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.
Friday, February 26, 2010
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.
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