I've been working on my novella for the past week, and I've made some decent progress (not quite up to my goal, but still I've got some new pages), but I'm struggling with how to motivate my characters' actions. I was reading a writing book recently that commented on how we can always figure out what a character would do in a situation by imagining ourselves in that situation, but I think that's not very good advice. Most of the time, what I would do in a situation would be the most reasonable thing, which is probably not at all interesting.
So I've been working on a scene where two characters are having an argument, and this is really giving me trouble because I don't really know how people have arguments in real life. If I try to imagine what I would do in the situation, I come up with my characters sitting down together and reasonably hashing out their differences so they understand where each other is coming from and see how they misunderstood one another, and then they make up. But that's not interesting for a story. There's no drama there, no tension. But I can't really see why anybody would yell and scream and throw things or whatever. That's ridiculous behavior. There's no way for that to come across as realistic, at least not to me. I don't think I've ever yelled at another person in real life.
But in order to move a story forward in an interesting way, in order to increase the tension, there needs to be conflict. But conflict seems to me to usually be unrealistic. Most of life is not made up of conflict. But most of life is also boring and not worth writing a story about. But if I increase the conflict, the whole thing starts to feel contrived or sentimental, like I'm stretching to come up with something because that thing is interesting rather than because it organically evolves from the situation and the characters. But if I play down the conflict to a more realistic level, the story feels boring or frigid. There must be a very fine balance, but I struggle to find it.
Ultimately, what I want to do with my fiction is to say something about the world, to represent how things actually are. But I also want to write something that's interesting to read. And sometimes those two goals seem to be mutually exclusive.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Goal
I finished up my semester last week, and I have two weeks until I have to specifically do anything. At some point in that time, I need to plan for my summer classes, but basically I'm on vacation time, which means I have ample opportunity to get some serious progress done on a writing project or projects. As it happens, the piece that is at the forefront of my mind (which I wrote about last time) seems like the ideal piece to devote about two weeks to.
I think I might actually have a novella on my hands rather than just a short story. I wrote a rough draft last year that was in the ten page range. Then as I reworked it, it expanded, and I didn't finish a second draft because I realized the whole structure and approach needed reworking. So I've been outlining and structuring the whole thing, and I think it's going to be much longer than the initial short story. So I'm close to ready to begin writing what could be considered the third draft of the story or the first draft of the novella.
I've never written a novella before, so I don't know exactly how long it might take, but when I have so much time available to write, I should be able to get a significant amount done each day. The fastest pace I ever achieved was a couple years ago when I wrote a rough draft of a kids book in about three weeks. That was about 60,000 words, which is in the range of a novel rather than a novella. I'm guessing that this novella I'm writing now will be maybe in the 20,000 word range. So if I could write 60,000 words in three weeks, I should be able to write 20,000 in two weeks. That's less than 2,000 words a day, and 2,000 words a day isn't a crazy ambitious goal; I've often kept up that pace. And if I have a solid outline where I know where I'm going and how I want to proceed from sequence to sequence, I think the writing should flow as easily as a rough draft ever tends to flow.
So we'll see how it goes. I feel good about it. I think I might actually manage to produce something solid by the time I go out of town in two weeks.
I think I might actually have a novella on my hands rather than just a short story. I wrote a rough draft last year that was in the ten page range. Then as I reworked it, it expanded, and I didn't finish a second draft because I realized the whole structure and approach needed reworking. So I've been outlining and structuring the whole thing, and I think it's going to be much longer than the initial short story. So I'm close to ready to begin writing what could be considered the third draft of the story or the first draft of the novella.
I've never written a novella before, so I don't know exactly how long it might take, but when I have so much time available to write, I should be able to get a significant amount done each day. The fastest pace I ever achieved was a couple years ago when I wrote a rough draft of a kids book in about three weeks. That was about 60,000 words, which is in the range of a novel rather than a novella. I'm guessing that this novella I'm writing now will be maybe in the 20,000 word range. So if I could write 60,000 words in three weeks, I should be able to write 20,000 in two weeks. That's less than 2,000 words a day, and 2,000 words a day isn't a crazy ambitious goal; I've often kept up that pace. And if I have a solid outline where I know where I'm going and how I want to proceed from sequence to sequence, I think the writing should flow as easily as a rough draft ever tends to flow.
So we'll see how it goes. I feel good about it. I think I might actually manage to produce something solid by the time I go out of town in two weeks.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Structure
I've been working on a story recently and really wrestling with how to put the thing together. I wrote the rough draft nearly a year ago, and I've been playing with a revision for months, but I keep hitting a wall in my progress. The initial inspiration for the story was just a character and a situation, which I let play out in front of me. Then as I rewrote, I figured out more back story, and now I have a lot more material that I want to include, and I think the newer version will be much more interesting and complex than the rough draft where I was just figuring out basic elements of the story. But my current trouble is that I'm not sure how to put all the material into a new draft.
I started rewriting where I began at the same point as last time, just before the big event that sets the present story in action, but as I wrote and wrote, it became obvious that this structure results in a couple of paragraphs followed by pages of flashback before eventually returning to the present story, a structure that doesn't typically work well. Flashbacks are best kept to a minimum.
I could structure the story in the absolute most straightforward way, where I begin with the very first element and then play it out in order. But this would mean starting with the character as a child and then going through years of events until I reach the big scene that was the original inspiration for the story, which also feels like a mistake since it would take pages and pages before reaching the hook, the exciting event that really sets the action in progress.
Another approach would be to start with the hook and then insert mini-flashbacks throughout the whole story, interweaving memories into the present action. But this seems like a set up for a schizophrenic story that fails to ever be quite one thing or another.
Part of the problem is that any of these structures CAN work. Writers have done them well before and will continue to do them well in the future. But they all have drawbacks and weaknesses. And sometimes the pitfalls appear so large that there seems to be almost nowhere safe to step.
So I've been wracking my brain, trying to remember what I learned in grad school about how to find an appropriate structure for a work of fiction, and the sad truth is that I don't think this issue was covered very well. Part of the problem is that the teacher I had for the class that should have covered this material was simply not a good teacher. Instead of learning about structure in the fiction class, I learned about structure in the screenwriting class, and that's now what I'm falling back on.
One major structural point in the screenwriting class was the inciting incident, the action that sets the plot moving, which, in a screenplay with a standard three act structure, comes in the first act, typically fifteen to twenty minutes into the film, after the world of the film has been established. Before the inciting incident occurs, the audience needs to understand the world and who the major character is, so when the inciting incident occurs and the character makes a choice about what is going to happen, we understand what is at stake. I'm not sure a short story necessarily has the exact same structure as a screenplay and whether I can plot out my story in the same exact fashion, but I think this concept of the inciting incident is probably useful to keep in mind.
So the question I've been asking myself is whether the hook, the event I began with as the original idea for the story, is the inciting incident or something else. I tried something to help me sort through the material: I wrote down each separate event, which could be an entire scene or simply a memory that is represented in a single sentence, and I wrote down each one on a note card. Currently, I have forty-two cards. I looked at these events and tried to determine which one has the most potential to be an inciting incident, which one results in the character making a choice that affects his life and sends him down a new path. And I've tentatively concluded that the original spark for the story is actually more of a plot point later. It's a complication from the second act (if I'm thinking of a three act screenplay structure), and the inciting incident is something that occurs much earlier. So what I need to do is not necessarily begin at the very beginning, but begin shortly before the true inciting incident, the action that occurs that sets my protagonist on his path that leads him to where he is when the big event occurs, setting up the final action down the line.
Anyway, I'm still struggling with it. I'm also trying to figure out whether I have a short story on my hands or a novella, so I'll probably write another post here soon where I hash out my ideas on length as I keep working on this.
I started rewriting where I began at the same point as last time, just before the big event that sets the present story in action, but as I wrote and wrote, it became obvious that this structure results in a couple of paragraphs followed by pages of flashback before eventually returning to the present story, a structure that doesn't typically work well. Flashbacks are best kept to a minimum.
I could structure the story in the absolute most straightforward way, where I begin with the very first element and then play it out in order. But this would mean starting with the character as a child and then going through years of events until I reach the big scene that was the original inspiration for the story, which also feels like a mistake since it would take pages and pages before reaching the hook, the exciting event that really sets the action in progress.
Another approach would be to start with the hook and then insert mini-flashbacks throughout the whole story, interweaving memories into the present action. But this seems like a set up for a schizophrenic story that fails to ever be quite one thing or another.
Part of the problem is that any of these structures CAN work. Writers have done them well before and will continue to do them well in the future. But they all have drawbacks and weaknesses. And sometimes the pitfalls appear so large that there seems to be almost nowhere safe to step.
So I've been wracking my brain, trying to remember what I learned in grad school about how to find an appropriate structure for a work of fiction, and the sad truth is that I don't think this issue was covered very well. Part of the problem is that the teacher I had for the class that should have covered this material was simply not a good teacher. Instead of learning about structure in the fiction class, I learned about structure in the screenwriting class, and that's now what I'm falling back on.
One major structural point in the screenwriting class was the inciting incident, the action that sets the plot moving, which, in a screenplay with a standard three act structure, comes in the first act, typically fifteen to twenty minutes into the film, after the world of the film has been established. Before the inciting incident occurs, the audience needs to understand the world and who the major character is, so when the inciting incident occurs and the character makes a choice about what is going to happen, we understand what is at stake. I'm not sure a short story necessarily has the exact same structure as a screenplay and whether I can plot out my story in the same exact fashion, but I think this concept of the inciting incident is probably useful to keep in mind.
So the question I've been asking myself is whether the hook, the event I began with as the original idea for the story, is the inciting incident or something else. I tried something to help me sort through the material: I wrote down each separate event, which could be an entire scene or simply a memory that is represented in a single sentence, and I wrote down each one on a note card. Currently, I have forty-two cards. I looked at these events and tried to determine which one has the most potential to be an inciting incident, which one results in the character making a choice that affects his life and sends him down a new path. And I've tentatively concluded that the original spark for the story is actually more of a plot point later. It's a complication from the second act (if I'm thinking of a three act screenplay structure), and the inciting incident is something that occurs much earlier. So what I need to do is not necessarily begin at the very beginning, but begin shortly before the true inciting incident, the action that occurs that sets my protagonist on his path that leads him to where he is when the big event occurs, setting up the final action down the line.
Anyway, I'm still struggling with it. I'm also trying to figure out whether I have a short story on my hands or a novella, so I'll probably write another post here soon where I hash out my ideas on length as I keep working on this.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Salieri
I did a little detective work yesterday to find out who got the job I interviewed for back at the beginning of April. I knew that the school's board of governors had to approve new hires, so I looked up the agenda for their May meeting. There were three positions at the school, and all three went to current faculty. They have all been adjuncts there for six or seven years, and one has a Ph.D. With that competition, I completely understand why I didn't get the job. The school already knows those people, and they have more experience (and one has more education) than I do. When I looked up that information, I was hoping to find what I did. The odds were against me to start with, and I figure I would have had to completely blow them away with my interview and teaching demonstration in order for them to decide to hire me instead of their local folks, so it doesn't mean much against me that I wasn't hired.
If anything, it's a good sign that I was interviewed at all since I also found out that they had ninety-seven applications. I don't know exactly how many people were interviewed, but I doubt it was more than ten or twelve. So the fact that I made it to the top few out of nearly a hundred seems like a really good sign. They spent several hundred dollars to fly me out there, so they were at least considering me somewhat seriously even if they ultimately decided to go with people they already knew. So the good news is that my application materials must look decent since I'm getting interviews, and I don't feel like I'm doing something major to shoot myself in the foot when I interview (although, obviously, I could have done something better to impress them enough that they would hire me instead of their local folks).
But the bad news is that this experience reiterates how hard it is to actually land a full-time job. After all, the people who got the job had been adjuncts for four or five years longer than I have been before they finally managed to land full-time jobs. For one job posting, there were ninety-seven applications. For another recent job for which I got a phone interview but not an in-person interview, there were 125 applications. (And for the Wisconsin fellowship I didn't get, there were five hundred applications for six fellowships). To actually land a job, I need to be the top choice, not merely qualified or pretty good or in the top ten. I need to be in the top one percent or fraction of one percent. And that's tough.
Growing up, I was a top student. According to GPA, I graduated in the top three percent of my high school class. I'm a member of Mensa, which means I test in the top two percent of the population for IQ. I made it to grad school twice. I had a 4.0 GPA for my time in my MFA program and nearly that for all my other schooling. According to standard measurements, I'm very intelligent and capable, and I'll be a top candidate for various positions throughout life. But my guess is that I look pretty much the same as the other applicants for any of these jobs. One doesn't get into or through grad school in the first place unless one is highly intelligent and capable. Obviously, the school chose to interview me, so maybe I looked better than eighty-five of the applicants. But it's quite possible that I'm never going to be the number one guy, and with this kind of competition, even if I'm number two, I don't get the job.
The same thing is true for publishing. It's not enough to be good or decent. One has to be the absolute top in order to get published. One's story has to be better than the other hundred or five hundred or thousand stories that the magazine is considering. The odds are stacked against ever breaking through. It's not impossible, of course. People get published. People get jobs. And certainly there is the possibility to get lucky. Maybe a magazine will need to fill a few more pages before going to print, so they'll accept something halfway decent just to finish up. Or a school might have their first few choices turn down job offers and hire somebody they aren't quite as impressed with. But to really succeed it's not enough to be in the top ten percent or five percent or two percent or maybe even one percent.
And, of course, the reality is disheartening. When it comes to writing, I feel confident that my writing is good. The fact that I get personal feedback from journals is enough to indicate that I'm not completely deluding myself that my stories are well written. But that's not enough. I'm clearly not the top one in a thousand. Maybe I'm in the top five in a hundred, but so are thousands of other writers, who are also getting rejected. When it comes to teaching, I suspect that if I just keep at it long enough, I'll someday be the top candidate; eventually my experience will build up to the tipping point. But it's tough to think about continuing to work part time and make so little money and have no benefits for another five years.
If anything, it's a good sign that I was interviewed at all since I also found out that they had ninety-seven applications. I don't know exactly how many people were interviewed, but I doubt it was more than ten or twelve. So the fact that I made it to the top few out of nearly a hundred seems like a really good sign. They spent several hundred dollars to fly me out there, so they were at least considering me somewhat seriously even if they ultimately decided to go with people they already knew. So the good news is that my application materials must look decent since I'm getting interviews, and I don't feel like I'm doing something major to shoot myself in the foot when I interview (although, obviously, I could have done something better to impress them enough that they would hire me instead of their local folks).
But the bad news is that this experience reiterates how hard it is to actually land a full-time job. After all, the people who got the job had been adjuncts for four or five years longer than I have been before they finally managed to land full-time jobs. For one job posting, there were ninety-seven applications. For another recent job for which I got a phone interview but not an in-person interview, there were 125 applications. (And for the Wisconsin fellowship I didn't get, there were five hundred applications for six fellowships). To actually land a job, I need to be the top choice, not merely qualified or pretty good or in the top ten. I need to be in the top one percent or fraction of one percent. And that's tough.
Growing up, I was a top student. According to GPA, I graduated in the top three percent of my high school class. I'm a member of Mensa, which means I test in the top two percent of the population for IQ. I made it to grad school twice. I had a 4.0 GPA for my time in my MFA program and nearly that for all my other schooling. According to standard measurements, I'm very intelligent and capable, and I'll be a top candidate for various positions throughout life. But my guess is that I look pretty much the same as the other applicants for any of these jobs. One doesn't get into or through grad school in the first place unless one is highly intelligent and capable. Obviously, the school chose to interview me, so maybe I looked better than eighty-five of the applicants. But it's quite possible that I'm never going to be the number one guy, and with this kind of competition, even if I'm number two, I don't get the job.
The same thing is true for publishing. It's not enough to be good or decent. One has to be the absolute top in order to get published. One's story has to be better than the other hundred or five hundred or thousand stories that the magazine is considering. The odds are stacked against ever breaking through. It's not impossible, of course. People get published. People get jobs. And certainly there is the possibility to get lucky. Maybe a magazine will need to fill a few more pages before going to print, so they'll accept something halfway decent just to finish up. Or a school might have their first few choices turn down job offers and hire somebody they aren't quite as impressed with. But to really succeed it's not enough to be in the top ten percent or five percent or two percent or maybe even one percent.
And, of course, the reality is disheartening. When it comes to writing, I feel confident that my writing is good. The fact that I get personal feedback from journals is enough to indicate that I'm not completely deluding myself that my stories are well written. But that's not enough. I'm clearly not the top one in a thousand. Maybe I'm in the top five in a hundred, but so are thousands of other writers, who are also getting rejected. When it comes to teaching, I suspect that if I just keep at it long enough, I'll someday be the top candidate; eventually my experience will build up to the tipping point. But it's tough to think about continuing to work part time and make so little money and have no benefits for another five years.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
On the Other Hand . . .
Friday I got word from one of the schools where I interviewed. It was four full weeks from the time I flew out there for the interview to the time I finally heard back from them. Four angst-ridden, nerve wracking, sour stomached weeks. And the final word is that they don't want me.
Now I'm down to one possibility left open, but I'm not feeling very optimistic about it. For some reason, I felt better about the interview at the school that turned me down than the more recent interview, and since the one I felt better about said no, that doesn't bode well for the other one. I'm just hoping it's not too much longer before I hear something official from them. Also, I have not heard anything from the Wisconsin fellowship, and their information says that they will contact the chosen few by May 1. That one doesn't really sting since I knew going in it was a pretty long shot. But not getting a job offer after waiting and hoping and daydreaming for so long certainly does.
So I'm thinking that I'll probably be doing the adjunct routine for another year. It's not so bad, of course, and it's great that I made it as far in the interview process as I did (I take that as an indication that I must be doing something right with my application materials anyway). But it's frustrating.
The upside, however, to not having a full-time job yet is that I will have more time to write. At the moment, I've only been assigned three classes for the fall, and they're all developmental writing. Now developmental writing is not easier to teach than composition, but it does take less time because the most time-consuming factor of teaching writing is grading papers and the papers for developmental courses are simpler and shorter and easier to evaluate. I'm estimating that three developmental courses will not merely be part-time employment but will be about half-time, taking about twenty hours a week or so. This will leave me with plenty of extra time to write. I could, of course, seek out a second job as I've had in the past, and that's tempting because the pay from three classes will pretty much be exactly enough to cover my expenses with little or no wiggle room. But I think the better choice would be to devote myself more to writing, to really get a steady routine set much more than I've had recently.
I wrote my last post about reconsidering how much weight to give writing in my life and maybe swinging the balance toward my teaching, but in the wake of my recent rejection, my thoughts are shifting again. Part of the equation is the long-term goal. A full-time teaching position at a community college certainly satisfies an important short-term goal, which is to make a decent living and pay off my grad school debt, but it doesn't really further my long-term goals of writing and eventually teaching higher level courses. It doesn't work against those goals exactly, but it doesn't put me much further down the path. But if I work more on my writing and manage to publish more, that will be the best way to work toward eventually becoming a creative writing teacher. So maybe, even though in the short term it's tough to just barely squeak by paycheck to paycheck, it's worth focusing more on the long-term goals.
There are a few other little things to be positive about at the moment. One, this semester is almost over. It's been one of the toughest semesters of my life, primarily because I've felt so up in the air the whole time about the future. But there were other issues too, like canceled classes because of snow and rain, which then threw off the groove for the semester so it was close to the end by the time anything felt routine.
Two, I'll have about three weeks off once this semester is over. I'm looking forward to this greatly. I will have to do some preparation for my summer courses, sure, but there won't be any papers to get back immediately or anything like that, so it's going to be actual time off. I haven't had any time off like this since I moved to Pennsylvania nearly two years ago; I've been working two jobs most of that time so when I had a break from school I still had to work the other job, so sometimes I worked seven days a week, and the most I ever had truly off was a few days at a time.
Three, I've got the Advanced Placement English Exam reading coming up in June, and I'm excited to do that. It should be fun to travel somewhere I've never been and to network with colleagues and just have an interesting new experience.
Four, my summer classes look like they should both work out. Last year my summer class was canceled at the last minute due to lack of enrollment, but this year one class already has enough and the other is right on the edge, so I'm hopeful that they'll both happen. If they do, that will mean I'll easily make it through the summer without having to dip into my savings, so then if my budget is super tight in the fall with only three classes, I won't have to deplete my savings just to get by each month.
On a whole, things could certainly be worse than they are. And even if nothing works out right now for full-time employment, I got some interviewing experience under my belt, and I should be an even stronger candidate for similar jobs next year. And maybe by then I'll have some more publications on my CV as well.
Now I'm down to one possibility left open, but I'm not feeling very optimistic about it. For some reason, I felt better about the interview at the school that turned me down than the more recent interview, and since the one I felt better about said no, that doesn't bode well for the other one. I'm just hoping it's not too much longer before I hear something official from them. Also, I have not heard anything from the Wisconsin fellowship, and their information says that they will contact the chosen few by May 1. That one doesn't really sting since I knew going in it was a pretty long shot. But not getting a job offer after waiting and hoping and daydreaming for so long certainly does.
So I'm thinking that I'll probably be doing the adjunct routine for another year. It's not so bad, of course, and it's great that I made it as far in the interview process as I did (I take that as an indication that I must be doing something right with my application materials anyway). But it's frustrating.
The upside, however, to not having a full-time job yet is that I will have more time to write. At the moment, I've only been assigned three classes for the fall, and they're all developmental writing. Now developmental writing is not easier to teach than composition, but it does take less time because the most time-consuming factor of teaching writing is grading papers and the papers for developmental courses are simpler and shorter and easier to evaluate. I'm estimating that three developmental courses will not merely be part-time employment but will be about half-time, taking about twenty hours a week or so. This will leave me with plenty of extra time to write. I could, of course, seek out a second job as I've had in the past, and that's tempting because the pay from three classes will pretty much be exactly enough to cover my expenses with little or no wiggle room. But I think the better choice would be to devote myself more to writing, to really get a steady routine set much more than I've had recently.
I wrote my last post about reconsidering how much weight to give writing in my life and maybe swinging the balance toward my teaching, but in the wake of my recent rejection, my thoughts are shifting again. Part of the equation is the long-term goal. A full-time teaching position at a community college certainly satisfies an important short-term goal, which is to make a decent living and pay off my grad school debt, but it doesn't really further my long-term goals of writing and eventually teaching higher level courses. It doesn't work against those goals exactly, but it doesn't put me much further down the path. But if I work more on my writing and manage to publish more, that will be the best way to work toward eventually becoming a creative writing teacher. So maybe, even though in the short term it's tough to just barely squeak by paycheck to paycheck, it's worth focusing more on the long-term goals.
There are a few other little things to be positive about at the moment. One, this semester is almost over. It's been one of the toughest semesters of my life, primarily because I've felt so up in the air the whole time about the future. But there were other issues too, like canceled classes because of snow and rain, which then threw off the groove for the semester so it was close to the end by the time anything felt routine.
Two, I'll have about three weeks off once this semester is over. I'm looking forward to this greatly. I will have to do some preparation for my summer courses, sure, but there won't be any papers to get back immediately or anything like that, so it's going to be actual time off. I haven't had any time off like this since I moved to Pennsylvania nearly two years ago; I've been working two jobs most of that time so when I had a break from school I still had to work the other job, so sometimes I worked seven days a week, and the most I ever had truly off was a few days at a time.
Three, I've got the Advanced Placement English Exam reading coming up in June, and I'm excited to do that. It should be fun to travel somewhere I've never been and to network with colleagues and just have an interesting new experience.
Four, my summer classes look like they should both work out. Last year my summer class was canceled at the last minute due to lack of enrollment, but this year one class already has enough and the other is right on the edge, so I'm hopeful that they'll both happen. If they do, that will mean I'll easily make it through the summer without having to dip into my savings, so then if my budget is super tight in the fall with only three classes, I won't have to deplete my savings just to get by each month.
On a whole, things could certainly be worse than they are. And even if nothing works out right now for full-time employment, I got some interviewing experience under my belt, and I should be an even stronger candidate for similar jobs next year. And maybe by then I'll have some more publications on my CV as well.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Priorities and Stuff
I just read the post on the MFA/MFYou blog about setting priorities in one's life, which is an issue I've been pondering a lot recently. As I get closer to landing a full-time teaching job, I've been daydreaming a lot about what my life will be like once I'm in that position. I had an interview a few days ago, and questions came up about my view of the term "professional development" and job duties outside of the classroom. I think I was able to answer those questions satisfactorily. I expressed interest in a variety of possibilities, such as serving on committees, working with student organizations, developing podcasts to supplement my coursework, attending professional development seminars, evaluating Advanced Placement exams, and so forth. Since the interview, I've thought even more about these things and have played out various scenarios for the future in which I take additional classes at the local university and complete an advanced writing teacher certification program or maybe another degree. I think of how I can make myself as attractive as possible for advancement and tenure or for other full time jobs down the road.
Now those are all good possibilities, but those are also things that take a lot of time and effort. So the question is whether I want to devote myself to those things at the possible expense of my writing. And this is really tough to evaluate.
One particular issue I've been considering is how I should best use my summers if I get a full-time job. It turns out that at the school I just interviewed, all full-timers are contracted for the regular school year, and any summer teaching is done for additional pay as adjuncts. This means that I could simply decide not to teach during the summer and take that time completely for my own writing. Or I could teach additional classes that perhaps I don't have the opportunity to do during the regular school year. Teaching extra classes would be a great way to expand my experience as well as make more money. The extra cash could go straight toward paying down my student loans or into savings. Choosing to teach extra classes would certainly have a lot of benefits. But I know it will be tough to write much during the school year when I'm teaching full time, so that extra time during the summer could be my primary way of maintaining an investment in my writing. But how do I weigh the various options against each other?
Part of me kind of feels like I need to reevaluate my writing goals significantly, that I need to sort of step back from how I think about writing and myself as a writer. I don't mean that I'm planning on giving up writing, but I sometimes feel like I let it dominate my thoughts too much. I think of myself as a writer. It's a major part of my identity. Therefore, when I don't find time or can't muster the effort to write, I feel like I'm unsure who I am, like I've lost part of myself and am living somebody else's life. Also, when I continue to get rejected when I send out my stories, I have trouble reconciling that failure with my image of myself as a writer, and rather than simply undermining my confidence in my abilities to do an activity I enjoy, it undermines my entire sense of self.
I'm mostly able to counter doubts and fears and whatever else by reminding myself that I'm still awfully young. It's unusual for writers to achieve success by my age. So I often think that the best plan is to allow myself the extra time to continue developing my craft and hope that I can break through in the next decade or so. In general, I think this is a good attitude to take. But the difficulty I face is that in the past, so much of my dreams about the future and where my life will go have hinged on being successful as a writer. This isn't to indicate that I planned on making a living as a novelist (which I know is highly unlikely), but I figured that if I could publish enough to establish myself a bit in the literary world, then I could teach creative writing and likely teach a lighter load as a university professor than the five-five load of a community college teacher and, thus, have more time to write. The teaching and writing would go together and feed back on each other.
Recently I've been facing the notion that such a dream may never come about or that it could be years or decades before it does. And in the mean time, I still need a job. But do I want to have "just a job" or do I want to have a career? I'd like to be paid to do something I care about. That is one of the great things about teaching. Even as an adjunct, I get to do something that makes a difference. And the reality is that I would love to do it full time while making more money and having health insurance and so on. Yet the sacrifice that comes with full-time employment will be less time to write. But that is something I'm willing to trade, I think. I still hope to pursue my writing, but I know that, especially in the first years of a full-time position, it will be hard to find time for anything else. But I think that's a necessary trade off. And more and more, I'm thinking that it might be that I'll really have to set my writing goals aside for a few years, or relegate them more to hobby or side interest status.
I don't know. It's tough to accept that I might not realistically be able to write much while pursuing a teaching career, but I do suspect that that's pretty much the way things will work out. Part of the problem is really the issue of priorities. If I'm willing to slack as a teacher, then I can probably find more time to write, but I don't think that's fair to my students or the school that pays me. I think I should really make teaching a priority, even if it means downgrading writing. But I'm awfully conflicted about it.
Maybe it's still premature to fret over such things. I don't actually have a job offer on the table right now anyway. It's possible that the end result of all my stressing over applications and interviews will be that next fall I'll be doing the same adjuncting I've been doing for the past two years. If I don't get a full-time job, then much of what I've been obsessing over is moot. And maybe that will be truly beneficial. After having thought through the implications of full-time employment, perhaps I can take better advantage of a part-time situation for another year and spend as much extra time as possible writing. At the moment, I've only been offered three classes as an adjunct for the fall, which will mean a much tighter budget but more time to write. Then when the day comes that I have to shift my priorities further toward teaching, I at least will have had more time to work on my writing between now and then.
Now those are all good possibilities, but those are also things that take a lot of time and effort. So the question is whether I want to devote myself to those things at the possible expense of my writing. And this is really tough to evaluate.
One particular issue I've been considering is how I should best use my summers if I get a full-time job. It turns out that at the school I just interviewed, all full-timers are contracted for the regular school year, and any summer teaching is done for additional pay as adjuncts. This means that I could simply decide not to teach during the summer and take that time completely for my own writing. Or I could teach additional classes that perhaps I don't have the opportunity to do during the regular school year. Teaching extra classes would be a great way to expand my experience as well as make more money. The extra cash could go straight toward paying down my student loans or into savings. Choosing to teach extra classes would certainly have a lot of benefits. But I know it will be tough to write much during the school year when I'm teaching full time, so that extra time during the summer could be my primary way of maintaining an investment in my writing. But how do I weigh the various options against each other?
Part of me kind of feels like I need to reevaluate my writing goals significantly, that I need to sort of step back from how I think about writing and myself as a writer. I don't mean that I'm planning on giving up writing, but I sometimes feel like I let it dominate my thoughts too much. I think of myself as a writer. It's a major part of my identity. Therefore, when I don't find time or can't muster the effort to write, I feel like I'm unsure who I am, like I've lost part of myself and am living somebody else's life. Also, when I continue to get rejected when I send out my stories, I have trouble reconciling that failure with my image of myself as a writer, and rather than simply undermining my confidence in my abilities to do an activity I enjoy, it undermines my entire sense of self.
I'm mostly able to counter doubts and fears and whatever else by reminding myself that I'm still awfully young. It's unusual for writers to achieve success by my age. So I often think that the best plan is to allow myself the extra time to continue developing my craft and hope that I can break through in the next decade or so. In general, I think this is a good attitude to take. But the difficulty I face is that in the past, so much of my dreams about the future and where my life will go have hinged on being successful as a writer. This isn't to indicate that I planned on making a living as a novelist (which I know is highly unlikely), but I figured that if I could publish enough to establish myself a bit in the literary world, then I could teach creative writing and likely teach a lighter load as a university professor than the five-five load of a community college teacher and, thus, have more time to write. The teaching and writing would go together and feed back on each other.
Recently I've been facing the notion that such a dream may never come about or that it could be years or decades before it does. And in the mean time, I still need a job. But do I want to have "just a job" or do I want to have a career? I'd like to be paid to do something I care about. That is one of the great things about teaching. Even as an adjunct, I get to do something that makes a difference. And the reality is that I would love to do it full time while making more money and having health insurance and so on. Yet the sacrifice that comes with full-time employment will be less time to write. But that is something I'm willing to trade, I think. I still hope to pursue my writing, but I know that, especially in the first years of a full-time position, it will be hard to find time for anything else. But I think that's a necessary trade off. And more and more, I'm thinking that it might be that I'll really have to set my writing goals aside for a few years, or relegate them more to hobby or side interest status.
I don't know. It's tough to accept that I might not realistically be able to write much while pursuing a teaching career, but I do suspect that that's pretty much the way things will work out. Part of the problem is really the issue of priorities. If I'm willing to slack as a teacher, then I can probably find more time to write, but I don't think that's fair to my students or the school that pays me. I think I should really make teaching a priority, even if it means downgrading writing. But I'm awfully conflicted about it.
Maybe it's still premature to fret over such things. I don't actually have a job offer on the table right now anyway. It's possible that the end result of all my stressing over applications and interviews will be that next fall I'll be doing the same adjuncting I've been doing for the past two years. If I don't get a full-time job, then much of what I've been obsessing over is moot. And maybe that will be truly beneficial. After having thought through the implications of full-time employment, perhaps I can take better advantage of a part-time situation for another year and spend as much extra time as possible writing. At the moment, I've only been offered three classes as an adjunct for the fall, which will mean a much tighter budget but more time to write. Then when the day comes that I have to shift my priorities further toward teaching, I at least will have had more time to work on my writing between now and then.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Submissions
I keep track of my submissions in a handy Excel file. I have the story, the journal I've submitted it to, when I submitted it, any other notes, and the date it's rejected or accepted. I think something along these lines is a must for anybody who is seriously trying to get published. It's easy enough to keep track of submissions this way, and I can quickly glance at it to see how many pieces I have currently making the rounds.
Right now, I have two stories that I'm sending out to journals. One I've been submitting for a few years. The other I've been submitting for less time. Both of these pieces have received personal responses from readers at various journals, ranging from the somewhat generic "the writing is good, but this isn't right for us right now" to more detailed critiques with explanations for why the journal doesn't want the piece. Both of these stories have undergone substantial revisions over a period of years, and both are, I feel, in pretty solid shape. Yet both also are still being submitted because they have not been accepted anywhere.
Ordinarily, I like to have each piece at about ten places. When I get a few rejections, I resubmit to a few more places so I have a steady flow of submissions and responses coming and going. But lately, I've been really bad about sending out new submissions. The rejections keep coming in every so often, and without new copies going out, my overall submission numbers keep going down. I got a rejection the other day, and when I logged it in the file, I noticed that I'm down to only a few places still considering my work.
It occurred to me, obviously, that I should send out a new batch of envelopes, but I didn't. Sometimes when I've received several rejections in a row, I think it's probably a good idea to review my work again and see if I might want to revise further. I think that's a good idea right now, since it's been several months with the current drafts, and still nobody has accepted these stories. But there's another reason I'm delaying submitting right now, and that has to do with the uncertainty of my future.
I don't know where I'll be living a few months from now. I might be in the same place I am now, or I might be living on the other side of the country. Of course, the post office can forward mail, and there are e-mails as well, but I still think it's easier to submit work with an accurate address. Plus, there are a lot of places that shut down or slow down during the summer months since they are affiliated with schools. So until I know where I'm going to be, I've decided not to submit anything new.
This is a practical decision, but it also has the benefit of allowing me time to go back over my pieces once more and do that additional revision. Clearly, the current drafts are not quite doing it, despite the positive feedback I've already received. So maybe more dramatic changes are in order. For instance, one story has a protagonist who is an English teacher. I've been thinking that perhaps this detail might work against the story's success since many writers are also English teachers, and it's likely that a lot of stories are written by wannabe writers featuring English teacher characters. So maybe making the character another type of teacher would help. He could be a physics teacher, perhaps, or a math teacher. And maybe something as small as that change could lift the story out of the slush where it's spent so much time in the past few years.
Waiting a few months to send out a new big batch of submissions also means that when I start submitting again next fall, I will (I hope) have a new piece or two to send out along with the old pieces. Unfortunately, I've really been slacking the past few months. I had great plans for this semester. I'm teaching four classes, which is a lot, but this is the first time since I've been adjuncting when I didn't have a second job on top of my teaching, so I figured I'd have plenty of extra writing time. I did make some decent use of that time early in the semester. I wrote regularly and made some decent progress on a short story rewrite. Then I left the story behind to work on a writing sample from my novel for a fellowship application. But then by the time I was ready to get back to the story, I was in the midst of the job application process, having been contacted about interviews.
I can't honestly say that preparing for interviews and going through the interview process took all of my extra time, but the anxiety surrounding those interviews sucked a lot of my energy and left with little ability to concentrate the past several weeks. So, basically, I've barely done any writing since February. But my hope is that in a few weeks, I'll know whether I've got a job lined up for the fall, and I can either plan a move or settle back into the life I've been living the past couple of years. And at that point, when the nerves have settled down, I'll return to that story that I haven't touched in weeks. And maybe by September, it will be ready to send out.
Right now, I have two stories that I'm sending out to journals. One I've been submitting for a few years. The other I've been submitting for less time. Both of these pieces have received personal responses from readers at various journals, ranging from the somewhat generic "the writing is good, but this isn't right for us right now" to more detailed critiques with explanations for why the journal doesn't want the piece. Both of these stories have undergone substantial revisions over a period of years, and both are, I feel, in pretty solid shape. Yet both also are still being submitted because they have not been accepted anywhere.
Ordinarily, I like to have each piece at about ten places. When I get a few rejections, I resubmit to a few more places so I have a steady flow of submissions and responses coming and going. But lately, I've been really bad about sending out new submissions. The rejections keep coming in every so often, and without new copies going out, my overall submission numbers keep going down. I got a rejection the other day, and when I logged it in the file, I noticed that I'm down to only a few places still considering my work.
It occurred to me, obviously, that I should send out a new batch of envelopes, but I didn't. Sometimes when I've received several rejections in a row, I think it's probably a good idea to review my work again and see if I might want to revise further. I think that's a good idea right now, since it's been several months with the current drafts, and still nobody has accepted these stories. But there's another reason I'm delaying submitting right now, and that has to do with the uncertainty of my future.
I don't know where I'll be living a few months from now. I might be in the same place I am now, or I might be living on the other side of the country. Of course, the post office can forward mail, and there are e-mails as well, but I still think it's easier to submit work with an accurate address. Plus, there are a lot of places that shut down or slow down during the summer months since they are affiliated with schools. So until I know where I'm going to be, I've decided not to submit anything new.
This is a practical decision, but it also has the benefit of allowing me time to go back over my pieces once more and do that additional revision. Clearly, the current drafts are not quite doing it, despite the positive feedback I've already received. So maybe more dramatic changes are in order. For instance, one story has a protagonist who is an English teacher. I've been thinking that perhaps this detail might work against the story's success since many writers are also English teachers, and it's likely that a lot of stories are written by wannabe writers featuring English teacher characters. So maybe making the character another type of teacher would help. He could be a physics teacher, perhaps, or a math teacher. And maybe something as small as that change could lift the story out of the slush where it's spent so much time in the past few years.
Waiting a few months to send out a new big batch of submissions also means that when I start submitting again next fall, I will (I hope) have a new piece or two to send out along with the old pieces. Unfortunately, I've really been slacking the past few months. I had great plans for this semester. I'm teaching four classes, which is a lot, but this is the first time since I've been adjuncting when I didn't have a second job on top of my teaching, so I figured I'd have plenty of extra writing time. I did make some decent use of that time early in the semester. I wrote regularly and made some decent progress on a short story rewrite. Then I left the story behind to work on a writing sample from my novel for a fellowship application. But then by the time I was ready to get back to the story, I was in the midst of the job application process, having been contacted about interviews.
I can't honestly say that preparing for interviews and going through the interview process took all of my extra time, but the anxiety surrounding those interviews sucked a lot of my energy and left with little ability to concentrate the past several weeks. So, basically, I've barely done any writing since February. But my hope is that in a few weeks, I'll know whether I've got a job lined up for the fall, and I can either plan a move or settle back into the life I've been living the past couple of years. And at that point, when the nerves have settled down, I'll return to that story that I haven't touched in weeks. And maybe by September, it will be ready to send out.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Making a Living II
I've been thinking a lot about money recently. Primarily this is because I've been going through the job hunting process. This is the third year in a row I've sent out applications in the hopes of finding a full-time college teaching job. Each time I apply, I think about the difference a full-time position will make to my financial life, and I hope and dream while trying to keep those dreams reasonably in check. This year, however, is different from the past two since I've actually made it beyond the paperwork stage to the interview portion of the process. I take this as a good sign, so I've been letting my daydreams wander a bit further.
And here's the thing: people talk about how little teachers get paid and how worthless a master's degree is. And there's something to be said for those positions. Considering the education required to teach at the college level (comparable to lawyers and doctors), it is not necessarily the best gig in the world. Adjuncts in particular have a tough situation. Depending on the school, they might make two or three thousand dollars per class or only a bit above minimum wage, which is hardly what one would expect for a profession requiring an advanced degree. However, it is still possible to make a fairly nice living as a teacher.
If I land one of the full time positions I'm up for, my income will increase significantly over what I made last year working two part time jobs (a difference of at least ten thousand dollars, plus benefits). In fact, if I get offered the best paying of the jobs, my new income could be close to double what I made last year. So I've been fantasizing about what it will be like to have that much more money coming in. Last year I made more than any year before, but considering I have debts to pay off from grad school, I'm still just getting by. But if I'm offered the best paying job I'm up for, then I will suddenly have enough money to start making considerably higher payments on my loans. In fact, I suspect that instead of taking about a decade to pay off my loans, I could be debt free in four or five years. At that point, I would be making far more money than I would need to just get by. I could then start thinking about larger purchases like a new car or a down payment on a house or laser eye surgery to correct my poor vision.
In the past few years I haven't fantasized much about big expensive things like those. I figured I'd probably live in a small apartment throughout my whole adult life and basically get by comfortably enough but always have to be careful with my spending and always wish I had a little bit more. I figured that without a family to take care of, I'll always do fine compared to those around me trying to support kids, but, still, I'll never be wealthy. But the truth is that even if I don't land a full time job this year, I probably will land one next year or the year after, and by the time I hit forty, I will likely be making quite a nice living. I won't be able to buy a mansion or anything, but I will be relatively wealthy in the sense that I could afford things like nice vacations or a decent car or retirement savings.
Furthermore, teaching has decent job security. When I moved to Pennsylvania a couple years ago, I moved here because I wanted a cheap place to live, not because I actually had a job here. Within a few days of arrival, however, I was offered two classes at the local community college. If I did not have my degrees, I might have spent weeks or months looking for some random office job or a retail position paying minimum wage, but instead I was hired right away. Even though the job isn't secure in the sense of having a long term contract (I don't know semester to semester how many classes I'll be offered or whether those classes will get enough students to go or might get canceled a week before they begin), it's still secure in the sense that there will always be a need for English teachers. And, of course, once I'm a full timer, I'll have one year contract with a high likelihood of having the contract renewed year to year or landing tenure down the road.
Again, compared with doctors and lawyers, teachers are not incredibly well paid, but compared with a lot of other jobs, they are. In addition to teaching, I worked at a bookstore until it closed a few months ago. I'm fairly certain that even as a part-time teacher, I made more than the manager of that store. I know a few people who work office jobs that don't require a college degree, and they make enough money to get by on those jobs, but not as much as I'll probably make teaching college. The truth is that teaching makes a lot of sense as a career not only because it's rewarding and challenging and keeps one thinking about the basics of writing on a regular basis and all those other reasons, but it also makes sense from a purely financial standpoint. I'm thirty-one years old, and the most I've ever made in a single calendar year is about $27,000 (which is still about twelve thousand more than one could earn making minimum wage, assuming one could ever actually get a full-time minimum wage job). But I expect I will make more than that this year and more again next year, and there's a pretty good chance that by the time I retire, I'll make six figures (that's counting on raises and promotions and the ever decreasing value of the dollar). But without my degrees, I would probably be doing the same kind of random office job I had when I finished college, which paid eleven dollars an hour about a decade ago and I'm guessing wouldn't pay much more than that today.
And here's the thing: people talk about how little teachers get paid and how worthless a master's degree is. And there's something to be said for those positions. Considering the education required to teach at the college level (comparable to lawyers and doctors), it is not necessarily the best gig in the world. Adjuncts in particular have a tough situation. Depending on the school, they might make two or three thousand dollars per class or only a bit above minimum wage, which is hardly what one would expect for a profession requiring an advanced degree. However, it is still possible to make a fairly nice living as a teacher.
If I land one of the full time positions I'm up for, my income will increase significantly over what I made last year working two part time jobs (a difference of at least ten thousand dollars, plus benefits). In fact, if I get offered the best paying of the jobs, my new income could be close to double what I made last year. So I've been fantasizing about what it will be like to have that much more money coming in. Last year I made more than any year before, but considering I have debts to pay off from grad school, I'm still just getting by. But if I'm offered the best paying job I'm up for, then I will suddenly have enough money to start making considerably higher payments on my loans. In fact, I suspect that instead of taking about a decade to pay off my loans, I could be debt free in four or five years. At that point, I would be making far more money than I would need to just get by. I could then start thinking about larger purchases like a new car or a down payment on a house or laser eye surgery to correct my poor vision.
In the past few years I haven't fantasized much about big expensive things like those. I figured I'd probably live in a small apartment throughout my whole adult life and basically get by comfortably enough but always have to be careful with my spending and always wish I had a little bit more. I figured that without a family to take care of, I'll always do fine compared to those around me trying to support kids, but, still, I'll never be wealthy. But the truth is that even if I don't land a full time job this year, I probably will land one next year or the year after, and by the time I hit forty, I will likely be making quite a nice living. I won't be able to buy a mansion or anything, but I will be relatively wealthy in the sense that I could afford things like nice vacations or a decent car or retirement savings.
Furthermore, teaching has decent job security. When I moved to Pennsylvania a couple years ago, I moved here because I wanted a cheap place to live, not because I actually had a job here. Within a few days of arrival, however, I was offered two classes at the local community college. If I did not have my degrees, I might have spent weeks or months looking for some random office job or a retail position paying minimum wage, but instead I was hired right away. Even though the job isn't secure in the sense of having a long term contract (I don't know semester to semester how many classes I'll be offered or whether those classes will get enough students to go or might get canceled a week before they begin), it's still secure in the sense that there will always be a need for English teachers. And, of course, once I'm a full timer, I'll have one year contract with a high likelihood of having the contract renewed year to year or landing tenure down the road.
Again, compared with doctors and lawyers, teachers are not incredibly well paid, but compared with a lot of other jobs, they are. In addition to teaching, I worked at a bookstore until it closed a few months ago. I'm fairly certain that even as a part-time teacher, I made more than the manager of that store. I know a few people who work office jobs that don't require a college degree, and they make enough money to get by on those jobs, but not as much as I'll probably make teaching college. The truth is that teaching makes a lot of sense as a career not only because it's rewarding and challenging and keeps one thinking about the basics of writing on a regular basis and all those other reasons, but it also makes sense from a purely financial standpoint. I'm thirty-one years old, and the most I've ever made in a single calendar year is about $27,000 (which is still about twelve thousand more than one could earn making minimum wage, assuming one could ever actually get a full-time minimum wage job). But I expect I will make more than that this year and more again next year, and there's a pretty good chance that by the time I retire, I'll make six figures (that's counting on raises and promotions and the ever decreasing value of the dollar). But without my degrees, I would probably be doing the same kind of random office job I had when I finished college, which paid eleven dollars an hour about a decade ago and I'm guessing wouldn't pay much more than that today.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Living Life
I've been thinking again about the old issue of writers needing something to write about. A friend and fellow writer has touched on this issue recently in her blog and sparked my thinking. She thinks that it's important for writers to live full lives rather than hole up and live in front of the computer screen. This is certainly an issue I've thought about over the years, and it's one I struggle with. The reason I struggle with it is because I fear that if she is right, then I may be doomed to never be a great writer because I'm not a very good liver (I'm a better kidney, ba-dum-bum).
I have a mind that won't quit spinning. I think through various outcomes for situations. I plan out possibilities and analyze things to no end. I have a strong desire to understand the world around me, and my inclination is to believe that if I ponder things enough, I'll improve my understanding. This can, of course, be great for a writer since I can come up with various possibilities for how a story might unfold and what characters might do and what it all means. But this tendency certainly has a downside. I'm not good with a lot of basic interaction. Chitchat is something I struggle with because my mind runs through various possibilities or tries to interpret what somebody is REALLY saying so I can respond appropriately, and by the time I think of something to say, along the lines of "yes, you're right; it was hot today," the appropriate time for a response has passed and the person I'm chatting with has wandered away or the conversation among a group has moved on and I'm still standing quietly in the back. Another facet of my social skills is that I don't pick up on various social clues. I take things literally and misunderstand what somebody is asking or saying. Anyway, the end result is that I don't make friends easily, and most of my social life consists of either communicating via internet with friends I knew from years ago or with people who are related to me by blood or marriage.
When it comes down to what most people think of as "having a life," I don't have one. I go to work. I come home and work. It's not unusual for me to go days at a time without leaving the house because if I'm not going to work, I really have no place to go. I don't understand how or where people meet other people and make new friends. It was a tough thing to do back when I was in school and was among a group of people of similar ages and interests, but now that I'm out in the adult world, it strikes me as a nearly impossible task.
I was in another city this weekend for a job interview, and while I was there I managed to get together with one of my old college roommates, one of my best friends from my early twenties. We have managed to keep in touch a bit over the years, but we tried to figure out when we last saw each other in person and, as far as we could recall, it was seven years ago. So we asked about various issues like what had changed in our lives in that time. He asked me if there were any major developments he'd missed, and I had to tell him that there really weren't as far as my personal life went. Since I last saw him I earned two masters degrees and became a teacher. I put on a bunch of weight and lost it again. I wrote a lot. Much has changed, but when he asked about my social life, there was not much to report. He asked if I missed that, and I had to say that I didn't really miss it. I have had so little experience with that kind of thing that I don't know what I'm missing.
(Also, this weekend of going through an extensive interview process--including a teaching demonstration and interviews with a search committee as well as several campus deans, presidents, and vice presidents--was one of the most stressful things I've ever done. I felt sick with nerves for much of the past couple of weeks, and what it most reminded me of was my dating experience years ago. I've really only had one girlfriend. We dated for about two months right at the end of my senior year of college. And the major thing I remember about that experience was the constant anxiety I felt. I was stressed and nervous and sick to my stomach and just generally pretty miserable. When I think back on it today, I have trouble figuring out why I put up with it. There are some pleasant memories as well I have of that girl. We had some good times, I'm sure. But whatever good times we had are completely overshadowed by my memories of anxiety and stress. If I had it to do over again, I don't think I would repeat that experience. And when I sometimes envy my coupled friends and family, I remember how unpleasant my attempt at such a coupling was and recognize that a life like that just doesn't seem to be a fit for me.)
What I don't understand is what is at the heart of good stories. Stories are about conflict, about drama, about interactions between people, about relationships. And those are things I don't have a great understanding of. Sometimes I hope that will change in my life. I see people around me who are very social or who have close bonds with romantic partners, and I have some envy for those individuals. My siblings are all married, and those relationships seem to bring them a lot of happiness. But I don't foresee anything like that in my life. I think somehow when I was a kid or a teenager or whenever, I missed out on learning some of the basic things about life that most people just pick up on their own. Or maybe I lack some instinct that others have about how to interact with others. So if I lack that understanding, will I ever be able to write stories that people respond to? Or will my pieces always seem odd, the characters unnatural and robotic?
My hope is that through reading widely I can further my understanding of human life, that I will vicariously experience the world. I think that's one of the great joys of reading. But is that enough? Can one learn what one needs to know to be a writer solely through holing up with books? Or am I doomed to be somebody who understands words and sentences and paragraphs and structural elements, who can evaluate a story and write a nice facsimile of life, but, lacking that spark that others have that makes life life, will never be able to produce that spark in my own writing?
I have a mind that won't quit spinning. I think through various outcomes for situations. I plan out possibilities and analyze things to no end. I have a strong desire to understand the world around me, and my inclination is to believe that if I ponder things enough, I'll improve my understanding. This can, of course, be great for a writer since I can come up with various possibilities for how a story might unfold and what characters might do and what it all means. But this tendency certainly has a downside. I'm not good with a lot of basic interaction. Chitchat is something I struggle with because my mind runs through various possibilities or tries to interpret what somebody is REALLY saying so I can respond appropriately, and by the time I think of something to say, along the lines of "yes, you're right; it was hot today," the appropriate time for a response has passed and the person I'm chatting with has wandered away or the conversation among a group has moved on and I'm still standing quietly in the back. Another facet of my social skills is that I don't pick up on various social clues. I take things literally and misunderstand what somebody is asking or saying. Anyway, the end result is that I don't make friends easily, and most of my social life consists of either communicating via internet with friends I knew from years ago or with people who are related to me by blood or marriage.
When it comes down to what most people think of as "having a life," I don't have one. I go to work. I come home and work. It's not unusual for me to go days at a time without leaving the house because if I'm not going to work, I really have no place to go. I don't understand how or where people meet other people and make new friends. It was a tough thing to do back when I was in school and was among a group of people of similar ages and interests, but now that I'm out in the adult world, it strikes me as a nearly impossible task.
I was in another city this weekend for a job interview, and while I was there I managed to get together with one of my old college roommates, one of my best friends from my early twenties. We have managed to keep in touch a bit over the years, but we tried to figure out when we last saw each other in person and, as far as we could recall, it was seven years ago. So we asked about various issues like what had changed in our lives in that time. He asked me if there were any major developments he'd missed, and I had to tell him that there really weren't as far as my personal life went. Since I last saw him I earned two masters degrees and became a teacher. I put on a bunch of weight and lost it again. I wrote a lot. Much has changed, but when he asked about my social life, there was not much to report. He asked if I missed that, and I had to say that I didn't really miss it. I have had so little experience with that kind of thing that I don't know what I'm missing.
(Also, this weekend of going through an extensive interview process--including a teaching demonstration and interviews with a search committee as well as several campus deans, presidents, and vice presidents--was one of the most stressful things I've ever done. I felt sick with nerves for much of the past couple of weeks, and what it most reminded me of was my dating experience years ago. I've really only had one girlfriend. We dated for about two months right at the end of my senior year of college. And the major thing I remember about that experience was the constant anxiety I felt. I was stressed and nervous and sick to my stomach and just generally pretty miserable. When I think back on it today, I have trouble figuring out why I put up with it. There are some pleasant memories as well I have of that girl. We had some good times, I'm sure. But whatever good times we had are completely overshadowed by my memories of anxiety and stress. If I had it to do over again, I don't think I would repeat that experience. And when I sometimes envy my coupled friends and family, I remember how unpleasant my attempt at such a coupling was and recognize that a life like that just doesn't seem to be a fit for me.)
What I don't understand is what is at the heart of good stories. Stories are about conflict, about drama, about interactions between people, about relationships. And those are things I don't have a great understanding of. Sometimes I hope that will change in my life. I see people around me who are very social or who have close bonds with romantic partners, and I have some envy for those individuals. My siblings are all married, and those relationships seem to bring them a lot of happiness. But I don't foresee anything like that in my life. I think somehow when I was a kid or a teenager or whenever, I missed out on learning some of the basic things about life that most people just pick up on their own. Or maybe I lack some instinct that others have about how to interact with others. So if I lack that understanding, will I ever be able to write stories that people respond to? Or will my pieces always seem odd, the characters unnatural and robotic?
My hope is that through reading widely I can further my understanding of human life, that I will vicariously experience the world. I think that's one of the great joys of reading. But is that enough? Can one learn what one needs to know to be a writer solely through holing up with books? Or am I doomed to be somebody who understands words and sentences and paragraphs and structural elements, who can evaluate a story and write a nice facsimile of life, but, lacking that spark that others have that makes life life, will never be able to produce that spark in my own writing?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Writing Sample II
I sent off my fellowship application for the Wisconsin fellowship today. It's amazing how long it takes to put together a packet like that. I wanted to make sure my writing sample was as strong as possible, obviously, so I spent many hours over the past couple of weeks working on it. I got some feedback from trusted early readers to help me decide which sample to use. I was leaning toward the current beginning of my novel, which I feel is some of the strongest writing I've ever done, but I knew that I was way too close to it to evaluate it properly, so a couple of other people looked it over and, sure enough, agreed with me that the new beginning to the novel is in good shape. I got that feedback several days ago, but I still wanted to go over the material a couple more times. Plus, I wanted to include the second chapter as well, which still needed a bit of tweaking.
So I continued editing and polishing the sample. Yesterday I typed changes into the second chapter off of a marked up hard copy and then read over the entire thing today. Just this week I lectured my classes on the importance of polishing their work before turning it in, doing that final read through (preferably aloud and preferably off a hard copy instead of just on the computer) before declaring their work complete. So I did that today, and sure enough found a bunch more little things I wanted to tweak: a phrase here, a preposition there. I read the whole piece out loud, marked with my trusty red pen, typed up those final changes and then printed everything out. I've probably spent twenty-some hours on this writing sample in the past couple weeks. But I got it in the mail today, and I feel really good about it.
As I did the final read-through today, I couldn't help feeling that my work is at a great place. I've grown so much in the past few years that I think I'm either reaching or on the edge of reaching a new level. If I keep producing work at the quality that I'm currently producing, then I think it's really only a matter of time before I break into some significant journals with some stories and maybe even wind up finding a place (a small press or contest perhaps) for my novel in the next few years. Or if not this novel, then maybe the next one.
It's nice to be at a point where I feel genuinely positive about what I'm doing and confident that I am actually moving forward and not merely spinning my wheels or deluding myself.
So I continued editing and polishing the sample. Yesterday I typed changes into the second chapter off of a marked up hard copy and then read over the entire thing today. Just this week I lectured my classes on the importance of polishing their work before turning it in, doing that final read through (preferably aloud and preferably off a hard copy instead of just on the computer) before declaring their work complete. So I did that today, and sure enough found a bunch more little things I wanted to tweak: a phrase here, a preposition there. I read the whole piece out loud, marked with my trusty red pen, typed up those final changes and then printed everything out. I've probably spent twenty-some hours on this writing sample in the past couple weeks. But I got it in the mail today, and I feel really good about it.
As I did the final read-through today, I couldn't help feeling that my work is at a great place. I've grown so much in the past few years that I think I'm either reaching or on the edge of reaching a new level. If I keep producing work at the quality that I'm currently producing, then I think it's really only a matter of time before I break into some significant journals with some stories and maybe even wind up finding a place (a small press or contest perhaps) for my novel in the next few years. Or if not this novel, then maybe the next one.
It's nice to be at a point where I feel genuinely positive about what I'm doing and confident that I am actually moving forward and not merely spinning my wheels or deluding myself.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Writing Sample
Lately, I've been working on multiple projects at the same time, or rather I'm going back and forth between projects. I've got a story I'm working on that I started last summer. I wrote the rough draft and then have been tossing it about in my head and jotting down notes on where I want to go with it for months. Now I'm writing the next draft of it. Then I'm also in the process of revising my MFA novel again. That's a similar situation. I wrote it years ago, of course. I defended it as my thesis, continued to revise for months afterward, thought I was done, did more revision, really thought I was done, started into the query process, thought maybe I wasn't done, and so on and so forth. I've been jotting down additional notes and planning out a revised structure for the novel for a while now and slowly sitting down to rewrite. I'm tackling the opening of the book first because that's where the most substantial changes are coming in. Some of the new beginning is coming from previous drafts and simply being shifted from later in the book to earlier, but some of it is brand new. So, anyway, I had been working on the novel for a while and then felt more like tackling the story, and I worked on that for several days, but then I felt obligated to work on the novel again.
Obligated is not the right word there. It's not that I feel like I should work on the novel and it's a hassle or something like that. I want to work on the novel. But at the moment I'm thinking about a fellowship I'm going to apply for. I have to get my application packet in this month, and, of course, a writing sample is the major component of the application. And I'm stuck on what to include as my writing sample. If I land the fellowship, this novel is the primary project I want to work on during the fellowship year, so I think it would make sense to include an excerpt from it as my writing sample. Yet which part should I excerpt? The obvious answer is the beginning, but that's the section of the book that is in the most disarray right now because I'm completely reworking it. But if I send a later section, that might indicate to those evaluating the applications that I don't feel confident in the beginning of my book. I've read several places that when querying agents and such and including sample pages, one should include the opening of the book rather than a section from the middle for that very reason. However, applying for a fellowship is not the same as querying an agent; the assumption here is that I have a project that I will continue to work on, not that I have a finished manuscript ready for publication.
Another option is to forget about including an excerpt from the novel as my writing sample and just use a short story (the application doesn't indicate that the writing sample has to be from the project I would be working on). That would show what my writing is like as well as be a complete piece. That might be to my advantage because it's often difficult to judge a part of something by itself. I used to bring in chapters of my novel to workshops in grad school, and a good deal of the time it seemed like my peers didn't know how to comment on it because they had no idea how this one section fit in with the larger story or really what that larger story was. Sometimes when I read the fiction published in the New Yorker I have that problem. They publish short stories, but they also publish excerpts from forthcoming novels, but they don't clearly identify which a given piece is, and sometimes I'll read it and then feel a bit baffled because it was well written but doesn't feel complete at all; then, later I discover that it was the first chapter that wasn't supposed to work on its own. So, for a fellowship application, would it be wise to try to entice them with a slice of something larger or to give them something complete so they can get a better sense of my ability to not just write a nice sequence but to write an entire story?
Anyway, what I've been doing the past few days is working on the beginning section. I figure that if that comes together really well and I feel confident in it, then that would be the best thing to send. But I only have a couple of weeks before I need to send the application off, which is not much time to get a new piece of writing into polished form. So in the likelihood that the opening isn't ready, I have to decide what else to send. I'm leaning toward an excerpt from the novel that works on its own as a story. But that leads to one more question. Do I refer to it as a novel excerpt or as a story? If sending a novel excerpt, I can include up to thirty pages, which would be about two chapters. If sending a story, I can only include one story. I think maybe I'd be better off sending one story by itself (again, that way there are no issues of trying to figure out how the excerpt works in terms of the larger piece), but that means I'd only be using half the amount of space available to represent myself. Would they look down on my application if they only get fifteen pages instead of thirty? Or do they really know after two pages whether they like the writing?
I'm probably over thinking this and would be better off just picking a piece I think is good and representative of my abilities and sending off the application already.
Obligated is not the right word there. It's not that I feel like I should work on the novel and it's a hassle or something like that. I want to work on the novel. But at the moment I'm thinking about a fellowship I'm going to apply for. I have to get my application packet in this month, and, of course, a writing sample is the major component of the application. And I'm stuck on what to include as my writing sample. If I land the fellowship, this novel is the primary project I want to work on during the fellowship year, so I think it would make sense to include an excerpt from it as my writing sample. Yet which part should I excerpt? The obvious answer is the beginning, but that's the section of the book that is in the most disarray right now because I'm completely reworking it. But if I send a later section, that might indicate to those evaluating the applications that I don't feel confident in the beginning of my book. I've read several places that when querying agents and such and including sample pages, one should include the opening of the book rather than a section from the middle for that very reason. However, applying for a fellowship is not the same as querying an agent; the assumption here is that I have a project that I will continue to work on, not that I have a finished manuscript ready for publication.
Another option is to forget about including an excerpt from the novel as my writing sample and just use a short story (the application doesn't indicate that the writing sample has to be from the project I would be working on). That would show what my writing is like as well as be a complete piece. That might be to my advantage because it's often difficult to judge a part of something by itself. I used to bring in chapters of my novel to workshops in grad school, and a good deal of the time it seemed like my peers didn't know how to comment on it because they had no idea how this one section fit in with the larger story or really what that larger story was. Sometimes when I read the fiction published in the New Yorker I have that problem. They publish short stories, but they also publish excerpts from forthcoming novels, but they don't clearly identify which a given piece is, and sometimes I'll read it and then feel a bit baffled because it was well written but doesn't feel complete at all; then, later I discover that it was the first chapter that wasn't supposed to work on its own. So, for a fellowship application, would it be wise to try to entice them with a slice of something larger or to give them something complete so they can get a better sense of my ability to not just write a nice sequence but to write an entire story?
Anyway, what I've been doing the past few days is working on the beginning section. I figure that if that comes together really well and I feel confident in it, then that would be the best thing to send. But I only have a couple of weeks before I need to send the application off, which is not much time to get a new piece of writing into polished form. So in the likelihood that the opening isn't ready, I have to decide what else to send. I'm leaning toward an excerpt from the novel that works on its own as a story. But that leads to one more question. Do I refer to it as a novel excerpt or as a story? If sending a novel excerpt, I can include up to thirty pages, which would be about two chapters. If sending a story, I can only include one story. I think maybe I'd be better off sending one story by itself (again, that way there are no issues of trying to figure out how the excerpt works in terms of the larger piece), but that means I'd only be using half the amount of space available to represent myself. Would they look down on my application if they only get fifteen pages instead of thirty? Or do they really know after two pages whether they like the writing?
I'm probably over thinking this and would be better off just picking a piece I think is good and representative of my abilities and sending off the application already.
Routine II
The past couple of weeks have been kind of lovely. I now only work one job, and I'm finding the additional time to be fantastic. I only have to go to campus to teach two days a week, and the rest of the week I can do prep work and grading from home. So that means most of the time I have a very flexible schedule. I wouldn't go so far as to say I've developed a solid routine yet, though. It's really too early in the semester to declare that, but I have managed to get some good writing in.
Mondays and Wednesdays I leave the house about six in the morning and get home about six in the evening. Waking up early, driving a long commute, and then teaching four classes back to back wears me out and by the time I'm home in the evening, I'm pretty much ready to just watch a movie or something, so not much writing happens on those days. But the other days, I've been managing to get some writing done first thing in the morning. I get my coffee going and sit down and write for a couple of hours. Then later in the day I prepare for classes and do grading and so forth. It's been working out really well so far.
There are a couple of issues that could throw a wrench into the gears, however. One is that it's simply too early to declare this officially a routine at this point. It's been a nice couple of weeks; that's all I can really call it now. But a bigger issue is that I'm at the point in the semester now where I'm going to start collecting papers to grade, so that will take up much more of my time. In the early weeks of the semester (especially this semester when classes have been canceled a couple of times due to weather), the prep is pretty straightforward and there's little yet to grade. But in the coming week I'll have stacks of rough drafts to go over and comment on. I'm hoping that I'll still manage to develop my routine. I think I can still devote mornings to writing and then worry about grading later in the day, but we'll see how it works out.
Mondays and Wednesdays I leave the house about six in the morning and get home about six in the evening. Waking up early, driving a long commute, and then teaching four classes back to back wears me out and by the time I'm home in the evening, I'm pretty much ready to just watch a movie or something, so not much writing happens on those days. But the other days, I've been managing to get some writing done first thing in the morning. I get my coffee going and sit down and write for a couple of hours. Then later in the day I prepare for classes and do grading and so forth. It's been working out really well so far.
There are a couple of issues that could throw a wrench into the gears, however. One is that it's simply too early to declare this officially a routine at this point. It's been a nice couple of weeks; that's all I can really call it now. But a bigger issue is that I'm at the point in the semester now where I'm going to start collecting papers to grade, so that will take up much more of my time. In the early weeks of the semester (especially this semester when classes have been canceled a couple of times due to weather), the prep is pretty straightforward and there's little yet to grade. But in the coming week I'll have stacks of rough drafts to go over and comment on. I'm hoping that I'll still manage to develop my routine. I think I can still devote mornings to writing and then worry about grading later in the day, but we'll see how it works out.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Routine
One of the things I've found is effective for me as a writer, and just in life in general, is having a routine. The most productive I've ever been was a couple years ago, shortly after grad school before I started teaching as an adjunct. Two major things I had going on at that time were getting into shape and writing. And I was able to develop a routine for both, exercising regularly, reading, and writing each day. I think my ideal day would go something like this: get up around eight or nine, drink coffee and read for two to four hours, eat, read some more, exercise, write, eat again, and then write or read or maybe watch a movie later in the evening, and in bed by midnight or so. What a life that would be. And I pretty much had that for a few months, and in that time I lost about thirty-five pounds of extra fat, did substantial rewrites on a novel, worked on some stories, worked a bit on a screenplay, and wrote an entire rough draft of a children's novel. It was a fantastic life. But, of course, the need to actually pay rent, to buy food, and to pay back the debt I acquired while in grad school required that I get a job.
For the past year and a half, I've had a much different life. I've been working two jobs, teaching and retail. Some days I would work both jobs back to back, leaving at seven in the morning and getting home at ten at night. Other days I would grade papers at home before going to the store in the evening. And while my classes were on the same schedule for a semester at a time, my retail job required me to work a variety of hours each week. I still somehow found some writing time, but not nearly as much as I'd like, and I could never develop a solid routine. If I wanted to make Friday a writing day, that might work one week, but then the next week I'd be at the store all day. Often I worked seven days a week and then when I'd get a day off I just wanted to completely zone out in front of the TV. The lack of a consistent routine really makes finding time to write a challenge.
But I'm beginning a new stage right now. The bookstore is closing down. Tuesday is the last day it will be open, and by Thursday, it will be completely empty. Although I'm sad for the people who are losing their jobs, this works out perfectly for me. I had been considering quitting for a while since I started teaching more classes and making more money from the college. This semester I got a raise and will now make about as much just from teaching as I made last semester from the two jobs combined. And the thing I'm most looking forward to about only having the one job is that I can now develop a steady routine.
I will only be teaching two days a week this semester, Mondays and Wednesdays. I have four classes back to back and then office hours as well as my hour-plus commute to campus, so they will be long days. Then, of course, I'll have to prep for classes and grade papers at home during the rest of the week. But I can now schedule my time much more accurately since there won't be an unpredictable variable anymore. So I plan on devoting the extra time each week when I had been working at the bookstore to writing. I can schedule my time myself and set aside the same regular hours. I can develop my own routine. Of course, it takes a while to get into a groove with a routine. The store is only now closing, and I plan on visiting family soon before I'm too bogged down in the semester to take a weekend off. But starting in a couple of weeks, I plan on instituting a new routine, setting specific goals for my time, and using this semester to full advantage.
One final thought on this subject: I found out recently that I'm going to get to go to the Advanced Placement English Reading this summer to evaluate AP English exams. It's one week in June and pays an honorarium equivalent to one of my regular teaching paychecks. That extra money, on top of what I intend to save throughout the semester, should be plenty to get me through the summer and up to the point where I'm paid again in September even if I have no other source of summer income. So that means that if I don't teach a summer class or get another part time summer job, I could devote about three months this summer to writing. I could have the ideal life once again, get a solid routine in place, and be incredibly productive. What a lovely thought that is.
For the past year and a half, I've had a much different life. I've been working two jobs, teaching and retail. Some days I would work both jobs back to back, leaving at seven in the morning and getting home at ten at night. Other days I would grade papers at home before going to the store in the evening. And while my classes were on the same schedule for a semester at a time, my retail job required me to work a variety of hours each week. I still somehow found some writing time, but not nearly as much as I'd like, and I could never develop a solid routine. If I wanted to make Friday a writing day, that might work one week, but then the next week I'd be at the store all day. Often I worked seven days a week and then when I'd get a day off I just wanted to completely zone out in front of the TV. The lack of a consistent routine really makes finding time to write a challenge.
But I'm beginning a new stage right now. The bookstore is closing down. Tuesday is the last day it will be open, and by Thursday, it will be completely empty. Although I'm sad for the people who are losing their jobs, this works out perfectly for me. I had been considering quitting for a while since I started teaching more classes and making more money from the college. This semester I got a raise and will now make about as much just from teaching as I made last semester from the two jobs combined. And the thing I'm most looking forward to about only having the one job is that I can now develop a steady routine.
I will only be teaching two days a week this semester, Mondays and Wednesdays. I have four classes back to back and then office hours as well as my hour-plus commute to campus, so they will be long days. Then, of course, I'll have to prep for classes and grade papers at home during the rest of the week. But I can now schedule my time much more accurately since there won't be an unpredictable variable anymore. So I plan on devoting the extra time each week when I had been working at the bookstore to writing. I can schedule my time myself and set aside the same regular hours. I can develop my own routine. Of course, it takes a while to get into a groove with a routine. The store is only now closing, and I plan on visiting family soon before I'm too bogged down in the semester to take a weekend off. But starting in a couple of weeks, I plan on instituting a new routine, setting specific goals for my time, and using this semester to full advantage.
One final thought on this subject: I found out recently that I'm going to get to go to the Advanced Placement English Reading this summer to evaluate AP English exams. It's one week in June and pays an honorarium equivalent to one of my regular teaching paychecks. That extra money, on top of what I intend to save throughout the semester, should be plenty to get me through the summer and up to the point where I'm paid again in September even if I have no other source of summer income. So that means that if I don't teach a summer class or get another part time summer job, I could devote about three months this summer to writing. I could have the ideal life once again, get a solid routine in place, and be incredibly productive. What a lovely thought that is.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Another Fellowship
I recently found another fellowship opportunity that looks awesome. This one is for people with an MFA or PhD in creative writing who haven't published a book yet. It is a one year deal to teach a creative writing class each semester and work on a book, and it pays $27,000 for that year. This is the type of thing that would be a huge boost to a CV in helping to land teaching jobs down the road, it would provide a lot of time to write, and it would provide creative writing teaching experience. This one is almost more appealing than the Stegner Fellowship I applied for because it involves teaching creative writing, which I really want to do, it's in Wisconsin, which seems more like my kind of place than California, and I'm betting it's less competitive because it doesn't have quite as big a name and is probably not as geographically appealing to a lot of people. Anyway, it looks awesome, so I'm definitely going to get my paperwork together and apply for it. I'm in the process now of applying for full time teaching jobs for the coming school year as well, and I feel very hopeful that maybe I'll manage to land something great this year.
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