Provocative title, don’t you think? Even, perhaps, a bit titillating? Well, evidently, my last post, with the word “panties” in the title, was, too, because that day, what do you know, there was a marked “Bump” in my blog stats. Now there are two whole people reading it, although I really don’t want to speculate what that second individual was doing while he was reading…so there’s the Bump.

Now, back to the Grind: I’ve had my nose back to the grindstone all morning, and after a lot of struggle and banging on my head on the keyboard, think I’ve finally managed to rework Chapter Five. My brain now feels about as jiggly and weak as my backside does from sitting and working on that chapter all morning.

Fortunately, I arranged my schedule for today (hopefully) to allow for a quick trip to the dungeon/fitness area in our basement to try to restore some signs of life and vigor to mind and body alike.

But, before that, I thought I’d give you an update. For those of you hoping that this will involve more about panties, prepare to be disappointed.

The revision is still going well, though I expect things to slow down even a bit more now that I’m back in classes again. I am feeling much more confident on that front, as I took some unexpected free time yesterday at school and spent it in the computer lab working my way through multiple tutorials. Think I have now figured out how to turn on the Mac in my classroom…just kidding–figured out a lot more than that and am no longer feeling like the class dunce (although I don’t have that class again until a week from Monday–will let you know how that goes).

Yesterday’s class went well. I liked the instructor, there are a few classmates from my fall class in there–it just felt like a much more comfortable fit. I am planning on heading back to the lab this afternoon, if I can swing it, to work on some of my homework there. At some point, we’ll probably wind up purcashing the software so I can use it at home, but for now, I’m still going to use the (free) resources provided by the school.

Add to my revision process two classes, a possible grant project due at month’s end, and the commencement of the production cycle for the newsletter I edit, and it’s going to be a busy couple of weeks. That’s why I feel absolutely no guilt in teasing you in with a salacious title. I wasn’t really being dishonest: there was a Bump in my stats, and working through those tutorials and Chapter Five of my revision was a Grind–just not the bump and grind some of you were hoping for.

Silly, isn’t it? An increase in traffic just from the word “panties.”

But hey, if that’s the way things work, then…

Bra!

I returned to class yesterday for the first time since Winter Break ended. I was just as excited to be back in the classroom (or in this case, the computer lab) this time around as I was for my class in the fall.

I was, however, a bit more nervous about this one: It is a software class, and technology is not my strongest suit (duh, that’s why I’m going to classes for it!) But the bigger problem, the one that cost me at least one hour of sleep Sunday night, was that the school’s computer labs are all Macs, and I, dear readers, am a PC. Actually, let me qualify that statement a bit: I use a PC. Generally speaking, I think people who define themselves by the type of computer they use need to get a life, though I must admit that the expression, “I’m a PC”, is quite effective in getting across to a baffled Mac-lab software teacher the fact that you have no idea what he’s talking about.

The class started off well enough: The teacher was energetic and engaging, and seemed to really know what he was talking about. He encouraged us to ask questions, to never be afraid to raise our hands, etc., etc., etc., so I felt pretty comfortable the first time he started demonstrating something on the screen and I didn’t catch it. I follow directions for the most part, so I raised my hand and asked him what he did and how he did it. Imagine my surprise when he teased me about having to ask!

Fortunately, I’ve got a pretty good sense of humor (I think), and a background in theater, so I was able to laugh it off with a witty retort of my own and move on.

Alas, shortly thereafter, I found myself lost on some stupid thing again (and when I say stupid, please try to understand that stupidity is relative.) If you’ve used a PC all your life, then operating a Mac is not actually “intuitive”–that’s just the popular byword all you Macs out there like to try shame all us PC-users with. Well, I looked up  the word intuitive in the dictionary and one of the definitions reads “readily learned or understood<software with an ~ interface>.” I therefore respectfully disagree: Macs are not intuitive, at least not for me.

Okay, back to the panties. The teacher told us to ask if we didn’t understand something, and I took him at his word. There were several more things I didn’t understand, so I asked several more questions, and each time I did, he teased me a little more about the gaps in my knowledge, and each time the class tittered and giggled at my expense. (And my classmates in this class were, on the whole, a lot older than the teens and twenty-somethings in my last class; you get a whole room of aging baby boomers and grannies laughing at you, then you know you’re screwed.)

I was getting more and more frustrated, and more and more embarrassed with each question. Finally, I just gave up, but the woman next to me took pity on me and kindly allowed me to pester her with my questions. Unfortunately, I made her miss something she didn’t understand, which made me feel bad, so I sucked it up and asked the teacher one last question, for which he teasingly chided me that I shouldn’t have been bothering my classmate, but should be asking him instead. I replied (laughingly–never let ’em see you cry), “Well, she doesn’t tease me when I ask questions.” He made a gesture like I’d wounded him to the quick with my comment, but I was beyond caring.

Why do some teachers feel the need to embarrass their students for asking questions? I walked out of that classroom close to tears, fuming and angry about my first day in that class for pretty much the rest of the day. I fantasized what I would say to the teacher if we were alone in a dark alley (and I had a large can of mace in one hand and a cellphone with 9-1-1 on speed dial in the other): “You big, arrogant jerk! I used to be a teacher, too, you know, and I always told my students that the only stupid questions are the ones you never ask. Why do you think I came here in the first place? To learn, or to be the butt of your jokes? What kind of teacher are you? If you’re so talented at what you do, then why are you teaching at a technical community college in the first place? Grrrrrr!”

When my husband returned home, he was eager to hear about my class, but with our children present, I didn’t feel I could open that can of worms (I feared the expletives might damage their tender ears). But he kept pressing me and pressing me to tell him what was wrong. Finally, I blew, tears practically welling up in my eyes as I told him how the professor had spent most of the class teasing me about my shortcomings (I swear, I almost had to check to see if I had on Disney Princess underwear–almost.) He got that look in his eye, the one that always tells me, “Julia, you’re over-reacting. Come down off the ledge, let’s talk this over as if you were a rational human being, and see what needs to be fixed with this situation.”  Translation: Put on your big-girl panties and deal.

But I was in no mood to deal at that moment. I was in a mood to kick and scream, to rail against the teacher’s casual cruelty to me and against the general injustice of a world that cannot agree to all use the same type of computers. I know what needs to be fixed (at least with me; the teacher’s needs are a whole ‘nother story.) My husband is right: I need to put on my big-girl panties and go to work. I need to beef up my Mac skills, plain and simple. I need to work harder than anyone else in that class to show him that teasing is not going to stop me from showing up in class and asking him questions. (In fact, it’ll likely just piss me off again and spur me on to even greater heights.)

I will spend extra time in the lab. I will memorize every chapter of the textbook. I will become so damned proficient in this software that I’ll be able to operate it with my eyes closed. (All right, all right–designing stuff with your eyes closed is probably a bad idea, anyway.)

But make no mistake, Professor: it’s on. It is so on. No, wait–they’re on. That’s right, the big-girl panties are on, and they’re coming for you.

Ouch–hang on a second; all that chest-thumping has given me a wedgie…

Sorry, couldn’t resist–instead of working last night, when I should have, I played hooky to watch the new episode of The Simpsons and the 20th-anniversary show that followed. So, there goes that resolution–I spent the day yesterday not writing. Naughty girl.

I am trying to get back on the path of righteousness today; I have just spent an hour and a half working on my revision, which is definitely slowing down, and I did research some submission opportunities for a couple of my short stories.

But, unfortunately, today, I go back to school. Now, if you read any of my earlier posts, you know that I generally find that an exciting thing, something I look forward to, but with my newfound (and admittedly still shaky) writing discipline at stake, I’m finding it hard to work up a lot of enthusiasm for sitting in a classroom for four hours this afternoon when I could be writing instead.

Ultimately, I know this is good for me. This stuff, for lack of a better term, I’ll be learning today is stuff I’ll be able to use in a practical way someday, say, if I decide in six months or so that I will settle for self-publishing and need to do my own book design. That’ll be a practical application, sure.

Oh, but today, all I want to do is write.

Oh, and smoke–that hasn’t gone away, despite my running a couple of quick miles this morning to remind myself of things I couldn’t do when I was a smoker…didn’t help. Still craving.

Be strong, naughty girl, be strong.

I am pleased to say that I did manage to write for an hour today, Saturday. While I have always managed to write during the week when the kids are at school, trying to do so on the weekend presents a few more challenges, not the least of which is a nagging feeling that I shouldn’t be taking any time away from our weekend family time. My solution to that problem is that I am trying to limit myself to just an hour on Saturday and Sunday each. We’ll have to see how that goes as the weeks go by.

The work is starting to slow down a little bit now. I think that the pent-up creativity and energy has now dissipated enough that I am approaching once more a more typical speed and ease of work.

But the real interesting and unexpected development is this: the main character of my novel is a chronic smoker. Now, I used to be a smoker a loooong time ago; I quit when I was just nineteen years old (For those of you scoffing that at that age, I couldn’t possibly have been a smoker, not so fast: I was already up to two packs a day by then.) Occasionally, over the years, particularly during periods of duress, I have experienced a mild craving for a smoke, but I’ve never given in. I think that’s largely because I also occasionally have nightmares where I dream that I’ve given in and am smoking like a fiend; I awaken from those dreams panicked and sweaty that I gave in, and inevitably sighing with relief when I realize it was just a dream. Strange, I know, but who can account for dreams?

The  real strangeness here is not in my dreams, it’s in my waking thoughts: This whole week, as I’m losing myself in this character who actually does smoke like a fiend, I have been experiencing cigarette cravings! How weird is that? We walked out of a bowling alley today, picking up our son from a birthday party, and someone was standing outside the entrance, smoking. That usually makes me grumble and grouse, often giving a very loud and very obvious cough so that the smoker will know just how much I hate having to walk through their secondhand smoke. But today, it was all I could do not to walk over to the guy and ask him for a hit! My, my, my…think I am taking my writing a bit too much to heart. Hopefully I can finish this revision before the cravings get any stronger! Interesting, though, very interesting…

Well, I made it: a whole week of my “butt-in-the-chair” approach to improving my writing discipline, and I’ve done it! I worked on my revision for a whopping ten hours this week (two each day) and spent an additional three or so hours working on other writing (my youth novel, this blog, some freelance editing, etc.)

The revision is going smashingly, I think, although hey, as my daughter pointed out, it has not yet been accepted for publication anywhere, so we shall see. The work at hand right now is just to finish this revision, then the submitting process begins all over again, first to volunteer readers (anyone interested?) and then to publishers and agents.

But revision can be a dangerous thing: When we went to Mt. Rushmore this summer, there was a display in the visitors’ center about how long the sculpting process took, and I remember reading something about artists’ general inability to say definitively that a work is DONE. You can keep at it and keep at it, chipping away a little bit here and a little bit there, adding a splotch of red here and a swirl of blue there, until you drop dead–artists can tinker with their works indefinitely, so you just kind of have to agree to agree with yourself on what that point of completion is. How much of this revision is real, how much of it am I doing just because I’m tinkering? I have no idea.

So this time around, once I get to the end again, I’m going to give it to a couple of people who I didn’t let read it the first time around (one of whom is my husband, which scares me to death–his opinion carries far more weight with me than it should, but I can’t seem to relax about the thought of him reading my work with a critical eye; I respect his opinion too much.) After he’s done with it, I think then I will finally feel in my heart that I can do no more with it, and I will declare it done. Then I will submit it to a second round of professionals to see what happens.

Then, and only then, will I know if the work for whichI’m sticking my butt to the chair right now was worth it in conventional terms, but right now, I am loving every minute of the process. I love it! And that is another way of describing success, isn’t it?  Loving what you do? (Too bad love won’t cover college tuition, though…)