Tracy Barrett has fans everywhere. Some of her biggest
might be in Cairo, speaking from experience. My youngest, Cyrus, has gobbled up
her entire MG series, The Sherlock Files, and I have joined him. We've
created our own little book club that has expanded to an embrace of the
original Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. What more can any author ask?
Inspiring the young and the not-so-young to love her books and those she
touches in her writing. In addition to the Sherlock Files, Tracy has other
books well-loved by her readers. Book lovers should check out her history and
myth-inspired works, like King of Ithika
and Dark of the Moon,as well as Anna of Byzantium. As an author
and professor and adventurer, Tracy Barrett is an inspiration. She is
joining us today.
WELCOME,
TRACY!
Thank you for inviting
me to be a guest here, Eden!
In the fall of 1984,
with my dissertation on a medieval Italian poet half-finished, I accepted a
one-semester teaching job at Vanderbilt University, filling in for a professor
of Italian who was going on leave. Just one semester.
In the spring of 2012, I
finally said “good-bye” to that job. In the meantime, I finished my
dissertation, and taught every Italian class at Vanderbilt from 101 through
literature and civilization. I never sought tenure, preferring to spend my
weekends and summers raising my children to writing academic articles. Later, I
also discovered a love of writing books for young readers.
I always worked hard,
but during my last year at the university, it was non-stop. When I wasn’t
teaching or prepping a class, I was writing. When I wasn’t doing either one, I
was climbing the steep learning curve of my new volunteer position as U.S. Regional
Advisor Coordinator for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and
Illustrators, a post I accepted a year before I resigned from teaching. Seven
days a week, all day long, I worked.
When the day job ended,
at first it was hard for me to take time off. While I’ve never believed that
you have to write every day—there have been many days, even weeks, when I
didn’t write a word, and I managed to publish nineteen books in eighteen
years—now I didn’t have an excuse not
to. Classes started without me. The SCBWI learning curve smoothed out. I have
no syllabi to put together, no book orders to place, no tests to create and
then grade, no faculty meetings to go to (yay!), no kids at home, a husband
who’s retired, a self-sufficient cat (is there any other kind?), and an elderly
dog who sleeps most of the day.
So I had no excuses. If
I wasn’t going to write more than I used to, why did I quit my day job? After
all, in a list of best day jobs for writers, The Writer magazine (August, 2011) listed “college professor” as
no. 1. Had I made a terrible mistake in quitting? To prove that I hadn’t, I
kept my butt glued to my desk chair. I started four (!) new projects, hoping
one of them would grab me. All summer I felt guilty every time I left my home
office.
As the leaves turn and
we’re finally getting some relief from the heat that has blistered Middle
Tennessee for months, I’m discovering that I have to find a new pattern for
this new season of my life as well. I’ve narrowed my four projects down to two.
I turn off my computer before dinner. I’ve declared Tuesdays “no-work” days: I
catch up on email, read my friends’ Facebook posts, knit, read for pleasure
(what a concept), go to a matineé—anything but write or revise. Research is
permitted if it means reading a book that I would read for pleasure even if it
weren’t useful for one of my works in progress. If I get a brilliant idea for
something I’m working on, I’m allowed to write it down—as long as what I write
fits on one standard Post-it. And usually, the next day it doesn’t seem so
brilliant after all.
I’ve lost the social
life that used to surround me at the university, so I don’t turn down any
invitations. If a friend asks me to lunch, I go. I still organize monthly
gatherings of non-tenure track faculty and attend weekly get-togethers at a
local pub with another group of friends. I’m taking advantage of travel that I
couldn’t do previously because of conflicts with the academic calendar.
Since I started this
schedule, I find that I’m much more relaxed, and paradoxically, more
productive. I finished and revised a manuscript that was a loooonnng time
getting done, and revised another one. I’ve made nice headway on the two new projects.
I expect to fine-tune my
new “season” as I go along, but for now, this is what works for me. If you’re
afraid to take time off because “a writer writes every day,” give it a try. If
the thought of not touching your computer in the evening gives you hives, grit
your teeth and see if you can do it. You can always go back to your old
schedule. But you might just find that leaving your work primes the pump, and
maybe you, like me, will be a better writer and a happier person for doing it.
Bio:
Tracy Barrett has written nineteen books, both fiction and
nonfiction, for readers in elementary school through high school. She loves
history and mysteries, which are combined in her Sherlock Files series, which
has been translated into three languages. The first book in the series, The 100-Year-Old Secret, has been
nominated for nine state awards. She also loves Greek myths and has written two
books that retell Greek myths in new ways, King
of Ithaka and Dark of the Moon. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she
blogs at Good-Bye, Day Job!
DEFINITELY VISIT:
A few weeks ago, I was invited to do a Skype author visit with the kids' book club at Changing Hands Bookstore in Arizona. After accepting the invitation, I fumbled my way through the online Skype tutorial, and at just the right moment, had a lovely virtual chat with kids who love books, and, even more thrilling, had read Storybound. Perhaps I'm several years too late, and those of you who don't dwell in the 1990s where I bide my time in a wifi free and Luddite existence are yawning and tabbing over to the next blog post in your reader. But for the rest of us, for those who muddle their way through the latest online trends, this is one worth checking out. The savvy folks over at skypeanauthor have even set up a virtual network to connect interested authors with teachers, librarians, booksellers, and, ultimately, readers. 
