Jenn: I’ve Fallen… and I can’t get up…
After going gangbusters on this textbook and meeting and exceeding many of my self-imposed schedule deadlines, I’m in limbo. Kind of. The conference call with my editors ended up going really well. They are incredibly happy with the book. Their main stylistic comment was that it sounds a little too conversational for a textbook, and that the students may like this, but it’s the faculty who will ultimately adopt or not adopt the book, so they want me to clean that up. It makes sense, since my process was to have a student sit in and type as I lectured in class, so I ended up with twenty pages or so of transcribed “conversation.”
They also want me to do all those things I dread. Boldface words and create a glossary. Key terms. End of chapter material. I dislike this stuff intensely, but that’s what people put into textbooks, and that’s what I have to do. I find it restrictive and stifling to have this material at the end of the chapter. I teach what I teach, and it’s misleading to kids to be memorizing a whole bunch of terms and main points that I may or may not cover. This stuff is not low skill enough so that I can farm it out to a student, so it’s on me. My editors also made some formatting changes and the plan now is to send me three chapters at a time, I’ll make the required changes, then they send the book out to 100 reviewers, 3 chapters at a time. Eek.
The thing is, it’s summer. Ask anyone when faculty should be taking a long break, and they’ll of course mention this season. Not us! At my school, we have two intense summer semesters, 100 minutes a day, four days a week, and I made the moronic mistake of teaching THREE classes. That’s nearly six hours straight of lecturing non-stop, EVERY day. The money is incredible, but the effort is deadly. My daughter is now in daycare five days a week, which kills me, but ironically she is thriving and seems very very happy. She no longer cries when I drop her off, she gets dressed happily and without complaint in the AM and when it’s time to go, there is no longer a fight, she gladly walks right over. It’s a shame that others can raise my kid better than I can. In the morning she is met with all these stations of art tables, sensory tables, etc., and they play for an hour. Then they do “circle time” where they read a book and introduce each kid, followed by a snack, 1 1/2 hours out on the playground, lunchtime, a nap, more art and sensory projects, another snack, and 1 1/2 hours out on the playground playing with each other, and then I come get her. She has learned songs I don’t know, and has created some ingenious and beautiful artwork. There are frequent guests of muscians, sports people, etc., to stimulate them. Of course her teachers don’t replace me, but it is such a relief, as a single mom, to not feel this pressure to get her up to the park to play with kids every day at the same time, and to be stocking and conducting artwork sessions. Now all the time we spend together is absolute quality time (not meaning art is not quality, it’s just not one of my strong points); cooking, going for walks with our dogs, talking, playing in her room, and reading reading reading. That place is my village (as in what it takes to raise a child) and seeing how happy she is there makes me feel a little less guilty about them not being her blood relatives and me paying for the service. Bright Horizons is a wonderful place.
Right, so back to the book. I look at it. I open the files. I realize I have to be productive in the cracks of time. But I am not. The students who were working on it for me have graduated or left for the summer, so it’s just me, and I’m pulling LONG hours teaching three classes with twelve field trips until the end of June. I don’t have anything left, because it is important to me to have the energy and the brain to be totally focused on and commited to my daughter when I’m home. But the second summer session, I’m teaching only two classes, large ones (which, ironically, are much less work) not field trips, back-to-back in the AM. So the plan is to do what I can, kind of freeform, this first summer session, and then get a real schedule back in place, and posted on the Monday Page, for each week. I’ll have four half-days M – Th, and all day Friday to work, for seven weeks. That ought to get me far. And then my daughter and I are going up to Maine for over two weeks. And we will do nothing and everything all day long.
Does anyone have any experience with advances? I’m almost thinking of not teaching at all Summer 2, and my original thought was to go up to Maine for two full months with my daughter. Reality set in. Two weeks are enough. I don’t need the money, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to be asking for an advance because it will make me look like I know what the ___ I’m doing? And if so, how much does one ask for?
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
Impressive progress, Jenn! You do seem to have bitten off rather a lot for the summer, however–yikes! Having such a good childcare solution is huge, however. Imagine the stress if things were different…
As to your advance, that would have been addressed in your contract. Was there no previous discussion of an advance?
Hey Jenn–long time no see round these parts! How is the textbook project? Are you done? Hope things have come to a happy conclusion.
Hey hey! I know, I’m such a loser, sorry.
I’ve come to the conclusion that all one has to do to write a textbook is to be unbelievably organized. I keep tripping over myself by saving to different places, losing files, and having to sort through seven variations of the same document. Argh! And I’m a Type-A-Virgo-Oldest-Child!
I submitted all 20 chapters to the publisher, and the head editor had to… excuse my language… piss all over a “sample chapter” that he “edited in great detail.” Okay, I understand his comments, but does he have to be condescending?
Here are a few:
“this is 7 or 8 grade levels below where we need to be. This is not even appropriate for a community college text”(my whole GOAL was to make the subject accessible to non-science majors who are completely daunted by the current textbook I use in class. Guess I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams there! I should be so lucky in other areas of my life!)
“this is a science textbook, you should be talking about palaeomagentism, not the cold war.”
(this was a fascinating story about how the US Navy actually discovered magnetic anomalies on the seafloor, mistaking them for Russian submarines, which let to the development of the theory of plate tectonics. “just the facts, ma’am.”
“the reason your work is so confusing is because you keep switching tenses”
(egad. the Earth WAS created but we are NOW in a time of global climate change. and the atmosphere will CONTINUE to heat up. past, present and future in one sentence, how ELSE to write it?)
He also (did you get that? HE? HE? HE?) has me adding all this stupid “learning objectives” and “review” malarky scattered throughout the text which I think completely breaks up the flow and is totally unnecessary. Then all the “end of chapter material,” summary, key terms, multiple choice questions, essay questions, glossary definitions, useful websites, etc..
I’m slogging along through it, but it’s annoying. I’m also continuing to use my little undergrad elves who are unbelievably helpful, but the organization thing is a problem here again. I’ll give two kids the same job. I’ll start working on a chapter that a student is also working on. They get sick and delay the flow.
So anyway, thank you SO much for asking, the manuscript is still ahead of schedule but is a long, nightmarish beast of a project. I’m incorporating it into my six-month plan, which is to bring Hollis down to 3 days of school, only come to work on those 3 days, and to start saying NO to everyone and every thing. Pare everything down and simplify. I got rid of my cell phone, now I have no cell, no TV at home, no internet at home, no car, and a peaceful life. Soon I will be so peacful and simple that I will cease to exist. It has been so nice to slow down.
But I *will* make it a point to get back on this site. I hope you and everyone else has been happy and thriving through the winter.
You know, that editor (“this is 7 or 8 grade levels below where we need to be. This is not even appropriate for a community college text”) sounds like he doesn’t get out much.
Maybe you should send him a few copies of those “best professor on the whole freaking CAMPUS” awards that are cluttering up your office?