Lecture Writing, The Anti-Fiction

As I have mentioned here before, I’m deep in the midst of prepping a Theories of Personality course for next semester.  I’ve been breaking my neck to get all the lectures written and the powerpoints mad, and I’ll continue to bust my butt in order to get the syllabus, quizzes, tests, etc. finished before January 6th, which is when class actually starts.  Why am I doing this?  Well, because when I first started teaching for this university, I was hired in October and my paperwork sat around on some lazy person’s desk in HR such that I did not get access to the system in which I was building my course until 2 days before the university closed for Christmas.  Meaning I had an entire semester’s course to write in 2 weeks.  I pulled it off, but it sucked.  I spent my entire Christmas break at my office at work.  I’m trying to avoid that this time.  In a perfect world, I’ll have everything written, recorded, and uploaded prior to the start of the semester, so that all I have to do is GRADE and answer questions.  This is how I work multiple jobs without going stark, raving mad.  Online courses, while a massive PITA to create and set up, are relatively self maintaining afterward.

I set myself the unconventional NaNo goal of finishing these lectures and the novella.  I’ve been a rock star on the lecture side of things.  I officially have one lecture + one remaining slide to write.  I’ll probably wind up expanding a few of the lectures a little, but the worst of it is almost done and we’re not at the end of Week 3 yet.  I’ve officially written 12 lectures in the last 5 weeks.  My brain is somewhere around the consistency of the porridge I like to eat for a winter breakfast.  Consequently the novella has…well, sat.

I needed to rewrite a few scenes from the beginining, which I did.  I have come right up to the middle of the story and my get up and go done got up and went.  I blame it on being firmly sucked into teacher realm.  There’s not much overlap between the two and I’m afraid I’m not very good at moving between worlds.  I’ve done a few character sketches, made lots of random notes, but I haven’t done any new scene work in about two weeks.  Seriously, this kind of stuff is the anti-fiction for me.  I haven’t been in the mood to write much at all.

So…I’m just going to let things sit another week or so, just wind up the lectures.  I decided it was best because what little I HAVE written hasn’t been productive or useful.  So I’ll knock out the mandatory stuff I’ve gotta get done.  After that I hope my brain will realign to the fiction polarity and start actually working again.  I’m waiting for any of my projects to sit up and speak to me again.

Wish me luck today!  I’d love to celebrate finishing the lectures with something tonight.

One thought on “Lecture Writing, The Anti-Fiction

  1. Running a computer store is rather anti-creative too, I find. Sometimes I can write a bit in between things, but only if none of my employees are here to see me do it. (S) But alas, we must eat.

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