The fall cold is upon me. I kept telling myself it was a hang over from my busy weekend of wine-drinking with some NEOpeeps on Friday and Tailgating on Saturday, but no, it's definitely a cold. That's okay. Virginia Woolf says illness is good for poets. Maybe I'll get a raging fever and write some delusional poems.
Nah, I don't think I'm that sick.
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Mom and Dad are on their way home! I get to see them tomorrow!
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My Craft & Theory of Creative Non Fiction class is really cool. I really want to write some personal essays now. I wonder how people who write multiple genres do it. I feel like if I have some time and the urge to write, it has to be poetry. If I write prose, it's a little like cheating. It's like telling your boyfriend that you only have one free night this week and you'd rather spend it with this guy you just met because maybe you like him better. Is boyfriend still going to be around when you come looking for him again?
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Now that my HFS (that's Huge Fall Submission...big doesn't cut it anymore) is out, I'm getting anxious. This morning, I was thinking "well, I mailed them on Friday, so some of them might arrive today." Like anyone is going to open them, read them, and make a decision as soon as they come out of the mailbox. Now that I'm on the BOR staff, I understand a little better why it doesn't happen as quickly as I want it to. But still. Those are my babies out there, and I want to know if anybody wants them.
Almost every poem in my thesis is out there. I feel like this will give me a good idea as to whether or not I'm ready for first book contests. Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges (or apples to apple trees?) because obviously one poem won't make or break the collection, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and blah blah blah. But it still seems that if this submission frenzy goes well, then I can start thinking bigger. I can start thinking book.
Book....that's crazy. I have to pinch myself sometimes because I always imagined/hoped I would be a Writer...but now that I've got some publications under my belt, and a book seems like a serious possibility, it feels completely surreal.
Well, I have class plans to finalize. Best be getting to it.
Poem: Far Gone
2 days ago
3 comments:
Ugh, I'm sick too! I woke up this morning sneezing and with a swollen throat. What a way to start a Monday, hugh?
I wonder, do all MFA graduates come away with a completed book? That's really quite amazing, considering that most programs are only two years...geez, I feel like it would take me ten! My muse likes to take long vacations though...
Would you say that as a grad student, there's a lot of pressure to have a full manuscript ready by the time you graduate?
Sorry about all the questions. Good luck with those submissions!
Hope you're on the mend, Sara! With you and Jay both hacking I will have to take my vitamin C. ;)
Joanna, our program is 3 years, so that makes things a little easier (I assure you, I wouldn't have been ready for a book this time last year!), and our thesis is supposed to be a "publishable manuscript" or something along those lines. I don't know if it's that way in 2 year programs, but you know who probably does...Mary.
Hope you feel better soon!
Mary, I've been lathering up with purel about 80 times a day. Hopefully that will keep the germs away from you.
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