Goals and Chunks

It’s been a crazy spring. We just finished classes and put the bow on another school year at Northfield Mount Hermon, where I teach and live. This spring, my middle daughter, Audrey, took my Crime Literature course, which was a wonderful experience (at least Dad says that; not sure what Daughter would tell you) and graduated. So we had friends and family in and out of the house for a week or so.

Audrey and Dad

Now summer is here, and I have several commitments. For the past 20 years, as an educator, I’ve been involved with the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program. In a couple of different roles this summer, I will spend about twenty nights away from home, holed up in hotel rooms.

All of this leads to many starts and stops in my writing schedule.

I try to use these chunks of time away from home wisely by setting writing goals. If I’m spending time away from my family, I want to have something to show for it. This week, I’m traveling to Tampa Bay, Florida, toting revision suggestions for a screenplay I’ve written. (We’ve gone full circle because –– irony of ironies –– the notes come from a former student who now works for a Hollywood agent who handles my work.) The script is 62-ish pages long (an hourlong TV pilot), and I’ve got eight nights. My hope is to finish the revisions and send the script back to him before I get on my return flight.

Once the script is put to bed, it’s on to my next chunk and another short-term goal: I’m 30 pages into a novel, and I want to reach page 150 by Sept. 1. I have three weeks at home before I travel again. I would like to write 75 pages in that span.

And so on.

I met a writer (a poet and essayist) this week who says they work eight hours Saturdays and Sundays, focusing on their day job during the week. I don’t possess that ability to compartmentalize. I couldn’t set writing aside for five-day stretches. And my weekends are joyfully spent chasing field hockey, swimming, cross country meets, and lacrosse games.

So my writing life exists in chunks and ebbs and flows, moving from one goal to the next.

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On my nightstand: I’m in the middle of two books I am loving, both nonfiction. And speaking of goal-setting and ebbing and flowing, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, is a fascinating look at the great author’s life as a runner and writer. I’m late to the game on this one; it’s been out since 2008. And Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond, is compelling narrative nonfiction. It won the Pulitzer (and just about every other nonfiction award it was eligible for) and I’m seeing why. It is both fast and weighty.