Teaching has definitely been on the front burner for me these days, which I think is part of the classic conundrum for writer-teachers, or teacher-writers. In some ways, teaching seems like the perfect day job for a writer because you are still spending a lot of your time immersed in literature and the construction of literature, but that’s misleading. Teaching can be such a time-consuming job, particularly when you’re teaching new material as I am this entire year. I certainly don’t have writer’s block, but I am finding myself dealing with the juggling act of balance.
However, I have been trying to maintain this balance for enough years now that I know how to handle these periods in my life! I think the first step is to recognize when the balance seems uneven, and then to identify some concrete steps you can take to adjust it. So I’m following up on a query I sent out recently and sending out some poems that I think are as finished as I can make them.
Another strategy that I have used in the past is to see whether the events that are disturbing your balance can become fodder for your writing, which in turn helps shift that balance. This worked for me with new motherhood, and I think it could easily happen with teaching. My new role model for this shift is Emmet Rosenfeld, an English teacher who has a wonderful piece in The Washington Post Sunday magazine about trying to gain a prestigious national certification and also keeps a blog on teaching and learning for Teacher magazine. I certainly have been thinking a lot about technology and culture while teaching my Facebook class and about the value of literature while teaching English this year for the first time. Who knows what journeys those experiences will take me on as a writer?
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