Carrie Callahan

A big fat failing 'F'. And it's OK. I've learned a lot through my little experiment, but the most important thing was to keep my goals simple. Which I didn't. After Thanksgiving break, and my mid-term grade, things at the Self School crumbled a bit, then crumbled a bit more. I took out certain "classes," and tried to add others. I restructured the writing to try to accommodate short stories and novel writing, but that didn't work out. It was all too complicated to develop good writing habits. For me, life can't be a diet. What I mean by that is diets are temporary. My syllabus was temporary. There was a limit, a deadline, an end. Because of that, it was easy to tell myself, "Ohp! You screwed it up and now you'll never finish. Might as well eat a box of twinkies!"* *metaphorically speaking Instead, I realized I should have been looking at writing less as an assignment and more like a lifestyle. Not something to only do on s...

In school grades were a fantastic motivator for me. I just loved seeing A after A after A on my report cards, and kept an open conversation with my professors to be sure I did just that. I saw anything less than an A as failure. As my grades no longer affect any of my legitimate records, I've dialed things down a bit but I haven't stopped grading myself. For my self-school project to be a success, I need to measure how well I've achieved my goals. Because no one is there to really judge whether my work is good enough, participation will have to do and I've come up with the following rubric to determine how well I'm doing: GRADING: 25% - Reading 10% - Crits 25% - Textbook 40% - Writing 90-100 A 80-90 B 70-80 C 60-70 D F Looks pretty good, huh? Let's look at how well I muster: First, I get full 25% for reading, and another 25% for the textbook work as I've finishe...

Part of teaching yourself is knowing when to back off. This is not one of those moments. Instead, I've realized that I'm not pushing myself hard enough! I have too much free time, and too much creative energy left over from other endeavors. I need to add more writing to my syllabus. On that note, I'm announcing the addition to my syllabus of a novel-writing class! This class' aims will be to write about 2,000 words on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday toward a longer fiction work, in addition to the other story writing I'll be doing on Tuesday and Thursday as well. I say "about" 2,000 words because I find that when I put specific numbers on my progress, they distract me from really getting into the writing. Instead, my focus will be on getting into the "flow" and losing myself in my writing in much the same was as I lose myself in reading - not checking word counts every five minutes. I'm hoping this more holistic approach will help me r...

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 outp...