Think Write Love --with Apologies to Elizabeth Gilbert

My dad's 1936 Royal.

    When I heard that my topic of the week was "Why I Love Being a TA," I was stumped. Why do I love (in no particular order) chocolate, reading and my daughter?  I could either write a doctoral dissertation on each topic....or I could say "Just 'cause." All of these, including blogging, are so much a part of me, it is hard to dissect the why and wherefore of my love.

But I'll give it a shot.

Blogging requires thinking. In this case, thinking about writing. I spend a lot of time thinking while writing.  Plots, characters, research details...a lot of thinking. What I don't do is contemplate the act of writing, the why of writing, the reasons I write.

Teaching Authors offers me the challenge of thinking about those questions. The questions I would be answering on say Fresh Air or during an interview with Horn Book...if I were fabulously successful and well known...I am forced to think about here. Think and articulate them to the best of my ability. When I am confused about anything, I journal about it. Writing brings my own fears, failures and frustrations into focus.  Most of the time, things become clearer after I've journaled. TA has sometimes served as my Public Journal.

I love TA because it makes me write. Well, duh, you think. Isn't that what you are supposed to do...you're a writer. Yes. But TA gives me a deadline. Since I am not currently writing under contract, I don't have deadlines. This lack of urgency makes me a slack jack of a writer.  When TA says "By first thing Friday morning," that leaves no wiggle room for me. Feet to the fire, fingers to the keyboard. TA readers expect a post that day....not the day before or after.  (Admission: there have been times when I have forgotten or there has been a monumental emergency, and the post winds up being a "deadline edition" instead of an "early morning edition."

TA's Mary Ann, Carmela, April--Ill. Reading Ass. 2010

Then there is the love. The love of putting words together in a way that makes sense to you and hopefully to your readers.  The love of reading reading reading to see how other authors do this or that...or to just lose yourself for a couple of hours (all the while telling yourself that you will use what you have learned in a future TA post.)

Most of all, however, is the love of my fellow TA's. I have never been associated with such a smart, creative and occasionally irreverent  group of women (as of yet, there haven't been any TA dudes...as of yet.) Some of them were fellow students in MFA program at Vermont College. Some were friends of friends who I met when we did state reading conferences together. And a few I have to remind myself, I have never met in person. I know them through emails and posts. It doesn't matter. If there is a more caring and supportive group of people...well, I haven't met them (yet...never say never.) We appreciate each other's work; we are poets, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, and a couple of us are multi-genre-ed (I know...not really a word...until now!) Writing is a lonely job. No coffee breaks with co-workers, or Friday Happy Hours. Just you and your chosen instrument of writing. However, the support and advice of my fellow TA's is just a text or email away. God bless them all.

So, in conclusion...being a TA has kept me ruminating about writing, focused and on time, and surrounded by my own support group.  What's not to love, people?