365 days of being a writer: day 364 & 365

Here it is: Day 365.

I never had a chance to write yesterday, as several members of the cohort went out after we were released from our final orientation, and well. It was a long night.

Yesterday was a much more momentous day than today (in part because I have spent all of today recovering from a brutal "altitude induced" hangover--the altitude, she befuddles). After we finished the last of the teaching demos, we had some pizza with the second-years and our subject librarian, and then we were done with the colloquium. We're teachers now.

In the afternoon, all of the writing program met in our devoted building, The Carriage House. We heard three really amazing, inspiring speeches from the faculty and students and then our Director, Beth Loffreda stood up and said that our number one job for the next year is to write. We can be good teachers and good readers, but we need to write and write and write. She urged us to appreciate fully this time when so many people are invested in our words and our progress (because who knows when that will happen again). And most importantly (for me) she said this was our time to figure out the ways we fuck ourselves over as writers: our distractions and the stories we tell ourselves about our writing and our processes that keep our pens still.

We all walked out of there in high spirits (which was SO important after the mostly exhausting and occasionally frustrating colloquium all week).

How fitting is it that my "year of being a writer" ends the day before my year of writing begins?

Today, as I lay around nursing my bruised liver, I tried to think about the last year. One year ago today, I was pretty certain that I might never be where I am. While I poured my heart into my applications, there was the threat of a second shut-out hanging over my head. All fall and into the new year I tried to cultivate a habit of writing and submitting. And a bunch of stuff got published! I placed essays, book reviews, even a poem. I met hundreds of writers like me on Twitter and Facebook, trying to get into programs, into print, and into their own process.

This year taught me, above all else, that determination and hard work really can make anything possible. That's not some cheesy bullshit platitude: it's the stone cold truth. AND, Nothing easy or truly valuable happens overnight. Shit takes time and patience. The patience part is something I am hoping to cultivate here, now that the scrabbling part is over for a little while. I can exhale for a bit.

Thank you, everyone, for reading along and cheering me on and keeping me going. I may not post daily going forward, but I will still keep track of my progress here.

365 days of being a writer: day 362

I feel a little bit better about teaching on Monday for the following reasons:

• We got to hear a bit more practical advice in today's session. There still wasn't quite enough "doing" for my hands-on self, but there was more discussion about in-class specifics rather than teaching generalities.
• I got to see my classroom. At first I was bummed out that it's in the Agricultural building (4th floor--my ass will be fucking STONE by summer break with all these goddamned stairs), but it turns out that the fourth floor is where all the plant sciences and entomology labs are. There is a locked door marked "Insect Gallery" just down the hall! I could have swooned from the awesome.
• I have fortified my organizational defenses. I went out and got a whiteboard for the house, an appointment book, notebook, file folder, and supplies for class. I still need to get a VGA adapter for my Mac, as the classrooms are not yet fully Apple friendly.

This evening I drafted out my demonstration, which I am NERVOUS about, but prepared for. As a good friend of mine says, "Everyone starts out a white belt."

365 days of being a writer: day 361

At one point this afternoon, I was fairly convinced that I could not be a First-year Composition teacher.

From 8:45 am until 4:15, with painfully few breaks, I sat in a room and got more and more confused and more and more anxious. I don't feel QUITE as bleak as I did earlier, but wow. The trepidation, she begins.

Now, I am going to finish grading a couple of "test" papers before bed.

I am finally online at home. More later.

365 days of being a writer: day 338

Right now in Phoenix, a fantastic thunder and lightning show is carrying on around us. The last rumble shook the whole house for several seconds. The rain is light, but steady. People's giddy voices can be heard floating across the neighborhood.

I actually wrote for most of an hour today. It felt great to be in a bit of a groove, even if it was at an awful Barnes and Noble cafe. I have been wanting to write something about riding the bus, but couldn't get into it. After reading the Colossus of New York, I decided to try his omniscient / first person narrator style. I could be wrong about what it's called, but it seems to be a great way for a bunch of "characters" to talk at once about an experience. He uses it for the crowds in NYC: on the subway, at rush hour, at the beach. It seemed like a good technique to try out for the experience of riding on the bus.

Anyway, as an exercise, it got my pen moving. I don't know if it will end up "being" anything, and I especially don't know if it does, if I will submit it TO Whitehead with my manuscript. ("Hello, I'm your biggest fan! Please let me know how well I've copped your style.") But PEN! Moving! I also packed up the entire EXTRA box of books I have somehow managed to acquire in the two months I've lived here. The fuck. And a tub of knitting and sewing stuff that I had left out with high hopes for productivity. Tomorrow begins my last full week at work and my second to the last week in the straight world.

365 days of being a writer: day 331

I am on a borrowed laptop. My old HP and my new Macbook Pro are at a Genius bar being mind-melded into one.

While I was transferring files from my external drive to my soon-to-be backup laptop, I got to revisit many of my submissions folders and what I consider my "old writing." There is a lot of poetry in the old writing. I never did (or have) taken my poetry seriously. I take other people's poetry very seriously. I can recite more from poetry I've loved than I can from essays I've loved.

I am in awe of the poets I know. I marvel at their commitment. Maybe I don't consider myself brave enough to be a poet, or true enough. But the poems go back to junior high. Even earlier, if I consider song-poems I wrote and illustrated when I was in grade school. Part of what I love about creative nonfiction is the leeway for lyricism. I am a romantic; I like lovely turns of phrases--that lends itself to terrible poetry (it seems) and evocative essays (I hope).

What this means, is that I will be taking one of my workshop semesters in poetry. Maybe I can get over the belief that my poems are silly.

365 days of being a writer: day 329

It has been difficult to get creative writing done lately. It seems like I am not alone, several other MFA-students-to-be are frustrated with writer's block. I've been focusing at work on finishing a major project at my day job--and it drains my writing juices a bit.

And then there's The Doubt that several of us have reported. It was a whispery voice back in February, when I felt bereft of direction. But it has gotten louder and more sure of itself the closer it gets to Departure Day. It reminds me pretty regularly that I don't know what I want to write a whole book about! The science stuff feels impossible to do well, to do interestingly. I've started striking out into strange directions that might be interesting, or they might just be distracting. I can't tell if the Doubt is pushing me into a more important direction, or trying to detract me from the one that needs my attention.

I know that the only way past The Doubt, is through it. And I can't freaking WAIT to get on the road. But it is by no means a blissful escape: just an exciting one.

365 days of being a writer: day 328

It was a let-down, settling back into a cube today. I had a great time in Austin, just laughing with friends and drinking beers. The workday was long on Tuesday, and it bled right into the evening. I could see how easy it would be to fall back into that routine. When I got home I just wanted to watch TV. Insidious!

This evening I poked around at my manuscript. I decided to include a fictionalized piece that I submitted to a journal with a specific theme. I haven't heard back yet, but I am curious to talk about the style of this one with our eminent writer. I go back and forth between being enamored with and feeling like a literary hipster for trying to pull off an abstract-y second person narrative.

I drafted an outline for a bus piece. It will be even more abstract-y and in second person imperative. It could be a big mistake, but now's the time to make them, right?

365 days of being a writer: day 321

Last night, a haboub engulfed the city. A wall of dust over 5,000 feet high crashed over us like a wave. Here on the ground, all I could see was dark. I never watch the news, so I had no idea what was happening, only that it was very windy.

When it got dark so fast, I was hoping for rain and opened the door to see how wet the air felt. It felt damp and cool but the air wasn't actually wet: the dust was cold and so fine it was more of a smell than a sensation. I was worried about my new eyes, so I ducked back in and didn't think anymore about it until I saw the aftermath salted all over everything in the morning.

All this to say that most of my writing time tonight was spent trying to clean all the dust out of the pool. There was a lot of it.

I also got my pedagogy textbook in the mail today.



It is much more diminutive than every one of my undergrad textbooks (except for one about poetry that was equally tee-tiny). I'm glad.

365 days of being a writer: day 320

If this were August instead of July I would have spent the morning packing up a moving truck and then I would have hit the road with an old friend, heading N.

ONE MONTH LEFT!

I am going to spend some of this month trying to compile a 30-50pp manuscript for the Fall writer-in-residence at UWyo: Colson Whitehead. He's agreed to read and consult with two nonfiction students. They drew names, and one was me! Fifty pages is daunting, so I'm shooting for 30, but right now I'm only at 19. Double spaced. I would like to get two drafts done this month. An experimental piece on science and a short piece on public transportation. Can I do it? I have to turn in what I've got on August 1st or sooner.

Already school is so motivating! And daunting! Did I already mention the daunting part? Oofa.

Also, my contributor's copy of Creative Nonfiction showed up today. It's in my imagination, but it feels more substantial than the one that came as part of my regular subscription.

365 days of being a writer: day 306

I can't seem to pick between writing about cats or writing about my girlhood of scientific embarrassments. So, today I researched big cats and women in science.

This part of my process needs work: I think and think and think and take notes or make lists and sometimes even outline--but I don't write until I have some direction. That can't be ideal. So far, for the cats I grabbed an article on the psychology of cat people (I am SO glad to have uni access to research papers already), I'm reading Matthieson's Snow Leopard and I ordered Alan Rabinowitz's Jaguar. I want to write about giving away my cat and how we coexist uneasily with them at times. Maybe.

In the sexy ladies of science department, I grabbed a piece on Title IX as it affects women in the STEM fields (I just learned that one today: Science, Tech, Engineering, and Maths), one on the glass ceiling for women in science, and a wild little booklet on a few lady scientists you've probably never heard of, including an ichthyologist and the women who discovered the first Ichthyosaurus. My mind is inexorably drawn to visions of fish on bicycles with these revelations. But what does that have to do with me looking at scabs under my microscope or holding a variety of creatures in grade school when others recoiled, including but not limited to: a tarantula, a fire-bellied salamander, and a python? Something, but I'm not sure what just yet.

This, this process of chewing vignettes and facts like a slurry of cud--this isn't a process, is it? It feels like something duct-taped into performance, rather than crafted. I wonder if I will be able to sit and write every single day, once I have the time and focus to do so. Or if it will be more of this read-amass-pupate (I like the visual of this, better than digest) produce. Maybe it could be a process if I were able to work on multiple things in a variety of stages. As it is, I feel like I only wrote one essay last year, the starlings, and so far only one this year, the hummingbirds. Coney Island was tweaked, the blackbirds have been picked at... And I did have to write two academic essays last year for my apps: the bees and the one about Diane Ackerman's science poetry.

I guess it boils down to my worrying about my ability to produce once I'm in school. Not just writing, but reading. And lesson plans. And Environmental homework. I need to write a book about something! Can I? And what in the world will it be about?

Ms Manners on the MFA

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a wonderful piece on MFA draft etiquette by Elise Blackwell, whose common sense and compassion seems second only to one other MFA director I can think of.

I am more than pleased to say that every school with which I had cause to correspond adhered to all of these points, and more. And I'd like to think I did the same.

365 days of being a writer: day 232

More exciting emails happened all day, and I even called a couple of potential landlords. Man, if I could have a place lined up by the weekend! That would be huge.

I also asked Jeff Lockwood, one of the professors (who specializes in science and nature writing, among other things) for a summer reading list. Here's what he sent back. (Items with a * are books I already own, the rest are on the newest birthday wish list, along with snow boots, silk long underwear, and a mountain bike. Here that, Santa? I've already read the stuff in bold.)

*Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Wendell Berry, What are People for?
*Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle
*Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Loren Eiseley, Star Thrower (essays), The Innocent Assassins (poetry)
Jean-Henri Fabre, The Life of the Grasshopper
*Stephen J. Gould, Reflections on Natural History
*Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac
Barry Lopez, Home Ground
Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring
*Peter Matthiessen, Snow Leopard
Patrick McManus, I Fish Therefore I Am
* John McPhee, The Control of Nature
*Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf
Kathleen Norris, Dakota, A Spiritual Geography
*Michael Pollen, The Botany of Desire
*David Quammen, The Flight of the Iguana
Pattiann Rogers, Firekeeper
*Mary Shelly, Frankenstein
Gary Snyder, Mountains and Rivers Without End
*Henry David Thoreau, Walden
*HG Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Elizabeth Dodd, Spirit's Eye **
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem **
*John D'Agata, About a Mountain



** (I added those.)

 In addition, the professor recommended three of his own books: *Locust, *Grasshopper Dreaming, and Prairie Soul, to help me get a feel for where he's coming from (which is only fair, since he's read my work).

With that in mind, today's act of being a writer is going to be to start reading. Up first, Silent Spring.

365 days of being a writer: day 231

The barest bit of writing got accomplished today. We're talking tiny. But it was a rewrite, so that's something. My poor Utah essay-poem has just bombed everywhere. So, I asked some of my fellow MFA hopefuls to take a look at it. So far, no one has responded. This does not bode well.

I also exchanged about a dozen emails between faculty and students at Wyoming. I'm really going there!

Here's a scary thought: when was the last time you lived on $1000 a month? I will probably have to take out some amount of loans to make it through with sanity intact.

Today I also browsed through some of the affiliated study abroad programs that Wyoming works with. There are a few that offer a month long Spanish/rain forest ecology program in Costa Rica. Also, through the student rec center, they run kayaking, caving, and snow shoeing trips. SNOWSHOEING, you guys! Someone please buy me snowshoes for my birthday.

I'm pretty exhausted from all of the hopping around yesterday, so I'm calling today done.

365 days of being a writer: day 230

So, I will admit when I am wrong. Yesterday, I was wrong. My oldest friend in the world specifically said that I should not freak out until I heard from Wyoming, and I nonetheless freaked the fuck out.

And today, Wyoming called to offer me a spot in their program.

After crying a little bit and calling my mom, and writing to one of the professors that I consider a mentor to get his blessing, and hopping around my apartment like a rabbity nine-year old--I called them back and accepted.

I have written to both TTU and KSU expressing my sadness at being unable to accept all of the offers.

I'm going to attend the University of Wyoming's MFA program in the fall.

You guys!

So, for the second time this week, I am going to go cry a little but this time I'll be listening to a few more repeats of Queen and jumping on the bed before going to sleep.

365 days of being a writer: day 226

I'm working through some ideas of connection and disconnection in this birding piece. And I've no doubt that all this MFA business is part of the reason I am hung up on connections--writers work so much in solitary confinement, either actually imposed or metaphysically constructed, it's no wonder we cling to each other (as though clinging might save us*).

Birders, like knitters and writers, most often commune one-on-one with the objects of their affections. Banding together on occasion breaks up the loneliness, but can also reduces their productivity... Sorry, I just put myself to sleep for a minute. We know these things. Who cares? What does all this have to do with my grandmother? And Roger Tory Peterson? What does this essay want to be about?

Anyway. It was a crummy week. It looks like one of the two Wyoming candidates may take her slot--I think it's the other one that needs to give it up, but still that on top of the CNF thing was tough. And yet, and yet, I can't help but be relieved if she does. As another writer friend so astutely pointed out, I want Wyoming for dessert.

*apologies and gratitude to Galway Kinnell

365 days of being a writer: day 223

No, I haven't decided yet. Though I think about it approximately three times each hour.

I'm getting more organized about the birding essay, and baby steps are apparently the best I can do right now. I've drafted an outline and am now looking at which parts of the blackbird essay will be cannibalized and which will be thrown out.

I gave up the snooze button for Lent and was doing really well until this week. Now I am back to my old tricks, I suspect there's something to feeling "stuck" that makes me want to stay in bed all day.

What's nuts is that I can't even write one of these blog posts without stopping and staring into space every sentence. Which city has better yoga classes? Which has farmer's markets? Where can I live closest to school? Which has the most classes to choose from? Can I take a bus in any of these cities? Can I camp/hike/bird watch close to town? And it goes on into the night. It's all wonderful stuff, and sometimes I just start dancing around in my room because I'm so goddamned stoked for next year. Or I let out a spontaneous 'yawp!' But OHTHEWAITING.

365 days of being a writer: day 218

Here's a crazy thought--I was in Texas just two weeks ago. It feels like it was two months ago. Like, YEARS ago I visited the campus and fell in love all over the place with everything.

I wrote a note this evening to the fine faculty at the University of Arizona. It was such a hard email to send! Arizona was my last resort, somewhere in the back of my mind--but it wasn't fair to sit on a spot that someone else somewhere wants and will love. And under different circumstances, I would have loved it too. But my heart is further away. I sure wish Wyoming would call! But at this point, either Kansas or Texas will be a wonderful consolation prize.

Now I just have to pick between them.

It's hard too, to write these "no thank you" notes, because I am always terrified that they are going to write back something devastating, like YOU'LL NEVER WRITE IN THIS TOWN AGAIN! Or, Don't you KNOW who we ARE? They haven't yet said anything other than kind, brief good lucks. It is always a relief to see the succinct well wishes, and such an awful gut-wrenching before.

Last year I counted down the rejections. This year, too there is a countdown of options. I was giddy after I sent the email tonight. As though, suddenly it was really truly going to happen!

Before I forget, here's the Xenith book review: Drawing out the Truth

So, yeah. I'm getting pretty amped up. I still need to unload this cat, though. Are you sure you don't want him?

365 days of being a writer: day 219

Long day! More messages from potential future classmates, and I sent a query to a lit site for a review of an upcoming book.

That's it. Still in a holding pattern until I pick one of these damn schools (one of which I will be honored and lucky to get to attend)! Then it's time to start packing. It seems far away, but I'll need to move in two months back to my folks and then again to city X two months after that.

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS! In FOUR months I'll be in grad school! Off to go cry myself tears of relief until I fall asleep.

365 days of being a writer: day 217

The newest book review is done, but it's pending. The editor has some other pieces lined up, and I am definitely NOT a line-jumper. I will link as soon as it's live.

Today I turned down the University of Washington as graciously as I could. It was more than a little nerve-wracking, but I couldn't afford to go, even if they found me money for the school year. Over the weekend, I also badgered Penn State into rejecting me already, and they were kind enough to do so.

The tally:
MFAs: U of A - accepted; U of Wy - waitlisted
MAs: Texas Tech - accepted; KSU - accepted

I'd like to take one more school off the list by the end of the week. But for now, I will sleep, perchance to dream of a leetle paper-filled office with a short line of goofy undergrads waiting to ask me what a braided essay is.

365 days of being a writer: day 212

Here are some things about grad school that scare me:

1. What if I can't write once I get there? Right now, I am having the hardest time focusing my brain. What if not having a day job to suck up all of my brainjuice every day DOESN'T CHANGE THAT?
2. What if I am awful at critical reading? I am the queen of missing the point. Driving by the forest cause I was wondering what kind of tree that was... I so hate feeling stupid and I am so prone to acting like a know-it-all. I sense a come-to-Jesus humbling is coming.
3. What if I am not a good teacher? Sure, I can talk a blue streak, but can I coach someone to improve? No idea. I can be so impatient and so damned judgmental--these are not the qualities of a great teacher.
4. What if the money runs out? If I have to choose between dropping out and taking out loans, I will take out loans. Then I will live on the verge of an anxiety attack for my last semester.
5. What if I hate it? This could happen. I am notorious for growing to hate whatever I previously wanted so goddamned badly. 
6. What if I can't make any friends and I die alone, choking on a chicken bone, in my tiny studio apartment?

OK. Now that it's all out there, it isn't cooped up in my head.

I heard some encouraging news from one of the schools today about the possibility of partially funding some traveling over the summer. It has definitely upped the ante. Spain! Man, I have wanted to go to Spain for YEARS and it has just never happened. Now, I have the chance to MAKE it happen.

Except in SPAIN