MFA Rock

Getting Things Done

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P1010004_3That would be my Siouxsie-pale hands literally attacking the keyboard for the next month. Yesterday I turned in the last packet of the third semester for my MFA program. And saving my advisor’s response and a bunch of paperwork, that means I now have a month off. The next residency begins in scenic Montpelier on July 9.

During the semester, I finished a 16,000 or so word critical thesis (called, perhaps boringly, "Eye for a God’s Eye: The Bold Choice of the Omniscient Point of View in Fiction for Young Adults"), which, while it took me away from fiction for a good chunk of time, also turned out to be a tremendous learning experience. (Oh god, did I really just use the words "learning experience"? My apologies. I’ll get back to the hedonistic kind forthwith.) I also wrote about 16,000 words on a new (old) project, oddly enough using the omniscient POV–or the OPOV, as I now call it, which is, thus far, an even bigger learning experience. (Last time I use that term, I swear.) And did brief annotations for somewhere north of 50 books that I read, mostly not including the theory books I read bits and pieces of for the thesis. My advisor, the fabulous Leda Schubert, who is so smart her brain may actually throw off sparks at times, kept the faith and prodded me forward and endured the whining that comes from serving on two juries (the Tiptree and the Cybils) during the same period of time as writing a thesis and doing freelance stuff and the normal day job/life stuff, etcetera.

I’m saying this because I have a nasty tendency to only focus on what I haven’t done. Which, in this case, is to revise the novel I wrote during my first two semesters. I managed to do a bit of it, but for the most part it got set aside. (This will undoubtedly turn out to be a good thing, but some of us like to enforce insane standards for ourselves, or at least indulge in self-flagellation.) Anyway, that brings me back to attacking the keyboard. Doselle–whose ear I bent for far too long one night in Madison, answering the innocent inquiry "so what are you working on?"–will be glad to hear that I plan to take this month to Finish That Damn Novel.

Yesterday I printed out the first draft and got my pen and notebook ready. Mostly, I already know what needs doing, but I’m sure some other stuff will occur to me coming back fresh to it. The most major surgery is writing a new ending, but I know what the right ending is and that’s always the hardest part. For the next month, that’s what I’ll be doing. And then I will send it off to my genius first readers, who will tell me how to make it even better, and then I will send it to some agents.

But, first, the finishing of a coherent draft. Defendurcastle_2

What I won’t be doing this month is taking on any freelance assignments, saying yes to anything optional, keeping up with e-mail or returning phone calls in a timely manner. I’ve already downsized my feedreader subscriptions by about a hundred (so if something really important is happening in your life and I should know, e-mail me). One of the most important things I know about my own proclivities is that I require time to goof off, in fairly large measure, when I’m working really hard on something. So I will be playing Defend Your Castle (yay, Wii Ware!) and making it through the last couple of seasons of Angel (after getting bogged down by that whole Darla’s return storyline) and catching a stray movie and posting random stuff here and going out to dinner and that kind of thing.

I will just also be working very hard on making le novel and not keeping up with some stuff. Wish me luck and fortitude.

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Monsters of Academia (Updated)

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Gardner_2To a greater or lesser extent, John Gardner’s ideas about writing are just one of those things you eventually have to deal with in MFA school. For my critical thesis topic–the omniscient point of view–The Art of Fiction became one of my primary source books (he was a big fan), and On Becoming a Novelist worked its way in there too, since I had a point to make about the oft-misinterpreted fictive dream concept.

I won’t bore you with talk about that. But running down some things, I came across a couple of links that might be of interest. (Jeff Ford, you studied with Gardner, right?*)

Anyway, I like this passage from Stewart O’Nan’s "Notes from the Underground," on how seeing the various drafts of Grendel taught him to revise:

I’d heard how hard writers worked at revising, but here was concrete and heartening proof.  I’d been impatient with my work because my early drafts lacked depth and precision; now I realized I had completely misjudged them, and misjudged the effort required to write well.  It was not brilliance or facility that was necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one’s own bad prose again, one more time, and then once again, with the utmost concentration and taste, looking for opportunities to mine deeper, clues to what these people wanted and needed. I went back to my desk, applied myself with this in mind, and discovered that I was again writing on another level, a level that even now I’m happy to reach.

More fun is a Baltimore City Paper piece about Gardner’s infamous feud with John Barth:

As the class proceeds, Gardner proceeds to take the gloves off. Suddenly he is attacking his host, Barth, whom he tags as a "secondary" writer–someone who writes fiction about fiction. And chief among Barth’s offenses, just in case the students were thinking of buying it, is Giles Goat-Boy, which Gardner tells them is "arch, extravagantly self-indulgent, clumsily allegorical, pedantic, tiresomely and pretentiously advance-guard, and like much of our ‘new fiction’, puerilely obscene."

A few days later, the argument is recounted in The Sun, in an article portentously titled "Two Literary Lions Tangle." Barth fires off a letter to The Sun, acknowledging that he "registered, very briefly, some of my objections to [Gardner’s] eloquently expressed literary opinions because that is what seminars–indeed universities–are for." But as the letter proceeds, it sounds as though Barth believes he’s entitled to a rebuttal. What follows is a biting, if somewhat tongue-in-cheek, evaluation of his colleague’s recently published On Moral Fiction as "an intellectually immoral, self-serving, finally demalogical attack on his contemporaries, many of whom (in my opinion) are immensely more talented than himself."

It’s hard to disagree with the take of Liz Rosenberg (caught between them at the time):

When asked how significant, in the end, she thought this battle was, Rosenberg thinks carefully before answering. "I don’t know," she says finally. "There was an experimental phase in writing, which has died down to some degree, but maybe that battle untethered the way for greater freedom in writing." She does express some regret for the passing of an era when two major writers cared passionately enough to fight about the principles of their art. "Since then, battles have become purely personal and a lot less ideological," she says.

More high-minded feuds, please.

*Updated: Jeff reminds me why I was thinking that — well, besides that it’s true. A couple of years ago, he posted his introduction to the Fantasy Masterwords edition of Grendel:

I got to see first hand how he approached the craft of fiction. I’d bring him my short stories, and he would go to work on them, spending as much time as was necessary to show me the gaffs, what repairs were possible, where the fatal flaws lay, and discuss writing strategies that would help me to circumvent the same problems in the future. A meeting could take up to two hours. Rehabilitating a single awkward sentence was as important as understanding the entire structure of a story, and a story’s structure was discussed as if it were a kind of music. If there was a line of students waiting to see him outside his door, they would have to wait until he was finished, but they always waited, because they knew that when it was their turn, he would do the same for each of them.

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Lit Crit Bender

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Which is not the fun kind of bender, I assure you. Yesterday afternoon when I finally finished the second draft of my critical thesis (clocking in at a mind-numbing 15,800 words–double the first version*), I realized that the only words for the state I found myself in were strung out. I felt like I imagine junkies do. Having worked on this thing for four or five hours and as many as seven in a stretch for many days, stopping only to eat garbage and whine, I was STRUNG OUT. Academic writing, even at the level I’m able to manage, requires so much focused concentration. It’s a completely different kind of thinking than fiction, not nearly as fun.

It does sting a bit that the word count is nearly equivalent to a third of a new YA novel. But I feel good about it, and whatever is required of me from here on out, it can’t be as hard as this jag was. Now it’s safely in the hands of my brilliant advisor, and I am taking a couple of days to catch up on the massive amount of everything that has been pushed aside–reading (finally I can finish Jincy Willett’s hilarious and amazing new novel, The Writing Class!), e-mail, this site, television**, and, most importantly, MY NOVEL***.

I have newfound respect for those of you who have completed book-length theses. I bow.

*The minimum requirement is 5,000 words of your own original analysis, excluding all the supporting quotes and etc. Keep in mind that students at traditional MFA programs usually don’t have to do a critical thesis.

**What is up with The Return of Jezebel James? I usually like Parker Posey, but her delivery is so ODD. It proves she’s no Lauren Graham, that’s for sure. But even if her delivery was wonderful, the tone and the ditziness and the terrible, terrible premise and a FREAKING LAUGH TRACK? Well, it doesn’t add up. Whyfore Amy Sherman Palladino? GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER. That said, playing spot the poster in the background at the fictional Harper offices is fun. I give this show another two weeks before cancellation unless it gets tons better. Liking the show about the really old guy and the new Juliana Margulies lawyer thing okay so far though.

***Don’t tell the fiction writers strike people, okay?

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Critical Mass

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Today was all about assembling the "It’s time to write that critical thesis draft" workstation:

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Taunting me, or perhaps motivating me, I have this:

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Pretty good motivation. Unrelatedly: I love the Sporn no-pull mesh harnesses; they make dog walkers very happy. We also bought a double leash, but haven’t tried it out yet. I’m sure much excitement will ensue. Oh, and we loved, loved, loved The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, complete with Atari flashbacks.

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Vermonting

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  My Room 
  Originally uploaded by gwenda

Only one day into the rez, and I’ve already changed my thesis topic (don’t fret, for many, many of your excellent book suggestions will still be applicable) and listened to the fabulous Jane Yolen talk about revision.

I am safely at the B&B, as you can tell by the flowered wallpaper. But, scary bunny aside, that is the same painting my grandmother had a print of on her wall when I was a kid (#8), by Fragonard, and that makes me happy.

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Critical Thinking with the Hive Mind

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I’m about to start semester the third in the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at the fabulous Vermont College of Fine Arts (a program I highly recommend). Anyway, the third semester is when you do your critical thesis and I’m putting together the reading list for the bibliography of mine, attempting to get a headstart on things. What I’d love from you smarty smart peeps, are your recommendations of any and all (good, bad, indifferent) young adult fantasies with strong political overtones.

Nothing’s too obvious to mention, because I’m interested in being as comprehensive as possible and my ability to overlook stuff should never be discounted. And although I’m more focused on relatively current work (last 10-15 years), classics are fine too as I haven’t fully established the scope yet.

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Whew

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And I just sent in my fifth and final packet to my advisor — about 90 pages of fiction (novel excerpt + a short story), two essays, an annotated bibliography. And, boy, are my arms tired.

Wait. Make that my brain. Boy, is my brain tired. But semester one is done!

Tonight I walk the puppies and drink wine. And wish there was good television. (I watched the Veronica Mars finale again last night while essaying and, wow, that really was good TV, huh?)

I had fun with the Amazing and Incredible, Only-Slightly-Laughable, Politically Unassailable, PoMo English Paper Title Generator during my breaks today. My favorites were: "Male Collusion and the Edges of Postmodern Relic in Gwenda Bond’s Monster Nation" and "Identity as Capitalism: Questioning Mythical Murder in Gwenda Bond’s Monster Nation." You try. You can even use books that aren’t still being written. (Via.)

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Probably… (Updated)

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against my better judgment I dipped a toe* into the current wave of MFA-bashing. I’m done, and will not even be rubbernecking this one any longer, because I’ve got a NOVEL TO WRITE.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When writers try to tell other writers what they should or shouldn’t be doing, it really pisses me off.

*I pretty much agree with Callie, and she brings a welcome straightforwardness to the discussion.

Updated: Carolyn nails it. Word.

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Schoolwork is Hard

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I fear I will be a very poor hostess this week. Unlike my undergrad years, I’m attempting to not be a procrastinator with my MFA program. Actually, I’ve largely left my procrastinating ways behind*, so it is possible. I think ultimately it came down to HATING the feeling of a deadline being right on top of me, about to squash me flat, with no room to maneuver, or time to rewrite the whole thing if need be.

So, mostly, I avoid putting myself in dead-heat, last-second situations. I get plenty of those at the other work, and I enjoy them when I do. With writing? Not so much. I can do it, I just don’t like to if I don’t have to. This means I’ve been busy beeing it for the last few weeks (it feels like years ago I was in Vermont, but it wasn’t), so that when the deadline to turn in my first packet of work rolled around (this Friday), I’d be ready. And I more or less am, but I’m still planning to spend the week fine-tuning everything.

I still need a better voice for The Voice (you know, the disembodied kind that tells you what to do) in the first bit of my novel Aztec Dance TunesMonster Nation, to polish off the annotations on my reading (some of which I can’t wait to talk about here — great stuff, most notably Ysabeau Wilce’s wonderful and zippy Flora Segunda), and to ensure the blah-blah-blah on my essays is sharp enough (essays of doom). All that said, this is turning out to be a great deal of fun. Which probably means I’m insane.

One of the negatories of all this work work work all the time, though, is that I hadn’t seen the inside of a gym in, oh, a month or more. Last week, I broke down and bought a recumbent exercise bike, which Christopher put together for me (thanks, sweetie!), on which I can now get some much-needed cardio at o’dark thirty every morning while reading or watching the television machine. I know. I know. I still have a natural aversion to people talking about exercise too, but can I just say what an immediate and huge lift in my energy level this has enabled? I just was not going to have time to make it to the gym, EVER, and still walk the dog at night, so this is a good solution. (We got some little hand weights too.) I’m truly against early rising; I believe it is the devil’s work. But, if I have to do it, I may as well not feel like everything that happens afterward is careening out of my control. This helps. And I’m less tired than usual today on a couple of hours less sleep.

Anyway, all this by way of saying that I may be scarcer even than usual for the next few days, but there’ll still be TV talk. And book posts at some point soon.

p.s. Several people have emailed me lately thinking I’m still in Vermont. The program is low residency, so I’m home now in Kentucky, and will be at all the usual haunts (except BEA, which I don’t think I can swing this year) this spring, and then back to Vermont in July.

*Y’know, except for the Internerd and blog reading.

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