PSA to all students of anything everywhere: If you do not understand something, ASK YOUR PROFESSOR. Explaining things in a way that you can understand is what we are paid to do. Making poor grades because you’re afraid of looking stupid IS stupid. If you have a question, ASK IT. And don’t wait until after the test. We can’t do anything to FIX it after the test. That is all.
On that note, I plowed through and finished grading midterms last night. Their term papers are coming up, which will be even worse, but for a week or two, I can enjoy my sanity. In the meantime, there are still lectures to write, more web content to write for work, and more progress to be made on the novella.
I did a series of tarot readings for my novella hero yesterday. I’ve been slowly going through and doing lots of my characters. Marley, Conall, and now Gage. With Marley and Conall, it was kind of trippy. The symbolism and such in the cards seemed dead on in an eerie kind of way. The one for Gage–didn’t seem to fit. It made me think about how much easier it is to interpret the cards in light of an existing story. There’s a natural tendency to fit the interpretation to a framework you already know. With Gage–well, I’m still kind of learning him even though I know his story. It will be interesting to see when I get down to more detailed plotting on my YA trilogy Totem how the cards work as a plotting tool. I read a bit about it in Tarot for Writers yesterday, but didn’t really have the time to play with it. Overall, I”m finding it very interesting, though I still have loads to learn.
Today is the last day of the first week of the Novel Push Initiative: October, so participants, be sure you’ve sent me ALL your word counts for the week so I can write up my report tomorrow. A lot of our folks are totally kicking butt!
5 thoughts on “PSA, Tarot, and an NPI Update”
Has it only been a week? Are you sure? Seems like it has been much longer than that! 🙂 I noticed everyone who posts here seems to be way above their requirements most of the time, which is great. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I have to tell you, as a teacher (middle school for years, now teaching writing at the college level online), I can totally sympathize. Parents used to come into conference and tell me their child didn’t understand the material and that was why they were making poor grades. My reply — why aren’t they asking questions in class, then?
NPI for Wednesday: 503. I have another writing project to work on later today, so this will be all I’ll get for this story.
Doing your characters’ tarot cards sounds cool? Is this just to give you a sense of their personality or is it a past/present/future reading? How do you get in the mindset to read for them?
I’ve just been doing some basic readings following along with Tarot for Writers. I’ll expand as I learn more I guess.
NPI today – 487. That’s all there will be, with class tonight, but hey, its every day, right?
I’m intrigued by the tarot readings you’re doing and how it can help with characters, etc. I don’t know much about tarot reading, but checkec out a site on your blogroll. Since I have this affinity for mythic and archetypal stuff anyway, it might be a promising avenue to travel for a while, see what happens.
Gotta hate midterm time! I know I do!
No word count for the 7th. I spent the entire day painting my son’s room. FUN! 🙂