Are your feet in two rooms, or is it a balancing act?

I started writing seriously in fourth grade.  Every day before school and after school.  During classes, too. I was hooked on the inherent joy of storytelling.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I’d learned that no one could “get a job” as a novelist.  Writing was something you had to do on your own, which meant you needed a career that provided you with lots of extra time.  Who had lots of extra time?  English teachers, of course. They had their summers off, plus work days that ended around 3:00 in the afternoon, right? If I wanted to write full-time, all day, becoming a high school English teacher would be the first step towards my goal.

I applied to the University of New Hampshire, which I’d heard was a great school for English teachers. In the fall I entered as an English Teaching major. Right away I got completely caught up in my studies, and started working as a substitute teacher at a local middle school. I was fascinated with different philosophies of education, with how students learn to read and write. I learned new approaches to reading and talking about literature. Over the course of four years I was offered multiple part-time positions at the school where I was subbing, first as a Spanish translator for a student from Mexico, then as a special-education aide.  A long-term classroom sub.

All of which is to say I fell in love with teaching.  I wrote the whole time, just as obsessively as ever, but now I there was something else that I cared about.

I had an unofficial advisor at UNH, a brilliant man named John Yount. He was so important to me that I mentioned him in the Acknowledgements of my book. John was a novelist, and had attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. When he asked one day what I planned to do when I graduated, I told him I wanted to teach – and he said I’d be crazy if I did. It was a huge surprise for me, because he’d always been so supportive. Teaching would take up all my time, he explained. By then I’d seen enough teachers at work to know that he was right. Still, I had my feet firmly planted in two separate (but adjoining) rooms, and John’s sudden admonition made me drop two anchors. I believed him, but I wanted two things. I wanted to write and to teach.

When I graduated, I became a middle-school language arts teacher, one who still had every intention of becoming a novelist, but who was extremely happy with his day job.  The year was 1996.

A few years passed. In May of 2017, my first novel was published.  It’s called Ginny Moon. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’ve heard of it.

A debut novel requires a tremendous amount of support from the publishing team – and that includes the writer.  My publisher wanted me to do a lot of traveling: a month-long prepublication tour, and a month-long book tour. Both were necessary in order to give the book the best possible chance of success. Also, there would be articles I had to write, and I needed to finish my second book. I was happy to do all of these things – ecstatic, actually, and filled with more gratitude and pinch-me-I’m-dreaming joy that I ever could have imagined. I planned to take two months of leave, but when I made the official request, my superintendent said no. Two months was just too long.

So I resigned. Leaving my position was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I knew I could come back to teaching afterward, though in a different district.  The position I’d left would be long-gone by then.

But just as I learned that teachers don’t really stop working when the bell rings at the end of the day (ever respond to reading-journals until midnight?), I quickly learned that for a very long time I’d been burning a candle at both ends. Writing as obsessively as I’d been writing, while teaching full-time, was having a serious impact on both my writing and my teaching. I was a wreck and hadn’t know it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t have it all.  Not if “all” means being both a novelist and a public-school teacher at the same time. I’m writing full-time right now, and trying to squeeze in a bit of teaching where I can. All my friends are colleagues at the middle school are already into their first week of the school year, while I’m at home, writing.  I have what I set out to achieve way back in high school.  I would never go back and choose the other option – giving up the tours and time in order to keep my teaching job – but I’m not even close to being done with teaching. Teaching has been a part of who I am for a long, long time.  And I like it that way.

Ever find yourself in possession of the thing you’ve always wanted, only to find out that you’ve become someone who now wants more than that? I still have both of my feet in adjoining rooms, but I have a feeling it will always be a balancing act.