Three years ago, drowning with the loss of my routine to my children’s summer needs, I made myself a promise:
Next summer, my kids won’t be the only ones to go to camp. I’ll carve out some summer time for myself to grow.
Learning and growing gave me the room I needed to breathe, between camp car pool, swim meets, and weekend baseball tournaments. That small dose of selfishness gave me the room to be a more engaged and happier mom. Happy mom = happy family. A win for all involved.
Two summers ago, I headed to French Pastry School every day for a week. Here’s my full review of the French Pastry School Baking Enthusiast experience. It was a small taste of what it would be like to do a pastry program, a dream I’ve nursed for a long time. Every night I would return to my family laden with pastries, breads and highly technical baking knowledge. Chemistry class has nothing on the French Pastry School. The pastries were delicious, but the techniques were the real gem. I plan to go spend another week at the French Pastry School, once I’ve mastered each of the recipes in the thick binder we covered in one week.
Last year, I multi-tasked, spending one day on blogging at Blogher, two days on photography at Click Retreat, and one day on fiction writing at the Northwestern Writer’s Conference. A few days here and there, a lot of inspiration for various passions, but not concentrated enough to really make a significant, lasting positive impact.
This summer, I’m all about fiction. I’ve spent the last nine months writing the beginning of a speculative fiction novel called Blister. Think the Handmaid’s Tale meets X-Men with a plague that can kill you or elevate you to the highest levels of society. One blister that can change your life… or end it. Writing it has been so much fun, better than going to the movies, but I was at a crossroads, needing more fiction writing basics to move forward.
So this summer, I’ve been spending my Wednesday nights at Story Studio, learning about the Fundamentals of the Novel. Our discussions about narrative arc, point of view, and narrative distance have given me so much to think about, so much to improve my novel and keep me writing.
Manuscript workshop was definitely the toughest part of the course for me. I turned in the first three chapters, 27 double spaced pages, and waited seven long days before getting the feedback of my teacher and my peers.
They loved the story and were hungry for more. Their enthusiasm was like a drug. Their constructive criticism was insightful and consistent. Just what I needed to keep on writing, to continue working when the kids go back to school late August, when their summer of play and my summer of learning is over.