College Students: So You Want to be a Writer?

As a soon-to-be-graduate from an English program, I feel moderately qualified to give some advice to youngsters about embark on or early in their college career. More and more I'm meeting freshmen and students recently accepted to the English department who tell me, "I'm going to be a writer." Kudos, I'm on the same page, but sometimes it feels like they haven't really thought this career decision through. They seem to think it's an obvious, easy decision. To be honest, saying that you're going to be a writer is the wrong attitude to begin with. Either you are a writer or you aren't-- being published or paid doesn't determine that.
Here's some candid advice from someone who is about to face the big scary world with the degree you're going for.
1. Taking English classes alone do not prepare you to be a novelist: Taking creative writing classes and workshops are a great way to hone your skills. You can get great feedback from your professors and fellow students which can be incredibly valuable. In class you learn techniques and theory that are important foundations for good writing. However, if you never do any writing outside of class, there's little hope of you achieving much professionally. It's hard to make a living writing five short stories or ten poems a semester. It's when you're not writing for an assignment, but harnessing the skills you developed in class, that you can take the time to experiment creatively.
2. Writing a novel is not part of an English BA program: Very few English programs actually have writing a novel as part of the curriculum. Most undergrads don't write novels while in college. It is a time-consuming process that few students can make room for in their busy schedules. NaNoWriMo is great fun, but most of what you end up writing probably won't be usable, not without heavy editing. I organized my own independent study to allow myself the time to really focus on drafting a novel while still a student and got academic credit for all my work.
3. Writing is hard: I feel like I don't need to say this, but apparently I do. Writing a novel is a lot of long hours of thankless work and frustration. A first draft is not a finished novel either. You must toil through edits and revisions for more thankless hours. No one's first draft is publishable. Not really.
4. Selling your writing is even harder, so educate yourself: Hooray! You've completed something that you are proud of and that others have given you strong feedback on. Now you have to begin the brutal task of writing queries and summaries, sending out to agents and/or publishers. Yes, self-publishing is an option, but not an easier option. If you want to be a self-publishing success you have to be willing to put a lot of time and effort into it; basically you have to be your own marketing and sales team. Whatever route you choose, you have to understand social networking, the publishing industry, and what market you're entering. Do your research. You should be as well versed in your chosen profession as a surgeon is in theirs.
5. You don't have to be a writer: If you think you must be a writer simply because you love reading and language and aren't sure what else to do with yourself and your English degree; you're wrong. There are so many other options out there for you. Yes, there is always teaching. There's also library sciences, copy editing, marketing, technical writing. You can go on to a complimentary Masters program, English is a great starter degree if you want to move on to study law, another humanities field, or social sciences.

After all that, if you still do want to be a writer, if in fact you can't help yourself, here are a few tips that have been helpful to me:
Read everything: I mean, within reason. So you want to be a fantasy writer, that doesn't mean you can't learn about characterization, thematic arcs, and strong writing from historical fiction, commercial fiction, or 18th century satire. Don't pigeon-hole yourself. You might be struck with inspiration for a story in a genre you've never even considered before. It might be your masterpiece.
Explore things beyond the English department: I like to say that writers should know a little bit about everything. People don't want to just read novels about other people reading novels. If that's all you know of life, you won't have much material. Go to an art gallery, a rock concert, read a psychology journal, talk to a stranger in a bar (but be safe guys), go hiking, do something that scares you.
Travel: One of the best things that happened to me was getting out of my home community. Along with the above tip, travelling is a great way to gather material and get outside your sphere of understanding. Travel in the country, out of the country, anywhere. Again, unless you're going to set every story in the town you grew up, you need to see what else is out there. Even if you are going to write about the area you're from, sometimes it's easier to put it in perspective when you're away from home.
Have a social life: It's really easy to think that if you spend all of your off-hours in front of your laptop (or in true vintage style, typewriter) that it will be the most effective way to be successful. Those work hours are very important, but it's okay to have a social life. In fact, though many hours are spent in solitary confinement when you're working on a project, writing is still a surprisingly social profession, or at least it can be. Meeting with other writers and discussing your work can be really useful. Meeting with other people and discussing almost anything can help relieve some of your work anxiety.
Carry a notebook always: Always be prepared to write down any sudden ideas. Inspiration can strike anywhere-- on the subway, in the grocery store, while having lunch with friends. Don't be afraid of looking neurotic. Scribbling furiously in public can only help in giving people the impression you're a serious writer, after all.
Write something: Even if it's not up to scratch yet, write. Have a brilliant idea? Take the time to work on it. Don't wait until you're graduated to finally put pen to paper. Use your college years to make a start at finding your voice. Take random prompts, go to local writing groups. Just do it. Don't wait until you're "good enough" or else you will never get the practice you need to be good. You will write some crap. Everyone does, but you'll get better and you might even find that in a bad story, there's a good character or a great bit of dialogue that can be salvaged for something else later.

Best wishes fellow writers. I'll see you on the other side.

Acquired Tastes

As a child I tried a sip of wine at a wedding. After I had wrinkled my nose in disgust, my mother told me it was an acquired taste. Someday I would feel differently. Perhaps I was just a precocious or challenging child, but I had to ask, "Why would anybody take the time to acquire a taste?" And I couldn't understand why you would drink something that wasn't quite pleasant.
As I grew older, I did in fact acquire a taste for many things that I initially couldn't tolerate: beer, wine, cheddar cheese, tomatoes. In fact those are practically four of my basic food groups currently. I've found that tastes other than those in my mouth have developed as well.
In high school, I couldn't stand Virginia Woolf. My advanced placement English group read To the Lighthouse. I found it tedious. I didn't like Woolf's style. The whole thing felt rather pointless to me. Last year I came back to it. I admit that I was reluctant to revisit the novel, I only did so for a British literature class. Imagine my surprise when I found that there was something in the novel I had missed the firs time around: humor. With the space of a few years between me and my previous experience with the book, I found it to be a very different text. This summer I read Woolf's Between the Acts and found that to be a very interesting, if somewhat fatiguing book.
That's the strange thing about novels. They may not be factual, but they tell us truths. Usually truths about ourselves. Many readers will have one book they return to over the years that stands as a sort of gauge for that. The text remains the same. We're the ones who change.
Literature is not entirely unique in this way. I've had similar experiences with music as well. When I first heard The Decemberists, I wasn't sure about them. There was something odd about their sound. It was like my ear needed to be calibrated to their music. And eventually it was. Now they're one of my favorite bands.
Perhaps that's the difference between disliking something and needing to acquire a taste for it. Things that you acquire a taste for are unsettling. You don't like them at first, but there is something intriguing about them. Something deeper to the taste, the sound, the text. When you spend more time around it or return to it later, you begin to uncover that depth. It's almost like you have to work for your appreciation of that that thing. That makes your attachment to it greater in the long run. Maybe it's a little like falling in love? But, matters of the heart are not my area of expertise.
What things have you had to acquire an appreciation for over time? Or what things have you considered trying again after finding it initially unappealing?

Ironies Abound

So in the interest of transparency, I should tell you that I'm graduating in May. I'm on the cusp of embracing my adulthood, taking responsibility for myself, and figuring out what these years of study are truly for. No pressure.
If any of you have followed this blog for a while or read my sidebar -->>>> you'll know that I rejected the idea of being a high school English teacher fairly early in my academic career. Last week, thanks to a number of factors, I settled on what I want to do when I graduate.
Ironically, the plan involves teaching (and oh, how my father teases about that). But not quite in the way most English majors do it. I've decided that I want to live abroad for the next few years and support myself by teaching English as a second language. I want to travel and write and unfortunately, that needs funds. Teaching ESL might be the way to it. I think that might be more enjoyable for me anyway. I won't be convincing bored American teens to care about Shakespeare and To Kill a Mockingbird. No, I'll be sharing language and culture with students around the world. And yeah, some of them will be bored, but I feel like in an ESL curriculum there's more room to be inventive and incorporate technology and digital culture. If they're bad in class, I can always Rick-Roll them.
The job climate in the US is depressing to say the least. I don't want to run off to NYC to intern at a magazine or be an assistant at a publishing firm like every other graduating writing student on the east coast. Confession: I don't even like NYC that much. I'm more of a country girl.
Of course the hope is that I'll start publishing my fiction and make an income from that. But I don't live in fairy land (or even the world of Hemingway's A Movable Feast). Writing doesn't pay that well. Even if you're good. You have to be both prolific and popular
I know I want to write and travel and I'm afraid that if I don't do it now, I never will. I'll fall into some job that I don't really like that will sap my energy and my time to write. I'll get too settled to leave. Like most of my family, I'll end up living the rest of my days within 20 miles of the place I was born. That's why I have to go now. I can't give myself a chance to fall into a rut because I'll stay there.
And yes, I know that this lifestyle I'm describing has many drawbacks and challenges. Arranging visas, tax forms, language barriers, being far from the familiar, not being able to have many material possessions, etc. I'm not saying I'll do this for the rest of my life. I feel like I should spend the rest of my 20s with rich eyes and poor hands. I should sleep on other peoples' couches around the world. When I hit 30, I'll reevaluate and see if it's time to buy my own couch.
So that's my manifesto of the moment. Updates on this painful process of arranging my future will trickle in. Thanks guys.

"...Or you'll end up in my novel"

"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better."
--Anne Lamott

The first time I came across the ethical question of blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction was as a teen. A slightly paranoid friend in high school told me that her ex-boyfriend based a character in his play off of her and that she thought it was morally reprehensible. More recently, while reading the manuscript of a friend, I came to the realization that one of her characters was based off me. An odd sensation to read a fictionalization of yourself, but she was just a side character with my physical traits who would occasionally slip in literary words of wisdom to the narrator (in fact, the worst thing I might say is that I read a bit dull as a character).
In my own writing, however, after leaving behind the sadly autobiographical stories I wrote in childhood, I've tried to avoid basing characters directly off people in my own life. Working on some of my more recent projects however, I've discovered that it's inevitable. As writers, our minds are our landscapes. Everything we've read, seen, or experiences is what we funnel into our stories. Most importantly, the people we meet shape us.
I doubt there is any writer who can honestly say that nothing they've written has some basis in an experience they had or a person they've known. I think we often end up playing the "what if?" game. You start with an amusing or interesting situation from life and invent from there. Say, a late night volleyball game on the beach with your friends. Now you say "what if a treasure map had washed up on the shore that night?" or possibly, "what if Gary and I hated each other more and took out our animosities during the game?" There must be a story in that. The game in real life might have been tame, but throwing in those other variables makes it plot.
Some characters will become a composite of people I know. They might have one person's occupation, another's penchant for compulsive cleaning, but I develop completely fictional relationships for them within the story. Sometimes, if a close friend is being used as any sort of basis, I'll clear it with them first. I'll let them know that I'm lifting a bit of their physicality, or a circumstance from their life and using it in my story. So far no one has objected.
In most cases, I doubt someone reading my novel would pick out what they had been the inspiration for. I do have ethical qualms about making a direct transcript of a real person from my life to a character. But I can't pretend that my stories don't have the occasional non fiction basis. As a writer, I feel I have a sort of duty to capture the reality of human experience. Fiction is real in that sense, it can be a recognizable truth about life from a story that didn't happen, at least not exactly. It didn't happen, but it's still true.
Even more problematic can be injecting a "me" character into stories. It can be so easy to slip into writing about a hero that is basically your own self, especially when writing in the first person. I think a little bit of yourself will always be present in your characters. After all, what they say and do are filtered through you. But, sometimes it's really liberating to write from the perspective of someone totally different. A different background, different stance on issues, different race or gender, different age: I think experimenting with that can help you get outside yourself as a writer. And that can be so good for the work.

A Touch of Transparency; or What a Blog is For

I've been regaling, or boring you for the past three years with this blog. I wonder what you can surmise about me and my work from its contents.
What I've also been wondering of late is why I have this neurotic compulsion to be secretive about my writing. I've even been quite secretive about this blog in the past. For the first year I never told anyone I knew that I was a blogger.
Perhaps what is pushing me toward greater transparency is my realization that I really want to launch my writing career and that my blog might be a helpful tool in this regard. I should talk about my writing, share excerpts from it, get feedback. I can get rather phobic about people reading my unedited work (or even my edited work) and it needs to stop. This year I took a major step by letting my professor read my extremely rough manuscript and I found it to be a rewarding growth experience.
She didn't rip me to shreds. She realized that the piece was in its early stages. Instead she gave me enthusiastic feedback and support. I realize this is the internet and that there are plenty of people who have nothing more fulfilling to do with their time than criticize and wound, but the people who have opinions that actually matter aren't here to do that.
So here I am, about to do my last semester at college. I've just set down my mystery manuscript after a round of major revisions. I'm realizing that it is a hard book to boil down to a query letter. I'm trying to give myself some distance from the project, hoping it will be easier for me to be objective about if it's not so fresh in mind.
Instead of stagnating though, I'm starting work on a new project. I suppose that the secret to my eventual success is, quite simply, that I'm always working on something. I'm writing a poem or a short story. I'm outlining a sequel or drafting a new novel. It's all the honing of a craft. Working on characterization in a short story can help me realize why the motivation feels forced in my novel. Playing with language and description in a poem lets me practice developing a sense of atmosphere.
In the midst of all my course work I wrote four chapters of a new novel this week. It's going to be an Oxford story. And maybe I don't have the right to attempt to follow in the footsteps of Evelyn Waugh or Dorothy Sayers, or Philip Larkin, but Oxford lends itself to stories. I couldn't help but start forming ideas while I was there, and recent conversations with friends I met there has assured me that this is a story I need to write.
I'm trying to write the kind of book I love to read.

Things are looking up...

Perhaps. I've just put in some applications, though of course I don't know if I'll get anything from them, but the act of putting them in gives me a sense of accomplishment and control. I hope to get some sort of response (from at least one of them) soon
I also won a drawing I entered months ago on the PBS website. I won series one and two of Sherlock on DVD. That certainly cheered me. I barely even remember entering-- another example of me not expecting to much, but actually getting something.
At the literary society event tonight I dressed as Jane Austen and served tea. That was fun. My kooky friend Jess dressed as Henry David Thoreau. Somehow our interactions during the evening led us to the decision to tag-team a NaNoWriMo about the two of them. Not sure how that's going to turn out.
I've nearly finished this round of edits on my mystery novel and I'm taking a break from it while figuring out how to attempt getting it published. I have some very specific ideas about what I want from all the research I've done, of course I'm still looking for some guidance from those who have been there before. Right now I'm focusing on shorter pieces for my multi-genre writing workshop. I had a great batch of drafting last night.
And I've been listening to a lot of Seawolf. Maudlin music always has a cheering effect on me.

So thanks for bearing with me through all the crazy.
And I'm going to Italy in the spring. If that's not a sign of things looking up, I'm not sure what is.

Writing for Money and other Different Skill Sets

Sorry for the silence on this end.
I'm getting to the point in my life where I have to seize adulthood, independence, etc. I also have to get used to writing for different reasons. No longer am I simply writing essays for classes, stories and poems for myself. Now I'm writing to convince people to give me money, accept me into programs, buy my creative writing.
Application essays, query letters: they're a different skill set. It's a balance between informative and interesting. Between confidence and cockiness. No little artistic flourishes such as stand-alone phrases allowed (see previous sentence fragment). Suddenly I'm a slave to the basic rules of punctuation and grammar. They're no longer gentle guidelines I can bend for emphasis or fun. My bad habits (I tend to overuse commas) are glaring errors that need immediate attention.
Writing a novel is not the same as writing a query. Receiving an English degree doesn't mean anyone's going to pay you to use it.
The big dream would be for me to spend next year working/studying abroad. By the end of that year I would hope to have something in the works for getting my novel published.
The big dream is to live by my pen. Not grandly, but just enough to take care of myself.

Countdown to Oxford: Misconceptions

One more week stateside, so I thought I'd collect the best, or rather the worst misconceptions about Oxford, England, and Europe in general I've heard over the last few months.
Now, I have plenty of really intelligent culturally aware friends, but sometimes they say things that are ridiculous or not properly thought through. They sometimes realize it shortly after they've said it. A few of these comments were made in earnest, by some less culturally aware friends and acquaintances, which does make me question American education.

"Will you have the internet in England?"

"It's not like England's in Europe."

"You're going to be so close to everything, you'll have to take a day to go to the Swiss Alps."

"Oxford, London, what's the difference?"

"I've been telling everyone about your trip to London."

"You do know that everyone in England hates Americans, right? It's a good thing you're not going to France, they really hate us all."

"You'll have to go to Paris on the weekends, it'll be like, an hour away."

"It'll be all chicks at Oxford, right? I mean it's a girls school."

"Are you going to go to the palace? Can you have tea with the Queen there?"

I'm always afraid of sounding snotty when I correct people. I've given up on trying to persuade everyone that I'm not spending a month in London as they all seem to think. It's true that on the whole, the countries in Europe are much smaller than the US. England is only about the size of my home state, Pennsylvania. It still takes eight or nine hours to get from one corner of the state to the other, so I don't know why history and geography classes haven't given us a more clear understanding of spacial relationship between the countries.
As I've said before, I consider all the people who made these statements to be sufficiently intelligent, so I blame it on the weird US-centric bubble around our education that leads to these "ugly American" misconceptions.

Scenes from a Bookstore: Petulant Teenager

"I'm never coming back in here ever again!" I hear a girl about thirteen whine to her father as he gets in line at the local B&N. I'm in line in front of them, two novels in my hands.
"Never ever?" her father says flatly. He doesn't even look at her, probably used to her tantrums by now.
She gestures to the books in his hand, "You could just get a Nook. Then you could get those in, like, two seconds and we wouldn't have to come in here anymore."
He ignores her suggestion and patiently waits for the line to creep forward while she stalks off to the cafe inside the shop.
My brow inadvertently furrows: there are plenty of things to tempt a non-reader in a Barnes and Noble. There are movies, music, board games, Ugly Dolls. I can't help but think that this girl is being unreasonable and is not concerned so much with the fifteen minutes trapped in this purgatory, but afraid that some of her friends might see her there.
Just a few years ago, the media started telling us that smart was sexy, nerds were the new cool. It appears the pendulum is swinging back and to be caught browsing at a Barnes and Noble is somehow shameful and embarrassing to these local teens now.
Being "cool" as I understand it is being interesting. Being a person with something to bring to conversations, something new to offer to your circle of peers seems a lot cooler than bringing nothing but the latest Facebook news. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Pedantic, Socially Repressed: Bookish Stereotypes

The awkward intellectual has always been a common figure in pop-culture. For a modern example we can go to a prime time sitcom, Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory. Reason and fact has often been set up as opposition to emotional and sensual life, connection to other people. In fact that's what D.H. Lawrence's scandalous Lady Chatterley's Lover is really about.
My first instinct is to combat this stereotype, but I see it in my colleagues and I definitely see it in myself. I'm intellectually extroverted, I like to talk, discuss, debate, but I don't make deep personal connections easily. I often avoid making romantic connections; I am emotionally introverted. Many intelligent women I know have similar issues to varying degrees. Sometimes I think that we should have "Anyone Can Whistle" as our theme song. I can't whistle actually. This leads to the Neil Gaiman having to write a brief guide to seducing writers.
I've been feeling very socially awkward lately. Perhaps it's because I've been wading through the swamp of my own thoughts to write this novel and that can become a self-centered process. I spout off fun facts and use archaic vocabulary and three or four syllable words in common speech. My humorous (I thought anyway) allusions to literature and film in conversation go by unnoticed.
When you spend your days forcing yourself to analyze and think about everything's significance, to think deeply about words and their implications; it can make casual interaction difficult. Especially with people from different disciplines or mind sets. Of course there's always the odd male that finds this attractive:



He is a beautiful rarity. Maybe I'm overstating this, many intellectual men and women have perfectly normal lives-- even love lives. But this stereotype is definitely out there and I can see some of the reasons behind it even in myself. What about you? Bookish ladies and gents happily social or misanthropic? Can you turn off lecture mode or do you talk about the mythological significance of the hero's journey after the movie?

Ode to the Coffee Shop

I went to my usual coffee place today and decided to scribble down a few thoughts about it. I'm there about once a week writing and working:
My blue cotton scarf looks so vibrant draped across the the rich, cherry wood chair illuminated by a beam of white winter sun pouring in the window. It's warm today, but the sun isn't spring sun quite yet.
There is an incessant hiss and whir of the heater and the coffee makers-- the fruits of which leave a smokey, bitter taste on my tongue. Stirring spoons clatter against metal cups and then drip through the frothed milk on the lattes. It's a cacophony in the quiet shop.
Everyone here knows me by face, if not name. It is a cliche, but it makes an odd sort of sense. When a writer needs a haven that home cannot provide; where else is there to go? It's to the coffee house where you can sit among the din of music and conversation, sipping at the biting, but pleasurable hot drinks and working uninterrupted. It's my natural habitat, the paper coffee cups, the bagels, the endearing young staff, the public solitude.
It's an out of the way, indie place, that I might just dedicate my first book to. Enough of it has been drafted between these walls. I owe them for their shelter, their inexpensive high quality stimulant beverages, and their tolerance for letting me make a two hour drink last all afternoon with my books spread across their table tops; me staring into space, sighing, and inventing characters based off the other customers. So, here's to Patrick, Samantha, Jeremiah, and the rest of the staff who are unwittingly helping me on my way to becoming a novelist. Starbucks can just go jump in a lake.

2010 An Obligatory Review

Oh, I have to. Even if it's only a new year according to our flawed solar calender (just saying, if we followed a lunar calender we could have thirteen 28 day months which would make a lot more sense).
So here are some ways I'll remember 2010:
1. The year of technological horror. I had one computer cord die on me and have to be replaced, then the computer itself died shortly after I replaced the cord. My flash-drive suddenly ceased functioning, then I got a very determined piece of Malware infested in my new computer in time for midterms. Then, right after finals my computer started acting up. Last week then, the Malware came back. So my whole hard drive had to be wiped. Yes, I just got it back today.
2. The year I gave Dickens another try. And you know, I found it wasn't bad. I rather enjoyed Dombey and Son. It was also perfect timing for my honors course in which we read The Mystery of Edwin Drood and wrote our own endings. My version (not surprisingly) was described by my professor as a bit "film noir." It was a lot of fun.
3. The year of rejection. For the first time, I started actively submitting my work to lit journals and querying agents and editors. I had done little touches of freelancing, but I had never submitted so much before. Ergo, I've never been rejected so much before. Dipping my toes into the publishing world was an overwhelming experience. I may have had a breakdown (or two) and reconsidered my choice to be a writer. Overall though, I learned a lot, and hope to start round two later this year.
4. The year of detective stories. Not just my own, though they have been constantly on my work table. I started a very determined course of education; I began an intensive study of the genre. When I looked back over the list of books I read, at least half were mysteries. I brushed up on my Agatha Christie as well as more contemporary offerings. I watched a good many mystery programs as well, the BBC's Luther being one of my favorites (though nothing can dethrone Sherlock of course). Though some stories have spun me around quite a bit, I've also realized that I'm a fairly hard reader to surprise. I'm fairly good at predicting plot twists. When I'm reading Doyle, it's always an ego boost if I can solve the crime before or at the same time as Holmes.
5. The year of Rory Williams. Well, I certainly appreciated him all year long and am going to miss him when he leaves next season. I think he's probably my favorite Doctor Who companion of all time.

Life Changing Books

Let's talk about life changing books. The books you read that change the way you think about something, the way you see the world. There are so many books that have effected the way I think and feel. Here are just a couple of the significant ones.
A Series of Unfortunate Events: These were my favorite book when I was young. Even into high school I read the later ones as they came out. These were so different than most books for young readers, they were dark, ironic, they sent me to the dictionary and made me love all the rich and wonderful words.
The Bell Jar: Such a wonderful book about identity, insanity and growing into young womanhood. Disorienting and razor sharp. I read this in ninth or tenth grade and loved it.
Slaughterhouse Five: Probably the best war story I've ever read. Kurt Vonnegut's genre blending and wry humor intrigued me, occasionally confused me, but ultimately enthralled me. It changed my perspective on trauma. So it goes.
Jane Eyre: Probably the first book I read that made me feel like I was the narrator, we were one. I was eighteen, dealing with isolation and trying to determine where to go with my life, this book helped me through so much.

There are so many more that have touched me or taught me, but these always stand out when I think back on my life.
What are your life changing books?

Finals

Sorry for the silence over here these last two weeks. I've been writing papers and doing presentations. My semester is almost over and I'm trying to plan how best to spend my winter break.
Now, I must finish an essay on Chaucer and I webpage for my new media class. I'll be back soon with book reviews and other (hopefully) exciting posts.

A Writer Recharges

After my mini crisis last week, I quit NaNoWriMo (gasp!). I am reassembling myself and my thoughts, and especially my writing. I think I just need to reinvigorate my work. I now find myself working on a play I started a while ago. Playwriting is certainly not a profitable direction, but I can't write with selling as the point. Writing has to be the point.
The play is an hour long farce, and I'm having fun. Writing needs to be be fun again. I find that letting myself relax and enjoy what I'm doing helps the ideas flow. As a young writer, I'm still finding my methods and my niche. I'm not off making my own living yet, I still have some time to flush out my writing.
There will be plenty of pressure later.
So, I'm doing plenty of reading, writing a little everyday, and trying to get out of the house more.

Skip this rant

I apologize in advance for this outburst.
A piece of flash fiction I wrote for the The Vestal Review was rejected last week which sort of set this whole thing in motion. I really liked that piece, I thought it was quality. So now I'm doubting my ability to judge my own work. Work on my NaNo has been increasingly halting because I'm a little overwhelmed with school work.
I just feel like I'm stuck in this place where I'm putting all this time and effort into a degree that no one will ever pay me for. Yes, an English degree can help you go in other directions besides writing, but I honestly don't want to do anything else. I write because I love it, because I have to do it, I can't stop myself, but now that I get closer to graduating (and having my bills ever increasing) I have to think about doing it for money as well.
Putting monetary value on my work is so difficult. When magazines and publishers aren't willing to pay for work that I originally did for free, it devalues it and makes me doubt myself as a writer. I hate entering writing contests, even though they may have cash prizes because I hate having my work held up and arbitrarily judged by people comparing it to dozens of other submissions. I'm very private about my writing and these terrible experiences trying to make it more public only tell me that it should stay private. No one wants it. But I don't know what else I can possibly do with my life. Molding words and telling stories are the only thing I know how to do. But apparently I don't do it very well.
I need something positive to happen to me, I'm having some kind of quarter life crisis here.

Happy November!

I wanted to rush out of the gate and get 15,000 words my first week, but a research paper on Don DeLillo and other projects for my classes had delayed me. I'm sure I can catch up this weekend.
I'm excited about my novel. It's definitely an experiment compared to my usual writings. It is a fragmented narrative interspersed with memories and other routes that life could have taken, there may even be a little poetry involved. Lately I've just been fascinated by how slender the thread our lives hang on is. We believe we have control and we can plan out our lives, but in reality the smallest chance or the slightest choice can through us in a different direction completely. I want to explore that, whatever that is. A tidy little project for the month of November.
Happy Noveling everyone.

Refugee Writer

No heat or electric since early in the day on Saturday. I've been sleeping under a pile (2) cats in an effort to stay warm. Early this morning I awoke with a red nose and numb fingertips. I've been living off apples and cashews. Trees are dangling on wires and split into pieces along roadways. It's been moderately intense.
Tomorrow the power is anticipated to be turned back on, but some of the towns around us won't have it until Thursday, so it's hard to tell. You become very aware of county and township dividing lines in this sort of weather. Roads will be clear until you pass the county line, then they are covered with tree branches and slush. I'm huddled here on campus. I may stay over until power gets back on at home.
If power comes back tomorrow, it will be just in time to start typing my NaNoWriMo masterpiece.

To Grad School or Not to Grad School

Bad Hamlet references aside, I really don't know. I really want to start my life, my writing, get out into the world and maybe travel. I have not been thinking about grad school, but my advisor suggested I really look at it.
Part of me is a little terrified that in about a year and a half I will have to go out into the world and support myself and start making my way. Grad school would delay that a bit and also throw me in the way of contacts in writing and publishing.
I've looked at Seton Hill a bit, they have an MFA in popular fiction. Their program is mostly done online with only a few weeks spent on campus (which is probably best, it is near Pittsburgh). The study of marketing and publishing your work is a major part of the course as well.
Boston University intrigues me as well. That would be a year long program of work shops and classes that would allow me to student teach as apart of the program. If I had to choose a school that would involve a move, I like the idea of Boston. For some reason I've always been drawn to New England and it's a great literary town. Their program is very selective and very specific however. They only accept 10 students for fiction, 10 for poetry, and about 6 for play writing. That would also mean I have to choose which one I want. They do have Global Fellowships in the program, though, where they send you to a country of your choice for three months to 'do there what you wish.' How amazing is that?
Of course, Emerson has an MFA in Creative writing and Publishing and Writing and they are in Boston as well.
I suppose I should leave the option open and prepare myself for the possibility of graduate school. That does mean I have to take the GREs. There are definitely some programs that sound like great opportunities, but would it be better for me to go out and find my own experiences?

Rock Me Like a Hurricane

I've survived pretty well this weekend. Probably because of all my preparation which included bringing all the potted herbs in and making sure I had a stack of books. My father's preparations included securing pizza and beer. We have our priorities. Many friends had hurricane parties yesterday and a local cafe made their evening cocktail special "Hurricane Hooch."
Actually, where I live fared far better than the town above us. Even though we're lower, we have so much farmland and preserved open space around us, that much of the overflow from the stream was absorbed. My friend Amy who only lives a few miles away called me this morning to say that a boat went by their house. Though we are fortunate, we are also stuck. Many of the major roads are flooded or have downed trees and power lines to contend with. The rain has stopped, but the wind is whipping up, so though we have power now, that may change.
Of course, tomorrow morning I have my first class of the semester which may be a problem. Currently all routes to campus are impassable.
I have discovered that minor natural disaster bring out my nesting instinct. I picked apples on Friday and made apple sauce. It's pretty fantastic. Then I made peach and pear preserves which we had on toast this morning.
I hope everyone is staying safe and having fantastic hurricane parties.