Summer “Vacation?”

As a school teacher, I’m often asked what I’m going to do during my summer vacation. When the question emanates from non-teachers, it is often tinged with a touch of jealousy or maybe it’s vicariousness or maybe both. I think these folks expect me to say that I will be lying poolside on a chaise lounge with constantly-replenished cool drinks. To be honest, I will do my share of that exact form of relaxation and other similar activities.

However, I will also spend nearly every other available minute I can spare either conducting research for or writing what I hope will be my next novel. That is the best answer to what am I going to do with my summer.

My first memory of actually vocalizing my desire to be a writer occurred when I was thirteen. I remember I surprised myself when I said it. Like most childhood dreams, however, I put it aside and settled for what I thought was the next best thing: being paid to read from great writers and to talk about their works with students. I became the poster boy for my most hated of adages: “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.” For over twenty years that snarky bullshit grinded my gears until – after surrendering all of my coaching duties and completing my masters in English Literature – I grew determined to prove it wrong. The experience that most validated that determination occurred when I was invited to the University of Central Florida’s Author’s Festival, where I sat in on a panel discussion with the great Ellen Hopkins, author of multiple YA bestselling novels (Crank, Perfect, Impulse, etc.) and met Lauren Goff, whose novels and short story collections (Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Delicate Edible Birds, and Florida) have earned her the respect of critics as one of the finest literary novelists of her generation.

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Over the past fourteen years, I’ve managed, somehow, to write nine complete novels (only three of which have been published), one partial that I’ve more or less abandoned, and my current Work-in-Progress, which currently sits at around 30,000 words. The vast majority of these projects were completed during summer months. I pick at them during the school year, but I spend so much creative energy just trying to motivate my students and to convince them of the value of what I ask them to read and write that there is very little left in my tank at the end of the day for creative writing.

What further complicates the writing process is that, as any serious artist of any genre knows, Art is an exhausting mistress. In my case, she demands more of my time and energy than I can reasonably devote to her and still fulfill the many other roles I play, responsibilities I carry, and time and attention I owe to the people in my life. Any turn of my attention away from her sends her sulking into a corner of my mind from where she constantly reminds me of my need to return and to tend to her: “You really should be writing,” she goads me. Even as I compose this blog post, her arms are crossed, her bangs are being uplifted with repeated puffs of exasperated air, and her eyes roll at my wasting of her precious time.

In order not to reduce myself to some stereotype of a novelist as an anti-social, solipsistic, work-consumed, tortured artist who drinks too much, I have to write in bursts whenever a window of time not already promised to or required by someone or something else opens. Whenever the rare three-hour block of time to devote to sustained writing presents itself, I seize it, but such periods are the exception, not the rule.

I imagine both the quality and quantity of my writing would increase exponentially should I commit myself and my time exclusively to writing and to a hermit’s existence. And maybe it would pay off in both critical and financial success. For me, however, that price is too high. My Art will have to remain my part-time mistress, for I am in no way ready or willing to give up all she necessitates to be married to her.

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