So, September is here and so is the new teaching year. As ever at this time I start up the engines ready for teaching, sort out the rubbish - both physical and mental - that has collected over the summer and, this year, I'm looking back and taking stock.
It's been one hell of a year.
Reading back to last September, I was happy and optimistic because I had had a couple of stories accepted - one for Bugged and one for the Bad Language anthology, Scattered Reds. I was talking about a new determination to write more and submit more. So, how have I done?
Well, in the last twelve months I have achieved a further 15 or so publications including one competition win and two stories commissioned and read by me on Radio 4. I've also taken up reading at open mics and other events - some as the guest speaker.
I've also, thanks to NaNoWriMo written over 150,000 words of creative work including more than 175 flash fictions (if you add 31 and flash365 together and add in the other incidental stories).
In other areas, York Press have informed me that my York Notes on The Kite Runner is a 'best-selling title' and have asked me to revise it for a completely separate book to come out next year, and I have also had a properly academic article accepted for publication in the coming months.
It has to be said, it has been my most productive and successful year ever.
The only problem now is to carry on so that, when I look back at this post in 12 month's time, I can also crow about what has been achieved. A good year means I need to work even harder.
Things I have not managed to do this year include getting a novel published, nor have I been able to finish a new novel with which I might have more success. These are still on my to-do list. I also need to find a publisher for a collection of short fiction, rather than self-publishing it all. Add that to the list too.Oh, and more reading spots would be nice too.
So, the year has been good, goals have been achieved. But there is still much to do. I'm going to try and come back here and blog more regularly, as well; not just about the successes but about the insights. But for now, I think that'll do. I have this short story to finish, and my daily flash to write, and the hoovering to do, and....
Showing posts with label The Kite Runner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Kite Runner. Show all posts
Friday, 23 September 2011
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Tell me everything...
Writing study guides is a strange thing. When I teach essay writing skills to students we make the point of telling them to answer the question only. I make the point of telling them that it is not an exercise in 'telling everything you know'. However, when it comes to writing study guides, that's exactly what you have to do.
At the beginning of last year I wrote the York Notes Advanced guide on Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. There had been almost no critical writing on the book, and there was very little material to go. The result was that I did something that one very rarely gets to do in academia. I just wrote what I thought. I didn't rely on secondary sources. I didn't quote from what people had previously said. I had no giants on whose shoulders I could stand, I just looked at the book, decided on an interpretation, and went for it. It was remarkably liberating. Of course, I had all the close reading skills I had ever learned, all the theoretical standpoints I had brushed up against, and a whole body of comparative literary studies to work from, but you know what I mean. And in that case, it really was about 'telling everything I knew'.
Recently I have been finishing off two smaller guides. One on Stephen King's The Stand, and one on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The first has been a little like my work on the The Kite Runner. There isn't a lot out there, so I've been able to provide my own interpretations. Of course, with Shakespeare, pretty much everything has been said, so it's more a job of collation than of creation. But still, in both cases, as with The Kite Runner, compiling a study guide, a written account to try and help a student to a rounded understanding, is a really interesting thing to do.
Okay, so, anyone who knows me will know I complain about writing them. They are, after all, work, and who enjoys that? But to immerse yourself in a text to that extent, to try and explain all the aspects of a book or play, to try and find the 'everything' so you can tell it, is a chance that you don't often get. Even when you teach a text, you don't often have the chance - or the time - to explore all the various facets of a text. So, for all that I complain, I do enjoy doing them. I wouldn't keep coming back if I didn't.
Anyway, enough of all this. After I finish off these guides and submit them, I'm going to work on my own novel. A very different proposition, much more creative, but another chance to tell everything I know. Wish me luck.
At the beginning of last year I wrote the York Notes Advanced guide on Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. There had been almost no critical writing on the book, and there was very little material to go. The result was that I did something that one very rarely gets to do in academia. I just wrote what I thought. I didn't rely on secondary sources. I didn't quote from what people had previously said. I had no giants on whose shoulders I could stand, I just looked at the book, decided on an interpretation, and went for it. It was remarkably liberating. Of course, I had all the close reading skills I had ever learned, all the theoretical standpoints I had brushed up against, and a whole body of comparative literary studies to work from, but you know what I mean. And in that case, it really was about 'telling everything I knew'.
Recently I have been finishing off two smaller guides. One on Stephen King's The Stand, and one on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The first has been a little like my work on the The Kite Runner. There isn't a lot out there, so I've been able to provide my own interpretations. Of course, with Shakespeare, pretty much everything has been said, so it's more a job of collation than of creation. But still, in both cases, as with The Kite Runner, compiling a study guide, a written account to try and help a student to a rounded understanding, is a really interesting thing to do.
Okay, so, anyone who knows me will know I complain about writing them. They are, after all, work, and who enjoys that? But to immerse yourself in a text to that extent, to try and explain all the aspects of a book or play, to try and find the 'everything' so you can tell it, is a chance that you don't often get. Even when you teach a text, you don't often have the chance - or the time - to explore all the various facets of a text. So, for all that I complain, I do enjoy doing them. I wouldn't keep coming back if I didn't.
Anyway, enough of all this. After I finish off these guides and submit them, I'm going to work on my own novel. A very different proposition, much more creative, but another chance to tell everything I know. Wish me luck.
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