As I do every year, I start by writing my students a letter of introduction and asking for one in return.
I’m not sure where the time has gone, but this is my 18th year of teaching, my 7th year at Graded. This year, I teach 9th grade English, 11th grade TOK and 12th grade IB Language and Literature SL. I’m including below my letter to the 9th graders. I have another post coming about TOK and I’ll include my letter to them there.
This year, I wrote the first two drafts of my letter on my Lettera 32 typewriter. My plan was to write the final draft on the typewriter and then make photocopies. Unfortunately, I had a problem crop up with the typewriter. (The platen kept getting stuck and not rolling, and the line spacing when I pushed the carriage lever was either not engaging at all or adding 3 line spaces.) I moved to my laptop for the final draft on Google Docs. Still, all in all it was a lovely composing experience.
See my set up below:
And without further ado…
August 10, 2024
São Paulo, Brazil
Dear students,
Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year! My name is Mrs. Griswold and we will spend this year together. This is my 7th year at Graded, where I’ve been a middle and high school teacher. Some of you have been in my class before. I’m excited to have you back! I can’t wait to see how you’ve grown and changed. I have 3 kids at Graded: a 2nd grader, a 5th grader, and a 7th grader. My husband is a math and computer science teacher here. I am originally from the US, but I grew up in Mexico and Venezuela. I am fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. I went to an international school like Graded and I have an IB diploma. After high school, I returned to the US for college, where I went to undergrad at Case Western Reserve University, and graduate school at NYU. When I am not teaching or responding to “Mommy,” I like to play the mandolin, run, and write.
One interesting way I have been writing recently is on a mechanical typewriter. At the end of last school year, I fell down an internet rabbit hole of antique typewriters and ended up with a 1965 Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. In fact, the first two drafts of this letter were written on that typewriter.
My mom’s reaction to me getting a typewriter was to wonder why I would want to deal with the hassle of changing the ink ribbon, losing the ability to edit, the loud clacking, and the bulky weight when I have a perfectly nice laptop and Google Docs.
It’s a fair question. First, I just think typewriters are cool. All the complex mechanical parts and no electricity makes it feel like magic. As for the noise, I like it. Typing on it is a bit like playing an instrument—noisy, but expressive. Like an instrument, it’s hard work on the fingers to type on a typewriter. But I feel a sense of power that I can make the words appear on paper as I type. We all know the pain of needing a printer and not having access to one. With a typewriter, my words have immediate mass and presence.
But my mistakes are also immediately visible. I’ll admit it can be frustrating to see a typo or error, but it has two positive side effects. To begin, I have to slow down and think about what I’m typing. I think this is a good thing. We move so fast all day, firing off messages. Maybe if we all had to type a little slower, and see our words on the page, we might be a little kinder, a little more thoughtful. And finally, I have to be okay with imperfection. On a typewriter, you have to accept the mistakes and keep writing.
One YouTuber referred to a typewriter as a portable printing press. I love that. There’s a line from Gutenberg’s invention of the movable type printing press in 1440 in Germany, to me typing at my desk in Brazil in 2024—that’s rad.
And who could resist that little bell that dings at the end of the line? When I first got this particular typewriter, the bell was broken; it didn’t make a sound. I had to watch a bunch of YouTube videos about how to fix it. I took the machine apart, located the bell, figured out the problem and fixed it! I felt like I’d won a gold medal. If my laptop broke, I would not be able to watch a few YouTube videos and fix it. Typewriters are a cool mechanical puzzle, and I love puzzles.
You know what my typewriter doesn’t have? Notifications. I can’t swipe to a different window or get distracted by scrolling. If I need to pause and think, I look up, and in my case as I wrote this letter, out the window. It’s a lovely silent moment. And then I’m back on it, clacking away.
Wow, Mrs. Griswold, you are going on and on about the typewriter, but isn’t this supposed to be a letter of introduction? Okay, okay, but I’m hoping that you are learning something about me through this story.
The typewriter is a symbol of where I am this year and where I want to go. I like puzzles. I like fixing things. I want to slow down and embrace imperfection. I want to disconnect from some things to connect more deeply to others. I’m excited by new experiences. I like taking on challenges.
One big goal is that I want to disconnect from technology and connect more with myself and others. I want to embrace messiness and mistakes. I want to try things that are hard, complicated and slow. I hope you might be willing to join me.
Hopefully you are starting to guess that I might be the kind of teacher who sees learning and students as a fun puzzle to solve. Hopefully you see that I’m not expecting you to be perfect. Maybe you can see that I value a love of challenge and curiosity in my students.
By now, you’ve probably guessed how I feel about the new cell phone policy. 😉
Now that you’ve gotten to know me, will you write me your own letter of introduction? Tell me who you are, what’s on your mind right now, where you want to go. Also, if there’s anything important for me to know about you, this would be a great chance for you to share that. It’s due next class. This is our first formal interaction as teacher and student, so bring your A game and turn it in on time next class.
Now, I know you probably don’t have a typewriter of your own, but in the spirit of slowing down and connecting with your own words, will you write me your letter by hand? Remember what I said about embracing imperfection. And please don’t worry about your handwriting. Anyone who has been in my class before can tell you how bad my handwriting is—who am I to judge? Try to keep it legible, but I’m good at reading handwriting.
This isn’t a super deep or long post. I just need to put this somewhere so the shouting will stop in my head.
First, my favorite new slang I learned recently is “slop.” It’s the AI garbage that is now all over search engines and social media. I do a weekly check in on social media to see all the travel, dogs, babies, weddings, meals, etc. Yes, social media is a wasteland. Yes, there’s not many of us left on Facebook, but there’s like 3 people and they post a lot and sometimes it’s nice. Leave me alone. I’m making this up, but it feels like 60% of my feed is bizarre AI slop. Like this:
Seriously, what the ****? The AI slop on Facebook started out a few months ago as like the face of Jesus in a farmstand of broccoli. Or a kid with a prosthetic leg with a sign about it being his birthday held by hands with more than 5 fingers. A week later that kid was holding hands with Jesus. Now comes this dada-esque atrocity of an ouroboros camel.
I really want to report this! (As if Facebook cares at all about what content is on its site.) But my sense of ethical do-gooderness was yelling at me to report this! I clicked the report button, hoping I could choose an option that says “This AI garbage is not just terrible, it’s disturbing.” This is not an option.
Clearly there is no human running these accounts. They’ve just been set to run and probably to learn from the clicks and comments.
I don’t comment on this slop either because whatever bot runs this account would be getting clicks, which is revenue, which they use to sell the profile later or to monetize the page. What am I even doing on Facebook? I know what I’m doing, I’m trying to find a local restaurant’s hours! It should be a federal law that all businesses get a free website that is just their hours, phone number, and address.
Okay, so that post and the ones like it are so bizarre they are laughable. Then yesterday, I’m watching the Olympics and just living for the commercials. Seriously, 80% of Olympics commercials make me cry. But not this one. It’s a commercial about a little girl who just loves running and her hero is a female Olympian runner. And her dad asks Google AI to write a fan letter to the athlete for the little girl. Google, are you drunk? Are you suggesting that little kids should send AI-written fan letters to their heroes? Are you hearing yourself?
I keep the letters that students have written to me over the years. One is on my bookshelf here in Minnesota, where we spend our summers. It was written to me when I was teaching at a drama camp after college and a kid wrote, in his own handwriting, that I helped him develop a love of performing “Shakesphere.” I treasure that letter. I know that a 13 year old wrote it.
Was no one in the room in the making of that ad who piped up to say that maybe this ad was saying the ugly part out loud? Was no one like, “Um, this seems like we’re not really keeping with the spirit of childhood, excellence, or personal connection? Tone deaf, anyone?”
So, let me tell you this now. It’s gross. Stop, Google. You are becoming the weird camel.
I bet if I asked AI to write a letter to an athlete it would sound something like this:
Dear [Name of Athlete],
I am a child in the 4th grade and I wanted to take this opportunity to express to you my deepest and most heartfelt respect of your athleticism and physical grace. Allow me a moment to delve into the myriad reasons I idolize your recent physical achievements, and hope to emulate your exploits myself.
When you were a high school athlete in New Jersey, you came in first place at an invitational meet, which was covered by your hometown newspaper, whose data I have recently scraped for information and training in my writing style. (Hat tip to journalist Maggie Stevenson for teaching me how to use semicolons and em dashes! Isn’t it great how much training data there is on the Internet? And it’s free!)
Your Wikipedia page says that you have three world records. There were footnotes and links to sources, but I haven’t been programmed to follow those to confirm the information. Also, I am not trained to question the veracity of Wikipedia.
I, a small human child, also want to be an award winning athlete. I want to consume high amounts of calories to fuel my wet meatsack of a body so that I can locomote very quickly on a oval shaped rubberized track over hurdles, which are defined as upright frames over which an athlete must jump. I’ve heard that running is hard and can cause physical pain. Humans generally do not like pain, but there seems to be some reason I, a 10 year old child, am interested in enduring the pain of running over hurdles. It might be for the gold medal–but that only contains 6 grams of gold, assuming I win the “gold” medal, and actually only copper, zinc and iron if I get bronze. But that’s if I even make it through the Olympic qualifiers with more than 1,800 competitors. Based on the probability, I should probably be encouraged to keep up with my studies an academics.
In closing, I hope to emulate your spectacular feats of strength and endurance when I mature into an adult woman. It is due entirely to your tenacity and indefatigability that I have set my sights on such a portentous achievement of physical prowess.
It started, like many good/bad ideas, with falling down an internet rabbit hole. Early last school year, we misplaced one of Everett’s favorite toys, a basket of magnet tiles. Shortly before returning to the US for the summer, I started researching buying replacements. New, they are quite expensive. David suggested I check out the Goodwill website. Lo and behold, Goodwill has two websites: one with auctions, like Ebay, and one where you can buy things outright. It became clear to me that when Goodwill got especially nice items donated, rather than putting them in that store, they put them up online to catch some niche buyers. I found the magnet tiles on the auction site and put in my bid.
This is when a question popped into my head: what other stuff is for sale on this Goodwill site? I’m not sure if I saw it listed or the idea just occurred to me, but there it was: typewriters.
As you may have guessed, the site was in fact full of typewriters. Now began the problem of not really knowing what I was looking for. Enter YouTube and Reddit. I discovered a couple of great accounts that highlighted features of different typewriters and showed how to clean and repair them. A spreadsheet began, because of course it did. I was finding it hard to keep all the different makes and models in my head. One YouTuber I especially liked, Just My Typewriter, had a few suggestions for your first typewriter. She suggested getting a Smith Corona from the 50s or 60s. Other sites and many YouTubers agreed that the Olivetti Lettera 32 is one is of the best. Those were running between $200 and $300 online and there were none available on Goodwill. The Hermes 3000 is a darling of many writers, but on Etsy or Ebay, those were often selling for $400 or $500, and when they appeared on Goodwill, they were around that price as well or with significant damage.
I decided to put in a bid on an Olympia B12 typewriter from the 70s. I soon realized that online auctions are complicated. The serious bidders wait until the last few minutes and seconds of the auction to sneak a final bid in at the end that beats the high bidder by a dollar, without time for that previous high bidder having a chance to counterbid. At first, I was perplexed by these maneuvers. Why not just bid early, and put in the max bid at the most you would be willing to spend? That’s what I did, but someone waited until the final minutes and bid 50 cents more than me to win. (Your max bid is secret, but other bidders put in $1 increments until they find your maximum and exceed it by $1.)
Unless I somehow made a max bid that was ridiculous, I didn’t really have a chance of winning. I’d have to set an alarm for the last 5 minutes of the auction and play their outbidding game.
I turned to the other Goodwill site. No competition, no alarms set for the final minutes. I could browse and research. I narrowed it down to a Smith Corona and a Sears Malibu. The Smith Corona was a Silent model from the 1950s. The photos looked good. The keys looked good, the body didn’t have any visible damage.
The Sears Malibu was a quirky choice. The Sears Malibu is a late 60s early 70s machine made in two shades of blue. It had some plastic body elements which many people online pooh poohed. I didn’t really have an opposition to the plastic. Sears also made a green and orange model that were similar but with different model names, Chevron and Newport. A redditor referred to them as being like Pokemon cards–collect them all! The Sears Malibu didn’t have as much of a presence on YouTube or the internet as a whole. There was one pretty scathing review on a typewriter website, but it felt like a personal vendetta, if such a thing is possible against a typewriter, lol. TypewriterMinutes had a review of the green Sears Chevron model and it looked interesting to me.
The Smith Corona was $99, which felt reasonable based on my research, but the Goodwill listing didn’t have much info about its condition or functionality. I could maybe try to win an auction for one and pay less, but that was no guarantee, and I could use up a lot of time trying to do that. The Malibu was only $55, and was on sale. I am such a sucker for a sale, even 5% off on a Goodwill typewriter. I left both typewriters in my cart for a day to ponder which to buy.
Reader, I bought them both.
Listen, it was the end of the school year. I was stressed. I was tired. I have no regrets.
I had both machines sent to my sister in law in Minnesota. But I still had 2 weeks until we flew back. I will admit that I got antsy. I continued to watch videos and read articles. Again and again the Lettera 32 was mentioned. Cormac McCarthy apparently wrote his novels on a Lettera 32. In the process of my research, I learned that the Italian designed typewriter was made in a variety of countries, and quite popular in many Latin American countries, including, drum roll, Brazil. One person even mentioned that the Mexico- and Brazil-made machines were desirable because they could make all of the diacritics and accent marks.
I hopped on over to Mercado Livre, a website in Brazil that bears some resemblance to Amazon, but with more independent sellers. More of the products you might expect on Ebay, but without the auctions. Whoo boy, there were a lot of Olivetti Lettera 32s for sale. Whereas many Lettere 32s will sell for $200-300 in the US, I found ones in pretty good condition for about $60-75. I looked at lots of pictures, and I specifically looked for the little screws that affix the ribbon spools on Lettera 32, which can easily get lost. I also wanted to see if I could find a seller with a bunch of typewriters, which could indicate that they knew the product they were selling. I found a seller who appeared to be the online platform for an antiques shop. I found a Lettera 32 that looked undamaged and I sent the seller a message: Does it type? Does the carriage advance? Do all the keys work?
The seller replied yes and I placed my order. It arrived a few days later. (Based on the serial number checked against the Typewriter Database, it was made in 1965 in Mexico.)
I loaded up the paper and started clacking away. The ribbon was totally dry, which wasn’t a surprise, but the keys all worked and the carriage advanced.
The one thing that wasn’t working wes the bell. Tragedy!
The charm of a typewriter lies in (among other things) the bell. I went back to YouTube and watched tutorials about how to fix a bell. I ordered mineral spirits and sewing machine oil. These, along with the compressed air cans we already had, were the main tools for cleaning, degreasing and then oiling a typewriter. I watched videos on how to disassemble the typewriter and I got to work. I blew out all the dust and used a paintbrush to help. Then I used the mineral spirits to clean out the inside.
I found the bell in the back of the innards. I played around with it and realized that the dinger arm was resting on the bell. When the machine raised and dropped the dinger, it was dampening the sound.
It wasn’t a problem of gunk or goo, which the mineral spirits would have fixed, so I realized it was a mechanical problem. I needed to bend the arm so that after striking the bell, it was hovering above the bell, not resting against it. Going slowly and carefully, I bent the dinger arm upwards. Very quickly, the bell began to ding!
The feeling of victory that accompanied fixing that bell was euphoric.
I ordered a new Olivetti ribbon. Olivetti uses a proprietary ribbon spool, but I was easily able to buy an Olivetti branded set of spools with fresh ribbon. After installing the ribbon, I realized that when I wrote, the spools weren’t spinning the way they were supposed to. I found that the screws on the spools were too high and were touching the cover and getting stuck. Even though they were Olivetti spools, they appeared to be too tall. With no other buying options, I would have to wait for the US. If I popped the ribbon cover open a little while I typed, they moved perfectly.
When I landed in the US, I bought my mineral spirits and sewing machine oil. I started on the Sears Malibu. (The Typewriter Database is not as fleshed out with these machines, but it is probably 1969 or 1970, but it could be later in the 70s.)
I rewatched the TypewriterMinutes video about the green Sears Newport, and learned how to disassemble it. I took it apart and followed the steps: blow out the dirt and dust with the compressed air and a paintbrush, squirt mineral spirits on the interior metal parts, using Q-tips and paper towels to remove the old gunk and grease, then small drops of machine oil on the moving parts.
When I put the whole thing back together, it was working nicely except for the ribbon reverse system. To try to explain what this is, the ribbon is on two spools. As you type, the ribbon inches from one spool to the other. Many machines have an automatic system for switching the ribbon from winding in one direction to winding in the other direction. On my Malibu, both of the spools were pulling simultaneously in opposite directions, rather than one side disengaging and the other spool pulling. I worked and worked on it, even enlisting the help of my 11 year old niece. I couldn’t get it to work.
Then camp and a beach trip came, so I put the typewriter under the bed and tried not to think about it. Once back from our trips, I went to work on the Smith Corona. (Based on its serial number, it was made in 1951.)
Before the cleaning, it had been skipping and adding in extra spaces in the middle of words. (Matilda tried to write a letter to her friend and cried real tears when it kept skipping and adding spaces) The mechanism that advances forward, called the escapement, may have had some junk or debris stuck in it. This typewriter was in good shape, but the eraser bits all in the machine led me to believe it was well loved and frequently used. Extra mineral spirits and air did the trick.
With another successful repair under my belt, I decided maybe it was time to take another look at the Malibu. I watched a couple of videos by Joe Van Cleave, focusing on the different types of ribbon reverse systems. It appeared that no matter the system, there was some kind of click when the ribbon reversed and the system would be the latched. My Malibu did not have any click, it just sort of flopped back and forth. On this second look, I leaned closer and saw a little metal arm pulled away from the ribbon reverse system. When l pressed it down, it landed perfectly on the ribbon reverse mechanism. When I flipped the ribbon forks back and forth, there was the click! I took off the left side of the body and pushed the arm down until it held the ribbon system steady. It worked. Again, I felt so triumphant. What a thrill.
Here’s where I get a little philosophical. As a teacher, change can be slow in my students. There’s not always an easy fix, and learning takes time to get into our long term memory. That’s not a complaint, but it means that frustration is a normal part of my day to day. Maybe that is why fixing a typewriter feels so good. I also love that mechanical typewriters can be fixed mechanically. Then again, maybe my satisfaction in working on those machines has nothing to do with being a teacher, and it is human to like that feeling.
Last night, I said to David that I wanted to buy another typewriter. He responded, “First, you have to type something.”
Touché, my friend. So here I am. I sat down after breakfast and composed the first draft of this blog post on my Smith Corona Silent.
Some initial reflections on writing long form on a typewriter: it’s a very physical thing to type on a typewriter, akin to playing an instrument. You really have to work your fingers. Because of this, you have to go a bit slower, which I like. You also can’t delete, obviously. But is it so obvious? We spend our whole day with backspace and autocorrect and, in some cases, Al to fix and enhance our writing. On this machine, my mistakes are immediate and visible. So, I have to make some decisions. Will I go back and x out the mistakes and rewrite the intended word? Will I just keep going and fix it later? I’ve also started using a pen to make corrections and additions above the line. (This is why I decided to type with 1.5 line spacing.) I’m not a perfectionist, but it is still a good exercise in deciding what to sweat and what to let go.
There is also the benefit of being disconnected from not only the Internet but electricity. I can’t click away and see what’s happening on a celebrity gossip site or the New York Times . I’m not an incredibly distractible person, but I’m human. I would definitely say that I am more immersed in the writing when I am composing on the typewriter.
I’m learning, however, that there are some words I don’t know how to spell! Occurred. I think that’s right, but maybe it is only 1 r? Distractable? Distractible? Destractable? Destractible? I really can’t tell. I might seriously make myself a little spelling list on a notecard to set next to the typewriter.
I also find myself wanting to go back and make revisions. I knew as I was writing about the repair process that I was getting too long winded and that my audience wouldn’t sustain their engagement for that long. But what can I do? I guess I could just stop mid-sentence and make a note to myself. I opted to just commit, knowing that I will shorten and condense those parts later.
Mabe you, like my son Calvin, are wondering how I got the blog post off the paper and onto the World Wide Web. David used the Android Google Drive app to scan the pages and then convert them to a PDF. I downloaded the PDF and then used Preview on my laptop to highlight and copy and paste the text into a Google Doc. One problem is that the formatting was a bit odd. All of my line breaks were maintained. That means that my paragraphs looked weird on the Doc. I installed an extension aptly called Remove Line Breaks. I learned that I should use a blank line between paragraphs rather than an indention. Once the formatting was okay, I revised and proofread.
Was this whole process more work? Yes. But I am starting to think it is less overall. How much time do I lose to internet time wasting? What’s the mental cost of flicking back and forth between windows and tabs and devices? There’s slow food, why not slow writing?
And here I will end. Perhaps I will come up with a snappier, more satisfying ending in “post”. My fingers definitely need a rest and I think I’ve earned to spend a few minutes browsing the Goodwill site for a new typewriter 😉
(Curious what the original types pages look like? Here’s a PDF of the original.)
I really enjoyed teaching AP Language and Composition for many reasons–if nothing else, I still think everything is an argument. An advertisement is an argument, a speech is an argument, a letter is an argument, a poem is an argument, a novel is an argument, a painting is an argument…someone stop me. But one nice fringe benefit was learning a lengthy list of rhetorical devices. Some you may recognize: rhetorical question, pathos, oxymoron, but some are more obscure: chiasmus, synecdoche, and metonymy. But my absolute favorite is zeugma (pronounced zoog-mah).
Right off the bat, Zeugma draws the eye down there at the end of the list, and that vowel combo is uncommon. It comes from the Greek word “to yoke” or to link together, and it essentially is when you use one word and apply it in two different uses or senses. If you are a millennial, I can prove to you that you already know a zeugma and make you sing at the same time:
You are the bearer of unconditional things You held your breath and the door for me Thanks for your patience
Alanis Morissette
Our Lady of 90s Female Rage Alanis Morissette sang these lyrics in “Head Over Feet”. It’s a bit of a deep cut, but I just earwormed a few of you.
So there are two senses of the word “hold” at play here. Holding the door, which would be using your hand to keep a door open, and then holding your breath, which means to trap air in your lungs.
Another example of zeugma: he stole my heart and my camera. The two senses of stole are yoked together.
So imagine my delight when I open a short story that one of my 9th grade students wrote. It’s vivid, the setting is engaging, and then a character is introduced: “Among the mournful crowd of peasants and soldiers stood a man with a heavy armour and a heavier guilt.”
Y’all. I gasped! I don’t know if he knows that what he wrote is a zeugma, or if he did it intentionally. I definitely did not directly teach zeugma. But I love, love, love that he wrote a brilliant one. His sentence is a great demonstration of why I love zeugmas: they surprise and pivot. It’s a little switch that delights the mind. It’s also very tight, in that sense that in just one sentence we can visualize his armor, but we also establish that he’s done something bad. Zeugmas make for zippy plot and characterization. In an assignment that limited them to 1000 words, this was a good technique.
Okay, that’s all. Just wanted to say I am here for all zeugma-related content.
Picking titles for a book you’re writing is hard. My Elizabeth novel is especially tricky.
One of the pieces of feedback I got when I queried the project 2 or 3 years ago was that the title then The Princess’s Guide to Staying Alive was too lighthearted and playful for the content of my book. In an early iteration of the book, the beginning was more light and ironic. That is not the case anymore.
So, as I began rewriting I started thinking about titles.
I want to communicate that it’s historical fiction in the title. Maybe that’s not necessary, but I want the fact that it’s set in Tudor England to be somewhat clear.
I want to telegraph the danger, the secrets, the intelligence and the strength that run through the story. It’s about an illegitimate princess who also happens to be the smartest person in the realm. That contradiction is important to the story.
What I landed on a year ago was Bastard Princess. I know that can be a little shocking to read, but let me explain. Elizabeth was a princess when she was born, because Anne Boleyn was still married to Henry VIII. Catherine of Aragon had been divorced, and her daughter with Henry, Mary, was now declared illegitimate–a bastard. When Anne Boleyn was executed for treason, Elizabeth was likewise declared a bastard. And when I say “declared” I don’t mean whispered. I mean Parliament passed an official act. Ambassadors to England wrote back to their home countries and described Elizabeth as “the bastard Elizabeth.” People most likely called Elizabeth a bastard to her face.
Coupled with this is the fact that Elizabeth was the best, or perhaps second best, educated person in the kingdom. The best scholar from Cambridge came to tutor Elizabeth and her brother from a young age. When her little brother Edward, destined to rule, split off and continued his studies alone, Elizabeth was then tutored by the second best scholar at Cambridge. A good education isn’t enough–I know this as a teacher. Elizabeth was very intelligent and tirelessly hard-working. She spoke and wrote English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. At age 11, she could translate a text from English to French, Latin, and Greek.
If there was anyone who deserved the title of princess, it was Elizabeth.
I also kind of like the shock that Bastard Princess provides. Princess is ubiquitous word in our culture right now. It’s splashed over clothing and products. It’s how many people refer to themselves or their family members. But when you pair “princess” with “bastard,” your brain almost can’t compute how those two go together. Princesses are spoiled girls with empty heads, right? They aren’t dangerous or defiant. But Elizabeth was both in danger and defiant.
I am also a huge fan of Hamilton: An American Musical. Opening line? “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore…”
When I heard that opening line, I was surprised and intrigued. Lin-Manuel Miranda didn’t shy away from both Hamilton’s challenges and the insults lobbed at him.
Those were the same insults hurled at Elizabeth, changing “son” to “daughter.” And she rose above those challenges, those slurs, just like Hamilton did.
So, Bastard Princess it was.
Until I began to question myself when I began querying again. Nothing like querying to fire up the self doubt to the max.
Would Bastard Princess turn agents off? Would it turn librarians off who wouldn’t display it, lest younger kids read it out loud? Would teachers feel uncomfortable book-talking it?
Maybe. As a teacher, I know how important teachers and librarians are in putting books in kids’ hands. I’m cool with Bastard Princess, but would a teacher be cool with that in Tupelo, Mississippi where my in-laws live? Grrr. Maybe not.
To be fair, the working title is not often what the final title of the published book is. So the real question is would agents be turned off by the title? As the wisdom goes, don’t give an agent a reason to say no. They are overloaded with queries, and if they see a reason to pass, they will take it.
So, cut to me in my bed at 5:30 making a list of words and synonyms. I want to telegraph strength, danger, secrets, survival, intelligence. Here’s what I’m playing around with.
The Eloquence of Ashes
Princess from the Ashes (does it sound too young, like a book for a 5th grader?)
Ink and Ash
Only Ash Remains (too sad? too dark?)
The Shelter of Ashes
Acquainted with Danger (sounds like a Bond movie)
I tried a bunch of titles with words like withstand and persist and fire and storm, but they didn’t work as well. They sounded like the catch phrase for a sports drink.
I think I’m gonna sit on this for a while. Maybe see what comes of the first batch of queries. I’ve got a Manuscript Academy consultation coming up, and I can ask this then. Maybe something will come to me in a dream.
Despite being not a night person, I’m not the kind of person who can hop out of bed at 5 am. I already get up at 6 am, and there’s something painful about giving up that last hour.
I started writing novels in 2012 when I only had one kid, and I did all my writing at night after bed time. One kid became two, and two became three. Still the nighttime was my preferred writing time.
Then we moved overseas. My teaching load is more mentally tiring. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I teach middle school now instead of high school. I really love middle school, but they need more energy and love and structure. I also teach three different classes in 5 blocks, rather than 2 different classes 4 blocks.
On top of the teaching, I live in another country, so I have daily interactions in another language. I love speaking Portuguese and learning, but it drains the brain.
So, when 8:00 pm rolls around now and the kids are all in bed, I find myself with very little mental gas left in the tank. During breaks from school I’m just as productive as a writer in the evenings. But during the school year, it’s hard.
So, I hiked up my jammies and set the alarm for 5 am.
The first morning I couldn’t even sit upright. I had to lay on the couch, completely flat, with my laptop on my legs. The second morning, I just leaned back and stretched my legs out. By the third morning I could sit like a normal human.
I noticed that my brain was totally focused on my writing in the early morning. I haven’t yet thought of my to-do list, I don’t worry about the laundry, I don’t feel an urge to book a vacation. My attention is narrowed in. As a result, I find I get a lot done in that hour. I probably accomplish as much in that hour as I would in 2 hours in the evening from 8-10 pm.
After a week and a half, I was so exhausted I started stuttering. I had to get more disciplined about going to bed on time. I can’t stay up late and get up early for very long. I went to bed at 8:30 pm one night and slept until 6:30 the next morning. That reset me. Now I’m better about getting to bed by 9 pm in time for some reading.
I take a day or two off each week, but I find that I wake up a little bit at 5 am. I get up quicker and I get to work faster. This might have to be my new normal, but I’m cool with that.
Teaching new curricula (3 of them this semester!) is kicking my butt, and writing on the blog has been super hard.
But, I want to say, hello. I’m alive! I’m here!
A student wrote me a very sweet email, and after I wrote my response, I thought it would make a good update on how I’m doing. I’m pasting it here and adding one or two things.
I am good! Life is crazy. But not in a bad way. In a full way, and in a way that means I make lots of mistakes. I miss being an expert, being competent, knowing what the next day is going to look like in my class. This has been so humbling, but in a good way. I’m starting over, and it’s hard, but you start to realize what really matters or what you were missing in your old life.
The hard part has been writing. For a variety of reasons, I’m taking a break. One, I can’t take any more rejection. I know I looked like I was handling it all so well, but the rejections really built up and I couldn’t do it any more. Creative fields are so hard because there is 99% rejection in your responses. I love being creative, but I lost connection with the creative part and was only focusing on the response I was getting.
Someone told me I had to write for myself, not for publication. I only realize now that I wasn’t doing that. I am trying to reconnect with me, and why I want to write. Do I even want to write? I’m trying to let go of it and see if it comes back. Because I don’t know if I’m glad about how many hours I’ve given to rejection. I don’t regret the writing, but the time I spent querying and then getting rejected so quickly, so dismissively. If that’s what it takes, maybe that’s not what it’s about for me.
Ugh, I feel like I’m 22 again, trying to figure out what to do with myself. If only you got the answer and then were done. I wish!
I’ve been thinking about writing a lot. But when I find my mind wandering into thinking about agents and querying and publishing, I stop myself. I have to somehow write and separate it from publication. I probably need to be less intense. I can hear you laughing. “Ya think?” I can hear you saying.
I guess what I’m trying to figure out is, what does it look like, being a teacher who writes on the side?
One thing I’ve been doing is exercising. Between working and writing back in the US, I was not active, I didn’t exercise, and it was getting to an unhealthy level. Our school here had a 3K Turkey Trot, and after that, I kept running. I did a 5K in November and I have a 10K on February 3. Running is easy, cheap, and a good workout for the time it takes. I’m super slow and not awesome at it, but I’m enjoying doing it. A writer I follow on Twitter said to remember that we are computers wrapped in meat and we need to keep the meat healthy to make the computer run. I’m remembering that.
Brazil has been really good, though. We are doing a unit on cultural norms and taboos with 7th graders and I have so much personal connection. By seeing the norms and taboos here vs Nashville and Harpeth Hall is so illuminating. I’m questioning things. It’s not like Brazil is perfect, or Nashville is perfect. But I can see the differences and the effects on people. It’s also helpful for me to look at myself.
Teaching middle school has been awesome. And also challenging, but in a way I like. I have amazing colleagues who are smart and passionate and funny.
The kids are good. It’s been a rough 6 months, but I only realized that now looking back. I can see now that some things the kids were doing were because of the move, even though I didn’t see it at the time. But, to be fair, it’s also hard to parent 3 kids, so this may have happened no matter where we lived.
For sure, though, I am so happy to have distance from US politics and news right now. Every country has its share of bad news, but this break feels nice. I don’t long to be back. I’m not homesick.
Over the break my dad was asking me questions that all amounted to: Did you do the right thing, moving? The answer is yes. It took 6 months, but this feels more and more like home. And I know that this was a good decision.
Today was the “Almost Alumnae Luncheon” at my school. Graduating seniors and mothers/special friends are invited to a lunch each year. There’s a student speaker, a faculty speaker, and a mother/alumna speaker. I was asked to be the faculty speaker. It was such an honor, and I want to share the text of my speech below.
(A quick note before my speech. Amy Grant is an alum of Harpeth Hall and she graciously performed three songs and played her acoustic guitar after the speeches. It was a moving performance that filled my soul in a way I didn’t realize I needed. When she came up to sing and started strumming and setting her capo, she said, “Meg, I wish I’d had you as a teacher.” I died. I am dead. Amy. Grant. You can write that on my tombstone. “Here lies Meg, Amy Grant gave her a shout out.”)
Here is the text of my speech:
Good afternoon. I am so honored to have been asked to speak to you today. In my high school, senior speeches happened at the end of the year, at a time much like this when regular class content was finished, and graduation was still a week or two away. Seniors met in a large room, and we took turns going up and giving a speech to our class. It was a chance to process, to remember and to say goodbye. Teachers were also allowed to give speeches, and I’ve been waiting, hoping that someday I might get a turn to speak as my teachers did. And how fitting that I too am in something of a senior year at Harpeth Hall. I’m in a similar position to you, preparing to leave the home I’ve known for seven years. I am poised on the lip of a new adventure, about to speak myself into the world, to utter a new existence for myself, just as you are.
Perhaps you are feeling a lot of pressure for the next four years. Someone might have told you that college was the best 4 years of their life. With no disrespect to the lovely memories of those folks, I’ve always been bothered by that. My best years will be behind me at 22?
I’m not here to say that college is not wonderful, magical, special. It can be. Certainly, it’s the first time you will take off into the world alone. But it is not the only time this will ever happen, it is just the first time. It is the beginning of beginnings, one of many fresh starts that you will be granted during your tenure on this earth. My adventure teaching in Brazil next year should serve as a tangible reminder of that. And as a person lucky enough to have had more than one new beginning, I have a few words of advice to share–as much a reminder to myself as lessons for you.
First, embrace impatience. Anyone can tell you to be patient, serene and calm. But I want you to be impatient. Chill is overrated. You’re excited for this new chapter to start. You want the rest of your life to start now!
Good, I say. Be hungry. Want it. Then, use that impatience as fuel to learn, to grow, to move somewhere new.
In 2011, I’d been living in New York City for 6 years going to grad school and then teaching. But I was impatient to leave. A teaching job in the upper school at Harpeth Hall popped up in the listings. I was hungry for a new beginning.
After embracing impatience, my second piece of advice is to be foolhardy. Not foolish, mind you, but foolhardy. To be foolhardy is to be bold, and recklessly so. Chase those goals with confidence. Sit at the table, even when you don’t know anyone; knock on the big door; raise your hand in a crowded room; bite off more than you can chew.
Who was I to apply to Harpeth Hall? I didn’t know anyone, I lived in another state, I was only in my 4th year of teaching. I had a million reasons not to apply. But I wanted to teach at a place like this. So I was impatient and dashed in with a foolhardy confidence.
Then, I showed up. Show up–that’s my next piece of advice. Showing up is more than going to class. Showing up in your own life can be incredibly hard. It feels easier to run, to hide. To cancel or to sit out. It’s easier to come up with an excuse, to find a distraction. Showing up for yourself is harder than it seems.
We spend too much time waiting for perfect conditions. I’ll write that book when I have the time or the perfect idea. I’ll apply for that job when my resume has exactly the right things on it. When I have the courage to move to another country, I’ll do it.
My secret is that I’m not brave, or honestly even ready. But, being impatient and bold and showing up is what brought me here. After a phone interview with Ms. Powers for the upper school English job, they flew me to Nashville to interview and teach a lesson. I still thought my chances were slim. Who was I? Some public school teacher from New York with a theater degree. But I showed up. And I poured all of me into it.
After 2 agonizing weeks of waiting, the call came in that I got the job.
So, you’re going to let yourself be impatient and foolhardy, you’ll show up even when you aren’t ready, even if you’re scared. Then I want you to listen. Pay attention. So, cliche, right? A teacher telling you to pay attention! Let me tell you something about adults. The path to getting where we are now may seem so inevitable when you see us up here. But in the beginning and the middle of the story that leads to this moment, the ending was anything but certain. The path doesn’t go in a straight line. You’ve got to pay attention to the signs along the way.
Some of you may know this about me, but I was a STEM kid. In addition to theater and the humanities, I took advanced math, and I even doubled up in higher level chem and bio in senior year. And in high school I needed an answer when people asked what I wanted to be. I was good at bio and chem and I didn’t really love physics, I liked working with kids, so… pediatrician. I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re good at STEM and like working with people, right?
So, I went to college hungry and impatient. In freshman year, I showed up and volunteered at the children’s hospital, and worked in a research lab. I took all the math and science classes, and I got straight A’s.
Then, near the end of freshman year, I was sitting in my chemistry class, looking to the world like the ideal student. But in my head, I couldn’t make myself care about it anymore. I was miserable. I was so unhappy. I had been steaming forward with such vigor toward med school, doing everything I was supposed to do. And yet, when I paid attention, the signs around me were so clear. I paid attention to the truth, deep down, that this path wasn’t right for me anymore. Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you have to do it.
So, what now? What was my life going to be? I felt a deep sense of despair, something akin to a major break-up. Despite the despair, I dropped my biology major and pre-med focus. Theater was the other thing I loved doing, so I turned my impatient energy toward a career on the stage. I went abroad during my junior year to London, and I studied Shakespeare and classical acting all day. From 9 am to 6 pm, I immersed myself in theater.
And then, second semester…you may have a sense of where this is going…I was miserable. In March, when the cast list was posted for the play, for the first time in my life, I didn’t care what part I got. I’d never felt that way before. But I listened to that feeling.
I came home that summer and regrouped. I got an education internship at the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. That summer, teaching kids about Shakespeare, I felt a happiness and fulfillment that–finally–lasted.
It may sound totally obvious now, seeing me standing here, that I was destined to be a teacher. But as a 21-year-old, I had no idea. Even though I realized education was a good fit, it would take a year of graduate school for me to realize that teaching English was where I belonged.
So I want you to pay attention. Forgive yourself if the career or field you picked perhaps as far back as elementary school doesn’t end up being the one you land on. It’s not bad to admit you don’t love it like you thought you would. It’s not quitting to follow where you are most happy. And you don’t have to do something just because you are good at it.
My husband, David, likes to quote a math teacher who says, “Find what you love. Do more of that.”
You might find that the thing you love was not the thing you were known for being good at at Harpeth Hall. College is a new beginning so that you can start anew. You are not a fixed person. And you will not always be the person your parents and classmates thought you were while you were here. When I won the English award in high school, my mom said after the assembly, “I thought you weren’t good at English.” Going to college and then into the world let me see myself beyond the lens of my parents and high school peers. It’s good to get out and see yourself more clearly.
So, pay attention. Find what you love. Do more of that. Listen to mentors and professors when they compliment and encourage you. Try to silence the voices that tell you that you aren’t “that” kid. The kid who’s good at [blank]. Trust that you don’t know yet exactly what kind of person you are. Trust that you are still forming. I’m 35 and I have three kids and I still see so much change happening in my life. I’m still forming. I hope it is ever thus.
Be impatient. Be foolhardy. Show up. Pay attention. Find what you love, do more of that.
It’s what brought me to be standing on this stage, after the seven most formative years of my teaching. Like you, Harpeth Hall has been an incredible education for me. I have learned things here that I never imagined. I have accomplished things I couldn’t have done had it not been for this place and the people in it. And now I will take those gifts that this beauty on the hill gave me, and I will, as poet Thomas Lux says:
boil and boil, render it down and distill, concentrate that for which there is no other use at all, boil it down, down, then stir it with rosewater, that which is now one dense, fatty, scented red essence which you smear on your lips
And go forth to plant as many kisses upon the world as the world can bear!
The news over the past few weeks has been startling. Starting on October 5, when the New York Times broke the Harvey Weinstein story, a cascade of women and men have come forward, breaking years or even decades of silence, to speak about harassment and assault by powerful and influential men. Harvey Weinstein was just the beginning.
When Elizabeth Tudor (the future Virgin Queen) was 13, Henry VIII died and she went to live with her last stepmother, Katherine Parr. Katherine Parr remarried quickly enough to turn heads. She married her old flame, Thomas Seymour. Seymour was the uncle to the king and an ambitious social climber. His motives may not be possible to nail down exactly, but he began making predatory sexual advances on his step-daughter Elizabeth. Katherine was having a difficult pregnancy and her marriage was fraying. Elizabeth was the sister of the king, but the bastard daughter of a beheaded queen. She was a young woman in a vulnerable position, and she became Seymour’s target.
In the summer of 1548, Elizabeth was sent away from her stepmother’s home to live with a family friend. Katherine Parr had finally realized the extent of Seymour’s actions. After being sent away, Elizabeth would never see her stepmother again. Katherine Parr died in childbirth in late summer 1548. In early 1549, Thomas Seymour was arrested and charged with treason. Thrown into his long list of charges was conspiring to marry Elizabeth after Katherine Parr died. That charge was treason for Elizabeth–royal women weren’t allowed to negotiate their own marriages. That was the sole purview of King and his council.
The rumors of Thomas’s behavior with Elizabeth were all over court by this point. There were certain factions who thought that if they could get Elizabeth to confess, she would be charged with treason and perhaps beheaded, thereby eliminating another heir to the throne. Sir Robert Tyrwhit, a local knight, was sent to Elizabeth’s house to interrogate her. It’s clear from his letters to the Lord Protector that he thought that Elizabeth would buckle and confess. After all, she was just a 15-year-old, orphaned bastard.
But here is what this story is really about. It’s about strength and survival. It’s about how a girl with an education defeats a grown man. Because that’s what she did. Robert Tyrwhit lived in her house, had her ladies spy on her, and used every tactic he could think of to get Elizabeth to slip up and implicate herself in treason. He belittled her. He berated her. He pretended to befriend her.
And Elizabeth outsmarted him. She only told him things he already knew, she played weak, she played sad. She was patient. She didn’t lose her cool. Her extensive education and training in oration and argumentation kept her always stay one step ahead of his tactics. She wore him down. She outlasted him.
What I want everyone to know is that Elizabeth’s story is one of triumph and survival. You need to look at those portraits, the Rainbow and the Pelican, and you need to know that you are looking at a woman who survived. She survived and she reigned. And for some, they might read her story and feel less alone.
I’m sort of biased because I wrote it, but I think that my book is important. It’s timely. And I hope that it makes it out into the world.
My hope was that the SCBWI Midsouth conference would bust my funk…and it did!
There’s so much to say, but I have to begin by sharing that I feel very lucky to live in this region. Ruta Sepetys won the Crystal Kite award and her speech was awesome. She spoke at the school where I teach a few years back when we read Between Shades of Gray for the all school read. She’s a great public speaker, despite saying that she prefers not to leave her house. She said that she was standing there because she’s a “supported failure.” I absolutely love that concept and can’t wait to talk about it with my students.
Laurent Linn gave the key note and it was everything I needed to hear. He was inspiring. He was humble and warm. Hearing about his journey as an artist and story-teller was really powerful, and a great start to the conference.
I went to so many amazing sessions. I learned a lot and my head was buzzing with ideas. I love the feeling of having ideas! I felt like manuscripts that were languishing in my stack suddenly got a second chance at life! Ninja Queen lives! (I really should make shirts that say that.)
Katie Carella gave a great presentation on the 4-year-old Branches line of early readers at Scholastic. I absolutely loved that session. I learned a lot and I loved her keynote with Jessica Young. My son loves the Haggis and Tank books, so it was great to see how those books came into the world. (I’m going to submit Ninja Queen to her. Ninja Queen lives! Gotta get some T-shirts!)
Linda Camacho did a great session on YA lit that fed my academic soul as well as my writer’s soul. She talked about the origin of YA lit and what the trends have been like for each decade since then. I appreciated her thoughtful and balanced outlook.
I had a great face-to-face critique that confirmed that the edits and revisions I’ve put into PRINCESS’S GUIDE over the last month were the right direction. That’s a great feeling. I can see how much I’ve learned about writing over the past 6 years.
I connected with old friends and made some new ones. We’re already adding to our critique group and planning our next meeting.
My amazing husband and co-parent flew solo with the rest of our clan, and I was relieved that the weekend went smoothly in my absence. This is the last conference where I’ll have to pump in the car in between sessions–yay. I’m so happy that I was able to do this conference and that I am also a supported failure.
Based on my critique, I’ve put in a few more revisions on my YA novel, and I’m working on polishing my submission for Katie Carella at Branches. I feel energized as I move into NaNoWriMo with my new middle grade project. I signed up on the NaNoWriMo website and finally settled on a working title: Normal Girl (Reluctantly) Saves the Day.
Okay. My batteries are fully charged and I’m ready to set off!
