Self-School 101: Enrolling Myself

In April of this year, I graduated college. I was quite proud of it, as I'm the first in my immediate family to do so. I'm also proud of how I spent my college time - shoring up The Writer's Guild, being an RA, and generally busting my ass in every classroom to grab each and every coveted "A" (stands for Acceptable - as in, the only grade acceptable). My standards were high.

After graduation, I moved to rural Louisiana where my husband is stationed with the military. I thought it would be boring, but idyllic. A place to relax and write. After the hectic pace of university life, however, it was more isolated than relaxed and completely lacking in the underlying academic structure I'd become reliant on to stay focused.

For some time I was aimless, depressed even. I thought if I got a job things would be great. Well, McDonald's was about the only place I could get employed and it wasn't exactly an inspiring work environment. Soon my writing output dropped drastically from a thousand or so words a day, to as much in a month, then to nothing. Something had to change.

I gave two weeks' notice because - who am I kidding? - I didn't belong in fast food, not really. I need to write, I need to put all of my eggs in that basket and roll with it. Trying anything else feels like a compromise and is. I want to be a writer, so that's what I'm going to do. But how do I avoid the same squishy resolve I had at the beginning of the summer?

Something college did not prepare me for was living without the infrastructure. Not understanding how to create that self-sufficient support, I fell into some of the many pitfalls of the new writer's life. I let myself get lazy and I let myself get distracted. I can't do that again.

I looked over my college life - my schedules, my syllabi, my to-do lists - and an idea was born. I needed to go back to school - sorta. I need the structures I'd graduated from back. I need order. So, I sat down at my computer and created "classes" for myself.

Considering what I need out of a writing course, first is a textbook. For that, I'm implementing a copy of Alice LaPlante's The Making of a Story that I have left over from a writing workshop way back in 2012. I can structure the class around it - it's fairly solid and well-reviewed. Each chapter - 1 for each week of a 14 week semester - has three parts. There is the idea, some exercises to explore the idea, and then some reading to back it up. There you go - three classes a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Other things I need out of a course are a sense of competition, exposure to other amateur writer's works, and writing requirements. So, Tuesday and Thursday will be dedicated to going onto /r/writing's weekly critique thread and commenting on work there. Then, I'll work on a draft of a story. Two drafts a week, with a final tweaking phase before submitting on Friday. Submitting my stories by the end of every week assures I'm actually working and that I'm put into a survival mode wherein only the good stuff counts.

To round out my schedule, I have literature class with daily reading requirements from my Goodreads "to-read" list. I'm always adding books to that list, but now it's time to take some off. Every day I'll set aside time to read 40-80 pages from whichever novel I'm on. (I'm reading the 1600 page Les Miserables in December and January - should be a fun challenge!)

This schedule sounds ambitious, but I expect nothing less out of my college courses - especially when they're run by me. Anyone can do this, and I think it will be a valuable tool to keep on track and always improving.

At the end of the "semester" I'll report back on my grades. Basically, if I do everything on time I get an "A". Anything less is just unacceptable. After all, my Latin honors mean squat if I don't write with my writing degree. The only person that fails if I don't show up to class is me.

Has anyone else tried this self-schooling method of getting focused? I'm curious to know if you have any ideas/advice!