After an intense 12 weeks of teaching a seminar on journalism, I’m feeling blissfully tired—the good kind of tired, when you made a big effort and were inspired rather than worn down by it. What a gift teaching is—especially when you only have 18 students, so just 18 final papers to grade!
The class at U of Oregon was on feature writing. It’s wonderful to see something I love and have practiced for decades take shape in the minds and keyboards of young journalists. I really enjoyed seeing them incorporate more complex reporting and literary style into their work as the weeks progressed. All is not lost with this world.
I gave a pop quiz on the last day which included this prompt:
“All Students Learned Something in this Class”
That is so profoundly true, professor.
Fake News!
As I was leaving several students and also faculty asked, So, are you teaching again in the fall?
My answer was, “If they invite me,” but that’s not true. The drive to Eugene is just too long—nearly 2 hours each way. I got what I wanted out of the class—teaching, plus meeting a lot of excellent journalists who teach there—but the driving left me spent by Friday of each week.
And yes, I caught some trout only 30 minutes from my classroom, but that’s not worth the work of being an adjunct professor.
However, I got something I DIDN’T expect out of the class—a huge jolt of writing energy. Being in the classroom twice a week, talking about journalism, led me to engage in it. As soon as the term started, I began rewriting my book manuscript.
In 12 weeks I did 240 pages of rewriting.
That’s a lot of rewriting by my standards—twenty pages a day sometimes, my fingers flying over the keyboard. I’m now 2/3rds of the way through another draft of my book, which is more or less Draft 3. Some parts have been rewritten more, some less, but this is my third draft.
I call it the Speed Run. As gamers know, that’s when you try to get through the whole thing as fast as possible, even if you don’t get every point.
So this is my literary Speed Run. A fast rewrite, getting the overview of the book while looking for flaws and building consistency and thematic power. I’ve promised to deliver the manuscript to my agent on September 1, so there is still a lot to do—probably a hurried 4th draft in July and August.
Thank you for your support, financial and otherwise, which helps me stay on target month after month, focussed on finishing the book. It helps to know you are involved.
I can’t tell you how much I’d love to teach trailer editing but the best offer I got wanted it done in a single day symposium kind of thing. You can’t teach trailer editing in a day. So I toil away on my documentary about the neighborhoods lost to eminent domain around LAX. I imagine they refer to you as old man Symmes...