So after having a discussion with Boyfriend and thinking about it for some time, I've come to the conclusion that I should start putting up some old entries that I deleted, and writing a bit more about my personal endeavors than just simply criticism and strict discussion. That makes this blog a bit less "professional," but it will at least be more "interesting." I hope.
I haven't put any of the old backlogged entries up, but I'll mention it in a new post when I do.
In other news, I've already started on my new thesis. I'm very excited. So far it seems like it's going to be mainly graphic, but I'm really going to try and push some boundaries with regards to craft and form. I finally have a good, strong direction to work in, and for the first time, I actually feel like I'm creating a book, or something akin to it. I just hope that it is completed in the span of this semester to an extent that both my thesis director and I are happy with, and that I can maybe extend in graduate school to an actual publishable work. But no getting ahead of myself.
And speaking of publication, I still don't have any new details regarding my most recent one. I can tell you it's a snippet of flash fiction, and it will be published on an international online journal that showcases student work. (Yay!)
There are a lot of contests open that I'm considering submitting to, but I haven't had time to go through my work and pick anything out. :/ Classes haven't been very demanding this semester, but I've been really busy with extracurriculars and helping with my mom's wedding that's taking up a lot more of my time than I thought it would.
25 January 2011
22 January 2011
In light of things...
I've come to the somewhat recent realization that my mother would never approve of anything I write, fiction or nonfiction. :/ Simply put, I like controversy and she's a prude.
I first thought about this several weeks ago, but in light of my upcoming publication and the work that is going to be published, I'm mildly nervous. She's going to read it, along with everyone else in my family, and so will my friends, acquaintances, and so on. Although the work is strictly fiction, I'm sure there will still be suspicions and accusations and uproar. (Or maybe I'm just over-exaggerating and everything will be fine. Hopefully it is the latter.)
Anyways, I think the point I'm trying to get to is that having people who actually know me read my work makes me uncomfortable. Because writing is so intimate, because I put so much of myself into my work, I feel that by reading my writing, there are no more secrets. Like people can just see straight through me. Maybe not all at once, but little bits at a time, like taking apart nesting dolls. For some reason, this raw exposure does not bother me with complete strangers. But with the people I know and interact with on a regular basis, it's kind of nerve-wracking.
Call me a masochist, but this degree of discomfort is one of the main reasons why I've taken a liking to writing non-fiction. It's a whole new degree of difficult, and I like challenges. The consequence of this, however, means being truly, one-hundred-percent honest. With myself and with my readers, whomever they may be. And while I do not consider myself a nefarious person, I'm sure there's plenty about me that not everyone needs to know about. Omission wouldn't do anyone any good. So I put everything on the page.
That's the risk involved with writing.
Perhaps that's the beauty of it, too.
I first thought about this several weeks ago, but in light of my upcoming publication and the work that is going to be published, I'm mildly nervous. She's going to read it, along with everyone else in my family, and so will my friends, acquaintances, and so on. Although the work is strictly fiction, I'm sure there will still be suspicions and accusations and uproar. (Or maybe I'm just over-exaggerating and everything will be fine. Hopefully it is the latter.)
Anyways, I think the point I'm trying to get to is that having people who actually know me read my work makes me uncomfortable. Because writing is so intimate, because I put so much of myself into my work, I feel that by reading my writing, there are no more secrets. Like people can just see straight through me. Maybe not all at once, but little bits at a time, like taking apart nesting dolls. For some reason, this raw exposure does not bother me with complete strangers. But with the people I know and interact with on a regular basis, it's kind of nerve-wracking.
Call me a masochist, but this degree of discomfort is one of the main reasons why I've taken a liking to writing non-fiction. It's a whole new degree of difficult, and I like challenges. The consequence of this, however, means being truly, one-hundred-percent honest. With myself and with my readers, whomever they may be. And while I do not consider myself a nefarious person, I'm sure there's plenty about me that not everyone needs to know about. Omission wouldn't do anyone any good. So I put everything on the page.
That's the risk involved with writing.
Perhaps that's the beauty of it, too.
20 January 2011
The Best News Ever!
No, I haven't heard back from a university about being admitted to their MFA program.
No, I haven't miraculously come into an exceedingly large sum of money.
No, I'm not engaged, nor am I expecting.
Two days ago,
Tuesday, January 18, 2011,
at 3:20pm,
I received the best news ever.
I'm going to be published.
(More details to come!)
No, I haven't miraculously come into an exceedingly large sum of money.
No, I'm not engaged, nor am I expecting.
Two days ago,
Tuesday, January 18, 2011,
at 3:20pm,
I received the best news ever.
I'm going to be published.
(More details to come!)
13 January 2011
The Rights and Wrongs of Interpreting Literature
A friend of mine posted a Cracked article about common interpretations not aligning with the authorial intent of six popular novels.
While this discrepancy may be interesting, once a work is published authorial intent doesn't matter. What a book is and what it means is entirely dependent on the relationship between the text and the reader. Books are read differently by different people. Books very personal, they connect intimately and differently with each and every reader, because the background and experiences of each individual person allow each reading of the work to be different, even if it is read by the same person. Once an author sends a work away, it can never be theirs anymore. It belongs to the readers. There is no "right" or "wrong" to literature, only as long as you can support your argument with valid examples from the text. :)
(As a side note, my lit classes, I keep having thoughts and ideas about writing that I feel merit more discussion than was provided in class and I would like to engage further as a blog topic... By all means, I am encouraging discussion. I'll try to keep track of these ideas as I get them and (hopefully) post at least one a day. I'm also going to try and keep each post centered about one particular topic, rather than touching on several in one post, even if that means more than one post a day. But I'm going to try and avoid that.)
While this discrepancy may be interesting, once a work is published authorial intent doesn't matter. What a book is and what it means is entirely dependent on the relationship between the text and the reader. Books are read differently by different people. Books very personal, they connect intimately and differently with each and every reader, because the background and experiences of each individual person allow each reading of the work to be different, even if it is read by the same person. Once an author sends a work away, it can never be theirs anymore. It belongs to the readers. There is no "right" or "wrong" to literature, only as long as you can support your argument with valid examples from the text. :)
(As a side note, my lit classes, I keep having thoughts and ideas about writing that I feel merit more discussion than was provided in class and I would like to engage further as a blog topic... By all means, I am encouraging discussion. I'll try to keep track of these ideas as I get them and (hopefully) post at least one a day. I'm also going to try and keep each post centered about one particular topic, rather than touching on several in one post, even if that means more than one post a day. But I'm going to try and avoid that.)
11 January 2011
Why I Write.
Today's the first day of my last undergraduate semester, and to celebrate I figured I should give you all a little more personal insight as to why I chose this path.
As you may or may not know, I spent the first three years of my undergraduate degree working on a Bachelor's of Science degree in Physics (with a Minor in Creative Writing). At about the time I started this blog, I was just about to make the shift to invert those two goals. I was stressed out, miserable. While I do still love physics, and am fully capable of doing the math required for it, I wasn't enjoying what I was studying. I wanted astrophysics, cosmology, astronomy, planetary motion, quasars, star life-cycles, black holes, gravity waves, special and general relativity... not Gauss' Law for coaxial cables with currents running through them, or classical Newtonian mechanics. While, yes, those classes were stepping stones to what I consider the more interesting aspects of physics, I was just done. Honestly, if I kept with the program, I would just be doing more of what I hated, and I didn't want to hate my job.
I thought about what I did enjoy: my creative writing classes. I loved workshop. Critique. Editing. Literary criticism. The best semester I ever had? Mostly English classes.
So I changed my plan. Minor in Physics. Pursuing a bachelor of arts in English - Creative Writing. Through some amazing stroke of luck, changing my major three-fourths of the way through my Junior year didn't affect my graduation date at all. I got into the Departmental Honors program for English, and I've been taking a full load of English classes to finish my degree in time for this May.
Last semester, however, was the worst semester I had experienced. It should have been the best. While I loved my subject matter, I didn't have the time to really devote to my classes. I felt shortchanged. I had to pull at least one all-nighter a week to get everything done in time. I had to stop going to aikido because I just couldn't manage it on top of my regular classes and my baby-graduate-courses. And then I had the week from hell: Boyfriend almost died, a great-uncle suffered a heart attack and had to have triple bypass surgery, and one of my friends was killed by a drunk driver while riding her bike home. Like I said, worst week ever. Instead of being less stressed out, I was even worse. Wasn't this contrary to what I wanted?
Over winter break I had a few moments of reflection, the most poignant of which occurred during a visit to KSC's Visitor Complex with some friends of the family. Surrounded by all of this science and technology, with all of these things that delight and inspire me, I felt a small piece of quiet unrest between my ribs.
Why write? Why is it that I have to write? I could be a physicist, and engineer, a rocket scientist. And I'd be damn good at it, too. But I am drawn to writing. I need to write. Why? Based on science, my experience with it, my love for it, where to I fall? What should I do? Why writing?
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be an astronaut more than anything in the world. That's why I picked Physics as my major. (Although more realistically I should have picked Geology so I could have a legitimate excuse to set foot on alien soil.) All I wanted was to see all of the stars in all of their glory--without the atmosphere to blur their shape and glow. The brilliant spectacle of lights no astronaut ever seems really capable of describing in adequate terms. NASA doesn't send poets into space, or artists of any kind, really. Only people that are useful. Scientists. Educators. Engineers. Test pilots.
Did I make a mistake?
No.
Something is driving me to write. I have no choice. I must to do it.
It's who I am.
As you may or may not know, I spent the first three years of my undergraduate degree working on a Bachelor's of Science degree in Physics (with a Minor in Creative Writing). At about the time I started this blog, I was just about to make the shift to invert those two goals. I was stressed out, miserable. While I do still love physics, and am fully capable of doing the math required for it, I wasn't enjoying what I was studying. I wanted astrophysics, cosmology, astronomy, planetary motion, quasars, star life-cycles, black holes, gravity waves, special and general relativity... not Gauss' Law for coaxial cables with currents running through them, or classical Newtonian mechanics. While, yes, those classes were stepping stones to what I consider the more interesting aspects of physics, I was just done. Honestly, if I kept with the program, I would just be doing more of what I hated, and I didn't want to hate my job.
I thought about what I did enjoy: my creative writing classes. I loved workshop. Critique. Editing. Literary criticism. The best semester I ever had? Mostly English classes.
So I changed my plan. Minor in Physics. Pursuing a bachelor of arts in English - Creative Writing. Through some amazing stroke of luck, changing my major three-fourths of the way through my Junior year didn't affect my graduation date at all. I got into the Departmental Honors program for English, and I've been taking a full load of English classes to finish my degree in time for this May.
Last semester, however, was the worst semester I had experienced. It should have been the best. While I loved my subject matter, I didn't have the time to really devote to my classes. I felt shortchanged. I had to pull at least one all-nighter a week to get everything done in time. I had to stop going to aikido because I just couldn't manage it on top of my regular classes and my baby-graduate-courses. And then I had the week from hell: Boyfriend almost died, a great-uncle suffered a heart attack and had to have triple bypass surgery, and one of my friends was killed by a drunk driver while riding her bike home. Like I said, worst week ever. Instead of being less stressed out, I was even worse. Wasn't this contrary to what I wanted?
Over winter break I had a few moments of reflection, the most poignant of which occurred during a visit to KSC's Visitor Complex with some friends of the family. Surrounded by all of this science and technology, with all of these things that delight and inspire me, I felt a small piece of quiet unrest between my ribs.
Why write? Why is it that I have to write? I could be a physicist, and engineer, a rocket scientist. And I'd be damn good at it, too. But I am drawn to writing. I need to write. Why? Based on science, my experience with it, my love for it, where to I fall? What should I do? Why writing?
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be an astronaut more than anything in the world. That's why I picked Physics as my major. (Although more realistically I should have picked Geology so I could have a legitimate excuse to set foot on alien soil.) All I wanted was to see all of the stars in all of their glory--without the atmosphere to blur their shape and glow. The brilliant spectacle of lights no astronaut ever seems really capable of describing in adequate terms. NASA doesn't send poets into space, or artists of any kind, really. Only people that are useful. Scientists. Educators. Engineers. Test pilots.
Did I make a mistake?
No.
Something is driving me to write. I have no choice. I must to do it.
It's who I am.
09 January 2011
Admissions List is Finalized!
So this is the final cut:
I'm not 100% done with admissions... I still need to request some transcripts and GRE scores and send some of my portfolios away... I also have to put together a massive portfolio for SCAD, which is going to be interesting, but all-in-all, I'm happy with my final list. Iowa and Texas-Austin aren't on the list, which is really just because I didn't get anything productive done over winter break, but there's nothing I can do about those two but wait until next year, if at all.
It seems like loud drunkards partying in my apartment complex have finally quieted down. Time to get some sleep. :) More work in the morning. (Or afternoon.)
- University of Denver Summer Publishing Institute
- Savannah College of Art and Design
- Vanderbilt University
- New Mexico State University
- Georgia State University
- Georgia College & State University
- University of Miami
- University of Florida
- University of Central Florida
- University of South Florida
- Florida State University
- Florida Atlantic University
- Florida International University
I'm not 100% done with admissions... I still need to request some transcripts and GRE scores and send some of my portfolios away... I also have to put together a massive portfolio for SCAD, which is going to be interesting, but all-in-all, I'm happy with my final list. Iowa and Texas-Austin aren't on the list, which is really just because I didn't get anything productive done over winter break, but there's nothing I can do about those two but wait until next year, if at all.
It seems like loud drunkards partying in my apartment complex have finally quieted down. Time to get some sleep. :) More work in the morning. (Or afternoon.)
06 January 2011
Happy New Year!
I did not get nearly as much done over winter break as I wanted to. My room is a wreck, I didn't get any new grad school applications done (and therefore missed out on a lot of deadlines to good schools), I've hardly written at all, and I didn't really read anything either. :/ Shame on me.
I've got a long list of Resolutions to get me back on the right track, and I was going to post them all, but that seemed kind of pointless. Rather than telling you about what I plan to do, I should just notify you all about what I've already done. For example, today I scouted through the out-of-state schools that still have manageable deadlines, and once I finish packing my stuff to go back to school tomorrow, I'll apply. I have reconsidered applying to all three summer Publishing Institutes, and now I may just apply to one or two. I'm leaning towards U of Denver over NYU, but even so, I know I won't be able to attend either unless I have a full ride, and I know they won't give me a full ride. Not for a short program like that. I might save my money and apply to another MFA program instead. I'll be sure to let you all know what I've decided.
Lately, I'd been thinking that I really wanted to teach after finishing my MFA, to be a professor and stay in academia, but I was looking at SCAD: Savannah and their internships for Cartoon Network and Marvel Comics and other awesome places like that.... and you know what? That sounds awesome. I think I'd love to work in industry, at least while I'm still young. I can teach later, when I'm old(er) and want to settle down. And after I've learned some tricks of the trade. :)
I've been working on a few essays on craft and focus for a couple of weeks, hopefully you'll see them soon. Until then, enjoy the rest of your first week of 2011. :)
I've got a long list of Resolutions to get me back on the right track, and I was going to post them all, but that seemed kind of pointless. Rather than telling you about what I plan to do, I should just notify you all about what I've already done. For example, today I scouted through the out-of-state schools that still have manageable deadlines, and once I finish packing my stuff to go back to school tomorrow, I'll apply. I have reconsidered applying to all three summer Publishing Institutes, and now I may just apply to one or two. I'm leaning towards U of Denver over NYU, but even so, I know I won't be able to attend either unless I have a full ride, and I know they won't give me a full ride. Not for a short program like that. I might save my money and apply to another MFA program instead. I'll be sure to let you all know what I've decided.
Lately, I'd been thinking that I really wanted to teach after finishing my MFA, to be a professor and stay in academia, but I was looking at SCAD: Savannah and their internships for Cartoon Network and Marvel Comics and other awesome places like that.... and you know what? That sounds awesome. I think I'd love to work in industry, at least while I'm still young. I can teach later, when I'm old(er) and want to settle down. And after I've learned some tricks of the trade. :)
I've been working on a few essays on craft and focus for a couple of weeks, hopefully you'll see them soon. Until then, enjoy the rest of your first week of 2011. :)
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