“I had acquired what, to my mind, is the most valuable success a writer can have — a faithful following, a reliable group of readers… who trusted me, and whose trust I must not disappoint.” -Stefan Zweig
Dear Reader,
With the manuscript for my book safely in the hands of my editor and the other good folks at Corwin Literacy, it is with great delight that I return to typing words about teaching into this blog, and it is with great gratitude that you (still) find my words worthwhile to read.
I've missed you during the past four months; they have probably been some of the most grueling of my career. Teaching hasn't changed — it's still a source of challenge and fulfillment for me, and I labor to love this year's kids just as I have before — but the creation of this book was even more of a test than I expected. Writing in isolation is hard on anyone, but especially on someone who has an engaged and kind readership such as I do. I resonate with the Zweig quote at the start of this post: certainly it is readers like you who take the moments it takes to read my work, who make me feel like a “successful” writer. When my words leave my computer, they are bits and bytes; when you read them and apply them to the work you have at hand, they take on flesh and meaning.
There are probably some sophisticated marketing things that I should be doing, starting now, to get you ready to buy my book when it comes out this summer. Certainly, that is what the “how to write a book” books tell writers to do.
But you and I are just colleagues, and so I'll trust that in the months to come you'll do as you please with your (or your department's, or your district's) purchasing power. Instead of all seeking to convince you to buy what I've made, I'm just going to resume writing things for you that I hope will help as you keep laboring (sustainably!) toward the long-term flourishing of young people.
Teaching right beside you,
Dave Stuart Jr.
PS. If you're outlandishly fired up about this forthcoming book of mine and want to be on the “inner circle launch team,” just sign up here.
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