Katie's Blog

Hmm... I've had a glorious last few months. I know, I keep saying that, but it's true. I've let my brain become focused on poetry -- I've read poetry, thought about poetry, shared poetry, critiqued poetry, and yes, of course, wrote poetry. Last week, though, my university had a guest lecturer come by to talk to writing faculty about second language acquisition, and of course, I was there, and my brain started thinking, again, of my pedagogy. It's been a shifting of gears, so to speak, and this morning, instead being awoken by a sudden need to write, I woke up to thoughts about re-sequencing my readings to accommodate for L2 learners. Good, important and productive thoughts, yes, but as I poured myself a cup of coffee and began my "work" for the day, I couldn't help but think, ugh. And here I go again, teaching taking over my entire brainspace. I love teaching, I really, really do. I think I'm a fantastic teacher. In fact, I THINK I'm a

Phew! What an awesome summer this is proving to be! Ok, so I'm not traveling anywhere, and no, no, I'm not doing even working, or even getting out of my pjs every day, but you know what? It's felt really, really wonderful. I've been writing, yes, writing, a boat load, I think enough to keep me revising and rewriting and editing throughout the rest of the year :-P :-P :-P I'm happy to finally breathe a sigh of relief: I've gotten my second full manuscript to a "happy place" -- and no, that doesn't mean I'm done, but it does mean that it's at least done enough. I've wrapped it up, it has a pretty bow on it, and now it's ready to start going off to publishers. This was my main goal for the summer, and it feels eerily good (while at the same time horrible) to have it, well, somewhat done. I'm going to continue working on it until I get a publisher, though, revising, adding, taking out poems, that kind of stuff. What IS my second