Classroom Essential Series

Ever see an advertisement for something and want to cry because you had a similar idea and someone beat you to it? That’s how I felt today when I pulled my copy of the NCTE Council Chronicle out of my post office box this afternoon. There on the back cover is a splashy ad for "The Teacher’s Essential Guide Series." It’s a Scholastic endeavor by Jim Burke. There are books on several topics, including Content Area Writing.

I’m no Jim Burke. Maybe that was the problem. If I were, when I turned in the proposal for a similar series for NCTE about four years ago, perhaps I could have scooped Scholastic. Oh well. Maybe I should just write books, and forget about proposals in the future.

Manuscript Scraps

I’ve spent the evening getting ready for a conference call tomorrow morning. Part of the work has been logistical–rearranging things in the room so that I can set up a printer. Online documents are great, but I still rely on printouts when I’m in meetings. It’s an old habit, born of necessity. The one time I took my laptop to a meeting at work, I was reprimanded and told to never do it again. So much for the 21st-century workplace, huh? Along with my printouts, I rounded up a journal to take notes in.

Idea Hamster Syndrome

I’ve been trying to decide "the next thing" I want to write about for a long time now.

• I could write about passages in the book I’m reading (The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging).
• I have some notes on revision that I’d like to explore.
• I’ve saved news articles on the Wayback Machine, the Flickr 365 Project, grammar choices in online writing, and ways to entice boys to read more.
• Yesterday in Books-a-Million, I found 5 more books for my collection of young adult fiction that incorporate computers in an integral way. I need to write about all of them.
• I have a bunch of notes on effective writing online that I could work into something.
• I’ve printed out calls for manuscripts from English Journal, Voices from the Middle,  and Teaching in the Two-Year College,.
• I’ve been doing some thinking on how scrapbooking and cardmaking magazines and resources talk about writing, from motivation to writing prompts.
• I have notes in several of my "idea" journals that I could write about.
• I found a number of starters for Lists of Ten that I could finish out and post.

I have plenty to write about—and I am writing.I have lots of scribbled notes, on paper and in pixels. It’s not blank page syndrome.

It’s sort of the opposite. I have all these pages, but I can’t decide which one to explore more deeply and publish. It’s Too Many Full Pages Syndrome.

Or maybe it’s more like Writer’s Attention Deficit Disorder. I keep spinning from topic to topic to topic, unable to focus on any of them long enough. The ideas are all interesting, and I don’t want to ignore any of them long enough to click that publish button.

Back in 1994, at the Computers and Writing Conference in Columbia, Missouri, Eric Crump called me an "idea hamster," someone who just keeps scurrying around on the hamster wheel, pitching out good ideas. I have notebooks, bookmarks, annotations, rough draft. There are dozens of ideas I’ve spun out. I just have the quintessential problem of an idea hamster—how do I manage to stop scurrying around the wheel and settle down with an idea long enough to get something done?

Proposals

I’d like to get something written for the English Journal due next week on doing the right thing, but I’m having trouble getting started. The call talks about academic honesty, plagiarism, and cheating. I’m thinking about perhaps doing something with how online sources complicate things, especially when teachers aren’t even allowed to take kids to online sites. It can fit the topic. I just haven’t managed to get going on it.

Instead I’m off to happy procrastination land, looking at a CFP that has a proposal due January 1. Why work on something due in a week when you can worry about things due in six weeks? On a whim, I checked the Computers and Composition calls a few weeks ago and began thinking about this one: A Thousand Pictures: Interfaces and Composition.

Here’s the question: Would it fit to talk about how computer interfaces are represented in children’s literature? I’m not quite sure where I want to go with the idea, and I’d need to do some reading on interface design to write anything. But I’m thinking of some books that attempt to fake what IM screens and emails look like as well as picture books that show computers with their interfaces on the screen.

I’m just not certain if that’s a good topic, or it’s ridiculously simplistic and laughable. And there’s the bigger challenge that I’d need to do a lot of reading on interface theory-wise. I’m not even sure what to read. It’s hard to read on a topic when you have no idea where to start—and even harder still when you’re not sure if it’s a topic that would fit the call. Maybe I should go back to the EJ call.

Lesson Revisions

Finished my work on the markup and tidying of our revision of the 3-5 lesson Get the Reel Scoop: Comparing Books to Movies today. The whole process took close to 7 hours. I hope the next one goes a bit faster. Only 8 to 13 more revisions to go. Now to begin work on the 6-8 revision of the lesson.

Figuring out the Inbox blog entry

So today I flailed about trying to figure out what to write for the blog entry. It needed to tie to 21st-century literacies, but I was feeling really lost on what to say. Going through the copyeditor’s comments seemed a lot easier than trying to come up with something new to say. As I was sitting there trying to figure out what to do, I thought, “I wish this were as easy as writing teaching stories for the manuscript. That’s what I do best. Oh, wait, why can’t it be that easy? Just write a story on one of the 21-century literacy issues.” Thank goodness the voices in my head talk about these things a lot. Otherwise I’d still be trying to figure out today’s entry, which ended up being I Was a Mac. They Were PCs. :)

Back to the Copyeditor

Got a handful of things done today: Inbox Ideas done, Inbox Announcements done, Work on Feb 08 calendar done, South Park character made (don’t I look cool?), Hallmark ornaments mom needed purchased, trip to the bookstore completed.

But the important thing was finishing the notes on the manuscript and leaving it on the copy editor’s desk before I left the office this evening. One more step completed. :) Supposed to have page proofs back after Thanksgiving. This part seems to be flying compared to actually writing the draft.

Still things to do, like get an author photo, do all the related lesson plans, get the companion website set up. Looks like it’s going to be a busy time for a while. And that’s without thinking about the ReadWriteThink and Inbox work I need to do.

Sam’s

Took a trip to Sam’s this afternoon. I hate going to Sam’s. It’s such a struggle not to come home with super-sized packages of things that I don’t have any place to store and get deathly tired of before they run out (or they spoil).

I managed reasonably well against the challenge. Got bags of candy for the office, which was the goal, peanut butter for the squirrels, and only 3 food items for me. I’ve decided to try the all protein diet, no carbs again. I simply have to do something before the season of eating descends and things get even worse. So I got prosciutto (which turned out to be very, um, questionable when I tried it tonight), smoked pork chops (mmm), and some sausage.

Unfortunately this evening the Carbonara that I tried to make with the proscuitto (diet starts tomorrow) is really sitting poorly. It’s burning. I added some Emeril Parmesan Italian thing from the frig and the garlic and spices set the acid reflux aflame. I’ve gulped down extra Prilosec and a double dose of Pepcid AC. I ate some chicken soup, bread, and milk. They settled things down for a few minutes, but it catches fire again not long after.

Heaven help me if this is like that sickness after the Gaming Forum at Purdue last month. I can’t afford to be down tomorrow. I have to finish editing the book and write all the text for the Ideas, Announcements, and Blog for INBOX. Besides the Honey Nut Cheerios and chicken soup diet I end up on when acid reflux is bad is wholly incompatible with the all protein, no carbs diet. Hoping for an overnight miracle.