Well, student teaching was over much faster than expected. I’ve talked this to death, but basically there was a huge tragedy in the family of the teacher who was supposed to be supervising me. In the interests of giving everyone a little space – her to grieve and me to complete the million assessments they’re requiring of me during student teaching – we’re calling it a day. I’ll do fifteen weeks next semester instead of five this semester and ten next.
So, this is basically to say that I find myself with unexpected time.
I’m using it to get re-caught up in my classes. And then I’m making a big Easterbay push.
I haven’t talked much about how Easterbay is going, because it’s a weird thing. I have been told that second books are particular beasts that seem never to behave. I’ve been told it’s because you finish the first book because you do – your overwhelming desire to be an author, or to exorcise your inner demons, perhaps just sheer stubbornness – but that second book is something you need a writing process to finish. And here is where you get one, trial by fire. I think I’ve managed that piece.
The piece I haven’t quite managed is the one where I finish the book. Every time get to the end and I think I have it figured out, something happens and it turns out that I don’t. The beginning of the book is shaping up nicely. It has a few characterization problems, but altogether it’s flowing and making sense. And then it just stops. I need to just write it, but therein lies the problem. How do you write something you don’t know?
Anyway, that’s what I intend to spend the summer on. I’ll wrench the ending of this thing out of me somehow, edit up the rest, and hopefully be in Beta reads by the end of July. That goal feels especially attainable now that I’ve gained three weeks of my time back.
Casey E. Hamilton 