Submit! Submit! Submit!

That exactly what I haven't been doing lately. I've been so caught up in working on graduate school applications and my thesis and schoolwork for my last semester of college, that I haven't been working on any other creative writing, and therefore haven't been submitting any new work! I need to submiiiiiit. (And so do you!)

I just submitted an old piece of flash fiction to the annual Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest (due tomorrow), and I am totally planning on submitting to the New York Times Modern Love Essay Contest (due at the end of next month). There are also two (three?) awards from the university I want to submit to due this Friday... so that's an extra essay, and a story or two... and then I have a project due this week, and I have to finish three novels (that I am waaaay behind on) and drawing my thesis takes like a million years for just a few frames and asdkfjsldkfskjflsd. Have I mentioned that I am also suffering from senioritus? :( I can't lose steam now! Almost done, almost done...

[sorry about the rambling. speaking of rambling, apparently that's a valid modern/contemporary technique... which embitters me because I would have loved to read my stream-of-consciousness journal posts from middle school (back when i was an original angsty emo/goth kid... ha) but I had to delete them so they're all gone... :( owell.]

I still haven't heard from any more graduate schools or submissions, but I did get a phone call on Friday from someone who found my resume on the university's Career Connections website (I totally forgot I uploaded my resume there) and wanted to interview me for a position as an intern editing and publishing biweekly & monthly newsletters. Pretty awesome, right? Except I looked up the company, and it appears to be a totally sketch pyramid scheme. :/ Even if it was a paid internship... I don't think I'm interested. (Not that I have time, anyways.)

But, back to work. (Oh, and I'm absolutely loving the weather in Florida. I did my homework on the beach today. In a bikini. With SPF 15. And didn't get burnt. Yay!)

SCAD.

The last graduate school application that I sent out was for the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). It was kind of a last-minute decision to apply there, as it wasn't on my original list of schools, and also because the application writing sample was daunting.


That's about a solid inch of paper.
The portfolio included up to two examples of several different styles of writing, including:

Nonfiction

• Personal Essay (1, my first thesis)
  
• Memoir (1)
  
• Promotional Writing (2: promotional email, reference letter)
  
• Writing for the Web (1, blog post)
  
• Book Review (1)
  
• Literary Criticism (2: Shakespeare, adaptations)
  
• Scholarly Essay (2: Physics term papers: Metamaterials, Computational Sympletic Integration)
  
• Business Document (1, Engineering paper on Bridges)
  
• Laboratory Report (2: chemistry 1, intermediate physics)
  

Fiction

• Graphic Fiction (1, the graphic novel I spoke about before. (not my second thesis, as it still isn't complete))
  
• Speech (1, monologue about healthcare systems engineering)
  
• Flash Fiction (1, not the one that was published in Sphere)
  
• Novel Chapter (1)
  

I think the total number of pages was 174, or something to that extent. The only guidelines given for the portfolio was to submit no more than 2 works in each genre, and that at least six types of nonfiction writing needed to be represented. I figured I'd go for more than less (since there was no limit for length). I basically combed through everything I wrote in the last four years and picked out what I considered was an exemplary example of the work I am capable of. I think I made up genres in the process, just so that I could include more pieces of work.

Anyways, the work definitely paid off. Friday afternoon I got an email from SCAD congratulating me on my admission, as well as the 5-digit scholarship I was awarded. :) My mom called me yesterday to tell me I had received a package from the school, which is (what I'm assuming to be) all of the admission materials I'll need. I'll have to wait until spring break to pick it up from home, which is fine, considering that I still want to wait and hear back from the rest of the schools before I make my final decision. But I might see if I can get it sooner, because I'm curious to find out what's in it.

I am incredibly relieved that I now have a place that can potentially be my home for the next 3 years, and that can lead to an impressive industry job. One of my former professors (that wrote letters of recommendation for me) told me it should probably be my top choice, since it's an excellent school. I'm very excited, and I'll probably see if I can drive up to visit sometime during spring break. :]

I'll be sure to keep you all updated... I hope you are having a good February!

First Responses

So, I've heard back from two schools.

USF rejected me, based on getting a lot of strong applications and I just didn't make the cut. (I honestly didn't think I would get in, but hey, I tried.)

University of Denver Publishing Institute sent me this letter:

"Dear Leslie,

Congratulations! We are pleased to tell you that the Admission Committee has granted you early acceptance based on your strong credentials..."

YAY!! I got in somewhere!

Now I need to come up with the money to pay for it. :/

The Waiting Game

Shame on me, but I still haven't notified the schools that I applied to of my recent publication. I have a nice spiffy letter drafted, I just haven't emailed it yet. I keep trying to get ahead on my homework for classes so that I can dedicate large portions of time to my thesis.

I still haven't done too much on the thesis, and I realize that I seriously just need to get started and write write write. My thesis director is expecting a draft on Thursday, and so far, I really don't have much to show him. Hopefully in two-days' time I can turn that around.

Back to grad schools... Everything is in, and now its just up to waiting for some sort of response. It'll be at least a month before I hear anything. Hopefully at least one school lets me in.

Publication!

My publication is up!

It appears in the Winter 2011 (Issue #5) of Sphere Literary Magazine: International Journal of Student Writing. The theme for the issue is "Morning Violence."

I find it rather fitting.

Click here to read it. :)
<3

Long vs. Short

So my thesis director posted a link to an essay regarding the absence of the novel in academia. It's a brilliant essay and I highly suggest you read it.

I personally have always had issues with keeping my writing short. I like to ramble. And I like to make things complicated. I just add layer upon layer and before I know it, I'm way beyond the scope of wrapping things up quickly. I know I'm good at creating conflict, I just haven't figured out how to create a nice happy resolution at the end, where the reader feels like all of their questions have been answered. But as a contemporary writer, do I even have to provide that service for my readers? I don't want to piss them off too much; then they'll never read any more of my work. But this is an issue I haven't really been able to work on in my creative writing classes because all we ever workshop is short stories or first chapters. :/ Even in my first thesis, I know my ending was weak. It was an extended personal essay, a string of anecdotes put together to analyze FIRST robotics as a religion, and in the end, it all kind of fell apart. It wasn't the best ending. I knew it. My director knew it. But still, it stands. :/ I'm still not happy with it, and I find that unacceptable. But rather than trying to beat that work to death and fix it, I'd much prefer to work on something new.

For this new thesis I'm working on, I already have kind of an idea of how I want to end it. End with the beginning. Circular kind of thing. It sounds lame when I reread that, but it makes more sense put into context. I know I'm being vague, and I'm sorry. I'm still trying to figure it out. But I want to try and like all parts of my life in this endeavor. Science Fiction. Creative Nonfiction. Writing. Science. Math. Music. Drama. Art. I'm going to try and make this work, but I need to make sure I don't bite off more than I can chew. I don't have a lot of time to get this finished, and since it's going to be a graphic novel, I really need a lot of time for the art part. It's sooo time consuming.

In both theses, there is a common strand. Rather than being long single pieces of work, they are collections of shorter works strung together in a way that makes sense. So maybe all of this training in writing short stories is actually rubbing off. The common string in the first one was a definition of religion, in which each bullet point was a segment I discussed in my anecdote. In the second one, I don't really have a common string. I have a theory that binds them together, but I don't have my story yet. The human aspect. The universality of it all.

I'm working on it. But I don't have much time.


In other news, the website that is supposed to be publishing my work has been down for about a week. :( Hopefully everything is okay, and they're just having mild technical difficulties.

Oh, I turned 22 last Thursday. I didn't really do anything exciting, just painted pottery with a few friends, and the day after, my mom came by and took me out for dinner and strawberry shortcake. One of my friends in aikido got me a cake (which we all shared after class yesterday), and Sensei was reminded that in all my 4 years at this dojo, I have still never had to do my Birthday Breakfalls. (I am expecting them tomorrow, and I am not excited about them.)

For those of you who remember Zombie Apocalypse Training, I've kinda started again. Besides going to aikido on a more or less regular basis, I've also been to the gym twice this week (going to try for at least 4x a week) to work on cardio, because my cardio sucks. So far so good, though. No passing out or anything. Hopefully by the summer I'll be able to graduate to a treadmill from the elliptical, and actually work on running. We'll see.