Hello, friends.
I sat at the table this Thanksgiving with Pamela and G, a plate full of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and cranberry sauce, almost all drowned in gravy. There was a roll ready to be made into a small sandwich that would get dipped into gravy. I looked around, happy to be with my family, thankful to be with them, but wondered what next year’s Thanksgiving would look like. Would there be Thanksgiving? There’s a lot of worry but I try to remain hopeful. I try to remember that we’re in unchartered territory. We can look to history to see how things like our current situation happened but we’ve never been in this situation. Will the technology work to bring people together? Will people realize the mistake and fight?
Anyway, these are thoughts that haunt me when I should be happy. I do find happiness every day, but it’s a circuitous route and goes through the Dark Lands of fear.
If only I had an outlet….
Oh! Wait! I do! So, let’s get into that outlet.
Welcome to the 98th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and ego in writing and teaching.
Becoming a paid-Patron on my Patreon would help me write even more. On Patreon, I write about things in more detail than I do in the newsletter or on my website and include the actual names of my works-in-progress and not just codenames. The lowest tier for Patreon is $1 but at $5/month, we’re looking at some serious help.
If every subscriber or reader of this newsletter, or every social media follower I have became a Patron at even just the $1 tier, I could write more and pay my bills better. The same would happen if they bought copies of my books.
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Grab Echoes on the Pond if you haven’t already. If you have bought it already, books make great gifts! And if you’ve read Echoes on the Pond, please consider reviewing on Amazon or Goodreads, and wherever else books are sold and reviewed.
You can also get my collection Catalysts or my novellas Alice on the Shelf and Shadowed.
Anyway, let’s do this!
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I’m on page 356 of Project: Amusement Park. We’re still in 1973 and some bad shit has happened that had been alluded to in the 2024 sections. Filling in the holes. You know what’s exciting about being on page 356? This was on page 341:
I’d left this little note on September 9th to let me know when I’d gotten to the halfway point. I decided to mark the date when I got there.
I feel like I’ll need to go back to the first half and make more foreshadowing about what’s going to happen in the future of the novel, pages I haven’t even gotten to yet. That’s why we do this, though.
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I was going to write about being a writer and a teacher and how they can compliment each other but also work against each other but I was having trouble getting into it. Here’s my original opening:
Being a writer and a teacher is one of those things that seem to go hand-in-hand. Many writers either started off as teachers before writing full-time or remained teachers even as their work became well known. Paul Tremblay, for instance, is a math teacher as well as a bestselling writer. I don’t know how other teachers who write deal with it but I find that there’s a balance that helps me a lot.
It sucks, right? It sounds like the beginning of a paper written by a high school student. No offense meant to high school students.
I don’t know why. I’ve been trying to start this for two days and even as I sit here admitting that the opening I tried was kinda bad (or just plain sucks), I still don’t really know where to go with this. I mean, I know (kinda) what I want to say, but how do I open it?
My head is feeling a little foggy as I sit here on the Sunday that I’d hoped this would be posted and trying to find the words. G just woke up and is sitting with Pamela right behind me and is putting on a TV show that I know will distract me (Schitt’s Creek). That’s how it goes, I guess. I could grab my MacBook or iPad and go into the bedroom and try to write, but then my back will probably hurt and I still have to put up a Christmas tree later on. There’ll be vacuuming and there’s still other things I need to do because tomorrow it’s back to school.
When I arrive at school and walk through the door, I’ll be Mr. Gauthier. As a teacher in a creative arts and multimedia program, I use my abilities as a writer, artist, and designer to help students achieve their goals. I use my knowledge of movies, television, books/publishing, and comic books to help expand students’ knowledge of the various creative fields in the hopes that they may end up in a career within the field. I’ll put my focus on them, leaving my ego (or as much of it as I can of it) at the door.
Being a writer definitely utilizes the ego. I’m Bill Gauthier when I’m submitting stories or sending out queries or trying to book gigs. Writing a weekly update for Patreon or my newsletter is an act of ego. I mean, writing and creating is in itself. To think I have anything to say that others will care about requires a healthy ego, I think. Social media and my website and all that is the same.
I’m not perfect at either writing or teaching. Sometimes the ego waxes or wanes into or out of the appropriate careers. That’s okay, though, because that’s being human. The thing I know is that when I get to work tomorrow, I will leave my ego at the door and do my job and when I’m working on my writing career, I will do what’s best for the career and the work.
And now I realize that the big thing writing and teaching have in common is that they’re both about the work and, ultimately, the audience.
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I’m still interested in what people think about me revising the essays I’ve written about the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Right now, it seems like the interest is in me publishing the essays as a book. I’d have to find a publisher or do it myself. We’ll see.
If you haven’t taken the poll, why not?
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Well, I think I’ve rambled enough. I’m thankful for have you to read this and thankful for your support!
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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