Clearly, I must be a masochist.

Guess who just signed up for NaNoWriMo?

Yup. On top of everything else I have to do, I'm going to try an write an extra 50K words within the month of November. That works out to be about 5 pages a day, which really isn't half bad. That's manageable. So I'm going to try it.

Focus is less on quality and more on quantity, so this should really get me to write like madwoman. The thought makes me cringe at first, but I really think it is going to be just what I need to get the kick in the butt to write a lot on a regular basis. And then when I'm done, I'll have plenty of time over winter break to craft it into something that's not complete and total crap. Huzzah!

I suggest you sign up, too! Find me as a Writing Buddy! I'm signed in as Elle Solace.

The Good, the Great, & the Frustrating.

I washed my sheets, my pillows, my clothes, the carpet, the bed, the couch, the ottoman, the rugs, everything. Twice. Plastic-wrapped my bed and box springs. I haven't seen another bug since. So I'm lead to believe it was a lone hitchhiker. I started washing my backpack, bags, everything. I still haven't seen another bug, so I'm hoping this is the end of the bed bug paranoia. I may just wash my sheets again next week. Just to be safe.

In terms of academia, a lot has been going on. Reading books, analyzing them, doing small imitation exercises, working on a mini conference paper presentation; constructing syllabi and lesson plans; working on my "thesis." I use quotations because I still have no idea what I'm doing, just two good ideas that I may or may not follow through to completion. I get the first workshopped next week; the next is Visual Storytelling, so I'm getting started now so drawing it doesn't take over my life later. I'm very excited about my classes and everything I'm learning. I am absolutely loving this.

As for work, you could hardly call it that. The main thing is remembering to grade on time, otherwise it piles up and gets forgotten. As the weeks progress I've become a harsher and harsher grader; my students don't necessarily appreciate that, but by the fourth week of class, if the assignment says 100-200 words and you give me 24, that's not going to fly. Simple as that. My interns are all doing great; the Winter 2010 issue of The Florida Review is finally out (huzzah!) and Summer 2011 should be out soon, too. :] I also got word that I may be able to interview a certain poet-memoirist with a movie adaptation coming out next year... very exciting! Work on the Reading Series I'm helping put together is going slow and steady; just trying to send out the Press Release and get readers for the event!

I've been trying to work on stuff on the side for submissions... There are so many places to submit, and I have nothing finished to sumbit! I'm really regretting not using the summer to really work on more writing. :/ But it's okay, I will recover. I even got invited to do a reading in December, but more on that as it approaches.

It's not all sunshine and happiness and rainbows, though.

Immersing myself in the MFA program has been great for personal and professional development, but it is putting a bit of strain on some, most, of my relationships. (I wrote a big long paragraph here, and then cut it because it ended up just being a rant.)

And a random note about ZAT: I've been at it again, slowly. Something to keep me sane. I'm missing Aikido really badly, though. I'm not sure how much longer I can go without it.

Being productive! Sorta.

So work and needing sleep have been keeping me from keeping you up to date on the awesome things going on in my life.

A week or so ago I filled out my paperwork for my GTA position and got to meet my director for graduate school. We talked about my direction and what I was looking forward to (everything!), and I am incredibly excited. I'll get my own desk and keys to important rooms, and I actually get to TEACH. I won't have a classroom all to myself, but I will be a part of the classroom environment, and I will get to impart knowledge, which I am super excited about. I just need to complete my online training.

I got to walk around campus and got my ID card, and it was all rather bizarre. I feel kind of like a traitor, or a spy, or something. Not familiar. With campus or with my new position there. But on the bright side, the building that will serve as my new home on campus is right next to the bookstore. :) Even if it is kind of old and falling apart. (I can live with that.)

After I got back from my trip, one of Boyfriend's good friends came to the area to celebrate his birthday. We had lunch with him Downtown one day, and then the next we went to the Dali museum, which is absolutely phenomenal. Seeing the Masterworks in person (I'd only studied them in books... seeing them in person in all of their glory is just humbling) and having my nose half an inch from the glass on some of his most famous paintings (The Degradation of the Persistence of Memory, sister to the famous melting clocks painting, for instance) is incredible. Whatever glass they use is the coolest thing ever. I had no idea there was glass between the painting and I, even when I looked for it. It is only at the most extreme angles can you see the light reflecting off of the paintings. It feels like the painting is right there. It's an intimate connection. I'm just astounded at the level of detail involved in the oils; in everything, really. So much for such small paintings. Lots of themes as his work evolved over time. I'm going to have to go back to the museum and spend more time there; I don't feel like I gave each of the paintings enough time and energy. He really was brilliant. Absurd, yes, but definitely brilliant and talented in a way you can't imagine until you see everything in person. I've been putting off going to the museum for years, and now I'm so sad I did. I missed out.

I've been working on planning a dive trip for next week, and I've been reading. I just finished Terry Goodkind's Law of Nines last night, which has been on my to-read list for years. Goodkind used to be one of my favorite authors in high school, but I wasn't terribly impressed with this last work. I found it largely predictable and anticlimactic, which is kind of depressing. I don't know if it's because my taste in literature has evolved, or if he's not as strong of a writer in thrillers as he was in fantasy.

And writing. I should be doing that, and I keep thinking, and i keep starting, but I guess since I don't really don't have a dedicated time of the day to just sit and write, nothing is getting done. :/ Similar to my resolve to continue ZAT. My inconsistent work schedule isn't helping, but at this point that's just an excuse. And speaking of ZAT, Boyfriend and I are about to go climb stairs on a parking garage, because I absolutely abhor stairs.

That logic makes sense. I promise.

Work work work

So most of my time lately has been spent working. The rest? Sleeping. Eating happens too. And in the in-between, I think about what I should be doing. Reading, writing, aikido.

I read David Small's Stitches in one sitting (on the floor of a bookstore) a few weeks ago, and it was phenomenal. I still can't seem to finish Nano; I may have to give up on it, which is sad, but I can't do it. I downloaded 58 books for my Kindle; I started reading some Lovecraft, but I wasn't in the mood; moved to Verne, wasn't much better. :/ In the mood for more contemporary work, so I may go ahead and order the recommended background reading books for my contemporary nonfiction class, and get started with that.

I'd hate to say I'm "stuck" with writing, because there is no such thing as "being stuck".... but I don't know. I haven't really been in the mood to do anything, which is really uncharacteristic of me. I'm always GO-GO-GO-GO-GO-GO-GO. And now I'm slipping on even my greatest passions. :/ I'm not depressed. Perhaps just lazy. I can't determine if it is justified or not.... but I need to just DO stuff.

Whenever I have to be at work, it kind of kills my motivation for the day. I think I should wake up early and go to the gym, or go when I get out of work, but neither of those things happen. I know I really just need to kick myself in the butt. (And it has occurred to me that this is not the first time I've complained about this... which is not helping my pathetic case.)

The summer is slowly slipping away... I need to make the most of it. :)

What I haven't been doing.

Apparently, the only discernible skill my new Bachelor's Degree has given me is the ability to wake up early. Every day. Without an alarm. Without fail.

This is useful for work. Normally I have to be in around 9am. I set my alarm for 7:45. But right at 7am, BING! I'm awake. And for half a minute I think about how I should roll out of bed and walk to the little gym in the clubhouse and do something productive for half an hour before work. So I can be energized and maybe work off the extra fluff I've accumulated over the past few weeks. But I never seem to get past the thinking part; I just fall back asleep, and then get ready for work.

Work happens to be a four minute drive away. Less if I don't hit the single stoplight between my apartment and the staff parking lot. I'd rollerblade to work, but there's no where to put my blades while I'm working. The lockers are too small. :( So I'm back home for the weekend, and I'm going to try to steal my bike back. That way I can save on gas money, too. :)

As for why I'm not working this weekend? I asked for it off to go to an Aikido Seminar that my sensei is teaching. But I haven't been to an aikido class in... months? Months. That's just embarrassing. I want to go, but at the same time, I'm slightly apprehensive. It's not just this pathetic laziness that's taking over my life, it's just that it's an ukemi seminar. And my ukemi sucks. That's probably enough reason for me to go, but I'm also absolutely broke. Dead broke. Yes I have a job, but I haven't even gotten my first paycheck yet, and I still have to pay for rent and groceries. :/ So it looks like my choices are: food? or seminar? -sigh-

I need to start going back to aikido. I deliberately made my work schedule so that I could still make it to class Monday and Wednesday nights. I intended on going to class this past week. But after work I just crashed. Took a great big nap, had dinner, and went to sleep for the night. Wake up in the morning, go to work. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I need to stop making excuses. Aikido and working out aren't the only things I haven't been doing. I need to be WRITING.

Now, a big part of writing, is reading. And gold star for me, I've actually been doing that. I recently finished Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters, and I'm currently working on Ed Regis' Nano. Once I finish catching up on books in my personal library, I'm going to start working on the recommended background reading for one of my grad school classes. My conservative goal is two books a week, so I need to step up my game a little. I'm going to make a rule for myself, that if I want to read, I need to be doing something else at the same time. Like spending some time on an elliptical trainer. Multitasking.

But reading isn't everything. I'm going to start working on an MFA in Creative Writing, for heaven's sake, and I need to actually WRITE in order to get my degree!

I have a lot of half-started projects, ideas in their infancy, and almost-done essays that just need a bit of tweaking. But I need to be writing. All the time. Working on something. I need something to show for this summer. So I need to find time to write. Every day, at the same time. I'm not quite sure how this is going to work yet, but maybe I'll link it to starting a Dream Journal again. After all, all my best ideas come from my dreams.

So now I need to go out and DO something! And I hope you all DO something, too! And enjoy your weekend. :)

--EDIT!--

OH OH OH. Before I forget!! I got my grades for my final semester: STRAIGHT A's. (YAY!)

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.

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.