felt less necessary and more like a waste of time. But then on Monday I tried again -- and purposely ignored the "finished" strophe. I went immediately to the second strophe and tried to remember that, at this point, I just have to tell the story. I have to get this out. The goal of this sabbatical is to produce work. I can't spend days agonizing ove...

Yesterday I worked myself into a frenetic, worried mess. I spent my writing hour(s) doing more reading than writing, which in itself was okay -- I was reading critical essays about fairytales, and taking notes and thinking about how my own fairytale poem should be shaped. But then, after the quiet period of the morning was up -- the boy and the girl having decided between themselves at some point that this would be The Day of Fighting and Not Listening -- I attempted to write out a schedule for my sabbatical. The results were rather disastrous. That is, to my apparently fragile psyche they were disastrous. If you look at it from the standpoint of my house and the kitchen cabinets I gutted and cleaned throughout the entire afternoon, the results were fabulous! (More overwhelming stress, please! I'll have this house whipped into shape in no time!) I went kind of bat-shit crazy on the inside. This sabbatical scares me. I think I've voiced that as a joke before, but I'm jus...

This morning I revised the first stanza of the poem I've been working on all week. That's right folks, all week. And it took me an hour to "finish" with the revision, and I didn't even actually finish it (pushing aside all discussion of whether or not one is truly finished with a poem). I had to change the rhyme in the couplet at the end of the stanza, and even though I'm using slant rhyme, it totally stumped me. So now the first and third stanzas are hanging out all sloppy and unfinished. Which is NOT how I like them. (Shut up, Penna.) At this rate I should be finished with my manuscript in the year 2030. In the words of Charlie Brown, good f**kin' grief. This all sounds like griping, I know, but if you were a fly on the wall during any of my TRUE gripe sessions with Penna, WELL, let's just say you would feel mighty sorry for him. This is nothing! He WOULD tell you, however, that I am notoriously slow with my writing. (Notorious in, you know, all ...