MFAers who are also NaNoers?

I'm curious as to how many people embarking on NaNo either have a degree in writing or are currently working on one.

Of course, no one needs a degree to write -- but many of us get that degree so that we can teach writing/composition and occasionally literature at the college level.

So I'm curious to know if you're out there and if so, how you're using NaNo. Are you writing for your MFA thesis or writing for your own side projects? Sticking with the standard MFA genre of "literary" fiction or moving out into popular genres during the month of November.

In love with an essay

Check out Alexander Chee's essay "Annie Dillard and the Writing Life." I'm in love with this essay. I plan on saving it and giving it to my creative writing students to read ... when I eventually have creative writing students to whom I assign readings.

And, interestingly enough, Dillard, though Chee, finally articulates a reason for literary writers disliking gerunds. Previously it had been one of those "just avoid such-n-such" rules that I had headed but not understood.

"Eulogy," a writing prompt

I was asked to "write a eulogy" for a class on lyricism. There was no instruction or restriction as to who or what we eulogized and after tossing around serious ideas and funny ideas and, well, all other ideas, I ended up writing the following:

Before we go any further, I would like to raise my glass and pay my respects to our dearly departed friend.

He was a good soul. Kind to strangers and patient to a fault. I’ve spent countless hours with him, and on our many adventures he never failed to entertain. He will always live on in our memoires: his pale pink complexion and upturned nose, his bow tie and tiny blue jacket, his unforgettable way of stuttering “th-th-that’s all folks.”

Let that stutter be a lesson to us all. Our dear friend’s condition never got better and yet he persevered. He didn’t let his speech impediment get him down; he was never upset by his trouble pronouncing even the most common of words or phrases. If he was smiling when he stuttered he continued smiling, and if he was beet-faced and livid as hell he didn’t let the stutter stop him from delivering one scathing retort.

That crazy duck and that conniving rabbit laid into our friend from time to time. Occasionally, he was even bested by a hound dog, but our rotund friend always recovered. The next time we saw him he was right as rain, ready to embark on a relaxing vacation. And, oh, what vacation stories he had!

Please bow your heads and take a moment to pray for the soul of our dear friend, Porky. And as we invoke the Lord’s name, to ask Him: O Lord, bless this, your bounty, which we are about to receive. It has been lovingly prepared and beautifully arranged. And, I must agree with Elmer when I say that I have never seen a pork supper to rival the one now before us.

Ad of the Week

Title Tribulations (and Friday grab-bag)

Sadly, this grab-bag has no fab links to stories published online because ... well ... I'm swamped.

There's Nathan Bransford's lengthy news of book selling price wars, to which I can only reply: Sears sells books? Since when? Tools, clothes and refrigerators, yes. But last I knew, books and groceries were just about the only things not in their domain.

Well, I guess that's not my only reply to Bransford. Who the hell does that to a dog? also crossed my mind.

My MFA program is doing a faculty search and so I sat in on a mock workshop that one of the job candidates lead today. She told us that she's a title person and gave the first (honestly) useful argument I've heard for crafting good titles for short fiction: you don't have that much time to hook a reader. Yes, they're already reading the lit mag -- bless their little hearts for that [I'm paraphrasing if you can't tell by now] -- but you want them to read your story and not keep flipping to the next one. So now I'm revisiting some of my one word titles.

So -- question -- would you rather read a story called Cake or one called Iron Teeth? I should have better ideas than those two ... alas.

The playwrights always have kickass titles and the fiction writers just seem to miss that memo.

I wrote a rather creepy "eulogy" for a short class project this week. (Go figure, me being creepy outside of the Kenyon Review workshop.) I'll post it on Monday.

Thursday's "word of the day" was aesthete which was really fortuitous because my prof used it in workshop Wednesday night and I meant to ask him what it meant but by the time I got a chance I'd already forgotten what the word was.

Then there's H1N1 which I hardly need to speak of as everyone else seems to be talking about it and rightly so. It would seem all the schools in the county have shut down for Thursday/Friday and some even took Wednesday off as well. I'm uncertain if their goal is to stop the virus from spreading or if they have so many students out that they're not making quorum to keep the buildings open. I have essentially been told to plan how I'm going to deal when the university shuts down not if the university shuts down.

As a teacher it would mean (unfortunately) that I would become the private, online tutor to as many students as are able bodied and willing to keep doing work when there's no physical class -- if you couldn't tell, I'm skeptical of how many 18 year-olds are driven enough to do that. As a grad student it would (fortunately) mean lots of time to sit in my room and write!

Assuming, of course, that I'm not among those who are sick.

Googling the Statement of Purpose

I have recently been informed by a fellow MFA candidate that when you google "statement of purpose, mfa" or "sample statement of purpose, creative writing" you get ME.

I was shocked.

This might mean that the traffic to my Statement of Purpose posts is higher or that they've been linked back a lot. Or, in all likelihood, it means that there are very few samples of statement of purpose on the web for creative writing programs. Not sure why that is. A year after I applied and was admitted I posted my sample online. It's still up there if you want to see it. It's so personal that I doubt anyone would want to steal it outright and the pattern/tips I followed are still available online courtesy of Vince Gotera.

I'll leave it to Vince to get into the particulars, no need to repeat them here, but essentially a statement of purpose in creative writing is formatted like an essay (not a letter) and it states why you want to intensively study writing. And if you know what specifically you hope to do during your tenure as a student -- more often this applies to students who are seeking Ph.D.s in writing or who are returning to grad school after a long time in the work force -- you'll want to state your specific goals you hope to achieve as a student. I cannot repeat enough how unimportant your SoP is compared to your writing sample. Worry about your writing sample first, your SoP second.

My colleague and classmate who told me that my blog appeared at the top of the search engine list is gunning for a spot in a Ph.D. program -- which I'm sure she'll get. I doubt she found my example as helpful as someone who is applying to a masters program would but I wish her well on her SoP writing. And I direct all Ph.D. applicants to take a look at M. Ramirez Talusan's posted statement of purpose which is much more academic than mine.

Why do so few people post their statements of purpose? I have no idea. It's not like it is a text that you will ever use again. No one publishes their SoP for money or fame. If you're afraid that someone will rip off your SoP then clearly it's not personalized enough to your circumstances and interests; nor is is firmly rooted in your writing style. One can't "buy" or "rip off" another's SoP. Consider this: you are putting a SoP in front of career professors; they know when a student's writing style or ability suddenly shifts. And students with red flags don't get admitted. So post your damn SoP and help some clueless but diligent people out.

Straight out of the 80s

I saw a girl walking down my block this morning who looked like she was straight out of the 80s. Messy, crimped hair fluffed up big. Tight jeans in a light, light blue that ended in white Keds.

But even more than the clothing it was her attitude. She walked with the over exaggerated swingy-bounce that I've seen most often in films. Totally 80s.

I need your help for a Post Secret related memoir project

(please repost and repeat the information in the following letter on your blog and to your friends. I hope to conduct as many interviews as possible over the next three months)

Dear fans of Post Secret,

I am a graduate student in an MFA writing program where I am working on a memoir project involving three months of my life and my then obsession with Post Secret. The reason I am writing is because part of my current memoir project involves conducting semi-anonymous interviews with people who have interacted with Post Secret. Not just people who have sent in secrets like I have (although that would be great) but also with people who interact with the blog, online communities, go to Post Secret events or read the books.

What I mean by “semi-anonymous” interviews: I will be conducting these interviews primarily over email. I ask those volunteers who respond to give me a name (first with last initial is fine) but it need not be his or her real name. What is important to my memoir is that people be truthful in recalling their thoughts and emotions related to Post Secret, not that they divulge their identity—it is, after all, Post Secret.

Once again, I am ONLY looking for volunteers to respond to some or all of my questions; I cannot pay people. Over the next two to three months these interviews will occur entirely by email, and there may be some follow up emails sent to certain respondents to clarify or to ask for elaboration. These interviews are for a piece of creative nonfiction relating to my life and, while I am not seeking immediate publication, the piece may eventually be published with some of the volunteers’ responses in it. Any interview or part of an interview that appears in the memoir will be attributed to the fake/real name the volunteer has offered me.

Thank you for having read this far and I hope you will take the time to answer some/all of the following questions and email your responses to eileen.postsecretmemoir AT gmail DOT com.

1. How did you become familiar with Post Secret? How long ago was that?

2. Thinking about the secrets you’ve read, which one stand out in your memory? What’s memorable about that/those secret(s)?

3. Have you ever attended a Post Secret event? Why? What was it like?

4. Have you ever sent in a secret? How many? If more than one, over how long a period of time?

5. Have you ever seen one of your secrets again (on the blog/in the books, etc)? How did that make you feel?

6. Have you ever found a postcard with a secret written on it that was tucked inside of one of the books? What was that like?

7. Have you ever put one of your own secrets inside of a book? What was your reason for doing so?

8. Has there ever been a time where you’ve written a secret on a post card but kept the post card instead of sending it? Please elaborate as much as you are comfortable as to why you’ve hung on to it.

9. Why do you think you read other people’s secrets?

10. If you’ve sent in a secret, or many secrets, why did you send it in opposed to telling someone you knew or keeping it to yourself? What was your reason for sending it off to some place where strangers were going to read it?

Note: I am NOT asking anyone to explicitly state the content of their secrets unless that is something that you want to share. Any information sent to me may eventually be published.

Writing Contest for Grad Students

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Touchstone is Now Accepting Submissions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the 1500s, merchants and tradesman used pieces of dark quartz or jasper stone to test the quality of gold and silver by rubbing it across the stone’s surface and examining the mark it left behind. This was their way of testing the genuineness and quality of each precious metal. This was their touchstone.

Touchstone, Kansas State University’s literary magazine, strives to serve as just such a standard for graduate level creative writing, and therefore we encourage you to send us your best work for consideration in the upcoming Spring 2010 edition. Submissions are open to any member of a graduate program in the United States. Award winners will be selected in each genre and will win title, publication, and our humblest admiration; however at this time no monetary prize is available. Contributors will also receive two copies of the journal.

At this time we gladly accept email submissions that include your contact information in the body of your message. Please address your email submissions to: touch@ksu.edu

For each genre follow these guidelines:

Poetry~
Please send up to 5 poems, total page count not to exceed 15 pages, attached to an email as Word documents or Rich Text Format (rtf) files with the word “Poetry” as your subject line.

Creative Nonfiction~
Please send up to 2 essays, each up to 15 typed pages in length, attached to an email as Word documents or Rich Text Format (rtf) files with the word “Nonfiction” as your subject line.

Fiction~
Please send up to 2 stories, each up to 15 typed pages, attached to an email as Word documents or Rich Text Format (rtf) files with the word “Fiction” as your subject line.

You may send multiple submissions for a single genre attached to one email. However if you have work to send for more than one genre, please send each in separate emails with the appropriate subject line for that genre.


DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: NOVEMBER 13, 2009


Submission to Touchstone implies permission to publish. Writers retain all later publication rights. Touchstone accepts simultaneous submissions with notification. For more information, contact Kim Peek at: kpeek@ksu.edu.

Service to Alma Mater

It appears my number has come up and it's time to do service to the alma mater.

I've never before been asked to contribute to the files faculty put together when they apply for tenure and promotion, but in the past week I've been asked twice. Are they polling the end of the alphabet this year?

All of a sudden it's time to try and remember back to my freshman year of college and give my opinion of a professor I knew as an angsty 18 year-old, and another that I knew as a self-center but less angsty 22 year-old.

This process has lead me to wonder how much of how we describe the past is what we thought at the time and how much of it is how we understand the world at the present. Time, distance and maturity are great (important) things ... but they're not always easily applied to memory. What is truer -- and here's where these concerns start to apply to memoir writing -- the situation as it was perceived by the individual at the time that she experienced it, or the situation as seen through the lens of time and all that time implies and changes?

Still Behind On Work

I had plans for a pithy Monday post. It must wait. Instead, I send you to something very funny. The comics over at Piled Higher and Deeper: a grad student comic strip.

Ad of the Week

Thank god someone finally said it

Nathan Bransford, pithy and to the point as he always is, has taken the old "Such-n-such classic novel would never get published int today's market" whine and knocked it out cold.

What are the 100+ commenters saying? I have no idea. I've learned that reading everybody's two cents is not worth two cents.

Writing Class Joke

The Non-Fiction Workshop

I promised I'd let you know how the non-fiction workshop went and I guess it's only fair to give you an update before and after I go up for workshop the first time.

The class is small and a mix of grad students and undergrad upperclassmen. Despite there only being seven of us, I have managed to hedge as long as possible and have not yet put work up for workshop.

I have embarked on a Post Secret memoir that I mentioned before in my plea for help. The project is, by design, large. However, it is growing into an ungainly mess. Thus my need to wait as long as possible to workshop. I'm trying to give the storyline a shape and that's not happening because I just keep on remembering things and wondering if I should add them in as well.

The nice part about writing nonfiction is that I just remember and write. I can focus on the storytelling aspect and on the sentence level craft without spending as much time thinking about plot, character development or any of the "creation" aspects of generating fictional material. And, as I have (within the past year or two) moved away from using my own life as wholesale story-fodder, that "creation" aspect takes a lot of time and energy in my fiction writing process.

The crazy part is that I keep remembering stuff. The more I think the more I recall. And more. And still more. It's all there, it's just taking a while for me to dig up again.

The awful part is that I'm not a linear thinker. So my narrative is jumpy and so is my process of remembering. This makes editing the "first" section difficult for workshop. I'll be giving them an incomplete narrative (it won't even have in the Post Secret interviews because I haven't addressed the shape of the narrative so I can't figure out where those interview snips best compliment the story), but it will be okay so long as I only give them the "second" part next time. What I don't want to do is give them twenty new pages plus twenty old pages that have been reworked and had a few more scenes added to them.

I'm also spending more time writing and reading for my grad classes than I am teaching and prepping for class.

A professor recently said that he's seen teaching composition ruin many a would-be writer. He went on to explain how easy it is to throw yourself into teaching when your own writing is going poorly and that if you become a really good teacher the need to become a really good writer lessens. Unfortunately I'm having the opposite problem this fall.

Third Coast

I'm now blogging for Third Coast magazine as well as working as co-Managing editor. My first post for the journal isn't brilliant but it is live.

One of my projects this semester is to grow our blog and web presence. I am fortunate in that the product I'm growing is a well respected little journal. A print only venture, we publish less than 1% of those who submit to us, making us among the top ten most selective markets on Duotrope.com.

Now I just have to think of what is appropriately literary and yet appropriately bloggish to write about for them.

Adventures at the Coffee Shop

Weird.

So Saturday afternoon/evening I spend a little over three hours at a coffee shop in downtown Kalamazoo. One of the nice features of this coffee shop is that it's also a bar so it stays open later than most coffee places (and if you're eager to do more work but feel the need to switch over to the hard stuff you don't need to move).

They have padded arm chairs, and cozy cafe tables, but they also have big study kitchen table-esque things which I am more than happy to spread out on and work.

As I slog down my coffee and slog away at my work (non-fiction project) the sun sets and the well lit coffee shop becomes a little more gloomy; the lighting inside is "atmospheric" at best. At this time I discover--joyfully--that I am sitting beside an electrical outlet, and plug in my laptop. Once hooked up to juice, the glow from the laptop is more than enough to beat the gloom.

The creepy guy in the armchair (who might be staring at me) leaves, and a group of three or four guys are playing chess at the table next to me; they don't talk much except to say checkmate.

Then -- woosh! -- a flurry of activity. At first I think it is the same four undergrads that were studying chemistry when I first arrived but these people are different despite looking like students from K-college. There's a guy setting up amps and mic stands on stage so I start to worry that a music show is about to start and my scribbling/typing away will be out of place. I look around the coffee shop/bar. Definitely not out of place. There are more people here than there were two hours ago but some of them are even more bookish than me. Two middle aged women and a grandmother play Scrabble. A guy behind me flips through some sort of business reports. The students -- they have my attention again -- are pulling two, now three, of the large kitchen tables together. Some of the students are dressed weekend-comfy and some weekend-flashy. It's the two flashily dressed students that made me wonder if the scene was suddenly changing. The settle in to their table and I go back to work.

When I look back up the students all have laptops out. They are gesturing and yelling across the coffee shop to each other as they procure lattes and cookies. The flashiest of the flashy ones has a ruffly scarf on and stacked heels; she gestures a lot. There is a sign propped up on their table. It is vaguely familiar and, as I struggle to place it, I wonder if it isn't a house crest from Harry Potter.

I frown. If a moment ago I thought I was the nerd for doing work in public on a Saturday evening then what will I think of these twenty year-olds announcing to the world their Saturday night Hogwarts fetish?

People are staring at them. The amp-guy pulls up fast before he can trip over them as they continue to rearrange furniture. The Scrabble-women give the flashy ones dirty looks as the flashy woman swishes back and forth and several of the college students hold a conversation over the Scrabble-women's table. The men playing chess remain absorbed in the chess.

Then, I place the shield logo. It's a NaNoWriMo shield! These people assembling in front of me are here for the ardent and admirable task of writing novels quickly and en mass!

For a brief moment I feel like I should join them, I should reach out and exchange the secret handshake with these young, bright, brave ... oddly dressed ... rather annoying ... obviously self-absorbed people.

Nope. Not gonna happen.

I continue working, alone; I do not have time for socialization tonight, particularly not with people whom I don't like.

When I look back up there are even more college students, (probably eight or ten by this point) and two middle aged women, one of whom has a very plain daughter who looks to be in early high school. The middle aged women are looking around like they are wondering if they really want to be sitting at the end of this very long table with all these strange, loud, gesticulating strangers.

The leader -- flashy woman has emerged as such -- calls them to order. She asks who the newbies are. She uses the term "newbies" without first explaining it. If one is new, one presumably does not know the lingo. Despite this, she does not explain the term which sounds harsh and disparaging when said aloud. This is part of the problem when certain content or language develops online and then moves into the realm of the spoke: few people stop to consider how their lingo comes across (gets re/misinterpreted) when it jumps realms.

The flashy woman hands out schedules brought by her not-so-flashy second in command. She tells people not to worry as the schedule is not set in stone and is only for personal use. In the same breath she tells the table that the schedule is their writing bible and they should staple it to their foreheads to encourage them to make their daily word counts.

"So who knows what a word war is?"

There is no response from the table.

"Do my newbies know what a word war is?"

There are mumbles that I cannot hear.

She addresses the end of the table where the middle aged women are sitting. "This is one of the myriad, great advantages of having a supportive NaNo-ing community group," she explains. I am certain, given her propensity toward adjectives, that she has absolutely no trouble making her daily word count without thinking of much content.

I am uncertain if she ever does explain precisely what a "word war" is.
I so happen to know that a "word war" is when a group of people race against, themselves, each other and the clock. They agree to a certain amount of time, say 15 or 30 minutes, and then a time keeper says "go!" and everyone manically clicks away at their keys trying to produce as much verbiage (and it quite frequently is more verbiage than narrative) as they are physically capable of in those minutes. Word wars that take place in person are marked by the sudden and complete silence of the group that is warring. If I had to hazard a guess I would say that there was no word warring that night.

The plain teenager is reading the online discussion boards.

"Who knows what they're going to be noveling about?" the leader asks.

At this point I realize that it is October.

I have known all along what the month was despite my deep longing for it to be September again as I did not properly appreciate that month as it passed by, but the fact of the matter remains that NaNoWriMo, the month of the national novel writing experience, is November. These people are one month early and do not appear to care.

Two or three of the college students raise their hands and the flashy leader squeaks and bounces in her chair. "Oo! Tell me!"

I return to work on my own writing projects, projects due in the immediate future (a little too-immediate if comfort is to be considered), and I am thankful, very thankful, that I did not stick out my hand and join in the past hour of unproductiveness at the non-writing novel writing table.

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