Ready to Rock and Roll

So I'm back from my trip to Virginia (I've only been back in Florida for about 5ish hours now...) and the only thing I'm going to say is that it was phenomenal! :] And completely needed. I was very excited that we got snow!


This is the first snowman I've ever made! You can tell it's a boy because of the leaf. :]
So anyways. Back to the writing. (Because I guess that's what you're all here for?)

All seven of my applications to Florida schools with MFA programs in creative writing (UF, UCF, FSU, USF, UM, FIU, FAU) are out. I submitted the fees, the transcripts, and all of the materials (namely the statement of intent and the writing sample). The writing sample was the most nerve-racking, because I was really ambitious with it. I submitted the first two chapters of a science fiction / steam punk novel I am working on (this is risky because it is a genre piece, and for some unknown reason genre tends to be frowned upon), and then for the schools that wanted more pages, I submitted a graphic novel. The term "graphic novel" is kind of misleading because it implies something lengthy... mine was only 8 pages long. More like a comic, then, but it was an adaptation of a piece of flash fiction, so there's not much you can do with only about 1000 words. But it was in full color! And I'm quite pleased with it. But that's also very risky because it's not only a piece of writing... it is art. Stick figure art, to be specific...


Don't judge Mr. Stick getting wasted with his buddies. There's a good cause behind it.
I can actually draw, but I liked sticking with the stick figures because of how identifiable they can be. :) Plus, it made drawing, inking, and coloring about a zillion times faster. But, as I was saying before, submitting a graphic piece is risky. I hope the universities see that as a good thing, though. That it is pushing boundaries and realizing that graphic novels are really starting to gain attention as legitimate literature. If not... well, there's always next year. :/ (I'd rather not, these applications are expensive!!)

Speaking of applications and their cost, I'm kind of stuck now. I'm going to start working on applications to all of the summer publishing institutes (U of Denver, NYU, Columbia) as well as any out-of-state programs. :) I'll keep you updated on my progress as I go along. For not the work shouldn't be that bad, I'll just keep using the same basic format for my statement of intent, and I'll be using the same writing samples... I just need to wait for after Christmas so that I can have enough money to pay for my applications and transcripts and such.

Speaking of transcripts, grades for last semester came out. I am so relieved. Got a 3.73 for the semester, and my cumulative GPA rose a hundredth of a point (to 3.68). Yay! The semester from hell didn't turn out so bad after all. (Although, I should note that MFA programs don't really look at your GPA or your resume or your GRE scores or anything like that. All they really want to see is your writing sample. Which is good and bad at the same time. :/)

As a last little note (I'm sorry this post is so long, thanks for bearing with me), I want to say hi and happy holidays to all of my readers. I've come to the realization that there are a lot more of you out there than I thought, so I want to thank you for bearing with me and my slight insanity and constant rambling. If you don't mind, I'd like some feedback. What do you want to read? More personal anecdotes? Or just writing about writing? Or something in-between? Do you want snippets of my actual prose? Or more pictures? Or comics? Or what? (Just wondering.)

Thank you for reading, and for those of you who leave me wonderful encouraging comments, a special thank you to you. :) I really appreciate it. You all are awesome. :]

Grad School Apps, Part 1

So I finished 6/7 graduate school applications this weekend, and the reason I didn't get to the full 7 is because the online submission site is giving me trouble and won't let me finish my application. :( I tried to get them all done before final grades for this semester went out because (1) I'm not sure how my GPA will fare this semester from hell, and (2) I already entered in all the information as if this semester was incomplete, and I didn't want to have to go back and change everything.

Two of the applications were entirely online-only, which is pretty sweet, and five actually need to be sent out into the world. I have those prepped and ready, but the post office is closed today, so I'll have to trust my mom to send them out tomorrow (since I'll be in Virginia!). I didn't staple or paperclip anything (I'm aware of the war on them), so trying to figure out what order to put things in is rather complicated. I just don't want anything lost. So I'm thinking small stuff first, and then larger works later. We'll see how that works.

Once I get back from my trip, I'll work on knocking out the summer institutes and any out-of-state schools. I barely had enough money to cover the admission costs and transcript costs for the schools this time around, so I'll need to wait on some Christmas money to help with the Get-Elle-Into-Grad-School fund. :]

Graphic Novel & My Second Undergraduate Thesis

So, I completed my first graphic novel this week! Its really more like a comic, only 8 pages long, and I need to tweak it, and maybe add an extra page of dialogue, but still, I drew, scanned, outlined, colored, added text, and submitted it for workshop, so I'm very pleased with myself.

The entire process took about 30+ hours or so. Extremely time consuming. The easiest part was just laying out the panels and what I wanted where. What took the longest was reformatting the panels on the computer (turns out I can't draw straight lines to save my life), and coloring. Even though I drew everything in stick figures, it still took an obnoxious amount of time. Its not perfect, but still, for my first full-length comic, "it's pretty damn good," as my professor stated.

Speaking of which, he suggested I draw a creative nonfiction one, and I got excited and asked if I could do that for my Departmental Honors thesis. When I first signed up for thesis, I was told that I could use my old thesis from Honors College for Departmental Honors, by when I inquired last week, I was told that I still needed to earn my three credits and that I should expand my original thesis or prepare it for publication.

Frankly put, I am completely sick and tired of that piece of work. I don't want to touch it, I don't want to deal with it, I'm done. So is Ira. So he's agreed to be my Director again, and help me work on completing another graphic novel, this time in creative nonfiction.

(You know, I have more pages of CNF than I do of F, and yet I'm still applying to grad school in F. It seems strange... I guess I write more CNF because it's harder and more of a challenge... but I do enjoy F also... I dunno. Whatever gets me into grad school. From there hopefully they'll let me take classes in CNF as well as F.)

I'm excited. :)

The Expectations of Others

Yesterday my Godsister/little cousin came to visit campus for an all-day outreach/recruitment event. I walked around with her on a tour of campus, ate lunch with her at one of the food halls, and went to a special engineering meeting/tour. She's interested in aeronautical engineering, architecture, and dance. She's stuck between art and math, like me, so I feel her pain. That was actually most of what we talked about that day--how to choose. But she's only a junior in high school, so she's got plenty of time to figure out what she wants to do. Basically I just told her to go with her heart (because she's phenomenal at both art/dance and math/science), and if she finds out she doesn't like it anymore, she can always change her mind. That's what I did.

While we were at the engineering meeting, we ran into an advisor for one of the clubs I am vice president of. I said hi and complimented him on his suit, and introduced him to my little cousin. Later that day, after I had left her to run across the street to see the new Harry Potter movie (I tried to get her a ticket but it was sold out), she told me that she ran into my advisor again and they talked about me. She said he "Told me he was :( bc u are so good at math and u left it for english."

:/

Well, that pretty much makes me feel like crap.


I do miss science and math and engineering. I miss the rhythmic number crunching and and graphing and analyzing data, dealing with real-world problems and creating realistic solutions for them. Studying how the world works, and being able to predict its behavior. I know I would have made a phenomenal physicist, an excellent engineer. And I may have loved it, too. I could have done so much, could have really made an impact in society, regardless of how small it was.

And yet I left it all. For what? For words. For the promise of paychecks one-third in value. For a degree in something I would have done in my spare time anyways. I can do the math but it makes me tired and frustrated. I gave up, and came to this. Yes, obviously I love this, and I love what I'm studying, and I love what I'm doing, and I love the potential there is to be a teacher, an editor, an author. But. I can't help but wonder.

Did I make the right choice?

I loved physics and robotics, too.

Like I told my cousin, one can always change their mind. I did it once. I'm sure I could do it again, if need be. If I missed it enough.

I might.

Dilemma

I've come to the alarming realization that while I have a strong writing voice, I have no real identity of myself as a writer. This is mildly embarrassing, especially considering my self-proclamation of being just that.

Being a writer means actually writing--on a regular basis--and submitting work for publication. While I have been doing both of these things, I wouldn't say that I am doing them well. I write sporadically, and lately have had a tendency to revive and refinish old works, rather than producing brand new content. I'm holding myself back. Perhaps inadvertently, but it is still happening.

I need to change this.

I need to write something brand new every day. It can be a snippet of a thought, a paragraph, a page, a chapter. Whatever time permits, whatever works. I need to take risks, experiment. Really try to find myself.

Because without direction and purpose, what good is a voice?

Starting New.

Allow me to reintroduce myself.

My real name isn't Elle Solace. It's just a pen name.

I'm a little over a semester away from graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English, concentration Creative Writing (Fiction) from a major research university in Florida. I have completed a minor in Physics.

I'm one of those rare people who can both do math and write. I enjoy both. But society seems to want me to choose.

Ultimately, this blog is an expression of my attempts to walk the fine line between these two extremes: the line between logic and lunacy.