By: Kirsty,
on 10/17/2011
As head of the SS, chief of police, 'Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of Germanness', and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler enjoyed a position of almost unparalleled power and responsibility in Nazi Germany. Perhaps more than any other single Nazi leader aside from Hitler, his name has become a byword for the terror, persecution, and destruction that characterized the Third Reich.
By: Susan Taylor Brown,
on 1/12/2011
Usually by this time of the year I am going crazy with preparations for a teacher assignment at an at-risk detention facility. For whatever reason, I didn't get an assignment this year. I'll admit to feeling a little bit down for a day when I realized the time for assignments had gone but now I realize that it was likely the Universe telling me it was time to just knuckle down and finish some writing projects of my own. When I teach, I find it hard to write much of anything except my daily teaching reports. Teaching is exhausting. Teaching poetry to incarcerated young men is VERY exhausting.
So I'm listening to the Universe and trying to focus, instead, on SS which is a YA verse novel inspired by last year's Poetry Month poems about my father. I've never been one of those people who thought much about how many words I got down each day. NaNoWrimo never worked worked for me. And except for deadlines that come when I am writing on assignment, I've never tried to get a certain project done by a certain day. Which probably explains why a lot of my novels are waiting to be finished.
But the last two years for National Poetry Month I committed to writing a poem a day, every day, on a certain topic. And I did it, without fail.
So I'm setting myself a new goal - I want to have a ROUGH draft of SS done by the end of March, before National Poetry Month begins. I'm rounding out the time left between then and now to 75 days. (actual number is 78) I'm not counting what I already have done but if I did 2 pages a day, that would give 150, 3 pages a day would be 225. Since this is in verse, I'm setting it at 2 poems a day. Some fit one one page, some will run longer. Now no one knows how long a book is going to be and I'm not going to worry about the specifics. I'm just going to try for 2 poems a day.
Now I don't think that means the book will be done by the of March but I can't revise until I have something to work with so that's the goal. One rough draft of SS by March 31st.
Wish me luck.
