Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Time Draws Near, The Writer Readies Himself . . . Kinda . . .

MFA application season approaches. I still don't feel like I have a great writing sample, but I've come to the conclusion I never will. I will never feel like I have written well enough until I get an acceptance letter, and even then I'll think, "whew, I snuck one past them." That's the trouble with finding your self-image as a writer in the opinions of others.

Honestly, I do think the stories I've written are good. The fact that not everyone agrees highlights the subjective nature of reading fiction. That's what makes me nervous about MFA applications. I can't be guaranteed a spot by just getting a certain score on the GRE (which I still need to take). I've been recently that I will just stop worrying about others opinions (within reason) and write what I believe God is leading to write.

The good news for today is that I finished the first draft of "Miracles for Americans." It needs a lot of work, but it's good to actually get to the end of a story. It's my longest story so far, coming in at 19 pages and around 7200 words, but I'm hoping to lop a bit of that off. So I'll be editing that and taking another pass at "Come on, Casper" to look over some changes I made a month or two ago. Hopefully I'll be able to communicate the humor I intended in"Miracles." I haven't had a lot of experience at humor writing, so we'll see how that goes. It'll never be a laugh riot, but I think it will have a lighter tone than "Casper."

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Still Pluggin' Away

Just another productivity report:

I've been waking up at 5:30 am this week. On purpose. Mary Ann and I have been struggling to find a good time for me to write these days, and I think this is the best solution. I've tried to do the late night thing; it seems the more 'writerly' thing to do, right? Writers are supposed to stay up late to drink and be tortured by their demons. Unfortunately (?), my demons kept standing me up, so Mary Ann and I broke with our 1-2AM tradition and started hitting the sack at 11:00. Since then things hve gone much better in the writing department.