I love the part of summer vacation where I start to lose track of the days. Thank God, I have a smart phone where I can input all the things that I’m going to do on a calendar! I made up my mind not to work, study nor change apartments over the summer; so now I have a wonderful routine of daily writing, and going to either yoga, capoeira or swimming–along with going out dancing when there’s a good venue to do so.
Everyone who knows that I’m on summer break always makes some jealous comment about hating teachers’ summer break, but I gently remind them that they don’t envy us the other 9 1/2 months! After teaching for 15 years, I finally understand how to use these weeks of unstructured time wisely. There’s always this tease of studying, working and or moving during the summer because “I have the time,” but this is the first time in a long time that I’m using my summer vacation for something that I normally leave town and go on vacation for: reading.
I know I sound like the typical nerdy teacher, but I’ve got lists of books that I’m determined to plow through and the maddening thing is that the more I read, the more books I put on the list. Even when I try to curb myself, I still think that now’s the time to do so since “I have the time.” One interesting thing that I’ve noticed in my concentration of reading is how many times I run across the word “struggle.”
That may not seem significant, but one of the characters in my latest novel is named Struggle. I never outline the chapters of my story or even the overall outline of the book, which would be a wonderful and logical thing to do, but it’s just not ever worked for me. What has worked very well is writing every single day. That way, no matter how little or much I write, I’m advancing the story. I like to humor myself that I’m coming up with the advancing chapters “organically,” but now that I have a serious reduction of stress in my life, I can make even more connections between the various things that I’m reading, which spans a wide range of interests from the Bible, theoretical physics and sexuality, especially women’s sexuality. In all of those topics, there’s a mention of “struggling.” I never pondered how struggle was such a universal theme in life. I guess it’s pretty ironic that Struggle is the most laid-back character in the book so far.
I’ve not organically come up with an ending to the story yet. That’s sort of the gift of my approach to writing fiction. When I finally reconcile with my subconscious about some new insight, it’s the most amazing feeling. It’s not often I get to surprise myself in everyday life, but I do increase the frequency through writing. Occasionally, when I have something stressful weighing on my mind, I go swimming and intuit a solution. Yet, when I write, I never know where the story’s going to take me.
This is truly a vacation.