Hello, writers. My second year teaching, I was new to a well-funded but poorly-achieving school. Almost none of the students scored above the first percentile on standardized tests. The children seemed happy enough, and there was plenty of joy in the building, but a lot of the teachers were phoning it in. Within the first week I realized that if I phoned it in too, no one would care.
Shortly after that, I realized the teacher two doors down from me was giving it his all. He was teaching as if he had a classroom full of future Rhodes scholars on his hands.
I knew I couldn’t do as good as job. But I also knew that by keeping an eye on his class, I’d at least remember to do the best I could instead of the least that was expected.
He kept me honest.
Now that I’m writer-lady, I have authors I turn to to keep me honest. They remind me that even if I can’t do as good a job as them, I can still give every story my best effort.
Mine are Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones.
Who are yours?
Since the above doesn’t lend itself to a Tonight’s Challenge, try this:
Take a single image from something that you’re working on. Reduce it to a single word. (Example: “wall”.)
Don’t write the word down, just think about it.
Now freewrite for five minutes based on that one word. (Freewriting is when you write or type without stopping.)
You can share all of the result, or part of it, or none of it, as you wish.
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