The Make-or-Break Teachers

I’m getting ready to start a new school year. As always, there’s a thought that lingers over all my preparations.

I hope I don’t screw up any of the kids too much.

To be fair, I’m pretty sure I haven’t screwed up any kids yet. There have been a few I wish I could’ve done more for, but I think my track record’s pretty solid. There’s a little extra anxiety this year since I’m starting at a new school—or rather, my old school after several years away.

It’s an interesting situation, because it’s the school I went to as a teenager, along with being where I launched my teaching career. My family and I are rooted in this area, so a lot of the neighbors know I’m returning to teach there. Several of them are hoping to transfer their child into my class if at all possible.

No pressure, ha-ha.

Seriously, though, one thing I’ve heard from parents in the last several weeks (and indeed the past several years) is how important they feel it is that their child gets the right math teacher. A good math teacher can take a student from hating math to at least tolerating it, if not better. A bad math teacher can bring a skilled student’s progress to a grinding halt. Often that damage is never recovered.

Is it the same in other disciplines? Probably, to a degree, anyway. But it seems like the near-irreparability is more severe in math. I had English classes that I hated, but they couldn’t kill my love for reading and writing (obviously). Then again, if I’d been a struggling reader in elementary school, and a bad teacher only reinforced and exacerbated my struggles, that could’ve set me back for the rest of my life.

Once past the learning-to-read stage, moving on to reading-to-learn, it seems the make-or-break power of teachers lessens somewhat. (I hope so, considering teens I’ve known with English teachers of … questionable quality.) Math works a little differently, always with a new skill, a new principle to learn.

That makes my job potentially dangerous.

Maybe a different approach is in order. Maybe if I keep the focus on helping kids develop their ability to think, to reason, to problem-solve—and I don’t mean “A Train leaves Station A at 6:45 am” kind of problems, I mean real “Here’s a situation and we need a solution” problems—maybe that means I won’t have to worry so much about breaking anyone.

Because you know what? There’s something else underlying this whole line of thought. To have the power to break, I have to keep a monopoly on the power to build.

The students need to be allowed to build themselves. Maybe they’ll suffer minor breakages along the way, too, but maybe that’s what I’m really there for …

… to provide the super-glue when they need to mend their own breaks.

Have you had experiences with teachers (math or otherwise) who had that make-or-break position in your life? What made the good ones good, and the bad ones terrors?

Being Simple Doesn’t Mean It’s Easy

Someone recently asked what it was that made my agent pluck me out of the slush and offer to represent me (beyond the obvious awesomeness—his words, not mine). I ventured that it was my high-concept hook that grabbed her attention, and then having a manuscript that lived up to the promise of the query. All it takes is an awesome, agent-baiting query and a manuscript that backs it up.

My agent happened to be present (thus the question), and while she agreed, she also laughed and said, “OH IS THAT ALL?”

Yes, if only it were as easily done as said. I certainly went through plenty of “Nope, not quite the right formulation” with prior novels.

But then I thought about it. Getting an agent obviously isn’t easy. But it is simple.

Do you see the distinction?

It’s like the game Operation. The directions aren’t complicated. Get the tweezers in the opening, grab the little plastic piece, and pull it out without touching the edge of the hole. It’s simple.

Does that make it easy? Not if you have unsteady hands like I do. It takes deftness and just the right touch. It’s hard—some pieces harder than others, and some people struggle with it more than their friends.

Some may develop the skills quickly. Others may never be able to grab some of the pieces. The difficulty varies, but the simplicity of the process is the same for all.

I think sometimes we get frustrated in the query trenches by trying to unravel a magic formula, some secret complexity that only agented writers know about. Start with the title, genre and word count. No, those go at the end. Never use this phrase. Always close with that one.

Certain “rules” are handy for not giving agents headaches, but really, we don’t need to expend energy worrying about that kind of stuff. It’s simpler than that. Get the agent’s attention so they’re dying to read more. Once they start reading, make them fall in love.

It’s also really hard. It takes work and research and even some luck.

If something’s worth doing, it’s worth working for.

What else in life have you found is simple, but not easy? How do you keep yourself motivated when the “hard” makes you feel like it’s more complicated than it is?

ETA: It seems some felt this post was condescending, with me talking from my high post of now being agented and deigning to tell you all “how it’s done.”

I am truly sorry if it came across that way. It was not my intention. Those of you who are regulars on AQC know that I get asked for advice on querying all the time. Even before I was agented, but especially now. I am NOT AN EXPERT. Never have been. Yet I get asked. So I do my best to come up with advice that’s universal enough, that’s encouraging while still being realistic about how FREAKING HARD it is.

My only point in this post was to say, don’t focus on the wrong stuff. Don’t freak out over the minutiae. Remember the goal—the simple, but not easy goal—of getting the agent to read more, and then having the super-shiniest manuscript you’re capable of to hand over.

Will the best you’re capable always be enough? No. That’s realistic. My best didn’t get it done for years. I learned, I grew, I kept at it, I got lucky with some timing, and it happened. It can for you, too. I can’t say it WILL happen for all of you. I won’t lie.

But it certainly won’t if you quit trying.

Confessions of a Goody Two-Shoes

I admit it. I’m a rule-follower.

In school, when the teacher said, “Do this,” and “Don’t do that,” I stayed in line. Even when I could’ve gotten away with something. As a teenager, I didn’t party. Never even would’ve occurred to me as a possibility. I didn’t push the envelope with the dress code, I didn’t use language worse than “crap,” I didn’t do anything that people seem to think all teenagers did (yes, even in my time, old crone that I am … note sarcasm).

Sounds like I’d have made a really boring character for a YA novel. But that’s beside the point.

This has extended into adult life. I show up to school earlier than required and stay at least until the end of my contract time. I still don’t party.

I don’t illegally download music or movies.

(Ah, now we’re getting closer to my point.)

A couple of issues have sprung up this past week that got me thinking about what a goody two-shoes I am, and with particular significance to writers.

Issue #1: The Ubiquitous Piracy of eBooks

This isn’t a new thing. It took a while, but the file-sharing phenomenon that’s plagued music and film for years is really catching on in the eBook world.

There are those who say piracy increases sales. A cause-effect relationship there is dubious at best, and I have all kinds of problems with the way the statistics are interpreted by proponents of file-sharing.

Goody Two-Shoes Says: I. Don’t. Care. I don’t care if something that’s wrong both legally and (in my opinion) morally helps my sales. (No, I don’t mean that the illegality of something automatically makes it morally wrong. And yes, I had to add that it’s my opinion because there are those who think file-sharing is morally right.) I’d rather have poor sales than benefit that way.

What’s the right/best way to try to keep piracy under control? That’s the tougher question. If you have thoughts, would love to hear them.

Issue #2: The Posting/Pinning of Pics You Don’t Own

This one’s a hot issue right now. An author was sued for posting a picture on her blog that she didn’t have the rights to.

Nope, you can’t just find an image through a search engine and post it on your website or blog or pin it on Pinterest. Some images are fair game, free for the taking. Others are flexible, allowing certain uses as long as you meet certain conditions, link back, etc. And others are strictly controlled by the artist, and if you want to use them, you’d better ask and be ready to live with their answer (possibly including payment).

Some of us knew this. Some didn’t, which is fine. A lot of us grew up in the internet age, but that doesn’t mean we were sufficiently educated in how to properly handle all this intellectual property that’s now so easy to access. Now we all know, and I see everyone taking steps to make sure they’re only using images properly.

But even as they clean up their blogs, I see some saying, “This is stupid. This makes my life harder.”

Goody Two-Shoes Says: So what if it’s inconvenient? I mean, really? Visual artists and photographers shouldn’t get the same respect we want as authors under Issue #1?

How about instead of grumbling, we direct our energy to educating about artists’ rights? Maybe we should talk to the kids in our lives about how the ease of ‘copy-paste’ doesn’t make it right.

Or am I just outdated in this whole idea of following the rules?

Talking Basically About Bases

You may or may not know that we operate in a base-10 number system, which is a beautiful thing. It spares us from the agony of Roman numerals, where years looked something like this:

Instead of like this:

Remember all that talk about place value in elementary school? Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on? That’s the base-10 idea. Multiply 10 by itself successively, and you get the next place value.

Ten isn’t the only number to base a system on, though. Convenient with our ten-fingered anatomy, but it’s not even the only base we use on a regular basis. Time notoriously operates on non-ten bases. (Makes figuring elapsed time tricky for some students.) And since this particular country refuses to go metric, most of our measurements avoid the ease of base-10.

There are plenty of practical applications for other bases, but when I first learned about them in school, I remember just thinking it was cool to write a number that meant something other than what it looked like. Sort of a mathematical code.

For example, take base-8. We have to reassign all the place values. The ones place is still the ones place. The next place to the left is now the eights place. And the next is the eight-squareds (or sixty-fours) place, followed by the eight-cubeds (or five-hundred-twelves) place. So earlier I mentioned the year 1988. In base-8, that’d be

3 five-hundred-twelves
7 sixty-fours
0 eights
4 ones

So the year 1988 converts to 3704.

If someone gave me a worksheet of numbers to convert to different bases right now, I’d probably be a happy camper working through it.

And that concludes our Yes-I-Am-A-Geek moment for this week.

Gratuitous Kitten Cuteness

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably caught that we’ve recently added to the family with two new kittens. We’ve known for a while that we wanted to and finally got out to some shelters over the past couple of weeks.

My mom and sister had already decided one thing they wanted: A black cat that we’d name Loki. (Remember my sister’s Tom Hiddleston fixation? Yeah.) You’d think deciding something like that in advance would doom us to a really bad fit, but that wasn’t the case.

We went to the shelter closest to us, and there she was. A 3-4 month old black kitten, climbing the gate of her cage and screaming at us (literally) to take her home. Having had her for a couple of weeks now, she can definitely be a little imp sometimes (so the name fits), but she’s also a cuddly sweetheart. In fact, as I type this, she’s perched half on my shoulder, half on the pillows I’m sitting against with her purr right in my ear.

Next up, we drove to another shelter much farther. There we found a younger brown tabby that we’ve named Pika. While Loki has lungs enough to bring the vet’s office cat running with worry (yes, that actually happened), Pika has the tiniest meow ever, when it comes out at all. Half the time, her mouth moves but no sound comes out.

Now for the gratuitous part. An entirely-too-long-for-what-it-is bit of video of the two new buddies. This is pretty much what happens to me every day while everyone else is at work and I’m trying to write. Enjoy!

(If you’re wondering about the colored claws, they’re plastic caps to keep them from shredding myself and everything else on the planet. And yes, Pika totally starts it, apparently forgetting that Loki’s bigger.)

Choose Your ‘Tude

Anyone who knows me could tell you that I’m a mix of realist and recuperating perfectionist. I hope for the best without getting my hopes up. I acknowledge when I do well without getting out-of-control big-headed … well, I try, anyway.

Like anyone else, I have those moments when I get down on myself. I’ve had aspects of stories that I wondered if I’d ever get right. I’ve been afraid I’d never come up with a good story idea again. (That one still comes along now and then.) I’ve had manuscripts get several requests, only to get rejections that left me saying, “Mindy, what am I doing wrong? How on earth do you get an agent to ‘fall in love’ with a book?” (Yes, Mindy has been the recipient of any and all negativity rants.)

That last bit has been key for me—having someone to vent to when I’m feeling insecure and uncertain. Someone who doesn’t just blast sunshine back at me. (“No, RC, you’re the awesomest, they don’t even know, you rock everything!”) Someone who acknowledges my feelings, counteracts with factual evidence, and admits when she doesn’t have the answers, either.

So despite my ability to criticize myself to death, I’ve managed to keep an attitude of “If I keep trying, I’ll keep getting better, and eventually I’ll get there.”

There’s a different approach that can certainly be tempting, but I feel certain is less effective. The frequent, public declarations of, “I suck. I’ll never succeed at this. I’m screwed.”

Well, yeah. I believe that’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’m not a sunshine-and-rainbows, super-jam-packed-with-positivity type person. But I do know one of the few things we can control in this industry (and life in general) is our attitude.

If we’re overconfident, we annoy others with our arrogance. And we look foolish when we inevitably can’t deliver.

If we constantly declare ourselves full of supreme suckitude, what are we looking for? Baiting others into a pity party? Fishing for compliments, which we’ll then refuse to accept (because, y’know, we’re so convinced of our suckiness)?

Hard truth: I am not here to convince anyone of their greatness, particularly anyone who doesn’t want to believe it. I’m busy maintaining my own ego’s balance.

You don’t have to believe you’re great. You just have to be passionate enough about writing (or whatever you’re doing) to keep working at it, and believe that if you do, you’ll improve.

And you are the only one with the power to do that.