Five Percent Chance

Making contacts

2009-03-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

In the past couple of weeks, I've started using Twitter. I learned about this application when a political figure made the news by tweeting about a secret mission to Baghdad, letting the world know when he wasn't supposed to that American politicians were visiting Iraq. (Thank goodness the people in charge are rocket scientists.)

So I googled Twitter and found the website, signed up for an account, and off I went. At first I couldn't understand how posting 140 character status updates could be useful. I did it anyway, though. Call it an experiment. (What can I say? I'm an experimental girl.) By giving Twitter access to my email address book, I found several of my friends who were already on Twitter. So I started out following those nine people. And pretty soon, most of them were following me, too. That, on its own, was a little like the status updates on Facebook. I could see what those friends were doing from time to time. Okay, I thought. This is easier than Facebook and less of a time sink.

There were applications that could take your Twitter status updates and make them your Facebook status updates, and I considered using on of them. But then something interesting happened. I started using Twitter differently than I used Facebook. I developed a Twitter personality, almost. One that my writer friends said they'd never seen before. "You're funny on Twitter," they told me. Hunh?

The next step was to look for the Twitter feeds of published writers. And sure enough, without too much difficulty, I found some. Followed by those of agents, publishers, and other interesting people and organizations.

Now I'm a huge fan of Twitter. I completely see how a person could meet a lot of others in their industry or just get to meet people whose work they're fans of. And some of them are very entertaining. You can follow anyone you want, unless they've blocked access to their updates. And anyone can follow you. It's a really interesting way to meet people who you'd never ordinarily get a chance to meet.

For example, one of the people I'm following is John Cleese. You know, THE John Cleese, from Monty Python. It's strange to see his updates in real time and to be able to reply to them if I want to. Now, Mr. Cleese has 80,000 followers so obviously he can't answer every tweet he gets, but he does answer some of them. Cool.

But here's my bete noir: There are a whole group of Twitterers who are trying to market themselves or their products with their Twitter feeds. They randomly follow thousands of people in hopes that those people will look at their tweets (Twitter messages are called tweets, if you haven't gathered that by now) and buy their products or subscribe to their feeds (and eventually buy their products or tell others about them.) I've even seen Twitter links that talk about some kind of multilevel system that automatically gets people to follow you on Twitter. This is really annoying. I don't want 10,000 followers who are only in it for some random marketing reason. If someone is following me, I want it to be because we share some interests. So when people start following my tweets who seem to be just marketing people, I block them.

it's true that I myself am thinking forward to the day when I'll have a published book. Everybody's got to make a living. But can't I just put my message out there, like setting a bottle adrift on the virtual seas, and see who comes looking for me? I hope the crate of canned goods washes up on the deserted island with me though. Otherwise, this may be a long, hungry sojourn. (Note to self: Bring a can opener.)

You can find my Twitter feed here.

Write or Die

2009-03-06T11:25:00.000-08:00

I discovered a writing program called Write or Die that puts pressure on a person to put words on the blank screen. This seems both like a helpful idea and a terrible idea. The premise behind is that the only thing you can't fix is a blank page. I don't know if I agree with that. If pressure makes you write in the wrong direction entirely, you will end up wasting a lot of time trying to fix pages that shouldn't be there in the first place.

But on the positive side, I wrote more in 22 minutes with this program than I normally would in 2 or even 4 hours. It worked because it forced me to not be distracted by other things. How did it do that? Well, on "normal" level, when you don't write for more than about a minute, the screen starts to turn pink, then red. When it gets red, a loud annoying song starts playing in the background. (My only issue was that I actually couldn't stop singing the song for the next two days.)

But, as a coworker asked, was the writing good or was it crap?

Well... to be honest, it had it's weaknesses. But generally at this point, when I am constantly forcing myself to write, I end up having to do revisions, major revisions. Even if it takes me hours to write a couple of pages. So at least I made some progress. I think the events are fine. It's the wording that needs work. And that's ok.

It's a very different experience of writing for me. I'm usually slow and careful, easily distracted by ideas that I have to research and sometimes this leads me to other ideas and soon I've done a ton of research, only some of which is useful, goofed off some, had a snack and my page might still have only two sentences on it. I'm still deciding whether this is a better way. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think.

Author website

2009-02-28T14:54:00.000-08:00

I took the first step to having an author website yesterday. I bought three urls. I haven't set anything up yet. I really want to have some photos taken, with props, and it will take a bit of planning and setting up. None of which I have time for now. But at least I have a web address to put something up on.

I almost changed the title of my novel. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea as I thought about what the novel meant. it's really about what underlies a person's conscious being. In art, it would be an underpainting, something never seen directly, but which affects the final outcome. I thought Underpainting would be a good title. I proposed this idea to Abby Murray, my brilliant poet friend. What?! she exclaimed. You're going to call it underpants?! No, I laughed. Underpainting.

That is a terrible title. It sounds too much like underpants. You need to introduce your head to the gutter. Adrianna's head, this is the gutter.

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that I will not be calling my novel Underpants... I mean Underpainting.

Bumps in the imaginary road

2009-02-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you've heard of writer's block. If you're a writer, you probably have at least a vague idea of what it's like to have writer's block. If you're not a writer, I will try to explain it as similar to dieter's block. Dieter's block is when you're trying to lose weight, but you keep getting tempted off your diet by the chocolate cake that your coworker brought to the office, or the French fries that your roommate brought home, or the jar of chocolate hazelnut creme that you just discovered in the back of the cupboard. And you know you shouldn't eat these things, but you think--aw, just this little bit. And suddenly you're off your diet. And since you ate that bowl of ice cream, what could it hurt to have a few more forbidden foods. So maybe just for today, I won't diet, but tomorrow, I'll get right back on it. And then tomorrow comes and you accidentally have a doughnut before you remember that you're supposed to be dieting. And on it goes.

So, writer's block is like that in that you know you should be writing, but there are all these distractions and even though you know that if you sit down and write, eventually you'll have something great (a better figure or a new novel chapter), compared to whatever is distracting you, it somehow doesn't seem worth it It's too painful to write, to put yourself through the discipline and the emotional and mental turmoil that it takes to write true characters and disturbing events. And anyway, you don't have any ideas right now. No ideas at all, so how can you write? Maybe a break would do you good. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day. Or next week.

I can't help you with dieter's block. All I can say is avoid, avoid, avoid tempting snacks. Threaten your coworkers with some dire consequence if they bring chocolate cake anywhere near you. Toilet paper their cars or something. (You did not hear this from me, by the way.) But writer's block is a different story.

Here are a few tactics I've used to get myself unstuck when struck with lackofstoryitis.

1) Do something else for one day or evening or whenever it is you usually write. One day does not a disaster make. And sometimes it's very helpful to just give your brain a break from thinking about the same story. Go see a movie, read a book, go out to dinner, go to a carnival. Do something fun. Feed your muse. But beware letting it drag on too long. Especially if you are writing a long work, like a novel or memoir. At least in my experience, if you stay away too long, it will get harder and harder to start again.

2) Sometimes just the sheer desire to write something, to try my hand at writing something specific will jolt me out of writer's block. So I encourage myself to write by reading blogs about writing or about writers who are doing something interesting. Google writers who interest you and look at their websites, or blogs. Think about finishing your novel, selling it, and becoming like them, with people looking at your website and wanting to be like you.

3) Awakened Minds Focus CD has helped me through a block many times. I just sit down with it and start writing and almost every time, I get something done. Except when Ariel, the rubber band cat, keeps jumping up on my desk and acting all cute, rubbing against my chin and blocking the keyboard. Then I'm pretty much doomed.

4) Write about your current story from a different angle. Recently while feeling stuck, I started writing about a therapy session where my main character went to a psychiatrist and talked about her life. I had been struggling to write a page a day of my novel, but I whipped off almost eight pages in two days when writing about the session. Then I was able to go back and work on my novel and make real progress. Some might say I wasted two days, but actually I may be able to use some of what I wrote there, if not directly then as history for my character.

5) Call me crazy, but I recommend hypnosis. There's this company called Hypnosis Network that makes CDs with liscensed hypnotherapists. I have several of their programs and I have found them useful. One in particular called the Hypnosis Experience, I've used to break out of writer's block a couple of times. It guides you through some exercises (no gym equipment needed!) that help get your brain going in the right direction. Hypnosis has been studied and used for all sorts of things, but normally, I'd say those recordings are a waste of time. These particular ones, though, seem to be really good. The company often has sales, so get on their mailing list and watch for one.

I have nothing to do with any of these companies I'm mentioning. I have just had to search high and low for ways to deal with my own inability to sit still long enough to write anything and I've been lucky enough to find these things.

6) One last suggestion: Blog about your writing dilemma. It will get you writing, get you thinking, and if you're lucky all your writer friends will email you sympathetic messages. And then you'll stop procrastinating and get to work. Like I'm about to. heh.

For those who don't read fantasy (and those who do): Contemplate this.

2009-02-14T11:53:00.001-08:00

In 1817, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the story of a obsessed scientist who creates life from the remains of various corpses. This work is said to be the first fully realized science fiction novel.

The story of Victor Frankenstein and his created creature spawned a whole genre of writing and has been made into several films. The idea of man being given the god-like power to create another human being never seems to get old.

But the truth is that people do have the power to create life.

I found out recently that two of my friends are pregnant. As I have lived my entire life never having created a human, the ease with which others are doing it seems amazing to me. More magical than biological.

Anthropologists believe that early in human evolution woman were worshiped for their creative powers as it was not well-understood during the transitional period from more instinctive animal-like human thinking to the development of less instinctive and more logic driven thinking patterns, how women were able to produce children. To me, it is no less miraculous given the knowledge that it is not only women, but a pair of humans who create a child. A small group project so to speak. Let's just whip up another person, shall we? It's not exactly making a sandwich or even creme brulee. In fact, it's harder than rocket science.

The idea of child bearing as miraculous continues to provide fodder for fiction. In 2006, the film Children of Men portrayed a near future where women have stopped giving birth. The end of humanity is nigh. In that film, when a woman does conceive and bear a child, it is seen as so miraculous that soldiers fighting in the streets in the midst of all out war stop and stand aside in awe as this new mother passes by.

We're a strange lot who don't believe in magic when it happens all around us all the time. Babies are born, lightning explodes from the sky, trees bear fruit, we feel joy, we fall in love, our brains capture the information collected by our senses and create an impression of the world, we build cities destroying nature to do so, nature takes the earth back bit by bit. Those of you who don't believe in magic will say, "This isn't magic. it's science." We've come to take these things for granted. Just as we come to take for granted the relationships in our lives that last the longest and give us the most.

Sad really, when you think about it. In an effort to be intellectual, we are blinded to the magic all around us. Thank goodness there is fiction that lets us safely believe in magic, while maintaining our intellectual affectations

Otherwise we might forget the experience of wonder.

Writing made simple. Sort of.

2009-02-09T06:35:00.000-08:00

Congratulations should be going out to Mindie Kniss and me. We, for the second week, succeeded in putting enough words on paper to equal six pages of prose. I think the truth for both of us could be summarized by the subject line of the email Mindie sent me in the wee hours of the morning.

Do we really have to get this done by April 30th?

Yes, Mindie. There is a Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Mother Theresa, the Big Bad Wolf. You have a fairy godmother and so do I. That dollar under your pillow came from the Tooth Fairy. Her name is Daisy, by the way. Babies are grown in cabbage fields. Al Gore invented the Internet and George W. Bush invented pants. I personally own the Brooklyn Bridge. It's been in my family for generations, and if you offer me the moom, I'll sell it to you. And speaking of the Moon, it's either made of cheese or it's a boat carrying a beautiful woman floating on the dark river of night.

But if you believe nothing else, Mindie, believe this:

Our thesis manuscripts are due on April 30 and we will gt them done. And Valerie Miner will be as shocked as Captain Louis Renault.

Focus

2009-02-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

I don't know when this started to be a problem for me, but I'm sure it's gotten worse over time. I've said for years that I have the attention span of a gnat. Now I'm not even sure it's that long.

I spend more time on Facebook than ever before and I just joined Twitter yesterday. While entertaining and useful in keeping me connected with friends, I'd compare these social networking tools to being in the back of a kindergarten class with the ADHD kids.

I don't know if any of the rest of you (and when I say you, I mean writers or writing students)have problems trying to follow the butt-in-chair rule that gets you to that much-to-be-desired Zen place, but I'm betting that I am not alone.

So here are some things that have worked for me, or at least made it a little better. I'd say I have roughly doubled my writing output by following these tips.

1) This will sound weird, but change your eating habits. There is no doubt that what you put in your mouth affects your ability to concentrate. To learn how important this is, read The Ultramind Solution: Fixing Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First by Mark Hyman, M.D. What Dr. Hyman says in this book was not new to me, since I've been studying natural medicine as a hobby for a long time. I knew a lot already about how good certain things were for my body, but I never quite realized the impact nutrition and things like hormonal balance had on my brain. I'd like to summarize it for you, but you won't really get it until you read the book.

Best tips: Balance your omega 3 to omega 6 ratio and eat more plants.

2) Awakened Minds, Inc. makes these CDs using binaural beats, which basically means they play a different tone in each one of your ears (using headphones) and this triggers changes in your brain wave state. If you took psychology in college, you may remember that your brain waves change with different mental states from deep sleep to active problem solving and several varieties in between. By changing your brain waves, you can crate better focus or creativity. It sounds like mumbo jumbo, but it was recommended to me by a doctor that I trusted. And these cds are not that expensive. I know about another system, but it costs a lot more. As a starving artist, I'm fine with cheap stuff that works. Anyway, one of these CDs is called Focus. It plays a rain sound (and now I think they sell the same one with an ocean wave sound instead)so you don't consciously hear the different tones. I am amazed though that when I just can't concentrate, I put that CD on and listen to it with headphones and it makes a dramatic difference. Basically, it's the difference between me goofing around on my computer and actually putting words on the page.

3) Caffeine does me wrong. I mean, it helps me stay awake and all, but it also increases my blood pressure, keeps me from sleeping when I want to, makes me tired the next day. I try never to drink caffeinated beverages any more. So what I've started doing instead is taking sub-lingual B vitamins. I buy a liquid called B Total that gives me a big dose of Bs. B vitamins are water-soluble, so they get filtered out of your bloodstream by your kidneys. Unless you have some health issue that prohibits it (and I don't know of one--maybe a B vitamin allergy?), you can safely take a lot more B vitamins that the RDA. They do a lot of good things, like giving you more energy, focus, and helping your heart and nervous system. B vitamins, especially B 12 get more difficult to absorb as you age or if you have digestive difficulties and take antacids or proton pump inhibitors. (If you want to read more about this, just google it.) So chances are, you could use more B 12 if you're over 40, take those stomach meds, or if your a vegetarian because the primary sources of B 12 are animal-based foods.

d) Also, from time to time, I have to remind myself to get up and move around, go for a walk or--because I live in the godforsaken Northern winter wasteland--just stretch or dance or something. The motionless office will be the downfall of Western civilization. We'll all get really big heads and little scrawny bodies. Ew! I don't look forward to that future. And what's the point really? The Singularity is coming anyway, and we can never out evolve intelligent machines, so why not just keep our muscles and actually write about what it's like to BE HUMAN amid all this chaos?

What some of us have to go through to come up with a blog post!

Ay carumba!

2009-02-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

First the bad news.

I reread my six pages submitted as part of my agreement with Mindie. There is really no gentle way to put this. THEY SUCK!

Now the good news.

Since Monday, I've been steadily working on them and while I originally thought they might be beyond salvation, they are coming along nicely. It seems so much harder than it used to, this getting myself into the head of my character. A warning to all those writing their critical essays: Don't let your fiction languish too long. It will make it harder to get back to it later.

So now I'm a little behind in my next six pages because I've spent the past two days doing revisions. I'm not done with the revisions yet, but I think once I finish them, the next part will be easier because I will be in a groove. I'm hoping to finish the first four chapters relatively quickly so that I can draw from them for my thesis. The truth is, chapter 5 is 23 pages olong, so it's possible that I could just use chapters 1-5. I only need 70 pages minimum, which means I need less than 50 pages in the first four chapters and I'll have plenty. But I'd rather use some of the later chapters than put the whole beginning in. I guess I'll see. I have 12 more weeks.

Hey Mindie, how's it going over there? What color T-shirt would you like?

Week One Success!

2009-02-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

I am happy to report that Mindie and I both got our first 6 pages done and in on time. We rule!

And now for something completely different. I just got an email ad from Barnes and Noble about a book titled, I Can Make You Thin. Way to self-aggrandize, Paul whatever your name is. I could make someone thin, too, if I could lock them in a room and give them only water and salad. Get over yourself. It is not you who makes another person thin (unless you do what I suggest above). It is that person. You can't do it for them.

Remind me never to give my book a title like that.

The exchange experiment

2009-02-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

Unable to make myself write as much as I wanted to, I came up with the idea of making a pact with Mindie Kniss, who I knew had a lot of writing to get done herself. I approached Mindie about this in an email proposing some vague kind of exchange. She immediately responded, "I'm in," and we hammered out the details in a few more emails. So the deal is that we are to send each other six polished pages of our thesis manuscripts every Sunday night before we go to bed, starting today. We don't have to read the other's work if we don't have time. We just have to send it to each other. There's no punishment (yet) if we don't, but we'll send each other little rewards for getting the work done on time.

So it's Sunday, and I am actually grateful that we have this deal, because I don't know if I would have sat here all day and all day yesterday and all evening the day before if not for the fact that Mindie will know if I don't get my work done. It really is good to be accountable sometimes. I have about a page and a half left to write--which you might say is easy, but the previous page and a half has taken me all afternoon. But still, the goal is within sight. Man, I hope this gets easier as the weeks go on.

And I can't wait to see what Mindie is writing.

A Semester's Worth of Posts in Three Paragraphs

2008-12-12T18:16:00.000-08:00

Well, I've managed not to blog for a whole semester. I've been busy writing my critical essay. I think it came out okay, though of course, I never really will be satisfied with it. Writing. You know how it is.

One thing I think I did succeed at very well this term is getting that annoying monkey off my back, the one gibbering in my ear about whether fantasy can be literature. And my conclusion after reading half a library's worth of essays and novels that either speak to or exemplify the topic, is that of course it can.

Once, a squirrel started hanging out on our back porch. At first, I thought he was adorable, the way he would taunt the cats through the screen door. I started putting out peanut butter for him and nuts and seeds. He became even friendlier. Eventually he started napping stretched out on the railing and if I would get crackers out of the cupboard, he'd move toward the door assuming that I was going to give him some. He got so brave in his pleas for snacks that he would come right to the screen door and stand inches from our biggest tom, who sat just inside the screen, his tail lashing madly back and forth. I began to fear the squirrel would dart inside when I opened the door. I imagined utter chaos erupting as he dashed inside and all five of our cats ran after him, upending furniture and knocking breakable items to the floor in their excitement. I tried to scare the squirrel away by yelling at him, but he would only take a few steps back and then edge closer again, his eyes on my box of Wheat Thins. Eventually, I threw a glass of water in his face, right through the screen. He didn't even flinch as the water whooshed over him. Of course not, I thought. Water is no threat to a squirrel.

The long essay

2008-07-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

The third semester of the MFA program includes writing a long essay. Apparently, early on this essay had to be 30 pages long. Now it's been reduced to 15-20 pages. I've heard various theories about the reasoning behind this. The most pragmatic is that an essay of 15-20 pages could be published. I have no idea if this is true, since I don't really read essays on any sort of regular basis, except in books. I don't really know how manuscript pages convert to book pages, but some of the essays I've read in books are certainly longer than 15 pages. I guess all this is moot though, since I don't expect tat I will try to get my essay published. But maybe I will. You never know.

I'm sitting in Espresso Royale right now, preparing to work on my essay or my book. I thought I'd take advantage of the wifi and do a blog entry. Marc is downstairs at the Labyrinth. We had lunch at the Red Hawk because I begged and said we needed to get out more.

As far as I can tell, this essay is meant to be about a personal experience of literature as it intersects with our lives and writing. It's odd. I didn't expect to learn anything about myself and my writing in the preparation of this essay. But as it turns out, even I didn't understand why I write what I do. And maybe I will never fully understand. But in trying to sort out what I should say to people about why some fantasy is literature, why it's important, why they should reconsider its validity, I've discovered some clear connections between my own spiritual longing and what i write. I've also identified the ways in which fantasy has shaped my life, the presence of fantasy in my life from a very young age. I think I've even come up with a fairly strong case for fantasy being the American/Western/industrialized equivalent of magical realsim in the motivation behind it and the purpose it serves for both the writer and the reader. Now of course, not all fantasy falls into this category. I'm leaning toward drawing the conclusion that it's mostly fantasy written in first person, and mostly by women or people of color or other people who have for some reason experienced oppression. I'm leaning toward saying that where the "magic" in magical resalism arises out of the cultural norms of societies heavily influenced by organized religion, the magic in the kind of fantasy I am referring to, the kind I write, arises out of the lack of such cultural beliefs. It arises out of a longing for the existence of some great power for good, something that could rescue us all, no matter what. It arises out of the fear that such a being or force does not exist, or perhaps out of the refusal to accept what seems obvious to our logical minds. We are alone, trapped in prisons of flesh, unable to control anything outside ourselves and actually not even our own physical bodies and often even our own thoughts, unable to count on anyone's help, always wondering if we will be let down, abandoned, disappointed, doomed. It arises as a response to the knowledge that death is inevitable, yet seems impossible to even contemplate. How could we simply cease to exist? It's the original human question about the meaning of life, re-framed by science and technology and the recent change in cultural standards.

Fantasy, well-written, character-driven fantasy, allows us to suspend our disbelief and belong to a world where there is a great force for good, where the impossible can be hoped for, where, though we are all in great danger, there is something that could save us, no matter what.

OK. I've pretty much written a book here. I'll stop now and get to work.

Apparently I've been tagged

2008-07-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Now, I had no idea what Stephanie was talking about when I read her comment. I've been tagged as a meme. WTF? First of all, I had to refresh my memory on this whole "meme" thing. I couldn't even figure out how to pronounce it. Like 'meem' or like 'mimi'? Well, the audio portion of the online dictionary says 'meem' but a friend tells me it's meh-meh. Who knows?

So here's the definition: n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

In other words, this is someone's fancy way of getting us all involved in a chain letter. Or a chain blogging event. By telling us that we're transferring a unit of cultural information. I find it difficult to buy into. And who says I have six quirky behaviors anyway?

Oh, all right. Here you go. (huge sigh)

1. When left to my own devices, I never eat a proper meal. Instead I collect about three items from the cupboards and refrigerator and eat them sequentially. On rare occasions, I will actually put something on a plate. This seems to be my best form of eating because I lose weight (just enough) when I do this for long enough and gain weight when I eat actual meals.

2. I love writing. If allowed, I will not only spend all day either writing, thinking about writing or talking about writing, I will dream about my characters. Of course, I am not really allowed to do this. Job. Husband. Friends. Cats. heh.

3. I have a crazy imagination. In a normal conversation, I will suddenly get an idea for a story and launch into a "I was just thinking, what if...?" Some people don't react well to this. My husband looks at me like I'm an alien, especially when I ask these questions about news items. Me: What if he just admitted that he likes men? What do you think would happen? Him: He won't. He's a Republican. Me: I know, but what if he did? Him: He won't. Me; I know, but do you think it would be a big deal if he did? I mean, if he can meet men in a public restroom, then I don't see how it could be that bad. Does he think he can just hide in the stall and no one will recognize him? Him: (you-are-an-alien-stop-it-right-now look)I have no idea.

4. I have no sense of thirst. I sometimes forget to drink anything for days, until I am literally light-headed. I try to get myself to drink without a sense of thirst, but my abject failure at this proves to me the real reason why we have a sense of thirst in the first place. I don't know what happened to mine. It's just gone.

5. I am the world's worst procrastinator. Except for Mindie Kniss. She's worse than me. But she doesn't think of it as procrastinating. She just thinks of it as living. Which makes me worse, I think. I feel horribly anxious about it. I even feel anxious about Mindie's procrastiinatory behavior. I feel better having discovered that Annie Dillard is a pretty good procrastinator herself. (This sounds like something a homeopath could use to figure out a remedy for this quirk. You know, worse when thinking about Mindie's procrastination. Better when thinking about Annie Dillard. Any takers?)

6. If I could eat only one food for the rest of my life, it would be chocolate cake with frosting. As luck would have it, I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic and I'm allergic to wheat. I never, ever get to eat chocolate cake. I mean, I could. But it would make me feel terrible. Stupid biology.

Now I'm supposed to tag six people. I don't actually know that many bloggers. So I'll have to say Felicity and Mindie. And then I'll have to tell them. But now I need to stop procrastinating, go to the kitchen and eat three foods and then get some work done.

Your Friend, the Swirling Vortex of Doom

2008-06-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

Craft talk by Pete Fromm.

Pete fromm tells us in his craft talk that he keeps seeing stories in which the writer takes his characters only to the edge of trouble and then lets them off the hook. Pete says he writes to get to the place where things are terribly wrong. I really appreciated the fact that he used student writing before and afters to demonstarte how the scene becomes more interesting if we don't evade danger to easily.

As happens often during residencies, while Pete was talking, I saw a possibility for a swirling vortex of doom for the main character of my novel. (Yes, residencies are the riskiest times for my characters!) Pete had discussed various reasons why writers might stop short--they like their characters too much, they don't want to go through the tough emotions of writing these scenes. But I saw a different kind of issue with going into the vortex. How would I get her out? And even if I did get her out, would the reader's view of her be changed so much that she would be irredeemable? Wanting to know the answer, I came back to my room at the end of the day to write toward the vortex.

The Habit of Art

2008-06-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

This morning's first craft talk was by Claire Davis. Here's my review.

You have to make a habit of art. No, you have to make a habit of art. That's what Professor Greg ( ) told Claire Davis's college writing class. Do you understand? he would ask them, getting frustrated when they barely paid attention, did the minimum work for the assignments or when half of them didn't bother to show up. Of course, they'd say. But we didn't, Claire tells us.

She has written the talk in the same way that she writes her fiction, revealing reality to us as if we've never actually experienced it for ourselves. And we realize as she's speaking that maybe we haven't. In a breathy voice that is almost sing-song, Ms. Davis takes us on a sensory experience of words. The word is smarter than we are, she quotes ( ).

Habit, she tells us, has some unpleasant connotations. Let us make it a ritual, whatever ritual it is that gets us to sit down with pen and paper or computer screen and keyboard and put words down, make images into words, tell a story.

Find the community of like-minded souls, artists, creative people and discuss things with them. Connect with the most primeval source of inspiration: the world. But maybe, she tells us, it's not any of these things that is what is meant by the habit of art. Maybe it is being fully present, in the moment, experiencing life, noticing the way the world smells and sounds and tastes and feels and how every color is absorbed into our eyes and passes into our minds. Be in the moment. Maybe that's what the habit of art is--living fully.

She suggests that we must get past the distractions that call to us in a world where our attention is being pulled in dozens of different directions every minute of every day. They are excuses. We all have them. But the writing is the thing.

She describes going out into her garden and absorbing it with her senses. While she speaks I am there, where roses grow around her door and because she doesn't have the heart to trim the vines, she has to duck as she goes out of the house and her screen door never completely closes. I am there with the green and green and silver of the leaves. I am standing in her back yard looking out past a field of grass toward the mountains. I am breathing the air of a place I've never been, never seen.

I know exactly what she means when she says, "What if this experience is here all the time, not just at that one moment? What if we just don't notice?" She compares the experience of imagining deeply to Zen. The habit of art is an evolutionary necessity, she tells us, and I believe her as if this message is written into my genetic code. You will never imagine deeply enough, she says, if you only see the surface of things.

I don't remember having gotten teary at a craft talk before. But, well... I know exactly what she means.

Schmooz and Cruise

2008-06-20T05:52:00.000-07:00

We arrived at te residency yesterday. The whole Fab Four arrived together since Deb flew in at 7:30 yesterday morning and came over to Abby's sister's house to sleep, and then Linda came to pick the three of us up in the afternoon.

We arrived at our room which is just down the hall from where we were last year, unpacked and went grocery shopping. Then we had dinner together, each of us eating different stuff.

Deb and I are in the same workshop and we had arranged for everyone in our workshop to meet up in advance. There was already a social hour planned for all students and faculty, so we just met there early. I think it was a good idea. Now we are more relaxed together.

After we'd been there a while, all the other people in the program started showing up. I introduced Molly to everyone and I introduced David Long to two new guys in our workshop. (Molly and David are our workshop leaders.)

[Hahahaha. I can hear one of my roommates snoring through the wall. (I won't name names. She might kill me. )]

And finally, I talked to Pete. We talked for a while.

I felt very social, but I think it's because I had a purpose. My purpose (self-defined) was to make sure the new people got to meet everyone.

I saw Felicity and Mindie, and as it turns out they are in te same room only a couple of doors down from us.

This is going to be a good residency. I can tell already.

Today we start lectures. Linda said there wasn't that muc going on today, but I have to teach with Julie Rember at 4:00, so it's going to seem like a lot to me until that happens.

I don't know what's on the schedule. I think I want to corner --well, not corner, but yeah, find and convince to chat--Claire Davis. I wanted to talk to her last time. There was kind of a faux pas last time in that after my worshop session with her, I was talking about it in the lunch line and it turned out she was sitting right near where we were. I actually wasn't saying anything about what I thought. I had just said, "You should have eard my husband wen I told him. He said, "What a lot of horseshit." And at that exact moment, she and I looked right at each other. I was planning to go talk to her and clear the air, but she had to leave early and before I could find her, she was gone. So, I want to do it now and maybe she and I can come to a meeting of the minds.

My romom is all arranged and I have some books on my shelf: Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, and Robert Holdstock, right next to a cookbook about meat. (That's a present for Marc.)

Portland

2008-06-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Portland yesterday. It's cool here, in the 60s. It's very interesting because I'm getting alittle familiar with the airport and I know what certain streets look like now. Also, I am enjoying the smells of Portland for the first time.

Yesterday I ate a peach and almost started crying It was so amazing. I had forgotten wat a peach really tasted like. The memory was still there, of course, but it had gotten all vague.

Abby is still sleeping. She really should get up so we can go and do something fun. Go out out to breafast. That's what we should do. We stayed up last night reading our writing to each other. Abby has some great poems.

OK< I'm going to try to get her up.

Tomorrow is the fist day of residency, although it doesn't start until evening.

Off Again

2008-06-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

I'll be going back to Oregon on Tuesday for my third residency. As usual, I am both looking forward to it and vaguely dreading it. I really don't like the traveling part of it, trying to make sure I have everything I need, managing my luggage, flying, being away from Marc and my cats. But I love seeing my friends, going to classes, being immersed in the creative atmosphere, getting to talk to other writers.

Usually, just before I go, I wish I could cancel it, get out of it somehow. Then after I get there, I almost immediately stop thinking about it and have a great time. Fortunately.

I'll be rooming with my usual roommates in the same dorm as last time. That should make it easier for me to settle in. It'll at least be familiar.

I'll be blogging the trip, as usual. Hopefully there won't be so many typos this time. I have a couple of new goals. We always have to do reviews of the classes we attended while at the residency. They're due within a week of the end of the residency, or we can turn them in before we leave. I've never had mine done in time to turn them in at the res, but I'm going to try to write about each thing I attend on the day I attend it. Maybe I'll do that here. I'm also going to try to make my reviews more formal and meaningful than I have in the past. I'm usually so tired by the time I write them that they are just a kind of fill in the blanks report of what the lecturer said. But I'm hoping that if I do them immediately after, and if I find some way to take better notes (and if I can actually read my handwriting--heh), hopefully I can write a good summary.

Every semester, a few well-written reviews make it onto the MFA website, a sort of advertisement for the program, and an endorsement of the student writer's work. Two of my roommates have had pieces up over the past two semesters. When I've seen theirs I've felt like a moron, because I can't imagine how they were able to focus enough to write such strong essays. So this time, I'm going to do it. I don't know how yet, but I'm going to.

The residency starts on the 19th, so I'll begin blogging after that. I'm co-teaching the reading for writers class again with Julie Rember. We're doing two sessions, but each one is only an hour this time. I'll write about those, but I expect it will go like it did last time.

More during the week.

Almost mid-term

2008-03-17T16:41:00.000-07:00

Obviously, I haven't been writing as much here this semester as I did last semester. This has something to do with the fact that my parents got a computer virus and something to do with the fact that I got a biological virus. The first part of that is probably harder to understand than the second part.

In some ways, I write this blog so that my mom will get to read about what happens with my school work. I mean, I want other people to read it, too, but my mom saying, "You haven't written for a while," is what motivates me to write here, or at least, reminds me to write here. So when my parents' computer was in the tech hospital because of a virus, she couldn't read my blog and so she didn't remind me to write in it. And then I got the flu, as in the real FLU.(I thought it was just a myth, like Santa Claus, the boogeyman and the toothfairy. [Actually, the toothfairy is real. I got a note from her when I was a kid. Her name is Daisy.)

Anyway, both viruses are cured now, and here I am to give an update.

I've sent and gotten back two packets. I've been happy with the feedback I've gotten and nothing has been a terrible surprise. Mostly, the comments that have helped have just broadened my perspective. I'm getting more confidence in my writing now and this is probably part of why I'm writing more. Last semester, I didn't really write anything brand new. Well, OK, I wrote a tiny piece of chapter XX, but other than that, I mostly added to things I had already been working on. But so far this semester, I've written the better part of two new chapters and I have a lot of new ideas.

Since everything seems to be going well on the small scale and since I'm a worrier, I have started to worry about the book as a whole and whether, after all is said and done, it can really work. I think it can, but then I start to panic. Yet I tell myself that all I can do is finish writing it and see.

About a month ago, I passed the hundred page mark, which seems both good and bad. I've been writing for a long time to only just have passed the hundred page mark. But then, it's going faster now and I think I'm about a third finished, with a lot of work that is relatively polished. I'll have to speed things up and there's going to be that pesky essay semester starting in June, during which I'll have to work on my essay. This will distract me from writing the novel, I think. So... I guess I had better stop writing this blog for now and GET TO WORK.

:)

Nervousmess and excitement

2008-01-31T11:01:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update on how things are going since I've been back.

Something happened to me at the residency. I didn't fully realize it until I got home and got rested, but I think all the things I had been studying over the course of the term clicked in my head. Well, probably not all of them, but some substantial new thing has happened for me. I can tell I understand a critical aspect of what makes writing good that I only vaguely had some external notion of before. It's almost like I had an epiphany, but I know it was really a synthesis of the semester's work and things I heard at the residency.

So I am more and more excited about that. Could I be a little more specific? Well, here it is. It's the difference between showing and telling. Everyone says it, but it's so vague what they say. It's like understanding quantum mechanics or something. You might know something about it, but the hows and whys of it are probably beyond you. It's kind of like that. Because really, writing is telling. It's using words to make a story. How much closer to telling can you get than that? So how can you show without telling while creating a story with words?

The best way I can find to explain the difference is to use the analogy of a photograph versus a film. When you describe something in a static way, you capture a photo. When you describe it in a dynamic way, one that uses words to do dual duty depicting things not as they are in a particular stopped moment of time, but as they are during a period of time, you capture a film with words.

I never thought about this consciously until recently. I think sometimes I might have inadvertantly done this, but it was hit or miss. Now that I am aware of it, I have a lot more control. I also realized that one of the keys is to use very precise verbs. I had been an advocate of using adverbs and I couldn't understand why adverbs had to be used sparingly or not at all. But I now understand that single words have a lot of power. If you use weak or static verbs to tellyour story and add adjectives to get the nuance of meaning across, the nuances of your story become static. If you use active, precise verbs, the nuances of your story remain active, captured in the verbs. Compare "he ran" or "he strode" to "he walked quickly".

Of course, adverbs are a part of the language, but they need to be rarely used. They are scaffolding, not solid foundations.

So that's the exciting part. The nervousness comes from not knowing if I can get everything done on time. I have only three weeks each period instead of four like last time, so I really ahve to be on point all the time. And I'm having troulbe with reading. My reading speed is really down. I'm still trying to finish my first book this semester. But I'll make up for it by reading an essay for my seoncd work.

I find that I really want to impress Molly. I don't know why I should feel that way. But then, I wanted to impress Pete also. We'll see what happens.

Lost Weekend

2008-01-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

I've been remiss. It's just been so hard to keep everything together and so I haven't been blogging. If I've learned one thing a bout my writing and what people think of it through this residency, it's that imagination in more important than knowledge. True, it's good that I can make pretty good sentences, but what affects people ,ost about my writing is the strangeness of it.Strangeness is the word that DL used in his critique.

So I have Molly Gloss as an advisor this time. I'm pretty excited to work with her. Today she and I are going to meet and talk about making maps.

I am going to have to work harder than I did last semester because I will only have three weeks in between packets instead of four. It looks like the summer semester is about three weeks longer than the winter one.

I have been thinking about writing again, though. Its really hard to write while here because so much is going on. Also, I haven't had as much energy as I did last time and I've been taking it easy. Last night I went to bed at 8 and slept in until 6 this morning. The previous two nights I had found myself falling asleep during the faculty readings, which really is too bad. I'm still sick and will have to go back to the doctor when I get home.

This residency has given me some new tools and some new insights into my own work. I have a more concrete idea of what I need to work on while getting the story down.

Yesterday I was inspired to write a poem in listening to Marvin Bell's lecture called Poetry A-Z. I think I will use it as my review of his talk.

This is all so vague, I know.

Remember the elevator story about David Long? Well, now I like him and he doesn't think I'm a weirdo anymore. Turns out he taght in the Poets in Schools program an was actually teaching in my high school during the time I was there. He taught one of my English teachers. So that was cool to find out. Small world.

Maybe I will get my wish to work with him after all. We'll see what happens.

Can I say here that I am grateful to the universe for my weird brain? Thanks whoever is responsible for my imagination, in spite of the fact that it allows me to imagine all sorts of paranoid crap sometimes. Without it, where would I be?

Thursday

2008-01-10T06:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, my titles have become singularly uninventive. What's your point? :)

I can only write for a minute, because I need to get something ready for today. Yesterday was good. I found out some good news, bt I won't put it up here. It's just about my work being liked by certain faculty, but I don't want to broadcast it since you never know who might be reading.

My piece is going to be workshopped on Saurday or Sunday.

I had lunch with Pete. It was great. We talked about writing. What a concept. We also exchanged stories: I tol him that my mom was a fan of his. We had a whole conversation about it. I think I am going to buy his new book for my mom when it comes out. He told me it may be a while.

Everything is kind of a blur. I had better get going. I'll try to write more tomorrow. It's harder to have anecdotes here because the hallways are so much like the great white north that no one ventures out to meet up there. But I have seen Abby and Debi and Linda everyda and hung out.

Wednesday?

2008-01-09T06:19:00.000-08:00

It's a good thinmg this residency doesnt feel as busy as the last one. I am pretty sick, and feel terrib le and ired. I have mo,ments when I feel ok, but mostly I feel slightly nauseous an achy.

I only went to four things esterday: the first craft talk, whih was Peter Sears about revisions. Then workshop, a talk by Hilda Raz, he editor of Prairie Schooner, and Marvin Bell's poetry reading at night He was with Glenn Moore (the best stand up bass player in America). It was really cool to hear Glenn play. Somehow I was not there for the poetry. I mean, I heard it, but I didnt feel it. Don't know why. Probably sickness.

I'm having lunch with Pete today.I'm looking forward to it. He's a good energy to be around.

Also on the schedule today, a craft talk by Ellen Bass. She is really great. She's talking about discovery. We are workshopping Linda's and Mindie's pieces in workshop today, cool because both of them are friends. Ten this afternoon, I may go to two graduate readings and a craft talk by Mary Helen Stefanick called The Secret of Once. Tonigt Pete Fromm and Valerie Miner are reading and Linda is introducing them.

The weather has apparently been crazy, but I have carefully avoided going outside or even looking outside or the most part. I only know by rumor and the sound of the wind howling through the wall when I'm in the bathroom in my room.

I'll be having breakfast with Abby again this morning. I really should spend some time now doing some reviews of classes so far, so I won't have so much work to do when I get home those first few days.

I don't know how, but Marc magically fixed my e. You probably won't remember, but last residency, I was sruggling with it. It works perfectly now and Marc clais never to have had a problem with it. I think he's just gifted. Actually, now that I think about the keyboard layout, maybe it was the h. But that seems to be working fine also.

Ah delirium. The cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

So far so good

2008-01-08T06:52:00.001-08:00

Well, Ive been in Oregon for three days. The first day I spent at Abby's sister's house. It was great.We went to a cat sanctuary where Abby used to volunteer. I fell in love wth a cat who reminded me of Nefertum. He was very friendly. I would have triedf to convince Marc that we should adopt him if only hnly we lived closer to him. I would hate to make a cat fly for so long.

On Sunday, we met Linda who drove up from Bend. Fortunately she has a four wheel drive because we had to drive through the mountains in a snow storm. Many people were off the road, but we were like the eveready bunny.

Yesterday was te first day of classes. I co-taught a class yesterday and it went really well. MOre than twice the number of people that we had wanted signed up for it, so we had to modify it some. We didn't have time to do individual work on their own stuff, only on the stuff that w had prepared.

Food is not nearly as good as during the summer residency. Finally, last jight we went to the grocery store, so hopefully I am set.

WE all hae our own rooms and the hallways here are godforsakenly cold, unheated. This leads to some degree of isolation. I had hoped to be next door to jy summer roomates, but we're all on different floors. Abby and Linda have beautiful rooms with fireplaces, kitchenettes and ocean views. By the luck of the draw, Deb and I have normal rooms. But we've been getting together in Abby's room for meals and just to chat when we have time.

I started out this residency exausted and sick, and I am really tired nmow. Yesterday there were two clases besides ours, plus the readings at night. Workshops start today, so it's going to get busier. There was some really good writing submitted to workshop.

Pete Fromm talked about convertig a short story into a screenplay. A story of his has been made into a film, whih he wrote the screenplay for. We watched the film. It was good. (Could I be anymore profound?)

I just looked at the schedule and saw that I have myself doing nothing after lunch until 7:30. I think I'll come back and go to bed. I feel terrible But now I need to get ready to go out and have breakfast in Abby's room.

Spring 2008 residency

2008-01-04T19:29:00.000-08:00

If you can call this spring... It's only just winter. At any rate, I'm leaving tomorrow for Portland to spend the night with Abby at her sister's house in Vancouver. She's going to pick me up at the airport and then we're going to rent a car so we can drive around Portland as we please. This will be great since I've never really been there.

Then on Sunday afternoon, we'll drop off the rental car and Linda, one of our other roommates from the summer residency, is going to pick us up on her way to Seaside. Our residency this time is on the coast instead of on campus. I think they do it this way because classes are in full swing and probably all the dorm rooms are occupied. So we get to go to a hotel on the beach.

Weather.com says it's going to be rainy there, though warmer than it is here. As long as I'm not cold, I don't mind.

I'm co-teaching a class on the first day of actual classes. I believe it's at 2:45 in the afternoon.

I'll try to blog in shorter but more regular chunks than I did in the summer. I expect it to be slower paced, because I've already decided that I'm not going to try to do as much as I did in the summer. While my roomies were sometimes sleeping in, I went to everything. I'm going to look at the schedule and decide what I will and won't go to ahead of time.

I will still get up at 5, but hopefully can get to bed a little earlier. I'd like to avoid repeating the blathering of nonsense I did on the last day of the summer residency when I was so sleep deprived I couldn't make a coherent sentence and had to set my alarm clock twenty-seven times, knowing each time that something was wrong, but unable to figure out what. In the end, my alarm didn't go off and I was late to meet my ride to the airport, babbled incoherently, and screamed at the top of my lungs because I couldn't find my suitcase which was behind my room door. Right where I put it the night before. Yes, all this is to be avoided, so this time, more sleep,a little more food, and less mayhem. No matter what John Rember says about how "you're only here for ten days--go to everything," don't listen to him. Really. Go to most things. Remember that ten days short of sleep and constantly running leads to madness. This is my current mantra.

The Day before the Day Before Christmas

2007-12-23T16:26:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-14T16:03:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

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...

2007-11-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-09-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-08-10T06:55:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-31T07:20:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-07-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-07T19:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-03T06:30:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-06-30T05:42:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-23T06:40:00.001-07:00

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!

2007-06-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

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."