The Day before the Day Before Christmas

It poured rain last night in Ann Arbor, Michigan, making a soup out of the inches of snow that had covered the ground for most of the week. Today, the lawn was grassy with the exception of a few thin patches of white. The wind has been, is blowing right now. You can hear it whistling outside the house. Winter is official as of yesterday, and the darkest day of the year is behind us.

In thirteen days, I'll be on my way to Portland for my second residency. The winter (or Spring, as I found out they call it) semester residency is held in Seaside, Oregon instead of on Pacific's campus in Forest Grove. When I was weighing factors in choosing which grad school to attend, I admit that a beach in Oregon beat a snowy campus in Vermont like scissors cut paper. Little did I realize that I may see for the first time snow on sand. Still, a beautiful stormy ocean view defeats snow dunes. At least it's a break from the weather here.

For anyone who doesn't know, we lost our two oldest cats about two weeks ago. I haven't stopped crying yet, although I am better than I was at first. I'm sure my parents think I'm a weirdo because all I talk about is our cats. I really think my mom wouldn't think it was so strange if we had kids and I talked about them all the time. The cats are my family and my best friends. As Anne said the other day, they are such uncomplicated relationships. In some ways, anyway. But really, just like any other, they are touched with guilt about not doing enough for them, worry about their health issues, annoyance at their neediness and demands on our time, followed by more guilt. But at least we don't have to send them to college. And I really can't imagine living without them. They define me. They are the sense of permanence that resides in so little of the rest of my life. They are the sun rising in the east, the face that looks back at me in the mirror. They are my eleven hugs a day and then some. They wake Marc and me up when we sleep through the alarm clock, they tell us our arguments are getting out of hand, they nudge us back to the real world when we've been in front of the computer too long. Because of them, I am rarely lonely and never alone. Although I seldom, if ever, use the word "blessing," if there were something I could apply it to, it would be them. I am constantly amazed that those little non-humans offer me their friendship and never get mad at me even though I make mistakes. As the novelist Anatole France said, "Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." Recently, they have reminded me that I can indeed cry.

In two days, Marc and I will have the first Christmas since we met without them, our eleventh together. I will be especially thankful as we sit down to carve for the three pairs of green eyes peering over the edge of the table.

Last Packet

I just sent my last packet out to my advisor. The semester has been rewarding and challenging. It could have been harder. I discovered that I could do enough reading if I pushed myself. But I hoe that during the break I can get ahead on some of the writing, because I think next semester may possibly kill me if I have a less understanding advisor.

I think I will get my feedback early because I sent things in by email, so I won't have to wait for the slowness of snail mail to get stuff back.

I'm going to try my hand at a couple of short stories over the semester break, see if I can send some stuff out. That's the problem with writing a novel: there's nothing to send out for a really long time.

OK, I just realized that in my haste to get my work done, I've barely eaten today. I'm started to feel faint. Better make myself some dinner. And then I can read anything I want!!! Yay!

Proper Blogging

I've started to pay attention to the blogs of my classmates who actually write about things other than how crushed they are by their advisor's comments or how great they feel when people like their writing. And I've started to feel like a freak. heh.

So I guess it's time for me to write about more serious things here. Thus my last post, which was a rather lame attempt to write about something of substance. In the end, I realized I didn't actually have that much to say about that particular topic. One of the reasons why I've resisted writing about things of substance here is that I have some rather controversial opinions. And I don't consider myself any sort of expert about how to write. I think I'm just lucky to have a good imagination and enough persistence and love of words and stories that I just keep revising until my wacky ideas make some sort of sense.

One thing of substance that I feel good writing about though is how a writer of fiction can make an impact in the world. There are the obvious ways: The sharing and expanding of ideas creates an intellectual ripple across and sometimes even beyond a society. But on a smaller scale, a writer can make a difference by sharing the joy of creation.

Education is important. People raise their standards of living when they get more education. It isn't surprising, then, that those who can't read and write are likely to be poor. Well, recently I volunteered to teach some writing workshops for a literacy organization. My hope is to help people see that they can write their own stories and by giving them that knowledge, help the newly literate overcome the challenges of reading and writing fluently. For those of us lucky enough to have learned to read at a young age, it probably doesn't seem that difficult. But for adults who are just learning to read, it requires endurance.

On Becoming a Writer

I'm no expert, so I can only give my opinion about what the experts say. The experts--not to use the ambiguous "they"--are writers of note and teachers of writing and, arguably, critics.

There are two universal things that these people say about learning to write good, meaningful fiction.

1. Read.
2. Write.

It's that simple, and that complicated.

One caveat could be added to number 1. That is, be careful what you read. It will influence the way you write and the way you think.

So why is going to school, getting an advanced degree in writing useful? Why can't anyone become a writer just by following these two steps. It's clearly possible to become a writer without going to school. Many people have done so, probably most writers of note, in fact. But school provides a few advantages, so for those who pooh pooh the idea of an MFA in writing, here's what I am getting out of my schooling.

It's true that I could read books on my own and did, of course, and still do. It's true that I could write on my own, and I did that, too. But in spite of years of practice, I lacked confidence in my work. My confidence has grown immensely under the tutelage of professional literary writers and in the company of others who love books and writing. I have seen that I fit into the world of people with imagination who can sit for hours and spin a story for the joy of it. I have seen that in the judgment of others, the words that end up on paper when I am done, are for the most part interesting and worth reading. And, very importantly, I have gained perspective by listening to others talk about my writing and yreading the writing of others who are working to become writers. It's somehow easier to see your own errors when you see them in the work of someone else first.

Of course, as Robert Peake said somewhere on his blog, an MFA program is what you make it. If you just skim by and do the minimum you can, your degree will be a piece of paper with words on it. (OK, I'm paraphrasing him. He didn't really say that exact thing.) But if you decide that you really want to get the most out of it that you can, an MFA can be a series of mentorships with great writers. It can teach you to fish and introduce you to a community of fisherpeople who will help you get up every morning for the rest of your life and get in the boat. Once you're there, there's a good chance you will catch some fish.

When it's good, it's very good...

The way the story seems to come out is unpredictable. Sometimes it feels hopeless, almost torturous. Sometimes a first draft is just the vaguest possible idea of an idea. And when I read it back, it's obviously crap. These kinds of drafts go in one of two directions. The first direction is that they get thrown out. The second direction is that they get revised, added to, things get moved around in them, new ideas--each one like flower blooming in a sparse garden--sprouting up, being sketched and then painted, a step at a time.

Much rarer is the first draft that is born whole, in need of very few revisions, or at least where a large section of it comes at once, from nothing. Of course, it doesn't really come from nothing. It comes from a lot of things that have been building up in my head for days or weeks or even months (and sometimes years). But then without a lot of struggle, it's just suddenly popped out. Those are the times I love writing the most. Those are the times when I know that this is something I need to do.

It happened last night and I can see in the events of the past few weeks, what forces made it happen. I wrote the second to the last chapter last night, or at least a good portion of it. I had been thinkng about it for a couple of days and had some good ideas when I couldn't sleep at 4 a.m. Marc wasn't home in the evening and I was writing. I got stuck at one point, but I allowed myself not to obsess about the sticking point, skipped over it and wrote on. I always feel like an emotional scene is working when it makes me cry as I'm writing it. I am kind of a drama queen, but good books and good movies make me cry and unbelievable and bad ones don't. The only dilemma with this in a person's own writing is making sure that what the writer is getting out of the writing is what a reader will get out of it.

Anyway, I am taking it to writers' group tonight and having read it aloud to Marc last night, I know that I am going to struggle not to cry when I get to the sad part.

I was wishing it was easier to get to that place in my head, that it wouldn't be such a rare occurrence. Well, coincidentally today Jon posted something on the MFA student caffe board about a book that I think might be helpful. So I ordered it. It's called Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. It's a book written in the thirties, but the feedback about it makes it seem like it's the perfect thing to help a writer get inside her own head. Just the ticket.

News

The packet came back on Friday. It was pretty good. I can't complain.

The weekend has been like a horrible nightmare, but finally I woke up from it and everything is ok. One of our cats had surgery on Friday for a problem with his ear that's been going on for more than a year. He had already had a procedure on it in February which didn't work , so we took him to the teaching hospital at Michigan State University. They went in through his throat and cleared out a mass that they think was a polyp. He seemed to be recovering fine, but then on Friday evening, he went into cardiac arrest. Thank goodness, Erica, the veterinary student who was assigned to him, was there watching over him. She saw that he had stopped breathing and got one of the emergency room doctors and they resuscitated him. He wasn't doing very well on Friday night. It might sound odd, but it's one of the hardest things I've ever been through. Some people would say, "It's just a cat," but really, they are so much like people, except that they don't hold on to grudges or bad feelings. They just love us and want us to love them. And this cat in particular is so sweet and even tempered. And he's a hugger.

I don't have kids, so I don't know this, but I think it must be what parents feel. When you are responsible for the welfare of a living being and that being is with you for years and you have a bond with them, it is terribly stressful when their welfare is suddenly out of your control.

So Friday night I kept waking up. I had a headache because I had been sobbing for a long time after we got the first call saying that he had gone into cardiac arrest and they were trying to revive him. He was breathing again by the time I went to bed, but not as well as they would have liked. On Saturdaymorning, the doctor called again to say that he had gotten better over night. We were scheduled to visit him, and the doctor said we still could. He warned me that "he is not the Anubis you know." I wasn't sure what this meant, except that he had a lot of tubes running into and out of him.

He was in intensive care when Marc and I got there. Erica took us in to see him in his little container. He was on an IV, had oxygen and a heart monitor. His neck was shaved for the surgery, which looked weird, but then Erica said, "He's showing signs of blindness right now. Dr. Haupman says sometimes cats recover from that and sometimes they don't." That was a terrible shock. I'd been so concerned about him losing his hearing, yet a vision loss would be much worse for him than deafness. We stayed with him for about ten minutes and then we came home.

I thought about him all night, reading about blindness associated with cardiac arrest, wanting to know if there was anything I could do. Of course, there wasn't. But what I read made me more scared.

This morning Erica called to say that he had gotten better during the night, that he was moving around and acting like his old self. "And," she said, "he's visual." We're hoping to take him home tomorrow night.

No packet yet

So I haven't gotten my packet back yet.

There is a lot of stress in my life right now. One of our cats is in the hospital having this scary surgery. He's been there since Wednesday and the surgery is today. They haven't called yet. I woke up in the night and couldn't sleep because I was thinking about him, all by himself, not knowing where we are. I know he always misses Marc, even when he, the cat, is home and Marc is gone for a few days, so I can't imagine what he's going through now. He's never been away from home this long before.

Anyway, because of this, I haven't been obsessing like I usually do about when my packet will arrive. Every other time, it's gotten here either Wedsday, Thursday or Friday, so I really do expect it to come today. I didn't feel that great about it when I sent it, but I took some of the writing to my writers' group and everyone really liked it. So maybe Pete will also like it. Bwahahahahahahahahaha! Unlikely.

I'll keep you posted.

Chill

It's autumn now. Leaves are turning red and orange and yellow, and alas, even brown. The maple trees are the most beautiful, with their star shaped leaves, when the trees are only half-committed to fall, the top half gold and the bottom half still green. Fall comes over them like a blush.

It's a little colder now than last month, but when I called this post "Chill" I meant laid back, mellow, relaxed. The calm after the packet. And you know what that means, don't you? Writing just pours out.

So I wrote a bunch more of my current chapter and I wrote that article, submitted it, got a request for revisions, did the revisions and sent them off. Tonight is writers' group, but tomorrow, I may finish the chapter and start on the next one.

Also, books. I started 1984. I actually expected to dislike it, but I really like it. The writing is nice, clean, interesting. And Orwell thinks like a writer. I don't know why, but I didn't expect that either.

The only thing I am missing is having more contact with other MFAers. There is some contact, but not nearly as much as I wish for. Have to work on people during the residency, to try to get them to participate in more of the electronica that various people have set up.

Wish I could go home right now and do some writing.

A little non-fiction

Well, night before last, I was inspired to write a short essay on the topic of reading. Reading, for me, is kind of a big deal. I h ave struggled with it for the past ten years as I've had a series of problems with my eyes. So I wrote the essay and I sent it off to a few people for feedback. I edited it and today I sent out a query to a magazine that might be willing to publish it. Of course, it won't really count, even if they do publish it, because it's not fiction. But at least I'm trying to publish something. Novelists can't just whip off a few pages and get them published. (Harlan Ellison, I'm not.)

The packet is in the mail

Well, I finally sent my packet off. This has been the hardest packet ever, but not the best. I don't even know what my commentaries say. I hope it's not a disaster. I'm just relieved to have sent them off.

I'm going to read shorter books this time. That is my solution. Short books, short stories, short short short.

Finally I am paying enough attention to the other parts of my life. And I can get some sleep. As if by magic, after finishing my packet last night, I lost four pounds. Really. Go figure.

Oh, the pain, the pain

Never have reading commentaries been so difficult for me to write as they are this time. I just finished the commentary for American Gods. I finished the book yesterday. FINALLY! That book is long. But after really struggling to keep reading it, I really started to like it right around page 300. In fact, I liked the last half of the book so much, I almost forgot how much I wanted to jump in front of moving vehicles while reading the first half.

My plan was to write three commentaries this time, and then next time to have a choice between writing two and writing three. But I'm almost ready to cave and just do two this time. It's just so stressful trying to write a commentary in a few hours with no time to look back over it. And it absolutely has to go out tomorrow. The one for Howl's Moving Castle is more than half done, but I want to watch the film again and get some exact dialogue to put into it. The one for Till We Have Faces is not remotely done. I think I wrote the first sentence of it yesterday. I'm struggling to make it not sound like a book report. I guess I'll try it anyway. Now that the A.G. one is finished, it would be great if I only had to do two next time.

'm such a whiner. It will all be fine. :)

Stress Writing

Whoa. The stress is crashing down on me. How's a person supposed to get all this stuff done? And plan a trip and take care of other life responsibilities. See, it's the stress that is stopping me from writing. I just can't relax into it. You know: the state of mind required to write about magic. I need to close myself up somewhere, alone, without cats, without students, without husbands, without friendly office mates, and without email for godsakes! and chill into that place in my head where everything just works. However, that is not happening. Because I have to finish reading two hundred more pages of this stupid book. I don't even like this book. And then I have to write three commentaries. And by the time I'm done with that, time will be short and I'll be stressed because time is short.

So there you have it. The state of my brain. We'll see if I can pull something out of a hat.

Postscript: You might think by reading this that I haven't really been working on my stuff. But I have. It's just not going so well. It took forever to read the C.S. Lewis book and now it's taking forever to read American Gods. And the fiction, I've been working on it every day. But it's just not there yet. Not quite there.

Message Board

So, I started a message board hoping that I could get other MFAers to post on it. Since we don't have the traditional program where we can all go across the street to the student center or to Maggie's Buns and sit around and drink coffee and chat and study together , I miss being able to hang out with everyone. And residencies are so busy and I am so scattered that I don't get to meet everyone. So why not hang out here with people?

Well, I know everyone is busy, but I still hope people will post. It would help if we could all get to know each other during the semester so when we go to the Winter residency, we have a head start.

I put the board in the links.

Writing, writer, write, writes, written, wrote, writ, wrath, wroth aka The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

To Writing:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee when I wake up in the morning and
haven't had coffee yet, and I sit down at my computer
with a head full of ideas and
not one of them will come out through my typing fingers.

I love thee when I am at work
And I have three calls on hold
And my boss is waiting in the hallway for me
to get off the phone, and then a student
sends me an email asking me to look
at something that she needs back by four pm
if I don't mind and I look at the clock and it's three forty nine
And the only thing in my head is
"How am I going to get my character out of there?
Why doesn't anyone help her? Why did I let her
get into that situation in the first place?"

I love thee when I am in the throes of a great idea
and my characters are talking to each other
and they are actually funny
and then Ariel, my cat, comes in and sees that
I am really working.
And she climbs up on my desk and sits on my hands and I put her down on the floor
after kissing her on the head and she rebounds like a rubber band. Down, up, down, up
until finally my characters get frustrated and go to get a drink in a bar somewhere
without me.

I love thee when I am sitting in the living room staring into space
and I can see and hear in my head the action that I have been pondering for the past
three weeks. And then Marc walks in and sees me and says, "What are you doing?"
and I say, "Thinking," and just keep on doing it. And then in two minutes he comes
back and says, "When is your next packet due?" and my stomach clenches and my mind
goes blank.

I love thee best, I admit, when a little epiphany taps me on the shoulder
and I turn around, and it says, "Hello, my lovely" and shoots me
with a gun made of its pointed index finger and thumb
right in the center of the forehead. And
I know immediately what happens next
and the writing on the page transforms somehow
and when I read back over it I am truly, deeply happy.

Except for that one word on the second page that just never seems right.

Happy Birthday to my Mom

My mom has been a very big contributor to my interest in writing. She took me to the library to get a library card when I was just five years old. She used to read to me when I was little. Not just kids' books. No, she read things like Tarzan and the Count of Monte Cristo to me way before I was old enough to understand them. Which served to make me vow that I would read them myself when I was older. She went to the school library and checked books out for me when I had chicken pox (and mumps...), including The Secret Garden. She bought me books like Huckleberry Finn as birthday presents.

And if you were there at the residency this summer, you will recall David Long's talk: A Writer is a Reader Moved to Emulation. Well, my mom taught me to love books. Of course, this has lead directly to me being so busy with school that I haven't had a chance to send her a birthday card. Oops. Sorry.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Eureka!

I got a packet back today from PF.

Hallelujah, finally I am not upset about getting a packet back. My writing in the order that things want to come out seems to have been vindicated. I think he really liked the writing, although, of course, he had comments, but for once it felt like the comments were helping me more than just making me feel like I should never have sent him what I sent. So now I think I know how I need to proceed on the writing.

He also mostly liked my commentaries, even though I was surprised that the one he seemed to like best was about the book I liked least.

So now, it's just a matter of getting all the work done. I really want to go back and rewrite chapter two, continue into chapter three and I want to go on and write more of chapter 13-14. I haven't decided where to divide them up yet, because I have a lot more that I want to write. that either has to go into 13 or 14 and only certain things have to be in one or the other. I guess I'll just write it all into thirteen until I get to an obvious spot for fourteen to start. I mean, I guess as I think about it, it does get more obvious, since the theme of fourteen is balance and there is a way that balance applies to what is going to happen next.

I suddenly got an idea for an alternate title, which is ... well, I've been relutant to talk about specific details of the book here, the web being what it is. But we'll see. Now I have two good possibilities.

I hope the process of working with each advisor is not as challenging as this first time. I feel like I would like to settle into a rhythm and just get a lot of work done. And it's totally not Pete's fault. It's just getting used to submitting something to someone who is a professional writer whose opinion is going to affect me more than a butterfly flapping its wings over the Pacific. (And everyone knows that even that can mess me up for weeks.)

It's midterm and I've been told that my midterm assessment is going to say that I am working hard and seriously and am on track. yay! I think I am going to miss working with Pete because he's so flexible about what I can do. I think some other advisors are going to make me go crazy. I wonder who I'll get next time.

While I think about it, I need to check to see if the library will send me a thesis from a student who graduated in the winter. Pete recommended that I take a look at it. He said it was someone who writes fantasy and struggled with some of the same issues in her writing that I am now . So I'm off to do some Pacific library research. :)

and isn't it fantastic? I'm not going to be morose for the whole weekend!!!!

You must have been busy, says my mom

A couple of weeks ago my mom pointed out to me that I hadn't posted anything on my blog since I complained about getting the packet back from Pete. You must have been busy, she said.

That I have. After getting a message that Shelley sent out to all of us MFAers, I realized for the first time that we actually had to turn in 12 of our reading commentaries to the program office. Paste your 12 best commentaries into one document, she told us. I was like, "Twelve best?" I had no idea that we were supposed to write more than 12. I looked it up and found that the MFA handbook says 12-15. I was planning to write 12, but knowing that they would become a part of my permanent record made me want options.

I had only sent two in each of my first two packets, so I knew I needed to crank it up and send three in at least two of the remaining packets. So I did that. It sounds like no big deal, right? What's one more two page paper. Well, it's another book, is really what it is. And in my case, I stopped reading a couple of books, realizing that they were taking too long to read and I wasn't going to get them done in time, and switched to books that for some reason I could read faster.

For the first time ever, I overnighted my packet today. There's no shame in it, I figure. At least it won't be late.

I send only 14 pages of fiction and didn't revise chapter 2 from last time. I think I'll work on that now that I don't feel under pressure. It needs some finessing, since I'm not completely happy with what happens in that chapter. I want to go back and look at some earlier iterations of it and see if I can make it better.

I've got some books in mind to read this time. Wouldn't it be great if I could finish four?

And I have some more of the story that has been dying to get out, so I'm good on fiction for at least one more packet.

So next week, Wednesday or Thursday, you will probably find more gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair right here when I got my packet back. I think I just should look at it until ... The thing is, whenever I open it, it's going to have the same effect on me, so I might as well get it over with. But can I be sedated first?

I've been reading about what the requirements are for getting a teaching job with an MFA and I've been trying to prep myself for the future. I need to do an internship or two, but I don't know how I will manage it with my job. It would also be great if I could sit in on some undergraduate creative writing classes just to watch what they do in class. Maybe I can do that next semester. I'll check into it. In the meantime, I've been investigating creative writing books adn trying to figure out my philosophy of teaching creative writing. What I know about pedagogy could fit into a thimble at this point. But sometimes you know more than you think you know. I'll keep working on it.

The return of the packet aka deathwish

I think I'm not so good at this getting feedback stuff.

I think I'm going to write to him and say that I want to alter the process somewhat and see what he thinks.

It sucks. I get so happy when I see that I have a packet, but then when I read it, I wish I hadn't opened it. I tell myself now that I won't open the next one. I'll just keep writing and let things go the way they go. I get derailed every time I read one of the packets, when it's such an unnatural process for me. It's just not the way I write. That chapter that I got such good feedback out of, would never have gotten me such good feedback if I hadn't written it in layers, in my own time. Ideas come to me in dreams, slowly and, bit by bit, I weave them in. I don't know if that will happen if I try to force it in this way. I think this process may wreck everything.

Second packet in

I sent my second packet to P.F. on Tuesday. I almost used regular priority mail but at the last minute, I chickened out and paid for three day FedEx. I don't know what to say about it except that I'm afraid to say anything after last time. We'll see what he says.

I do find it frustrating that all the feedback comes at once and I can't get more immediate feedback. I like to ask a lot of questions when I write. I plague Marc with questions about my work. Can you just read this part? What do you think of this? Is tetrahedron the word that I want? Why can't I use limned like that? What do you mean by that remark?

Obviously, I would never expect to ask all those questions of my advisor, but I would like to talk about bigger ideas before doing the actual writing.

I just checked fedex.com to see if the package had been delivered yet and it isn't even on the truck. It's been sitting at the storage facility in Great Falls since Wednesday night. This does not make me happy. I guess I'll look at it when I get home and if it's not arrived yet or isn't out for delivery, I'll email everything to him. If FedEx lets me down on this, I'm going to stop using them. But, I think it's guaranteed to get there by 7 pm which is 9 pm here. So I should try not to panic too soon.

Ready! Set! Stay awake for four days...

My next packet has to be in by August 17th. That's a week from today. However, it has to arrive there on the 17th (or earlier) by mail, so take away at least one of those days, preferably two or three. I'm staying home today and maybe Monday if I don't finish everything this weekend. Even though I have been working consistently on everything and have gotten a lot done, it still seems like it comes down to cramming at the end.

I have only written half of a commentary or notes for one anyway. I've finished two and a half books. The third book is taking forever to read for some reason. I think the type in it is smaller than in previous ones so there's actually more to read.

I finished my revisions yesterday on the chapter I sent Pete last time. I had worked on them before and set them aside, so in a few minutes yesterday I gave them a final going over. There still might be one or two slightly rough spots, but I don't think it's terrible. It certainly is better than last time. I am halfway or maybe a little more through with next chapter.

Ideally, I would mail the packet on Tuesday at the latest. So can I get it done without staying awake for four days? How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a toosie pop? One-two-three. Crunch. Three. :)

Discoveries

I am finding the writing of reading commentaries a helpful process. Each time I've written one, I've figured out things about the text that I hadn't noticed, even during a thoughtful reading. In fact, I've started to mistrust my initial reaction to any text, whether my own writing or someone else's.

I've been working today on my commentary for Tahar Ben Jelloun's The Sacred Night. I finished reading it last week and wasn't sure what to write about it. I found something that happened about a third of the way through the book fairly disturbing and I had not been able to reconcile this event with the rest of the book. I found myself questioning the way this particular event was handled because the author is a man and the first person protagonist is a woman--a young woman at that particular point in the story. The particular event I to which I refer is a rape. I felt that the writer didn't handle the emotions of the narrator well. But in retrospect, I realize that the rape was more than just a rape. It served several purposes. I also came to believe today that this character is actually a representation of woman in the North African culture at the time in which the novel is set. All the difficult events that occur in her life represent the various ways in which women were and are treated in that culture (and to a lesser extent) in our own culture.

It was only in thinking about the book for several days, reading about the author and his life and other works, and then trying to write about the story that all the separate realizations and bits of information coalesced into a larger, more meaningful whole. It's kind of exciting. Now I just have to work on the form a little.

In addition, I just went back to Pete's email in which he sent me some sample reading commentaries that he thought were good. Rereading his email after getting over my initial reaction to his critique of my work (which was not wrong--it just worried me), I realize that his email response to my question was much more clear and positive than I had originally made it out to be. If I had quoted it before without looking back, I know I would have worded it quite differently. This was a pretty big discovery for me. I really have to remind myself that I tend to project my own lack of confidence in my work into other people's comments. As I've said all along, he couldn't have been nicer, but now I realize, he was even NICER than I perceived him as being. Nuff said, except... I'm a moron. But there is a cure for that involving going to Lourdes or something, probably.

Sometimes writing is hell

So, this whole up and down thing is just like torture. First I think the prologue is working and should be kept with the story. But then, I read it to Marc and he convinces me that it shouldn't be there. How did he do that? He said the magic words, "Think of Romeo and Juliet. That's a tragedy. But there are only a few bad moments in it. Somber is depressing and no one reads to be depressed."

OK. Good bye prologue. I really wrote it to help myself anyway. And I'm glad it doesn't have to be depressing the whole way through. Now at least I don't feel so worried about how light it seems at the beginning. Because really, Romeo and Juliet is fun and funny at the beginning, and yeah, it's definitely a tragedy.

So why do I feel terrible? Maybe I'm comng down with something. But I don't think so.

A Rollercoaster Weekend aka The Writers' Blues

So after getting my packet back from Pete on Thursday, I had a lot of ups and downs. Actually more downs than ups. I was pretty upset when I first got Pete's letter because what I thought he was asking me to do was something I was vehemently opposed to doing. I read it as saying, "Stop using all that language. Just write like a normal, modern day person would talk." Well, to me, this takes all the joy out of writing. I mean, what would be the point of writing the way that most people talk when I go out of my way to actually use more meaningful words even in everyday conversations? Where would I ever get to use language that I love if not in writing? So that was really depressing. It was like, WHY EVEN BOTHER WRITING? (I wish I had an interrabang symbol on my keyboard--look in Wikipedia).

But then Marc spent about an hour talking to me about it and calming me down. (Thanks, Marc.) And then I felt better and realized that I might have been overreacting. But as I said to Abby in an email, I still felt like going to bed and never getting up again. Except to use the bathroom. And, you know, to keep from getting bedsores.

But I did convince myself that what he was saying was about some very stilted passages in the chapter I sent him and not about all the writing I had done on the book. But, being the idiot I am, I was not content to just accept this and go on with the revisions. No. I had to send Pete an email and ask him if he felt the same way about chapter 15, which I had given him and he had read. I said I didn't want my character to come off as unsophisticated. So instead of saying anything about chapter 15, he just wrote back and said she didn't have to be unsophisticated. She just had to be herself. So I took this to mean that he did think the same thing about chapter 15. So then I was morose all weekend.

I should add that Pete's letter and everything were totally nice. He clearly was trying to be as gentle with me as possible. Thank goodness! But still, I think we might not be on the same page. But maybe we will be. I'm just going to try to make it work. I wish I could talk to him more about it instead of just getting cryptic emails that I can interpret in ten different ways.

I mean, I went back and looked at chapter 15, and I did see a couple of spots where the language was a little stilted. And I noticed that when I'm writing, I never contract my negatives. I always write did not as opposed to didn't, or wouldn't not as opposed to wouldn't. This does sound formal and stilted and I'll go back and fix those spots, but overall, I like the voice.

By yesterday afternoon, I had written and rewritten the first few paragraphs 37 times. I was ready to walk into traffic. Some writer friends were meeting at a cafe, so I joined them there for a while and they talked to me about it. It was helpful. (Thanks, Stephanie, Pat and Karen!)

One of the things I ended up doing as I tried to work through it was to write a prologue. You know, what happens before the beginning of the story. It was just a page. I read them that and they actually liked it and thought maybe it should stay with the story. So, I'll see what Pete thinks.

While I was there, I noticed this guy one table over who wasn't even trying to hide the fact that he was eavesdropping on our conversation. When we got up to leave, I said something like, "Yes, I'd better go home and see if I can finish the revisions before I commit suicide." (I am such a drama queen.) As I was walking out, he got up and ran after me calling, "Miss! Miss!" I turned around (Although, seriously, Miss?) He said, "Before you off yourself, you should take Kurt Vonnegut's advice and throw up on your typewriter. You can clean it up later. It's worked for me many times." I laughed. So at least there was that. Later I realized that he probably didn't mean throw up ON your typewriter, but WITH it. I really thought at first he meant 'wretch' on your typewriter. It will make you feel better. But I think he meant, just write out everything and then revise it down later. I think the first one is easier.

And then I went home and felt like tackling it again. Maybe because I am insane. But, for some reason, it started to come together. I used one of Marc's ideas to rewrite the beginning, and maybe it's a little rough, but I think it can work. And then the rest was really not that hard. Especially because I established the voice in the prologue. I still want it to be a little more sophisticated and mysterious, but I think it's interesting. So in the hour before I went to bed, I got almost all the way through it. There's just one more paragraph that needs to be reworked or maybe cut, and then I think it will be done and I'll be on to chapter two, which I already started.

OK, done with ranting. I feel much better now.

Now I have to get to work again. I can't get the Spider Pig song out of my head. (Go see the Simpsons Movie if you are feeling depressed about your writing and have Marc take you to the Cherry Blossom for Japanese food beforehand. Marc is so funny. :) Spider pig, spider pig, does whatever a spider pig does...

The week in stress

I got my packet back from Pete on Thursday. He wrote a very nice letter about my work. I realized that I had gone kind of off the deep end trying to make sure I did as many revisions as possible before sending it to him. The result was that there were several parts of it that were virtually nonsensical. I didn't realize it till I read his letter and was upset about it. Then Marc read parts of my chapter out loud to me and I almost started laughing. It was just so out there.

Not the whole thing, though. Pete really liked the dialog . started revisions and it doesn't seem like it will be too hard to fix. I was able to create a guideline for myself to keep me at least somewhat grounded, which is I imagine that the narrator is telling the story to someone in particular. This keeps it intimate and makes going totally off in language land more difficult.

I am terrible at beginnings. I struggle with this with every chapter. Maybe I shouldn't even be distinguishing between chapters. Then nothing would be a beginning. I could do it later.

I saw Mindie on Wednesday. We talked for about three hours. She is going to a writers' retreat in September where Jack Driscoll and Dorianne Laux are going to be teaching. I'd like to go, but it's $525. I could ride up with her and she offered to share a room (otherwise it would be $625) but I don't know how I would convince Marc that I need to spend that much for a weekend workshop. But, I'll buy a lotto ticket and see what happens. heh.

Good news!

I mailed my first packet of writing to my advisor yesterday! It's not even going to be late. I don't even think the reading commentaries are terrible. Well, one of them is not great--I was so out of it by the time I finished. But all in all, I'm happy with what I sent.

And I'm really pretty happy with the first chapter. Of all the many versions I've written of it, I think this one is the best in several ways.
I was worried that the others were too light compared to the rest of the book. Also, since I now have committed to an underlying plot, I was able to foreshadow its discovery. So, all in all, I think it's not going to be too embarrassing for Pete to see it.

Also, last week the director of the program sent out an email telling us that the Atlantic Monthly had listed Pacific as one of the top five low residency MFA programs in the country. It's listed with Antioch, Vermont, Bennington and Warren Wilson. This made me feel great because one of the dilemmas I was having in making a choice between the programs that accepted me was the prestige factor. Not that I care that much about prestige actually, but I wanted it to help me get a job when I'm done. So now I've ended up in a program that I really like, where I totally fit in, and there is this added bonus.

My box of books from the residency arrived yesterday, sent to me by the wonderful Amber Vanzant. Inside was a card from Amber and Shelley. It made me really happy.

So now I just have to catch up on my work at the office and life will be perfect. :)

Progress Report

The writing has been coming along. I have ten pages now of my first chapter and I think I'm within five pages of finishing it. I'm not horribly unhappy with it, although it does still need some work.

I had a conference call with my roommates today. I thought about inviting Felicity to join us, but it was a little logistically difficult to get everyone to meet up at the same time because we are so widely spread out, each one of us in a different time zone. Maybe next time. Felicity, if you're reading, let me know if you would like to join in on some future conference call. We read and talked about work. It was helpful.

I'm going to take Tuesday off to get the last of my work done for the first packet. I still am working on reading commentaries, but they don't seem that difficult. Mostly I want to get as much fiction written as possible, because you only get five exchanges each semester and I want to make them count. If I could get my first chapter to be 15 pages, I'd still have five to write one of the Salome/Descendant stories. I've been brewing the one called Disciple in a cauldron over a slow fire.

One big happy family

A couple of days ago, we were all sent this photo, taken at the reisdency of everyone in the rpgroam, students and faculty and staff and interns. Don't we look happy?

Now, off on my own, the world seems full of stories. I am reading new things. I am still struggling with my first chapter. But I will finish it this weekend. Life is good.

Stupid writer's block

OK, it's not exactly a block. I have been writing. I just don't like how the words sound when I read them over. I feel a lot of pressure to write something good in a short time because I know that Pete Fromm is going to be reading it. I like his writing a lot. Maybe that is throwing me off.

Anyway, I just procrastinated for a couple of hours by going through all the posts I wrote while I was away at school and fixing typos and facts that I have since learned were wrong. The blog looks better but I am still on page three of my novel.

I did get an idea for a series of short stories, a little collection of very short fiction. I tried to start writing one of the stories, but the words just weren't coming. I need more facts. If I could just let myself make things up without having to know facts.... Well, that could be a disaster, but from here it feels like it would be great.

I had promised myself that I would get ten pages done this weekend and that then everything would be on schedule. I have to finish at least one chapter. I just wrote a swear word and then deleted it because I remembered that my parents might be reading. Now I'm going to see if Marc is somewhere doing something that I can do with him. I have all day tomorrow to write some more.

Homework

I've spent the past two days trying to get my residency evaluations done. I'm really close. I have two left to write about to reach the minimum number of 12. I think I will write about one more, just because. I've already finished the two other parts of the evaluation.

I had promised myself I would write two pages a day on my chapter. I didn't quite achieve this goal, but I do have a good start on it. I was really having trouble writing, so I did that exercise I mentioned yesterday. It got me going and today the words came out more easily and looked better on the page.

Tomorrow I am going back to work. It's about the last thing I want to do. I can see how I could be a full time student and be totally and completely happy. I never realized how burned out I was about my job until I went to college and actually worked myself into delirium and still didn't want to stop. But I'll just have to get over it.

I have this plan that I will try to get a lot done at work in the morning. I don't see what I really have to do, besides the newsletter. If I get everything done early, over lunch and afterward I can work guiltlessly on writing and finishing my evaluations. There won't be any law students there for the rest of the week, so it seems like a good time to use what extra time I have to get writing done. I could even close my door to keep people from bothering me.

Yesterday I sussed out some places to sell flash fiction and I want to send something in soon. I should set a goal for myself with regard to this. I also want to write a microfiction for the next issue of The First Line.

I need to decide which books I want to read first off my reading list. I'm thinking short stories by Flannery O'Connor and one of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels. Maybe Love in the Time of Cholera since I have it on my computer.

Midnight. Time to sleep.

So Many Typos, So Little Time

Honey, I'm home!

I got back night before last, exhausted. I slept and then I slept some more. I saw Marc. I hugged my kitties. I slept yet a little more.

For the record, the number of typos in my previous posts has a lot to do with not being used to typing on a laptop, lack of sleep and the fact that the 'h' on my laptop sticks. (I really should take it in to be repaired. It's a brand new laptop!)

I could go back and fix all the typos, but I don't have that much energy right now and I need to get my evaluations done by the end of the week, plus I have a lot of reading and writing to do. So please forgive those annoying typos. And please know that I actually do know the difference between memorized and mesmerized.

My study plan has me writing a new chapter for every packet that I send to my advisor. Also, I have a reading list of books. I need to read twenty works this semester and write commentaries on 12 of them. I have to send 2 or 3 commentaries in with every packet. The first packet is due on July 20th, so my work is cut out for me.

I restarted my first chapter for about the tenth time. I think I have it down now, if only I could get the words to come out the way I want them to. I think I may have to resort to what I do sometimes, which is start writing an explanation for myself of what happens in the chapter. Somehow this usually leads to an actual writing before it is done.

I don't know if I will have a lot to write here during the non-residency part of the semester, but I'll see. I guess I can write about my frustrations.

I looked last night for places I could submit my microfiction. I think I am going to send it out . I'll probably only get $20 for it, but that's ok. That's a book or a lunch for two. I also found another place that gives the first line and then all the flash fiction they accept for an issue starts with that line. That looks like a great writing exercise to me and I am definitely going to do it.

Enough about me. Sleep beckons.

See what this residency does to us?

Actually, this is the faculty. I am not going to name names, because I don't want googlers to be able to find poets doing crazy stuff. (And I'm pretty sure these are all poets except one.) But if you were in the audience or on the stage last night, you know who they are.

Last night Doriann Laux and Pete Fromm read to us. We all melted into puddles on the floor by our chairs at the amazing nature of the art we were witnessing. This is not a lie. As my husband has been known to say on such occasions, "We're all going to drown."

There were a lot more than four people in the audience, by the way. It's just that, well, it's school, and we seem unwilling or unable to get everyone to sit all the way down by the stage.

Ms. Laux made her debut to the new among us. She's been at another residency in Colorado and only arrived last evening. She was tired and at some point couldn't find the poem she wanted to read. Abby whipped open her book and ran up on stage to give it to her. Ms. Laux said, You want me to read this one? And Abby said, Yes. Since I had the balls to come up here, I get to pick the poem. Ms. Laux said, You're right. This seems to me to be an auspicious way for them to meet, since Abby is one of Ms. Laux's students and hadn't been able to talk to her yet. Her poems were beautiful and applause spattered between them, the first time this has happened at any of the readings.

I was especially excited to hear Pete Fromm's reading, since he is my advisor this semester. I was not disappointed. He read a new story, one that he claimed to still be working on. It was told from the point of view of a twenty-seven year old woman. It was gorgeous and I started thinking right away that it could be a performance, a one woman show. I even started thinking about how I might be able to get it in front of Jeff Daniels at the Purple Rose. Not that I know him, but I know someone who has worked with the P.R. before and that might be a channel. The only difficulty--where to get an actress who can play 27 who will be up to this piece.

It's crazy how, after hearing them read their work, you start to feel like these people are not of this world. Or maybe it's that really, they are totally and completely of this world in a way that most people never achieve.

I'm a little too tired to write, having set my alarm for 5 so I could make sure I got up in time to call Marc. I goofed up last night and forgot that we only talked for a few minutes after my nap because he had people over when I called. I told him I would call when I got back from the reading, and then I was all worked up and sat down to write, not remembering that I was supposed to call him until too late.

It's our last day of residency. Tomorrow morning I will be leaving for the airport at 6 am with two of the other students. I'll spend the entire day traveling and a couple of days recovering and getting my evaluations done.

My first packet is due July 20th, so right after I get home, I am going to be working my ass off.

Picture this

So finally I am uploading a photo. This is from lunch the first day. Next to me on the left are Abby and Debi, my roommates. Linda is next, but you can only see the top of her head. Then there is Shelley Washburn, the program director, followed by Valerie Miner, one of the faculty. I'm not sure who is next. It might be Laura, a poetry student, and then Jon Anderson, from my worshop group. This was taken at the new student table, a thing that only existed at lunch the first day. It's so funny that when it was taken, I didn't know that Valerie and Shelley were at the table with us. I assumed they were students.

Now that I have the camera hooked up, I can take a lot of pictures. In particular, I want to take one of Abby looking like a post-modern Rosie the Riveter.

Yesterday I met with my advisor, Pete Fromm. We had a very good discussion, and my plan was essentially unchanged. This came as a surprise to me, since I really thougt when I wrote it that it was a useless plan. Apparently it wasn't that useless. I like Pete. He's interesting and funny. I think it will be good to work with him. Incidentally, I revealed the underlying plot of my novel to him. It's the first time I've told anyone. He didn't say, this sucks, so I think it's going to be ok.

He tried to talk me out of writing a novel as my thesis project, but I told him I had been working on it for a year and that last summerI had committed myself to finishing it . I said I didn't want to put it aside becase it would drive me crazy. He agreed tat it wasn't good to set a novel aside for too long and said that was why he wasn't pushing me harder to do so. He did say, though, that if after a couple of exchanges, he thought it wasn't going to work, he would tell me.

Yesterday morning I went to a craft talk by David Long, the writer of The Inhabited World. Incidentally, the night before, he gave a reading, along with Ellen Bass, one of the poets that I rode up with. David Long's talk was entitled A Writer is a Reader Moved to Emulation. He said at the outset that it was less a craft talk than a pep talk. He told us all the reasons to read and gave a us a list of his favorite 100 books. I was rather amazed by the book list, which also included a list of books by decade and by foreign country--different books than his favorite hundred. He told us that most of us didn't read enough, that we were not careful enough about the books we chose to read and that we did not read carefully enough. Then he went through each of these and talked about them. For example, the reasons people give why they don't read: lack of time, reluctance to read, and others (tis is off te top of jy head-- I have a list written down.) Then he refuted each of the reasons. Whatever.

Later that day, I went back to my room after meeting with my advisor. I decided to take the elevator because I was tired. I had been running in the morning, because I couldn't remember having unplugged my flat iron. After Mr. Long's talk, I took off running to the dorms carrying my book bag on my shoulder because I only had ten minutes to get to workshop. I ran both ways. Anyway, by the time I headed back to my room that afternoon, it was time for my nap and for once I didn't feel like climbing stairs. So, although my default was the stairs, I called the elevator and climbed in when its doors opened. As the door was sliding shut, I saw through the front glassed in section David Long returning to the building. I held the door for him and when he approached I poked my head out and asked, "Need a ride?" I suppose I am a little star struck by all these well-known writers, but not as starstruck as if they were movie stars. I still remember many years ago when Jeff Daniels walked into the store where I worked. I didn't speak to him and tried to act normal, but I got a metallic taste in my mouth just like when I went upside down on the corkscrew at Cedar Point for the first time. This was not like that. I just admire his writing.

So I ask him what floor and he says four. I am going to three. On the way up, I tell him I enjoyed his talk that morning and I say I was impressed by his book lists (or maybe I said amazed). And really, my favorite hundred books????? I can't even remember reading a hundred books, although I'm sure I have. And actually when looking over his list, I realized that I had read a lot of them, but I could never compile such a list. It was totally impressive. I don't know whether this made him think I was an illiterate idiot or just a socially inept idiot for saying it, but he then said, "I have other lists." His eyebrows wee raised in a way that made me think he felt slightly insulted. So this was a somewhat awkward moment, and right then the elevator arrived at the third floor. I was speechless, which anyone who knows me will wish they had been there to see and mark down as a rare event. I got out of the elevator and looked back at him, opened my mouth to say something--e.g, bye or nice chatting with you, something, but instead no words came out and as the elevator door was about to close, I just walked away. Of course, in the awkwardness of that moment, my brain reset to its default settings, and although I was already on my floor, I started up the stairs. I realized my mistake quickly and thought, "I'll just wait until the elevator door closes and then I'll go back down." But what should happen, but Mr. Long sees me going up stairs and he says, "I'll get off here, too." And he gets out and starts going upstairs. Awkwarder and awkwarder. So, because I really am socially inept (and I'm a writer--what did you expect), I blurt out, "Have I gone crazy? See what happens? I ride in the elevator with you and then I start going to te fourth floor for no reason." I kind of laugh, but David Long doesn't. He just looks down at the floor. I take off down the stairs feeling like a moron.

I'm sure he thinks I'm a stalker now.The only way this will be a good story is if in two years I get to introduce him at a reading.Then I can tell the story in public and he will know I am not a stalker. Obviously I can never speak to him again because if I do he will think he needs a restraining order. Crazy. Probably he doesn't really think I am a stalker. That would be rather pretentious of him. No, he probably thinks I'm an idiot. I don't know which is worse. I think stalkerdom is easier to disprove than idiocy. At any rate, I think I can probably forget ever working with him.

Last night, Pattiann Rogers and John Rember did the faculty readings. I really enjoyed them I wanted to buy Pattiann's book but Linda wanted to go to Safeway, so I had to hurry. I'll buy it tonight and ask her to sign it. John Rember read a new short story which I really liked. I also liked the way he read it best of all the ones I've heard so far. He did a good job of creating characters with his voice and varying the tone and inflection in a way that made it easier to understand what was going on in the story. Those are the best kind of readings in my opinion. As I've said, a bad reading of even the best work is like Chinese water torture.

Catch up

The last time I blogged was on Sunday, and now it's Wednesday. I say this not because you can't tell on your own, but just so you know what I think has happened, so if actually something else happened entirely, you won't be confused.

Fatigue is finally catching up with me. I had discovered this great working pattern of going to bed at midnight or 12:30, getting up at 5:30 or six and ten taking a two hour nap around 3 in the afternoon. Yesterday I broke the pattern and instead of sleeping in the afternoon, I went to the sauna with my roomies. So in addition to getting no sleep, I got dehydrated. I went to bed at 9:40 last night and still couldn't wake up until almost seven. No more missing naps!!

I think I am the only one in my apartment who has actually cooked anything. And not one of us has used the microwave. We just eat cheese and yogurt, nuts and fruit and peanut butter, bread and butter, and, of course, chocolate. I haven't eaten a speck of wheat, in spite of the big table of desserts available everyday at lunch.

Talk about school, will you??? Is that what you are thinking?

OK.

I don't think I have talked about Claire Davis' craft talk entitled Sex: How Far Do We Go and Will You Still Respect Me After the Story. This took place on Sunday, which makes me realize that the last time I blogged was just past midnight on Saturday.

I went to the sex talk expecting it to be nuts and bolts, limits and suggestions. Well, it was and it wasn't. It was multimedia. Ms. Davis used slides of art to exemplify various types of sex in writing. She compared the cover of a romance novel to the Gustav Klimt's The Kiss. And then she read to us, first examples of bad romance novel sex and then amazing examples of sex in literature. Bad sex, she pointed out, is there for its own sake, to titillate. It does not move the story along, which should be the primary purpose of anything you put in a story or book. It does not really show character development. It is superficial, about body parts.

Good sex is the opposite. She read examples from a number of sources. Some of them made me want to read the books. Not because they were sexy, but because it was so obvious that the writer could write. And that Claire Davis' knows how to give a great craft talk. I mean she started out with the story of walking her dogs and coming across this little pick up truck with a six foot inflatable penis in the back. I knew I wasn't going to sleep through it.

My roommate, Linda, was taking notes and at some point I looked over at her and she was sitting on her hands. There was a moment when I thought I was going to have to leave the room because a passage that Ms. Davis was reading was so disturbing. And yet there was not one graphic bit of physical description in it. There was just enough that the reader knew what was going on. The rest was internal. This was a rape scene. I need to find out what book it was in. She also read from Lolita and now I think I have to read Lolita.

After this craft talk, we went to workshop. It was our first workshop with John Rember and Linda's memoir chapter was being workshopped along with Gary's memoir chapter about PTSD. Linda has written about something that happened in her childhood that led her on a long journey. I think we were both expecting the kind of workshop that we had the day before with Valerie and Craig, but John Rember actually conducted the workshop like a class, calling on random people to see what answers they could provide. It was exciting, but also confusing. I think because a lot of us are beginners at studying writing, we don't always have a clue about all the terms and concepts. He started talking about using third person technique in the first person, and he also talked about using different 'I's'. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded interesting. Later, Linda and I caught him at lunch and asked him a hundred questions.

When we workshopped the other piece, John at some point told Gary that he needed to think about me when he was writing. This is because I had said I couldn't focus on the piece from the front end and so after reading the first page, skipped to the end and read it from there. Gary said he didn't care about me since I wasn't his intended audience. Linda thought this would upset me. "I don't care about Adrianna!" I thought it was kind of funny being talked about in the abstract like that. Anyway, it felt almost like an acting class where you go deep into some feelings in order to change the intensity of the work.

After lunch we went to a talk called, Publishers and Publishing: What you need to know, by Christopher Howell, an editor of numerous literary magazines. I took copious notes. It's the only time I have really taken pages of notes.

After a nap and a long break, I went with my roommates to hear Valerie Miner and Peter Sears give readings. Probably owing to my severe fatigue that night, I remember not that much about the reading, except talking to Valerie afterwards. I also remember that she read in a fairly normal speaking voice, which I thought was a good thing. Oh, and I remember that Mr. Sears' voice reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield's. This should prove how tired I really was.

On Monday, the morning craft talk was Pattiann Rogers, a poet, talking about the creative in creative writing. She talked about poetic topics that have been done to death, including the roadkill poem and the poem about a visit to a dying loved one's hospital room. This has become the punchline to a lot of jokes, other writers saying when they stand up that they were going to read a roadkill poem, but thank goodness Pattiann had warned them not to. Ms. Rogers used a number of paintings of the Annunciation to show how artists can do the same subject in the same way over and over. She talked about different perspectives and read some work that used them.

Then it was time for workshop. My piece was workshopped. I had submitted the devil chapter of my book, which had had a lot of work done on it already. I was hoping for more. Mostly I got positive feedback. Everyone seemed to like it including Valerie and Craig, who used parts of it as examples when he talked about scene. On my comments sheet, he wrote that he wanted to read more and said it was a good sign. WE did two other fiction pieces that day, John's and Ryan's. I was really pleased with the comments I got and I realized I need to do something about the blindfold. People keep be confused about it. I need to make it more clear that the blindfold is not there, that he has led her to believe it's there. Also, people seem to think that the Lord of Mendes could be a giant, which I had not intended. The tips I got from Valerie and Craig involved more interstitial action and Craig suggested that I comb the manuscript for words that alluded to sight and blindness which were ironic in case I had not intended the irony.

Just to skip ahead a bit, yesterday we got our faculty assignments for the semester. I was paired with Pete Fromm. I am not unhappy about that. He asked me when I saw him at the reading if it was OK and I told him that I had put him on my advisor preference sheet. He said they don't see those. He's really nice. On Monday night all the students and faculty had a pizza dinner get together and he came over to our table and introduced himself to the four of us. I think all of us except Abby have a little crush on him because he's outspoken and funny and he laughs a lot and teases the other faculty members, espccially the ones he is most friendly with. Abby likes him fine, but says he reminds her of her dad, and EW! How could we have crushes on him?

I have read a bit of one of his books, and liked it (exept for the baseball part, which was far too much like actual baseball for me to like it.)

Finding out my faculty assignment made me so nervous that I didn't feel like sleeping when I came back to the room. Instead Debbie and I sat in the living room and talked about girl stuff. Thus I missed my nap.

Anyway, I finished my micro-fiction the day before yesterday and today we are going to read them all in class. I love Linda's, a little non-fiction piece. It is hilarious and riveting. After hearing it, I didn't feel as good about mine, but then I read mine to them and realized that it isn't that bad. It feels like a poem almost, which is what one of the Johns from our class told me yesterday at lunch--that he felt like he was writing a poem.

OK. Need to stop now. Apparently my dad made the comment, "How can anyone write so much?" when checking out my blog. So if I write any more, he will just shake his head at me. :)

Present Tense

I think it means I am rummy from lack of sleep. I woke up this morning thinking of lines from a narrative in present tense. I have never wanted to write in present tense before, but after hearing a number of readings in present tense, I am now dreaming stories in the moment. I tell you this as a warning. There is just no telling what I am going to write.

Yesterday my workshop group met for the first time. Our group rotates between Valerie Miner and Craig Lesley in one session and John Rember in the next. Yesterday we worked with Valerie Miner and Craig Lesley. I felt ill-prepared and found that my discomfort with knowing that I hadn't completely read the stories of the two other writers, thanks to the events of the previous night, made it less productive for me than it might otherwise ave been.

We actually did some work in the class in general terms. We talked about flash fiction and were given an assignment. Yes, we were asked to write a micro fiction (or non-fiction--some of the students in our group are non-fiction) of 250 words involving work. We read an example of such a story in the group and were given another one to read on our own.

Then we started workshopping. (Linda think it's funny that I made a verb out of work shop, but this is America and that's the way we got away from the King's English, for better or worse.) We do two or three people's work shop submissions, called worksheets, in each session. Yesterday we workshopped one fiction writer and one non-fiction writer's pieces.

We were given guidelines at the beginning, which we read aloud, each student reading one and going around the room. Things to do and things not to do when critiquing. I realized how helpful this was when I got back to my room and talked to Abby, my poetry , about her workshop group where apparently they all ripped each other's poems apart.

After the workshop we went to lunch and several of my workshop members, including me, ate with the two faculty members. I discovered in the workshop introductions that another one of the workshop members, Mindie, came from Ann Arbor. She works for Pfizer. She will only be around a few more months. She said she it as an opportunity to do something different. She lives not far from Marc and me, somewhere around Ellsworth and Hewitt.

There was a weird moment when we were walking to the University Center where lunches take place. I was walking next to Valerie Miner and she asked me how I was settling in. I said fine, that I was tired. And then, because I am a moron, one of those annoying people who answers polite social questions with too much information, I let drop that I had been to the emergency room the night before. I realized my error immediately, though too late. Of course she asked me what had happened and my sleep deprived brain realized I could not simply say, I stepped on a thistle bush. Without considering the consequences, I said I had a puncture wound--which would have been enough maybe, but instead I followed it up with something about being diabetic. Ms. Miner had already started tuning me out. She looked around and I stoped talking. She mumbled something about insulin. In fact, I think she just said "insulin," and continued to scan the room, probably looking for someone she absolutely had to talk to right then so that she could walk away from me. Apparently she didn't see anyone, because then she turned back to me and mumbled, "How does it affect your...?" Then she started scanning again. Then she just walked away, or tried to, but I had to go in that direction as well and it seemed as if we were in mid-sentence of a conversation, although one that we both wished was not happening. I took a step in the same direction and she turned back to me and said, "You don't have to follow me. I'm just going to put something down. " Then she noticed that other people from the workshop were still walking behind us and she asked whether we would all like to eat together. We found a table and left our things there, and I only felt a little like a moron. I joked about it with Abby later, telling her that it was the last conversation I would have with Valerie Miner--except that she was my workshop leader. This doesn't really look much like joke on paper, but when I said it, I did it in the Amanda Dallo style--I won't be talking to Valerie Miner again EXCEPT THAT SHE'S MY WORKSHOP LEADER." Then we both cracked up.

Actually later when my roomies and I were walking into the amphitheatre where the faculty readings were being held, Ms. Miner was there. The room where our workshop took place had a loud air conditioning vent which made a lot of noise the entire time we were in class. Ms. Miner had asked us to complain about it to the director to see if we could get a different room. We saw the director on our way into the amphitheatre and she told us that they had turned off the air. So when Linda and I saw Ms. Miner in the amphitheatre lobby and she smiled and asked us how it was going, Linda said, "It was fixed." I had no idea what Linda was talking about. I thought she meant that the workshop was fixed, as in a bet that was fixed. Valerie looked puzzled and Linda said the air conditioning. I laughed and said, "I thought you meant the workshop," and Ms. Miner laughed and said, "So did I." Linda was mortified, but I told her that I thought it was just a joke and Ms. Miner probably did, too.

The reading was Jack Driscoll and Craig Lesley. Mr. Driscoll read a new, unpublished short story that he had just finished before leaving Michigan. Mr. Lesley read some excerpts from a memoir about his relationship with his father. Mr. Driscoll's short story was amazing. It wasn't speculative, but it might as well have been. It seemed as improbable as any fantasy and yet it was anchored firmly in this world. Afterward I bought his novel, Lucky Man, Lucky Woman and stood in line to get his signature on it. I told him that I was from Michigan. He lives near Traverse City and teaches at Interlochen. His demeanor changed when he found out I was from Michigan and he told me how he had come to teach at Pacific. He said it was because of Pete Fromm and that originally he had thought he was only going to be there for one semester. Apparently he only takes two students a semester. I put him on my list of possible advisors turned in weeks ago, but having heard and met him, I feel more strongly about it now.

Craig Lesley, one of my workshop leaders, was the other reader. His memoir had the intensity of fiction. I've been so impressed with all the faculty so far

Later, all four of us came back to our apartment and sat in the living room and read writing to each other. It reminded me of the writing group back home. I have started editing out the words "am," "is,","was," and "were" where I can, replacing them with strong verbs. I'm surprised how often I use them.


Well, six forty-nine. I need to do a draft of my micro fiction, which solidified in my mind last night, before going to Claire Davis's talk on how to write about sex. I think I am going to write in present tense.

Drama

The day I arrived, I noticed that I had a bump on the bottom of my left foot. It didn't really worry me because I had stepped on a thistle plant in my backyard a week before and I knew that's what was causing it. At the time it had felt like I got some stickers in my foot, but Marc, my husband, looked at it for me and couldn't see anything. So when I felt the bump, I just thought it was a sticker working its way out.

Last night during the reading, I felt my foot throbbing and started to worry about it a little. So when I got back to my room, I looked at it and decided that it didn't look great. I called he 24 hour nursing line on the back of my insurance card and the nurse, after listening to my story, said, "You need to get yourself to an emergency room."

So this is how, at 10 o'clock at night, I went to the ER because I had a sticker in my foot. What ever happened to being a kid, when your mom could just pick it out for you? Well, I lay on a hospital bed on my belly while a doctor picked it out for me. There were actually two of them, but he only got one out. Micro-absess, he said. I got a tetanus shot, a dose of antibiotics, a prescription and some instructions. Ah, the joys of being diabetic.

I did get something out of it, though. I saw the details of a story, not in my ridiculous trip to the ER, but in the people who worked there: A triage nurse who looked back at me with eyes like a malamute, unflinching pale blue. A doctor with concrete-colored hair and a calm, pleasant manner, who chuckled wen I said, "Note to self," as if he had never heard the expression before and picked the thistle sticker out of my foot with no trace of hurry, making little jokes that weren't as lame as doctor jokes usually seem to be. (A few days later this doctor called to tell me that the culture he had taken showed I didn't have a staph infection and that he thought if I was doing ok, that I could stop the antibiotics. I almost had the feeling that he was going to ask me on a date. There was a longish, awkward pause and then I said, "OK, then. Take care." I think it might have been when I said I didn't think I could give up going barefoot that he became interested.) F our different people came into my room. It was as if every time someone went out, they were magically transformed into someone else. Maybe just because I am running on so little sleep, they all seemed slightly off, like in invasion of the body snatchers, except that they weren't trying to make me one of them

Anyway, that is all over now (inshallah)*

Last evening before all of this happened, I went to the reading by Joe Millar and Claire Davis, a poet and a writer of fiction. Mr. Millar has white hair and has grown daughters, though he didn't strike me as old, and always seems to be on the brink of laughing at some private joke. At first, I didn't know what to make of it, but after listening for a while, I found it endearing. Earlier, he was a member of a panel that talked about giving a reading. One of the things he said told me more about him than his poems did. He said that sometimes when you are giving a reading, you look at your poem, which is about someone you love and as you are reading it, you think about them and how much you love them, and it overwhelms you and you feel yourself start to tear up and you can't read. He described this as the worst possible experience, something that doesn't feel good. He said it was like being caught up in the greatness of your own work. One of the other poets responded that it wasn't your work that you were caught up in but your feelings about that person, which was as it should be, since that was what inspired the poem. So as I watched him read, I thought about this, and other things that he had said while on the panel.

On the topic of poetry readings, perhaps I am spoiled by my own experiences listening to Rebecca from our writing group read poems in her carefully modulated voice, which clearly delivers to the ear the words of her poetry while not calling a bit of attention to itself, but I find all of this reading stuff to be a little over the top. It's as if some poets don't realize that poetry can be read just like other things. It is Shakespeare's craft and its meaning can be lost with a false reading. Pattiann Rogers said yesterday that the audience knows if you are not with your poem. It's the reason why I have almost no idea what is going on when watching Shakespeare performed by high school students, yet am memorized (Ed. Note: mesmerized) when watching the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Not so much because of these readings, but because of some other readings I heard today, I started thinking that any MFA program should have an acting teacher who could work with students to help them be better readers. On the van ride in, Ms. Rogers talked about how more people would appreciate poetry if they heard it read properly and said that many poets were not good at reading their own work. I think it could be compared to Chinese water torture to be read poetry for over five minutes by someone who rarely varies their cadence and goes up at the end of every line break. I don't think it would matter if their poetry were fantastic; I would never really hear it. (Mr. Millar did not do this by the way. I'm just ranting, mostly about some other readings I heard yesterday.)

I bought Ms. Davis' book, and she signed it for me and asked me about my own writing. She said to me, "It was nice to meet you. I'll probably be working with you at some point." I also bought a book of Ellen Bass's poetry, the one I had read a bit of before coming here. Abby bought it , too, having found a poem about a deer that took a bubble bath. Also, Ms. Bass is extremely nice and you want to buy her books even if you don't know anything about poetry. It's a bonus that her poetry is also the literary equivalent of a great amuse-bouche. Well, some of it is, but that really doesn't do it justice.



*I'm not Muslim, but sometimes the Arabic expressions for things just seem to work for me. I haven't said Inshallah for years. It means something like "if God wills". Usually I just say "knock on wood," but as a client at the office told me once, "Wood won't do nothing for you."

Whew!

I arrived yesterday at the Portland Airport a little after two o'clock. My plane was slightly delayed, so I immediately went to the Starbucks kiosk in the baggage claim to find the shuttle driver with the MFA Pacific University sign. I managed to arrive before either of the faculty writers whom I would be riding back with. I was a little fearful because Amber had said, "Faculty writers don't like to wait."

All three of us eventually got our luggage and got onto the van with James, the intern driving the shuttle. As I mentioned earlier, the writers were Pattiann Rogers and Ellen Bass. I had made myself slightly starstruck by looking them up on Amazon.com before I left home and having seen how much they had published, I knew enough to be impressed. I had also found a snippet of Ms. Bass's work, a poem from Mules of Love, which touched me. Written very simply, yet resonating with some innate craving to ritualize in higher language that most profound of human emotions, love.

So, I spent the next hour in a van with them. They had not met before, but knew each other's work. So it was interesting to just hear them talk to each other. There was a whole conversation about having no sense of direction, which always makes me feel right at home! They were both very nice and funny, with easy senses of humor. I felt their collective wisdom in a way that surprised me and made me teary a few times. Maybe now I understand how, in old film footage I have seen, girls waiting in the crowd when the Beatles came to America started bawling when the musicians finally got off the plane. Maybe there is something about meeting someone who you know to be successful in a way that you really admire that makes you more emotionally vulnerable.

But I digress...

Last night was just a student potluck and then there was a meet and greet. I also, met all my roommates. We are in a quad, four bedrooms and two bathrooms along with a little living area, complete kitchen. We went grocery shopping together. It's pretty much like college.

My roommates are Abby, Linda, and Debi. They are from Alaska, Oregon, and Hawaii and are all first semester students. One in poetry, one non-ficdtion, and another one is fiction. Linda, the fiction roomie, is also in my workshop group. I reread her work this morning and it is really good. We are all getting along really well. It's fun. Three of us are in our forties and Abby is 24

I stayed awake for 21 straight hours yesterday, going to bed at midnight (which is 3 am at home.) Obviously, that is not my normal sleep schedule, and yet I set my alarm for 5:58 thinking that it's almost 9 am at home and actually got up after 5 hours of sleep. So today has been both interesting and challenging.

This morning we heard a craft talk by Marvin Bell, a poet who also teaching at the University of Oregon. It was entitled What I Do in the Dark. Apparently, he writes at night. He talked about process and how each poet has a different process. Then he read some specific poems and talked about the process he had gone through in writing them. He also talked a lot about his views of the war in Iraq and war in general. I came out of the craft talk wanting to write poetry and even got an idea for a poem while I was there. I was not familiar with his poetry before the talk and I'm not sure it was immediately interesting to me, but by the end, I liked it. He also made a point of saying that poets need to be free to write bad poetry. Things like this I felt applied to all writers. He also said that on some days he would feel like saying, I am not a poet. I can't write. Everything I have ever written is crap. I will never be able to write a poem.... And all of this resonated with me, as someone who periodically feels like I can't write at all. But it always comes back, and I expect it is the same with other writers. You just can' t let the fear rule you. (OK, this is not a paragraph. I'm functioning on not enough sleep. What do you want from me?)

There were many other activities today, a lot of them orienting us to school, graduation requirements, and each other. Tomorrow we start our workshops. I know that my work will not be workshopped tomorrow, but I need to reread the works of the two writers whose work will be done in my group.

There are two poetry workshop groups and three prose groups. Fiction and non-fiction are mixed together. I'm excited to see what it's like.

So, I have to eat dinner now and then we are going to a reading by two faculty members. I'll write more tomorrow. Hope I haven't bored you senseless. Fatigue is not the best writing companion. I'll try to catch up on sleep a little tonight so that I'll be a better blogger tomorrow.

First day of grad school eve

Just like with Christmas, there is bound to be some disaster. And so there was. I backed into someone's car just as I was about to pick my husband up from work. I left a note. Apparently, this is not common behavior, as I learned afterward when everyone, including the woman whose car I hit, said over and over, "I can't believe you left a note. Most people wouldn't." We met up at the police station. She was very nice to me. If you ever have to back into someone's car, let it be hers. Or one owned by someone like her. Anyway, my first ever at fault accident. Not one of my dreams come true.

I also got the schedule for the residency from Amber, who is really so nice and the most helpful person I have ever met. (Well... technically most helpful I will have ever met, since I haven't actually met her yet.)

I thought you might like to see some of the highlights.

Here's the first day:
7:30 - 8:30 a.m. Breakfast on your own

9:00 – 10:15 a.m. MFA Program Welcome

10:30 – 11:30 a.m. Craft Talk--Marvin Bell: What I Do in the Dark

Noon – 1:00 p.m. Lunch together
Note: Table reserved for new students

1:30 – 2:30 p.m. Panel Discussion
Marvin Bell, Claire Davis, Jack Driscoll, Pete
Fromm, Joseph Millar, Pattiann Rogers:
On Giving a Reading

2:30 – 2:45 p.m. Break

2:45 – 3:45 p.m. Meeting
Faculty

Alumni Reading
William Alton, Jeannine Hall Gailey, & Lisa
Galloway

4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Meeting
New Student Orientation

Round Table
Julie Rember: Tips for Presentations &
Readings &
Cheryl Thiele: Designing Digital Presentations
with Ease

5:10 p.m. Walk Meet in Burlingham Lobby

6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Dinner on your own

7:30 p.m. Reading & Book Signing:
Claire Davis & Joe Millar
---------

Some Other Craft Talks of Interest:

John Rember: Enkidu Died, Gilgamesh Cried:
Love and Grief as the Writer’s Best Friends

Claire Davis: Sex. How Far Do We Go, and Will
You Still Respect Me After the Story

Christopher Howell: Publishers and Publishing:
What You Need to Know

Craig Lesley: Landing the First Punch: Writing a
Compelling Opening

--------------

Workshops start the second day. There are also readings and thesis discussions by graduating students and readings every night by one or two of the faculty writers.

There are even a couple of student reading times, to be signed up for. I don't think I will be doing that my first time there, but maybe next semester. I'll try to plan ahead.

Of course, one big thing about the residency is finding out who you will be working with during the semester. I can't wait to find out. A few weeks ago, I sent in a preference form which I filled out based on having read through all the faculty writers, discovering who wrote fiction and then tracking down some of each one's writing and reading it, not critically, but just to see if it felt good. I picked the ones that seemed to fit best with what I like. I should say that I read only a few pages of each writer's work. Well, except one who hooked me and I bought his book. But I found the others' work equally interesting and I liked the voices. There was another book by another writer that I intend to read, but try not to invest in more books at once than I can read in a month. If you could see my bedside table...

Actually maybe I will close with that.

More tomorrow.

Travel Arrangements

I'm flying into Portland on Thursday. My plan had been to take the train to the end of the line and then call the school for a shuttle to come and pick me up. This afternoon I got an email from Amber, the administrator, telling me that two faculty writers would be arriving in Portland at the same time as I am and asking if I would like to catch a ride in the shuttle that will be picking them up from the airport.

I said yes, of course!

It turns out that the writers are Ellen Bass and Pattiann Rogers, two poets. It's a big bonus for me, I think. I'll get to meet people ahead of time and I will also get to have the real life experience of looking for someone standing in an airport holding a sign.

Tomorrow I'll be doing last minute, pre-trip stuff and, doubtless, getting really nervous. I can tell I'm going to have to go through a brief phase--due to shock, introversion, or having inadvertently used superglue instead of toothpaste-- of not being able to string a sentence together. But hopefully you won't have to see that part. It won't be pretty.

Countdown

On Thursday, June 21st, I will fly across the country to begin my first semester of grad school.

Many years ago, in the throes of a bout of writing, I told a friend that I was going to become a writer (as in a writer by vocation, not by avocation). His response?

"There's a five percent chance you'll become a writer."

I tried to ignore his words, but I admit that they stuck in my head. And while I kept writing, doubts sprang up like weeds in my subconscious. I started to think that I really wasn't much good at it. I didn't try to get published any more.

Then I got married and all bets were off. If, as Mary Ellen Lebert told me when I went to summer school in Monterey, "a relationship is 13 credits," marriage is full-time, full out, law school.

Still, once you've been doing it for a few years, you become a pro at it and can focus at least some of your attention on something else. So about a year ago, I decided to get more serious about my writing. Exactly how does one get serious about writing?

Well, you do it more, for one thing. That's how it started. I went back to writing regularly. I started a story blog. I joined a writing group. And I started thinking about what it would be like if writing were my job. What if I woke up every morning, made coffee, and sat down at my computer to type out the day's pages? What if I wrote a book and got it published? And what if I did that over and over again?

Then I decided to go back to school to get an MFA. I spent months working on the applications and got accepted to two out of the three places I applied.

So now, this has all culminated in my going away to school in less than a week. I'm excited and a little, um, TERRIFIED. But I do think I will love it once I get there.

So this blog really is just a way to keep my peeps posted on what is going on with my school work, my trip, my book.

I'll try to put up some pictures, too.

In the end, one of the things I will accomplish is to be able to say (albeit out of his hearing), "In your face, Steve. Five percent chance my ass."