This summer is very different than last, which is not a bad thing, of course. However, I am getting out more and doing more that is keeping me away from working on the podel (podcasted novel), but I have episode one of the second season for listening pleasure (I hope).
Also, if you have something to submit to Teach. Write.: A Writing Teachers’ Literary Journal, then I will welcome it. Submissions of the fall/winter 2021 edition are open until September 1. See the submission guidelines for more information
The promised book reviews will be coming tomorrow. I hope.
Working things out takes time. Here I am at 61, still trying to wrap my mind around exactly who I am and why I’m here. I thought that was something young people did. On the way to figuring that out, I got caught up in creating this crazy podcasted novel that I call a podel. CAMPUS: A Novel That Wants to Be a Musical. is a social satire about higher education in the South, and it’s a blast to do. I’m learning so much, screwing up a lot, but not caring, probably offending Lord knows how many people and not caring about that either.
I like it.
Last episode, one of my characters did a highly unusual striptease. Yes, HE did. In Episode 11, The Spooky Cat Head Biscuits, a Zombie band, perform at the club rush/advising/registration day, and during the performance, two of the fairy godteachers have to rescue Jack Spratt, a student who thinks math is beautiful, from the wiles of the devil, or rather a vampire, who tries to trick Jack into drinking hallucinogenic mushroom tea.
So, sometimes I’m a novelist/playwright/actor/singer/podcaster, writing about being a teacher, which I also am. And sometimes I am the editor of Teach. Write.: A Writing Teachers’ Literary Journal. It’s a little more normal, I think. I also like doing this work and would love to read your writing, especially if you are a teacher or you write about teaching. But I publish other types of work, too. Why not give it a whirl? I am accepting work until September 1 for the Fall/Winter 2021 edition. You will find the submission guidelines here,
Next time, I will be a blogger/book reviewer and talk about my latest summer read,
Episode 10 of my podel (podcasted novel) CAMPUS: A Novel That Wants to Be a Musical is now available. This chapter features Dr. DAG, the chancellor of the Enchanted Campus, with its fairy godteachers, gnomes, dwarves, vampires, zombies and boojum (kind of like a yeti), among other assorted creatures, like teenagers, grumpy faculty members, and inept administrators. Dr. DAG has a regular afternoon liaison with his beautiful secretary Ms. Subowski, but it is NOT what you think.
If you have a poem, short story, or essay, why not submit it to my literary magazine, Teach. Write.: A Writing Teachers’ Literary Journal? You still have plenty of time! Submissions are open until September 1, for the Fall/Winter 2021 edition. See the submission guidelines for more information. I would love to read your work.
Episode 9 of CAMPUS: A Novel That Wants to Be a Musical is now available!
I had fun putting together this episode of my podel (podcasted novel)–CAMPUS: A Novel That Wants to Be a Musical. If you haven’t listened to all of the episodes, they are available all at the same place when you click on the link above. Many podcast platforms carry CAMPUS, so just search your favorite application.
If you like the show and are able, please consider becoming a supporter. I’m not looking to make any profit, but I would like to pay a composer and sound tech to help make the podcast better and maybe invest in some education (hey, there’s a novel idea), so I can improve my skills, just because. Wow! The support button is available on the podcast’s landing page at the link above.
In Episode 9, the plot thickens when we meet the villain of the piece. Oh, you thought it was Dr. DAG? What a lightweight! He’s nothing compared to Mr. M., who isn’t too pleased that the fairy godteachers have chosen Jack and Jill as their proteges and sprinkled them with fairy dust. He has his own plan for them, and it doesn’t include enlightenment or inspiration.
The Spring~Summer 2021 edition of Teach. Write. A Writing Teachers’ Literary Journal is available free online. If you would like a print copy, they are available as well.
Maybe you are a writing teacher on summer break and would like to work on a writing project of your own. Why not consider writing a short story, poem, essay, or ten-minute drama to submit to Teach. Write.? I am accepting work for the 2021 Fall~Winter edition until September 1.
Although I prefer to publish the work of writing teachers of any kind, at any level, I am open to all writers and most genres. If you are interested, see my submission guidelines.
I would love to read your work.
I am getting back into the reading groove as well. My nephew Timothy, whose blog, The Mugwump Diaries, I have mentioned in previous posts, gave me a book for my birthday that I am finally starting to read–Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald. I just started it so more about this interesting book that won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2019 and has been listed as one of the top 100 novels of the 21st century.
I’m also reading a memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, by Michelle Harper for my Western Carolina University Alumni Book Club and Maranatha Road by my friend Heather Bell Adams. She has a second book out, so I need to get on the stick. I also sneak in a chapter now and then of one of my favorite British mystery writers books–Many Rivers to Cross by Peter Robinson.
I told everyone I would be mainly reading and writing this summer.
The second episode of CAMPUS, my Podel (podcasted novel), is now available on Spotify and other podcast apps. Enjoy both episodes and follow me to be notified when new episodes are available.
About about ten years ago, sitting next to my husband on a trip returning from a visit to see his family in Pennsylvania, I came up with a crazy, crazy idea for a play. It would be a social satire set on the campus of a school in Western North Carolina, but it wouldn’t be your typical campus, oh no. This one would have your typical students and faculty with typical failures and successes, typical red tape binding them all; however, although some would be humans, others would not.
My campus, I thought as we rode along, would have fairy godteachers and gnomes, elves and trolls. There would be creatures of Appalachian lore, including devil dogs, moon-eyed people, and boojums (kind of like Sasquatch). My play would be a musical, and on that trip, I wrote the lyrics to several songs, including “The Enchanted Campus,” which is sung, sort of, as part of this week’s episode.
But the musical was not to be. The reasons are too numerous to bore you with here, but I couldn’t shake this idea and wanted to do something with CAMPUS. I just didn’t know what. Then, November 1 of 2019, I impulsively decided that I wanted to participate in NANOWRIMO, National Novel Writing Month. You can find out more about it here. I had worked on other novels and successfully written over 50,000 words in a month and wanted to try again.
Yes, I know. I teach English at a community college, and I wrote over 50,000 words in a month WITHOUT short-changing my students. Amazing what a writer can do when motivated.
But I didn’t have a project idea in mind. That’s when I thought–CAMPUS–Why don’t I turn it into a novel and see what happens? So that’s what I did and at the end of November 2019, I had over 50,000 words of my newest novel attempt, attempt being the operative word. However, the novel wasn’t finished, but I had plans to finish it in the coming months.
Then, in March, the pandemic hit, and I could not have worked on the novel even if I tried. My students’ needs had to come first, and their needs were many. With all my classes moving to online and many students disliking, loathing might be a better word, online learning, I had to spend my free time grading essays, writing emails, sending messages, and holding conferences. I took a couple of weeks off in May after classes were over. I started reading more, writing on my blog, and taking better care of my health. But I was restless.
It was then that I decided to start work on the novel again, but I knew to finish it by summer’s end, I would need to write every day. And I did, recording my word count on one of those free yearly planners we all get so many of in the mail. By the time classes began in the Fall of 2020, I had a rough draft.
Now what?
Considering how incredibly strange my novel project is, I didn’t see it getting a traditional publisher, so I started thinking of how I could share my writing with the world through some other means. My daughter had introduced me to the podcast, Welcome to Nightvale, several years before, and we had enjoyed listening to the quirky tales of life in the strange town of Nightvale. The producers of Nightvale have put out several Nightvale novels. I also thought how much I love acting and working with Curtis to write music.
That’s it, I thought! Why don’t I turn things around and turn my novel into a podcast that has musical elements? I even made up a a word for it–Podel. It means podcasted novel.
I shared my idea with the people who get me the most, my husband and daughter. I also shared it with my friend and former student Curtis McCarley, who wrote the music for my musical A Carolina Story. Curtis is working on music for future episodes of CAMPUS, you will be happy to know.
Then, for Christmas, guided by the advice of my daughter, a recent music technology graduate, my husband gifted me with a podcasting microphone and headphones–terrific! Then, my daughter gave me a book about podcasting, Podcasting for Dummies, and I discovered this great free app called Anchor that has made podcasting possible, even for a novice like me.
My podcast set up–photo by Katie Winkler
I’m 60. I’m nearing the end of my career as a teacher, a career that has been, at times, like any work of value, incredibly frustrating, but more importantly, it has been immensely satisfying. I have been able to help people be better communicators and better thinkers. I have been able to become a better writer myself and launch another career as a writer and editor, one that goes hand in hand with my teaching. Makes me a better teacher, in fact.
I know my podel is rough. I have already made mistakes and will make many more. But, I ain’t, as they say, getting any younger, and this dream has been deferred too long.
I have written a crazy book called CAMPUS–A Novel That Wants To Be a Musical. Okay, so written might be a bit misleading. I have the first draft of a crazy book.
Here’s the thing–I teach English full-time and online at a community college during a global pandemic. This next semester, I will teach three accelerated composition classes (16-weeks of material in 8-weeks), two 16-week composition support classes (I have only taught them once before; they will again be synchronous online because of the pandemic), and one 16-week British literature course, maybe. I have very little time to do the necessary revision, editing, and, most time-consuming, marketing that it will require. Plus, I have no time to get together with my composer to write the music for the book. You read that correctly–this novel wants to be a musical, so music there will be–one way or another.
Here’s the other thing–I’m 60-years-old, and I’m a darn good writer, in my mind, but I’m not much of a business woman. I don’t know anything about marketing and don’t really trust people who do. I’m not sophisticated or wordly-wise. However, I’m not naive enough to think my book will be published traditionally, especially not with times as they are, and I’m not interested in self-publication, not in book form anyway.
So what’s a busy old teacher to do?
Since my specialty is 19th Century British literature, perhaps it is appropriate that I have decided, like Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Wilkie Collins, to serialize my novel; however, my satirical novel in parts will have a 21st Century twist. It will be a podcast….
Maybe.
Maybe it will be a blog or a vlog or something else entirely. I hope it will eventually be housed within a parody website. Oh, I have ideas, but not much of anything solid yet. All I know is that cutting the project into small bits, like I suggest to my students all the time, will allow me to pour my heart into teaching like I always do, but also make it possible for me to work on revising and editing the novel a little at a time and not wait too long to share it with people. Wait. Will anybody want to read it?
Who knows?
Who cares?
I’m the only one who needs to because within this world that I am going to create, no one gets to tell me what it looks or smells like, what the people in it need to be or think or feel. No one can criticize, ostracize, or minimalize me on this campus.
What happens there will be completely of my making, for good or ill.
Merry Christmas to me!
Note: If you would like to follow me on my little adventure, I hope to air the first chapter of CAMPUS on Sunday, January 10. More details to follow after Christmas.
Starting this new project does not mean that I have abandoned Teach. Write. If you are interested in submitting something, you can read submission guidelines here. The deadline for the Spring/Summer 2021 edition is March 1, 2021.
Hey, Mrs. Winkler! 