I’ve been reviewing my essays from university, seeing as how they came in handy this summer in particular when I was teaching a senior English course. I’ve been able to use snippits here and there for planning my summer school course that I taught, and am reviewing more to plan for the fall, though I’m teaching more junior courses.
Summer vacation is going to, therefore, be rather short, The first week flew by with some redecorating and some reading for pleasure. I’ve been reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for a laugh, The Tudors: Thy Will be Done which is basically a novelization of the third season of the Showtime series, and after seeing (pun not intended) the film Blindness, I’m reading the novel that it was based on.
I can’t believe that I recieved a memo from school today about the beginning of the school year! Recieving it has made me realize I must begin to plan out the beginning of my semester already!
I’ll take one more week though of lazy reading and watching movies until I take that back-to-school plunge!
It has occurred to me that with Spring and longer daylight hours, I’ve been able to read (without falling asleep!) more than I could most of the winter. I have been indulging my reading habits with a little historical fiction by Margaret George, whose Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry VIII I’d already read. Now I’ve been reading Mary Called Magdalene and have on deck Helen of Troy. George takes her historical heros/heroines and gives them a voice, a character and the situations as realistic as she can, and still create a fictional account that is interesting for a history buff and a literature enthusisiast. I’m enjoying her books immensely, and her Cleopatra is next on my ‘to buy’ list.
In the length of time since I have posted, I have been re- reading my favourite “Margarets” Laurence and Atwood. Over the March Break from my classes, I decided to read The Diviners by Margaret Laurence and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The reason I chose these books are twofold. First, they are on the curriculum for our department in the senior grades and I might teach those next year. Second, I had read both before, but it was a very long time ago, and I needed a refresher in good Canadian Literature. I enjoyed re-reading these novels very much. It was like slipping on my favourite pyjamas (which I did) and spending a few evenings with a close friend. I believe I will, either here or my library blog, review these novels.
Does writing quizzes for my classes count as my writing quota for the day? Today, other than this blog, that’s all I’ve written. Well, I do get bogged down at school, where I dip into my creativity well a little more some days than others. I am, however, coming up to doing some exciting literature in class. To Kill a Mockingbird is my favourite novel of the 20th century, and one of the most important. I have the privilidge to teach it to my grade 9 class beginning next week. My favourite quote from the novel, is one I use often for anyone who is judgemental, prejudiced and just plain uneducated about anyone who could be viewed as ‘other’:
Two of my favourite Canadian authors, along with Alice Munro (who wasn’t a Margaret, so no quotes from her today!) I can, and have, learned so much from these authors; as women and as Canadians of which I am both. Is it harder to get published here? I’m not too sure, as I haven’t gone that route myself yet. Recognition may be harder in Canada, though perhaps not in Canada itself, if anyone is paying attention. The main populace, though, is paying attention to the U.S. as our main media import. Hell, even the curriculum in my province hardly supports teaching the Canadian authors (we squeeze in The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood into grade 12 for the advanced student, and I teach Atwood in my poetry unit for grade 10. We are still advocating for The Stone Angel
So a big shout out to Google docs, an online resource for iGoogle users. You can start a document at home (such as the short story I’m working on), take it on the move with my crackberry, er, Blackberry and add a thought or two, then write a bit at work when I have a little time between classes or on lunch. No saving to a flash drive that can get lost (I’ve lost several). Just go to iGoogle and open up the document and type. It auto-saves, and I save again when I close. I find this works better for me to get my ideas out, rather than carrying around my own little black notebook, which I doodled in rather than wrote in. 
Damn I love that.
Thank you to one of my literary heroes for giving me a reason to hit delete without guilt. 
This is the short story I began today. I know where I want to go with it, but, as often happens with me, I tanget. Once I do, my short stories then become unfinished novels. I need, I believe, a set style to put a short story into; a framework. It doesn’t, however, seem as creative to me to do that. It hardly seems like art to follow a formula.
