Fall semester schedule and writing thoughts

I alluded to this in a previous post, but just to make it official: I've been hired by Butler University to teach a First Year Seminar. Basically, this is what they used to call Freshman English, only now a lot of universities are doing something a little different. A major purpose of the course is still to learn how to write, but each seminar has a different topic that should hopefully be of interest to students, around which they will learn to read critically, write and discuss persuasively, and relate the topic to themselves, the community, and the world. Specifically, they were looking for people with a performing arts and writing background, and that is a great fit for me.My course blurb is as follows:Good vs. Bad: Morality and OutcomeDo nice guys finish last? Do good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go everywhere? This course will explore both happy and tragic endings for fictional characters perceived as good or bad. Using archetypal characters such as Cinderella and Carmen, we will investigate these issues through literature and the performing arts.We will read, view, discuss, and write about both stories using works of ballet, opera, musical theatre, flamenco dance, and, of course, novels. I proposed the course back in the spring but had to wait until late July to find out if there were enough students to warrant hiring an additional instructor.So, I'll still be teaching voice in the music magnet at Broad Ripple High School, but cutting back to one day a week on Mondays. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings I'll teach the course at Butler, and then have some time for lecture prep, grading, and teaching a few private voice students. I'll be teaching voice at Earlham College on Wednesdays and Fridays, and singing on the weekends.Now, I know people who are unemployed, so having lots of work is something for which I'm extremely grateful. However, I've got this novel to edit and I've been terrible about getting back into it.At Worldcon, one panel I attended was Catherynne Valente (yuki_onna) and Greer Gilman interviewing each other about their unique voices as writers. Cat talked some about her writing process, and a big light bulb went on in my head. I really need lots of space for my novel. When I get in novel mode, I forget about other things, like exercising or eating. It's pretty all-consuming. Having to stop and teach feels like an interruption, and I have trouble dragging my head out of the novel and into the present time and place.I think this is one reason I've been stalled on the rewrite and have worked on short fiction thus far in 2009, not touching the novel until I get my last three short stories revised and into some slush piles. But I yearn to go back into the novel. Unlike Cat, I don't come out with naturally beautiful prose (maybe she doesn't either in the first draft, but I suspect it's still a heck of a lot prettier than mine) and much of the first draft of the novel was written pre-Odyssey, when I had great visions that didn't all make it to the page the way they ought to. The first third of the novel is pretty substantially revised, but still needs some work, and the second two thirds really need work.Obviously, I'm not going to be able to work on it the way I would like to this semester, especially with teaching a new lecture-discussion course for the first time and needing to stay focused. I think the challenge is to take this huge sprawl of a novel and treat it like many interconnected short stories, break it down into manageable chunks, and make slow but steady progress. I'm not sure I'll even get to that point till 2010, because it would be stupid not to get the short stories revised and out the door first, and then there's that darn novella people tell me is "pretty close to publishable" that I've only revised the first third of. *sigh* Revision is a pain in the ass.But giving the Worldcon presentation on The Willow Maiden (the ballet story I wrote that launched the novel), reading the prologue aloud, and answering a few questions about my mythology/where I am at in the novel, etc. made me want so badly to go right back into it. I love the novel, I believe in the novel, and I really need to give it the time it deserves. I'm terrible at meeting self-imposed deadlines, but if I'm not done by summer 2010 when I actually do have some blocks of time to work with, I'll close myself up and give myself the freedom to be a little crazy and wrap myself in the novel until I've fixed it to my satisfaction. I used to question whether I had the necessary skills or set of tools to do this. Now I believe that I do, I just need to make myself do it!