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Wednesday 4 February 2015

IWSG - Small Victories

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All my free time comes in lump sums. That's the curse of being a teacher. A first year teacher at least who has to make up all her lessons from scratch. The only real  bulk of free time that I have comes in the holidays which, I grant you, do make up for the stress of term time. But this means that I've never really finished anything in my life, and very few of the stories in my head can be finished outside of 100k.

As a result of this, my fiction makes slow progress. I tend to write only on average 30 minutes each day. It's not ideal. I would love to immerse myself completely in my world but it's simply not do-able. But the fact remains; I've never really finished anything.

So to make up for this, I decided to stretch my wings a little with a lesson and I wrote a sketch. I'm no stranger to script writing, but only for the Nativities at my Church where I was put in charge of the yearly performance of our young people. Even then I can't take all the credit. Normally I found a script or an idea online and adapted it for our small number of children. But last week, I took it upon myself to write an entire script from scratch. The class in question are not my favourite by any means. They're a mixed bag of personalities with one thing in common, there are very few in the class for whom science is interesting. And those that are interested struggle with it. But I'd been observed with them by another member of staff and although my lesson was satisfactory, we had a long chat and he inspired me to try harder with them, rather than plunging through the content with my head down ignoring all the troublemaking.

So I wrote them a script, where the specialised cells of the body have a huge argument over who is the most important, subtlety slipping in the facts about each cell that they have to know.  It took me, perhaps a little under an hour and a half. It was short, but I felt some kind of accomplishment having completed something of my own creation

And they loved it. Everyone who wanted to got involved and those who didn't, for the first time, respectfully sat back and watched the ones reading out their parts. They put in expression and no-one talked over anyone else, a first for them.

I'm under no delusions. They're not cured, and this week they'll probably be back to their naughty selves. But for the first time since September I was proud of them. And of myself. I completed something literary of my own design. It was small but it's a step in the right direction.

What are the small victories that keep you going? Finishing a chapter? Finishing a scene?

Sarah x



4 comments:

  1. That's great that the script was able to get your class's attention! That's definitely a victory to be proud of. Since I'm in the editing phase with my book, I try to look at every time I figure something out as a victory.

    February IWSG Co-host

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  2. That's cool! I like the idea of educational sketches. We used to come up with them for our theatre troupe/class in high school...some by the teachers, some by the students. Breaking out of a writing comfort zone sounds like a good way to get started when you're stuck.

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  3. Yay!
    yoo RITE!!
    Gotta lotta
    extraordinary
    exponential
    exactly.
    Wannum?

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    Replies
    1. Does the name
      BRENDAN OWEN KEARNS
      sound familiar?
      Thats my name
      and it's verrrry Irish, me wee lassy.
      Meet me Upstairs someday, dear.
      Let's gitta BIG-OL-BEER.
      Gotta lotta tok about.
      Cya soon...

      Delete

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