MFA Update

Or perhaps lack of update would be better.

People (not me) went to UNH's admitted student day. They've reported back. Said only glowing wonderful things. Got back frank but praiseworthy emails from the advisor-type-woman whom UNH told me to contact.

Was supposed to call WMU today but by the time I got around to it, it was already after normal business hours so I wasn't too surprised when it went to voicemail. Gotta look into that because the Poets&Writer's Speak Easy (yes I've caved and started reading there) says that they're telling waitlisted people what their number on the waitlist is.

Not that knowing a mere number really does much either way for me. Knowing the number doesn't mean that I'll get and acceptance even if I'm #1 nor does it mean that as #10 I will not for certain get an offer. The fact of the matter is that until I get a definite 'yes' or 'no' there can be no plan making. I can't sculpt my life around a maybe. But I can let them know that I remain interested.

I'm starting to remind myself of those women who sit around waiting, waiting, waiting on their boyfriends to get a clue and give 'em a ring.

I hate those women.

But at least with this I know that in a couple of months I will have an answer. I'll have a bride-groom one way or the other.

New Hampshire sounds amazing as a physical location. Mountains, forests, snow, ocean. Quaint college town where the students think they run things and cross the street wherever they want because the pedestrian is invincible. But it's so damn far away. And the farther away you go the greater your start up cost is. There won't be any running back home because I forgot something.

Not that I'm the kind of person who has always lived close by my parents and used them as a convenience store. I've lived 5-6 hours from home during school so I know that if I forgot something I needed to find it on my own. But it's a big move. Not distance-wise but stuff-wise. Dad seems to think that he has some ideas on how to make it happen physically. I'll let him worry about that for now.

For the moment, I find I have enough pointless worry.

I can't do much to influence the school situation right now. I haven't written anything (fiction) in a little less than a week. And I'm freaking out a little too much to generate any sort of well formed ideas. Then again the mindlessness of my new job helps to numb my brain and make it suitable only for reality TV viewing. Just last night did I realize that the guy I'd been watching skanks, dancers, and rock chick groupies slobber after and fight over was once the lead singer of Poison. I just liked the outrageous train wreck of it all. It's disgusting. All of it. And yet, I watch, because I'm in a bout of writing-insomnia.

It's not writer's block. Mostly it's not because I don't believe in writer's block. I think it's all in your head. And I'm coming up with ideas and notions for stories, letting the facts and pieces bubble up to me and saving them for when I have a clearer picture to write. But still there's nothing to show for that thinking process save post-its and napkins that I've scribbled notes on. And I want something I can skin my teeth into and feel good about.

Maybe the April version of NaNoWriMo (called April Fools) will be helpful. Although I doubt it will over much, as I'm having trouble dealing with the intensity of the genre overload that goes on at that site.

Ad of the Week

This week it's more than an ad, it's an ad campaign.

The campaign comes from Finland and is for the VR Train system. The video begins with some background about the monuments (second video posted here). Namely, it states that stone men from the front of the train station were used in commercials like this:

It's all in Finish but I think it follows pretty easily that it is about the history and progress of the train system and the stone men. Debatable is whether or not the stone men are supposed to be more child-like at the beginning of the progress.

This one is the one that's making a splash in the world of advertising. As in ad companies are taking note of it in places other than Finland. It's in several languages but subtitled.



Being intrigued, I kept looking for more of these commercials.

I found the campy, kidsy one called "Hands Free" which is easy to grasp the concept of as there's no talking.


And then one of the funniest: the boy band parody.


And then, because I know everyone would love to have a heart to heart with a reindeer ...


And, okay I don't speak Finnish so I've got no clue what the Train Watching one is about except that I know coffee when I see it.


I used to think the Geico Gecko was cool, but he's getting old. These guys might just be my new favorites.

Ayo Techonology

I have a wonderful new phone! It has internet! It takes pictures! I can get weather and email! It can function as a mp3 player!

So, with an unheard of stroke of brilliance for such an early hour, I took pictures while driving to work this morning (literally driving, thank god I didn't rear end the Toyota in front of me) of the gorgeous arbor of snow coated trees reaching across the road. And now the little shit phone won't give up the damn photos to my computer. After not finding an easy transfer option in the photo directory and then two brilliant thoughts I'm neither able to open it as another drive on my computer, nor have I been successful at emailing it to myself using the phone.

I could read the book that came with the phone. But my threshold is two go rounds. At this point I take a breather. Otherwise the phone will meet with an untimely end courtesy of the wall acting upon it as a means of equal and opposite force.

... ayo I'm tired of using technology ...

This means you have no snow pictures today, even though we got another three inches last night. But it melted and got heavy so it's off most of the trees by now. When I dusted my car in the morning I didn't dust the roof off. So when I walked out at noon the snow had slid from the roof to the wind shield. The entire wind shield and only the wind shield was covered with snow. The rest of the car was clean. Like someone had packed only over the front window! I laughed aloud when I saw it.

Today was the UNH MFA accepted student day. Alas, I did not go. But I am eagerly awaiting stories from the people who did go.

Subbing

Fact: to sub in a Michigan public school you only need 90 credit hours of college (any college so long as you pass) and a clear criminal background.

You don't even have to interview, have a teacher certification, or do anything to prove competency except fill out 30 pages of paper with the help of a trained professional.

So I'm in.

I signed on as a sub-teacher/sub-secretary and now I'm working in the book depository of a high school. It gets two thumbs up.

Thumbs down to the woman who was there before me (now on maternity leave). She must have done absolutely nothing while she was there. The place is sooo easy to keep up so why were there huge backlogs of unshelved books and books in need of repair when I got there? No clue. Particularly seeing as I've taken care of all the daily stuff that's come up and made a huge dent in her backwork. Anyway.

Thumbs up for not being in an office that has to deal with parents. Trust me, when it comes to high school, parents are more of a pain than a help unless they volunteer their time. They're not there enough to know what goes on but they're constantly "concerned."

And thumbs up for there being some hot men walking around that building. No, I'm not going pedophile here, I'm talking about adult males employed by the school. This is the first time I've been in a "work place" and seen that many good looking young(er) guys. Normally the young ones are awkward and ugly and the good looking ones are too old.

N. B. Student-teachers look so young. And most of them look so scared.

Why are you so young and scared? This is just a high school. These are just suburban teenagers. Live in Chicago's South Loop for a few months and these kids won't seem scary at all.

The exception to the scared bit are the student-teachers that teach specialty science classes. The guy who's the student teacher for Physical-Science is pretty confident. Possibly because it's an accelerated class where the teacher has been at it for 20 years in only that subject with a reputation for being tough. The student teacher benefits by proxy.

When I spent a day proctoring a test with the student-teachers and other staff, the student-teachers seem to seek me out. Like I was part of the club. I'm obviously not middle aged, and they know by now that I'm not part of the full time permanent staff. They think I'm part of their world. That I'm in their box somehow. I don't think of myself this way. Possibly because this is the high school I graduated from. I've been a student there but never a student-teacher. Possibly because I'm already out of college, and this city doesn't phase me after Chicago. Probably it's because I don't feel as scared as they look.

Flash Fiction: The Bed We've Made

Flash fiction, short shorts, or short-short fiction are all what they sound like: small, complete fiction stories told as briefly as possible. Length varies depending on whom you're talking to and what contest you're entering. The Southeast Review dubs it as any piece of fiction 500 words or shorter for their World's Best Short Short Story Contest (WBSSSC). Glimmer Train states for their Very Short Fiction Award that it's anything less than 3,000 words but they note that they don't think anyone can write a good story in less than 500. Not that I'm trying to start a Lit Mag cat fight.

Fight! Fight!

Ahem. Many of my short shorts start off as poems that has awkward childhoods. They knew they weren't really supposed to be poems but they were born to parents that were poems and in between poem children and had to grow up in order to find out their place in the world was among fiction, though they'll always love their foster family. (Was that last little tid bit in the Ugly Ducking story? I can't recall. Probably just my modern therapy adding on information.)

Ad of the Week

This one is for Paralith and her lab rats.



Up Next: Flash Fiction

Officially ...

... it's spring: (Photo taken 3/21/08 @ 3:30 pm)

... and I'm on the waitlist:

It's good to get the first snow storm of the spring season out of the way. And for once I'm not being sarcastic. It's a decent storm but without any ice which is always good.

Also good news is that Western Michigan has let me know something at all. They also told me that should I move up to be "eligible for a funded position" they would contact me. Exciting! Funded position! Oo the thought! Because right now I'd go to Western with out the funding as I qualify as an in-state resident. And I think I should get some sort of reward from this state for putting up with snow in the spring time. Okay, now I'm being sarcastic again.
Up Next: Ad of the Week

Oh, Spring, that's right

Today is officially the first day of Spring. I wouldn't have remembered if it wasn't for the image that greeted me when I went to Google this morning. Awww. Isn't that cute?

And look, the weather even seemed to cooperate for this festive occasion! Yes, indeed, that is blue sky and fluffy little white clouds! I should go stalk the water tower and see if they match today or not.

But don't get too excited. Tomorrow's forecast? 35 degrees, snow, and a Winter Storm Watch!

"SNOW IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES DURING THE LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING HOURS. TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATION OF 5 TO 8 INCHES IS POSSIBLE BETWEEN ABOUT 2 PM FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND 4 AM LATE FRIDAY NIGHT BEFORE TAPERING OFF AND ENDING BY SUNRISE SATURDAY MORNING."

Happy Spring!

Thanks for that weather update, Jim. Now back to local news.

In the mail today -- Bam! -- rejection letter. Thank you Notre Dame for making me wait this long! Paralith and I got into a discussion a while ago about the waiting for grad school responses and getting only silence when others where getting acceptances and rejections. She stated, aptly, that by this point at least we had made it beyond the first or second round of rejections. Which I agree with.

I have a feeling that I was on the second half of the ND wait list. Maybe even the first half. They started notifying accepted applicants more than a month ago so I held out fairly long. But as reality TV has taught us, putting in a good show and a tough fight may make you a fan favorite, it won't get you the prize money at the end. So long to my last chance to attend my father's Alma Mater. And my uncle's Alma Mater. It's where my dad got his graduate degree, where I was born and baptized and where my uncle played football in the tradition that my grandfather so loved. And it was the only thing that could have convinced me to move back to Indiana right now. My mother was ticked that I didn't name drop more on my application, as that football playing uncle (1970s if you follow ND football) is her brother.

My favorite part of the ND rejection is when they state "it's not you, it's the other candidates."

It reads "this decision should not be viewed as an evaluation of your acceptability as a graduate student, by rather as an indication of the degree of competition in your department."

Which made me feel really good until I thought about it. Translated into break up speak it would read "It's not that you're ugly, it's that this other chick is waaaay hotter." And I'd slap a guy for that.

I know, I know. Those three required visits to the therapist were obviously not effective else I wouldn't be having the urge to slap someone again. But now that no action has been brought against me I'd like to say that the bastard more than deserved it and most people agree.

Dear Indiana friends: this means I will not be moving back to you. Face it, you're not that shocked.

I have one school left to hear from: Western Michigan.

I refuse to think about anything arriving other than a skinny envelope with a rejection letter. Then again all I've ever gotten are skinny envelopes even for acceptances. As soon as I start thinking about what it would be like to attend a school, what I would say when I got the call, where I would apartment hunt, I inevitably get some piece of information that nixes all that creative wondering. Either a flat rejection or a piece of financial information that makes me realize some hard truths of the situation.

I'm not upset by the thought of needing a back door (apply to one program and switch) to get to do what I want to do. If I thought "sleeper program" sounded intriguing then "back door" sounds like I'm being just as crafty. To be honest, I don't need the degree to write. I'm writing now. I need the degree to teach, because I'd prefer not to temp for the rest of my natural life. So who cares how I get it or where i get it from so long as I get my writing done and get it accepted someplace? [N.B. we should be hearing acceptance/rejection of fiction pieces from the last round of send outs March 28 - early June. Contest (2 dif contests) winners announced in "late Spring."]

There's one more option after this last school though. A back door, so to speak, that could have beautiful product if I follow through with it. Especially for my web followers as it is a hybrid program that embraces tech and the visual art merged with writing. We will see on that score as I've not yet applied. However it's a program I know I could afford.

Which begs the question, what will the future of cutting edge writing look like? We're moving toward the ebook (I'll admit that I've read a few but I still love the smell of a new book in my hands) but no one has really explored the possibilities of the ebook. How much could be done with that form?

Clarke Passes Away

Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90.

I think this is my favorite bit

He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

Gotta love those Sci-Fi authors, the great imagineers of the future.

Book Rec

I don't believe I ever commented on Elizabeth Berg's guide to writing Escaping Into the Open: The Art of Writing True. It's a really pompous title for a really lovely book.

Instead of tackling the tiny bits and pieces, the mechanics of writing like Gardner does, she focuses on life as a writer and makes this the niche that her book fills. Berg tells of how she balanced (or didn't balance) life while freelancing for magazines, her transition to fiction, short fiction and novels, how to find a writing group, how to approach a relationship with an agent, how to deal with jealous friends and jealousy in yourself, which of course springs from her experience with success and seeing friends become successful at a faster pace than yourself. And she does all this while raising kids and keeping her husband from sending a search party out to find his missing wife.

I give it my stamp of approval. It serves a purpose no other writing book I've found has.

Speaking of purposes, I'm currently rereading tidbits from Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, to help me with my sanity and will to move forward.

Question from Notes on Craft

After the post "Notes on Craft: Plot-driven vs. Character-driven" Paralith asks:

What would you call a story that more or less rests on a certain environment? For example I read this sci fi last weekend which had fairly cliche characters and plot, but was based in the crazy universe where gravity is a billion times stronger than it is here and the people basically live in a cloud of air in space that's attracted to a black hole.

I'm just curious if you have a term for that.

Awful.

But if we're thinking of sticking to the naming construct that's already been established I'd call it "idea-driven."

As a means of producing writing the style of idea-driven writing turns out more bad stories than any other method. People who start off saying "I'm going to write a book about loneliness, or love, or fear, or the depravity of the human spirit rarely ever end up with an interesting story. And that would be because a story is, first and foremost a story. It is a series of events (or just one event) involving people.

Event+people.

Nowhere in that equation is there room for an abstract idea.

But what about all those abstract ideas that you learned in high school English? What about all those times when people say things like "it's really a novel about loneliness"?

Those are concepts applied to the book after it's been written by English teachers and critics. Well-meaning English teachers and critics, but not the writer.

There was a great article in The Writer magazine that also appeared in part on the Glimmer Train website a few months ago addressed to young writers, particularly the naive MFA candidate about precisely this. The writer said he'd been teaching in college programs for two decades and the most common blunders students made, no matter how wonderful their prose, was that they would write stories about observation that could easily be titled something like "Things I Saw While Driving in My Car" or they set off to write about abstracted ideas. They wanted to write about war, or patriotism, or the suffering of the [insert group here] instead of telling a story.

The idea-driven story usually becomes boring because nothing happens in it, the characters become 2-dimensional because they're secondary to the idea. The writer often tries to keep the characters 2-dimensional because if they're too life-like they might steal the show instead of bending to the will of his idea. At worst, the story becomes preachy.

I frequently bitch about the writing of an ex-bf of mine, but he's given me such great examples of what not to do that I cannot but help use his sorry butt to illustrate my points! This ex-bf told me he was writing a novel.

Really? What about?
Existentialism.
Oh. But what's it about?
Existentialism.
But what happens? Who are the characters?
It's this guy and he makes these realizations about life.
...And that was all he'd tell me.

You can't set out to make someone realize they believe in an existential view of their life. Just like a therapist doesn't sit you down to make you realize you have mommy issues. You sit with the therapist and you talk. You tell her about what you're doing now, how you feel about that, you tell her about the past and perhaps through all these things strung together you realize you have been letting people cow you your entire life and it had nothing to do with your mother. The ex didn't know anything about his character except that he was going to inflict a philosophy on him and call it a novel.

Some of you may be shaking your head at me, and thinking that I'm demeaning the greatness of the novel into some busker's trade, but the truth is that when you approach life starting with abstract ideas it's called philosophy. If you read Plato's Cave it's essentially a yarn that Plato spins out in the name of describing how he sees the world. As an idea it holds together; as a story, it's underwhelming.

Not to hate on English teachers -- they were some of my favorite teachers all through school -- but I have a friend from college who is now teaching high school English and I think it might have gone to her brain, kinda like working at a glue factory.

She told me she wanted to write this short story but needed help with the middle. She had a smash bang finish all geared up that would fulfill a second layer of meaning but she was struggling to incorporate all four layers of allegory into it.

WOAH! Back up the soul train!

You cannot consciously write the four layers of allegory. I don't even remember what all of them are! It just sort of happens. You make the story, you go back. You read for continuity and for clumsy language. Then you read again for metaphor. Are there too many? Can I strengthen one to make it repeat and become a theme? Then you read it again and if it strums inside of you, if you strike it and it vibrates in a pleasant way like a well tuned guitar then it's done. The other two layers of allegory can be constructed by English teachers later on, for now, I've done my job by making it strum.

Need to get my head on straight

I'm finding it overwhelming to write.

The act of writing -- more precisely, the act of sitting down to start writing -- seems to make my head want to explode.

There are a million things I know I should be doing right now. And just as soon as I get one done (e.g. my taxes) it turns around and bites me (I can't file my state taxes online so now there's more work). The list is starting to take a noticeable bite out of me, and a devastating bite out of my word count.

I don't have any easily accomplishable goals at the moment and therefore it feels like I'm accomplishing nothing on days when I do write. And on days when I don't write I know I am accomplishing nothing. And then I sit here and feel like my skull is going to crack open ... which could be a headache coming on and have nothing to do with my mental anguish.

Tomorrow I will force my word count goal for my JanNo remains. The JanNo challenge word goal was reached, however the novel is in need of patching as well as general repair to make it hold water.

Ad of the Week

City Lights:


I really like this play on light stuff.

Records:


Up Next: Questions Answered

Is this Spring?

On Monday I was walking from a parking lot to an office and was startled by a dozen robins flitting across the sidewalk from tree to tree. At least a dozen, maybe more. I smiled at them -- how can you not like robins? -- but I had to wonder at their sanity. If they were the harbingers of Spring, bellwethers of warm temps, what were this many of them doing here so early?

That was Monday.

Today, it is currently 55 degrees outside.

Maybe robins simply abhor the practice of being fashionably late.

Up Next: Ad of the Week, Picture

Decision Making

I've been comparing programs for the two schools that I've been accepted to. Among UNH's many draws is the fact that it's considered a "sleeper program." These under the radar programs are identified as a very good MFA that is doing great things but for whatever reason isn't getting the hordes of applicants progams like Michigan do.

I like the sound of "sleeper program" -- it sound stealth-like. Like I planned this. Like I am, in turn, stealthy.

UW-Milwaukee has a Ph.D. track. Yes, I'm interested in eventually going the Ph.D. path, but the program as a whole is not as impressive.

Then there are my friends from undergrad putting in their two-cents about place and location. Wtfisjohn (whom had previously spouted out his love for Milwaukee) gave me a hands down vote for New Hampshire. "You've lived in Chicago," he told me, "Milwaukee is just Chicago's German neighborhood. Go someplace new."

Then there was my girl friend's note:

Congrats [Speak Coffee]!!!!

Now. let's think about this rationally. Which place would be better for me to visit? Milwaukee is a fun place from what I hear, but NH sounds so much classier. I'm def thinking a visit to New England fall in NH sounds much better than let's drink some Miller Light, eh? Regardless, I know I'll be visiting a happier [Speak Coffee] than I would have just a few miles down the road at [law school].

So yep. congrats on taking the big plunge, working hard on those apps, and for having a choice about where to go!

Taggie7 asked a good question: would I still consider going if I wasn't funded? BTW Ms. Taggie7 has also been admitted to UNH fiction program. No, I don't know her, I found her on the MFAblog - isn't the internet lovely? I've also found someone by the name of Robert on that blog who was also admitted into the same program but he does not appear to blog, (I guess we can't all be perfect). Thanks to them I now know that it would appear that no one else got word of funding in their letters either. And the new magic word on the streets is that funding decisions have yet to finish their path through the lovely beauracracy that is college administration.

In answer to her question, funding will be a very important part of my decision. I desperately want this MFA. Then again I desperately want a TA position, for the fact that it is teaching experience as much as it is a paying job.

If I don't get funding from any school my next few moves will require some serious meditation. Not contemplation, but meditation. Zen-like moments to center and structure my life. Not because I'm into new age living techniques, but because I would need something to help me cope with life in debt, and meditation is cheaper than alcohol ... even Miller Light.

Notes on Craft: Plot-driven vs. character-driven writing

Because you asked, today's post is Notes on Craft and then some "seasonal" photography.

Notes on Craft: plot-driven v. character-driven writing

I am a believer in the school of character-driven vs. plot-driven. Not everyone believes there is a distinction in how writers work, I however firmly subscribe to this church. They have a great facility after all.

What's Plot-driven? Mystery writers are the easiest illustration of plot-driven writing. The mystery writer starts with a dead body. And many times the writer knows who killed him before she starts writing. Then she schedules twists and turns, red herrings and important revelations into the structure of her novel in order to reveal the killer to her reader. Without this plot there is no murder-mystery. However intriguing a writer may make her novel of this genre, she will remain heavily dependent on the structure of her plot.

What's Character-driven? It's harder to pin down a specific genre to illustrate this method of creating a story, but most (not all) literary fiction follows it. When I write I focus on the character and let a couple of conversations or arguments form in my mind that the character is having. Then I ask why would he fight about these things? Why is this important? How do the others react? And those questions give me some surrounding material; a little back story a little forward motion. And that forward motion, and those questions keep me going.

What you'll hear most often from character-driven writers is that the "story developed a life of its own" or "it didn't go at all where I thought it would." This is because the features the author thought she was writing toward weren't necessarily compatible with the character she had developed. She could have forced the character to adhere to the plot she had envisioned, but being character-driven means making the choice to deviate from well laid plans just for the sake of an unscheduled road trip. And who knows what you'll find on those back roads?

Can the two be combined? I'll go out on a limb, and say that once a writer finds a means of creating fiction that works for her, and is both satisfactory and believable for the reader, she doesn't spend much time analyzing her process to figure out where on the plot/character continuum she falls.

I tried plotting, and it was a flat, 2-D story. This is a common trend when new writers look back at work that they had meticulously plotted. The answer is to spend more time beefing up your characters. I've heard countless suggestions for "character questionnaires" as a means of fleshing out a character. Buy into this with caution. Knowing what your character's favorite color is, or what day of the week they were born on won't help them seem 3-D. If you find a questionnaire with open ended questions like how would you feel if you found out you were adopted? or what would you do on finding your lover/spouse in bed with someone else? or what is your idea of the perfect death? Basically open ended questions that you wouldn't ask on the first date because they're "too personal."

I've started with my main character, and she's great, but I'm having trouble adding plot to the story. When you're starting a story because the characters interest you, I think approaching it as "adding plot" is a frame of mind that makes it easy to get stuck.

If you can think of it less as "plot" -- less some sort of big framework of events, or a series of hoops for your character to jump through -- and just concentrate on "what happens to the character next," it makes the element of action that much easier to deal with.

Frequently, writers say they find it hard to "let bad things happen" to their characters, and I suspect that might be as much a problem as the "plotting." You don't want bad things to happen to your characters, just like you don't want bad things to happen to real people that you know. But if something doesn't happen to characters there's no story. Save your wishing, praying and hoping for your family (and you can always send good lottery winning-mana my way). But characters need strife. You have to take the character and make them live in a town that turns out to be right on top of a suddenly active volcano -- and that's all you need!

You don't need a big old plot, you just need this one inciting incident: volcano discovered under house. And if your writing is character-driven the character will then react to the volcano. Sure, any sane person would get out of the house, but does your character go back for the cat? For the bag of stolen diamonds? For the laptop with all her manuscripts on it?

Next you must ask her to act in a preemptive manner. Does she get in the car and drive for higher ground? Does she warn the town? Call the President of the United States? Call her volcano chasing friends and set up video equipment to watch the flows?

I've discovered that "letting bad the bad thing happen" often takes the form of my worst fear for the moment. Have you ever watched a movie and cringed even though nothing was happening, because you were certain that it was all set up for something awful to happen? Scary teen movies love to do this. We all cringe as the semi-important character walks through a darkened alley alone, or through a barn filled with power tools and scythe-like blades, or slips into to the eerie lake/lagoon. I get the same feeling of doom with my characters, just without the swamp creatures and axe murders.

I was writing a conversation between my female character and her guy friend and all of a sudden I knew I had set up the situation for an affair. I didn't want it to happen -- he was a nice guy after all -- but that was the "bad thing" I saw coming, and so I wrote it, even though I hadn't "plotted" it previously.

Photography: The weather outside my window

When I first posted beautiful snowy pictures of Michigan several months ago some said "How wonderful! It'll be great to follow the seasons through your blog!" I believe this was Jud. So here you go: March in Michigan. It's 3:00pm in that photo BTW, not night, not twilight. As lovely as this photo is, February was worse. So bad in fact that I didn't post a single picture of the world around me. There's some sun peeking through the clouds right now, but southeast Michigan is among the cloudiest regions in America. Ya.

Aren't you glad I'm sharing the "season" with you?

Official UNH Letter

There we have it! The official snail mail acceptance letter!

This means I'll no longer feel compelled to continue checking the blackboard site for UNH to see if my "status" had magically changed. I'll no longer fear an apologetic email from the campus tech department saying there was a glitch in their database that caused all applicants to appear as "admitted." Nope. It's on paper now; that means it's official, baby!

But now that it's here in my hot little hands, I am on a mission to decipher its secrets. I know it's just a letter and not some Da Vinci Code artifact, but there's a telling silence in this four paragraph letter:

There's not one word about money.

Nowhere does it say there's a grant, scholarship or TA position with my name on it. Nor does it inform me that TA decisions have already been made and I can apply for one next year should I choose to attend UNH. Word on the MFAblog was that the office decided they would not send out letters until they had made TA decisions. If so, this is bad news. However, hope hinges on the fact that this letter comes from the Dean of the Graduate School, and was cc-ed to the English Department. The Graduate School doesn't make TA decisions, the individual departments do.

I'd love to hang my hat on the later speculation, but it turns out I have no hat.

The fact and fiction of the letter.
Yes, it reaffirms the existence of an acceptance --
but what mysteries does it hold beneath its introductory platitudes?

The best I can hope if there's no money involved is further debt for one year of out of state tuition (glug). Then a Starbucks (or equivalent) job to establish residency in the great state of New Hampshire so that the remaining 2-4 semesters will be more resonably priced.

Up Next: Notes on Craft and "Seasonal" Photography

Ad of the Week

Humorous:


Inspirational:

Oh too precious

Check out this very brief article of British thievery. Warning: if you don't want to explain to the kids why this is funny, click with discretion

Book in Review

One of my most recent reads is Pam Houston's collection of short stories Cowboys Are My Weakness. Houston lives and writes in the American west, and the landscape and lifestyle feature prominently in all of these short stories. More than giving you a vacation to the Rockies, she makes you feel like one of the locals, or at least someone who's finally, grudgingly been accepted by the locals.

The collection was published in the early nineties but that doesn't change how entertaining or accessible these stories are. And accessible is the key word here. So many contemporary short stories shoot for this over the top level of abstraction that you finish reading and wonder what the hell was that about? Houston's work has none of that. Yes there's a deeper level there if you're willing to search for it, but there's also an easy to get into, pleasant narration that pulls you in and holds onto it.

I'll go out on a limb and say that her most famous short story is "How to Talk to a Hunter." It reads much like Lorrie Moore's "How to Be an Other Woman." Both have the same subtle, self-depreciating humor in the narrative voice caused by the "how to" advice given on how to date a man you know is cheating. As if this is a subject in which an expert is needed.

Cowboys Are My Weakness is only one of Houston's books. She's done novel length work and I believe has yet another collection of short stories out, but I highly recommend this first collection for reading that falls in the rare category of things easy to read that make you feel smarter after reading them.

Up Next: Ad of the Week

Oh! Acceptance!

Someone bless the anal-retentive people, for they shall find out first.

So haunting the MFAblog for the first time in a couple of weeks involved a bit of catching up. Reading conversations from the past week, and hearing what information applicants had gleaned from harassing admissions offices was most insightful.

Namely the discussion surrounding the University of New Hampshire.

Word was that they would be making the last of their decisions last week and their TA and grant decisions this week. Several applicants had been following their "application status" online and one commented that it had changed on a certain date.

Hmm, I thought, I never checked that. I jumped through the hoops. Logging into first the blackboard site with one ID/password set then through that into the application software through another ID/password set to get to my application information. The page started off with a nondescript spreadsheet of my home address etc. So it was with great boredom that I scrolled to the bottom. All my forms were marked as "received." Good. Although I know they had to have gotten them earlier than the date entered because the date entered was about three weeks after I postmarked them. So I'm scrolling back up to the top when there, stuck in the middle of all this information are the words "Application Status:" -- oh good that's what I was looking for -- "Decision Made. Decision: Admitted to Program."

Ohmigd!

I made some sort of noise of disbelief, unhooked my laptop from all its moorings and raced downstairs. My father wanted to know what all the noise was. I just wanted him to read the damn spreadsheet and tell me if he read it as I did.

A few minutes later he told me "I thought that noise meant something good." No you didn't. I so could have been making it because there was a bug on my wall.

Okay, so it's March and most of the bugs worth screaming about have died in the deep freeze, but maybe the bug had gotten really close without me knowing.

My understanding is that admitted students will be notified individually in the near future (not just through the website), but this will not happen until TA and funding decisions have been made.

Now that I have a choice, funding is gonna make or break the deal.

And I will post my book review tomorrow. Promise!

Go Google Yourself

"I Google myself."

"Have you ever Googled yourself?"

Why do all of these sound vaguely dirty to me?

The term Googling yourself, also known as a "vanity search," has been around since the commercial search engines appeared, but the actual number of people completing the act has increased dramatically in the past five years. For the John Smiths of the world, typing your full name into Google's search box might prove a futile exercise, but for those of us with more unique names it is often strange and scary to see what pieces of our lives are available on the internet.

I recently read a great little article by Frank Bures titled "I Google Myself, Therefore I Am." After laughing at the title for a good minute straight I actually read the article. Bures claims his self-Googling obsession comes from being a freelance writer. It is in the interest of business to see how many references are being made to a freelancer on the internet or whether he is receiving good/bad/any reviews.

Okay, that makes sense ... but what excuse do the rest of us have?

I type in my own name and find references to a Thanksgiving 5k walk that I did with my mother some seven years ago, the website I built for my high school literary magazine (which they're still using I'm proud to say), the DJ rotation schedule from my college radio days, a couple of articles I've written on Helium.com (so not worth it). Then the list trickles into text books co-authored by my father (same last name) and a woman with my same first name. This all happens before we get to the really juicy stuff: death records from 1930s Iowa.

Oh baby!

I'm yet to find any death record with my precise name combination on it. All of them I find are a woman with my first name and someone else with my last. Seeing as I have a fairly unique name, if I came up "dead" in Iowa, or St. Louis, or Detroit, it might unsettle me, even if it was almost a century ago. It's not the "dead" part that would bother me, as much as the fact that someone else had my precise name.

Again, I understand that for all the John Smiths this isn't a passing thought; it's a fact of life.

But for me, I'm a one and only. I still have a hard time adapting to conversations where another person has my first name. This is why I spent the weekend of my friend's wedding attempting to respond to questions aimed at the mother of the bride.

So what can I say but go Google yourself and see what you find. And to Frank Bures, here's one more hit on your next vanity search.

Up Next: Recent Reads in Review

Not Another One!

It would appear that as soon as I made my last post as to what memoir really was that another crock was being uncovered. This time a Ms. Margaret Seltzer writing under a pen name was outed as having made up the whole thing. From the NYTimes:

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

In her defense she claims she was writing the stories of people she knew, that her assumption of a false life was an attempt to give them a voice.

Unlike the Frey case, Ms. Seltzer's books are being recalled and her book tour has been canceled, in part because the book tour was yet to start. There will be no run in with Oprah this time around.

For crying out loud people, just write it as fiction and get on with it!

Ad of the Week

It rather reminds me of some of the special effects from new Star Wars and films like that.

Up Next: Google Yourself

Too Cool

Check out this artist website: http://www.martin-munoz.com/ Really charming, yet slightly macabre. Like a playful Tim Burton.