We recently connected with M.D. Saints and have shared our conversation below.
M.D., looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
How success looks is rather subjective, but that it takes a lot of perseverance and grit to be successful, is certainly objective. There are instances where one is in the right place at the right time, but generally, in order to be successful, and to sustain one’s success, there must be some kind of game plan. I am a good planner, for big things like my wedding, and for small things like daily chores. I like to plan almost everything because it helps me be more productive, and as silly as it is to cross things off a to-do list, I find it very gratifying when everything has been marked off and a new list can be made.
Yet before planning anything out, a successful end goal must be in mind. Otherwise any steps taken will be aimless and likely counterproductive. When I set out to write my novel, the end goal was just to complete it. My steps to successfully get there were pitifully small in the beginning, literally just to write three sentences a day. Sometimes those sentences were rough, consisted of only a few words each, and took an absurd amount of time, but they were written. Then, as time progressed, they became easier until I could write several pages a day. And as those steps were walked out, the end goal of how to successfully wrap up the novel became clearer. I have seen J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter napkin and it amazes me that she could have so much foresight. I am definitely not that writer, at least not for stories and novels.
When it comes to writing and crafting successful lessons I am much more methodical and meticulous. The end sum is always kept in mind and then the rest of the lesson is usually created around that. For example, texts that are particularly good for specific skills and standards like irony with Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat,” or dark humor with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” should be tackled in reverse. I try to work backward to figure out ways to best scaffold students up to really understand the various types of irony, or how mood and tone work together to create a humorously macabre story. When students can see their own end goal, it helps encourage them to keep moving and working toward it.
I think growing up in a time where children were permitted to fall and fail really helped develop taking things in stride. A big deal was never made of my successes or failures, and in retrospect, I think that helped create balance. Success was celebrated enough to be desired and continually worked toward, but failure was just a learning experience and then moved on from. There is a strange imbalance in society where many students are either so accustomed to failure that they cease to care, or they are so afraid of it that they paralyze themselves from going forth. Since I have primarily worked with high school students, it can be difficult to try to build up their grit and perseverance, but not impossible. I like to share historical tidbits with them to help inspire some positive goal/risk assessment: Babe Ruth is known for his home runs, but he struck out more often. Thomas Edison did not believe that he had failed, but instead just found ways that did not work, and he kept pushing forward until he reached success. Success is out there for everyone. People just need to take the time to determine their aptitudes, their goals and then take steps to make it happen.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am, a whole plethora of things really, but for the purposes of this interview, I am a teacher and an author and I write creative stories, poems, articles and lessons. I technically have two brands, M.D. Saints with Liberty Dog Writing Co. for my fiction and M.D. Saints with Reading the Rapids, my Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) store where I sell high-quality lesson plans. I am set apart from the large TpT sellers in that I do everything myself. I come up with my ideas, write my questions and keys, create the designs of the handouts and thumbnails that potential buyers see, I respond to my own feedback; I do it all. This is why it helps that I am such a planner, because it can be quite time intensive. A lot of the large sellers have a staff who does XYZ. I was so amazed when I first heard of that a few years back. I am much too particular to outsource anything. I enjoy making lessons and exercising creativity over them. It is not merely a means to earn extra income, I actually have fun while I create them. Additionally, if I receive a complaint about something, I want that on me too. I do not want to receive a complaint for something I outsourced and did not actually do myself.
I am a meticulous lesson writer. I do remember what it was like to struggle as a first year teacher. And then sometimes when other teachers shared their materials, they just did not always make sense. Therefore, I strive for my brands, both Reading the Rapids and Liberty Dog Writing Co. to have great clarity. My lessons and instructions are written thoroughly enough so that someone can purchase a lesson, be unfamiliar with the text, and still be able to implement the lesson with confidence. And I have received feedback stating just that. I am so glad when educators tell me those things because it means I am doing what I set out to do, and doing it well.
As a self-published author, I think I am also set apart for the same reason: I am pretty much a one woman show. When I was nearing the close of my initial (and very rough) draft of my novel I began to ponder publishing methods. I ultimately choose to self-publish with a print on demand company because it was time efficient and allowed me to retain total creativity with my story and my characters. I understand that publishing houses and editors make changes for what they perceive will sell better, but I wrote a story that I would like and a story that my immediate family members would like, and I wanted it to remain intact. It took me an absolutely ridiculous amount of hours to figure out how format page numbers and headers and margins, but it was a good learning experience and I refused to pay someone for something that I was certain I could learn to do. The only thing I outsourced was my cover art, because I have zero drawing ability, and I commissioned a former student to do it for me.
When it comes to being proud of my work, well I am just proud of it all. If I were not proud of it then I would not put it out there for people to purchase. I suppose, however, if I narrowed it down, I am most proud of just completing my novel. Writing a book had been a goal since childhood and I am very glad to have seen it though. I want to write another…I just have not managed to settle on a single idea yet. When it comes to my lessons, I have written several informative articles for them, and I am particularly endeared to my Murder vs. Insanity Trial Activity for Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” It is so fun!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
As a creative writer it seems obvious that drafts are drafts and that they are not intended to be the refined final product, however, this did not stop me from making my life more difficult for a time due to obsessively trying to edit each sentence as it was typed or written out. No wonder those initial sentence writing goals took so long in the beginning! When I started my first draft I was constantly trying to make each word precise and each sentence a greater part of the whole. I would debate names of minor characters and minor details practically ad nauseam with myself. It was such a time eater. I’ve taught creative writing and essay writing for a years, and I always tell my students that they must just start with an idea and get to writing. Even if the writing doesn’t make sense, I would tell them that is fine. So long as there was a starting point then thing could be corrected in the editing. Yet this was a difficult lesson for me to apply to myself. Never having undertaken a novel-sized endeavor, I perpetually had to remind myself that so long as the idea was there, then the rest could be corrected in the editing process. And with much editing, it was!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
With my novel, the goal was just to tell a good story and publish it in one form or another. I certainly did not set out for any type of renown (which is a good thing there, haha) and just holding the finished product and giving it to my parents and brother was the pinnacle of author achievement for me.
With my lessons, I enjoy making products with stories, novels, poem, topics, etc. that I enjoy, and all the better when these resources can help save other teachers time and stress. I immensely enjoying receiving feedback about how a teacher’s students talked about my lesson they implemented long after the lesson was over. Or how my lesson helped a teacher track student achievement with various goals. It is so wonderful that teachers, professors and homeschooling parents, have been able to utilize my resources to help their learners meet academic goals and standards. The feedback I receive from my Reading the Rapids store is usually very warming and keeps pushing me along to make even more variety for things that I may not necessarily even think to make for my own students.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mdsaintswrites.com
- Instagram: mdsaintswrites
Image Credits
All photo rights are owned by M.D. Saints