Monthly Archives: December 2023

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writing goals for 2024

As I think about my goals for the new year, I’m considering how I want writing to fit into my life in 2024. I have always seen myself as a writer, but after a few highly productive years leading up to the completion of a novel in 2019, I’ve been in a dry spell, at least by comparison. I do a lot of writing for my work–mainly emails and grading feedback–but in this post, I’m thinking about writing that is both more enjoyable and less ephemeral than those, important as they may be. So here are some writing goals I’d like to focus on in the new year.

  1. Get back into the habit of writing in my notebook for 15 minutes a day. I started doing this in September after I read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and wanted to rediscover the joy of writing, especially in longhand (a practice Goldberg speaks highly of). Throughout that month, I wrote for 15 minutes every morning. Most of what I wrote will never be shown to the world (though this post was a result of one particularly productive day), but it was a good practice, and I’d like to get back into it consistently in 2024.
  2. Research and revise two short stories based on incidents in the life of Christ that I drafted in 2023. These stories resulted from my daily writing practice. They are quick sketches that need research give them accuracy and authenticity. I may use my research and revision process to help me develop some resources for my students (I wrote about this idea here), but even if I don’t end up doing that, I would like to get these stories into a state that I’m happy with.
  3. Reread Sam’s Town to help me decide whether I want to work on the sequel. Sam’s Town is the novel I self-published in 2019. Soon after I completed it, while still riding a writing high, I started the sequel, Sam’s Home. But then I got married, moved, and lived through the pandemic, and the few brief attempts I’ve made to pick the manuscript back up haven’t really gone anywhere. So in 2024, I’d like to reread Sam’s Town in hopes of recapturing some of that excitement. Even if I ultimately decide not to make writing the sequel one of my goals for this year, I think I’ll enjoy revisiting those characters who played such an important role in my life for several years.

Three is a magic number when it comes to goal-setting, so I’ll stop there. What are some of your goals for 2024, writing-related or otherwise?

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ode to The Muppet Christmas Carol

Instead of a post about teaching and learning, today I want to share with you a brief homage to one of my favorite Christmas movies (though, now that I think about it, there’s a lot of teaching and learning going on in A Christmas Carol). Earlier this month, my parents treated their kids and our spouses to a delightful gift: a screening of The Muppet Christmas Carol in Pittsburgh’s beautiful Heinz Hall, the music track replaced with a live performance by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (which was fascinating–I heard things in the music that I’ve never noticed while watching the DVD or VHS). This gift prompted me to write the following reflection in my journal. Regardless of your favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol (I know this can be a heated debate), I hope this post brings a little joy to your Christmas celebration. God bless us, every one!

What do I love about The Muppet Christmas Carol? First and foremost, it’s Michael Caine’s performance as Scrooge. He holds nothing back; there is not “I’m acting opposite puppets” wink in his eye. He is one of the sincerest, most sinister, and yet most sympathetic Scrooges ever.

Another thing I love is the script. Though Muppet jokes and silliness abound, the language of Charles Dickens (who loved jokes and silliness where appropriate) permeates the movie. I give it a large share of the credit for why I fell in love with Dickens’ writing. Similarly, the film’s set–which, now that I’m an adult, I can see isn’t going to win any production design Oscars–still gave me an early love for the close-knit, crowded, alternately dark and brilliant world of Dickens’ London.

The music, of course, is what prompted the live screening we attended. The songs have a very Muppety essence to them, but that doesn’t stop them from containing some of the profoundest lines in the whole Christmas movie canon. The score is tonally spot-on: very British in is instrumentation, ominous when it needs to be and joyous when it needs to be, Christmasy all the way through.

Of course, there are nostalgic reasons too. I can’t picture a Stockslager family Christmas without it. I don’t remember when we started watching it on Christmas Eve night because “after all, there’s only one more sleep ’til Christmas,” but I know we’ve been watching it every year pretty much since it came out in 1992.

Watching the movie with a huge crowd and hearing their reactions was really special. Of course, laughter is the easiest reaction to hear, as well as the one we’re most likely to express aloud in public, so we heard a lot of laughter. But it was all at tonally appropriate times (unlike some cringy inappropriate laughter responses I’ve heard during live theater performances), and besides, both Dickens and the Muppets would love knowing that their work brought a crowd together with laughter, especially at “this most festive season of the year.”