Spring Break is here, so is Mono

So I have mono and it sucks horribly. I slept 12 hours last night. I didn't even want to. Not to mention that yesterday I had to take a nap because after my morning classes I went all crazy and cried. I was really worried about my trip to Washington D.C. to see my best friend because I've been planning it since CHRISTMAS!!! and now I've had to push it back to next weekend instead. But I feel really bad I cost my mom 300-something to change my ticket. She was really worried about me leaving today and not having any fun because I'm so sick. Boo to the universe that always makes me sick. Bleh. I should be packing to go home right now but instead I'm making playlists for the ride home and writing this blog entry. I promised I would keep this more updated.

But Spring Break means.... WRITING TIME!!! Hopefully I can at least revamp my Merlin story for the Gordone Award. I don't think that new creative nonfiction piece is going to get written... I have this really old piece from high school actually that I could rewrite into something better... Now that I think of it. It was our senior english final project. He never told us we were writing creative nonfiction but it totally was. Anyway I'm going to get back to making some playlists. Have a good spring break! I'll keep you updated on the progress of those stories.

No FenCon for me.

I haven't finished the new story I wanted to send. I don't want to send the Merlin story again, I feel like it's bad form to send the same story to three workshops in a row. Plus I seriously can't afford the workshop at FenCon right now. It's $35 on top of the regular membership that's $70. I'm still gonna go but just as a convention going not a workshopper. That makes me kinda sad but this is my last week of summer school and somehow I need to make myself focus on finishing my classes. Trying to write a story during that just won't work. It's ok though. Because I really like where the Shep story is going and I don't want to rush it.

AND!!!! FenCon will be my birthday weekend. You better believe I'm going to panels hungover. :D I need to bring someone with me to be my keeper. lol. Hey I'll be 21. You're supposed to engage in debauchery on your 21st birthday!! No I won't really be that bad. I'm just trying to cheer up because I can't do this workshop. It's ok! I'm going to work on querying those Wainscot essays to Strange Horizons. Oh and they might want to publish my Merlin story eventually too. Because I didn't know but a fellow workshop attendee from ApolloCon pointed out to me that they're interested in Hypertext stories. Which the Merlin Story very well could be. I wish I could get an artist to do a picture for the newspaper for me. Maybe I'll try to find one sometime soon.... Who do I know that's an artist?

Summary of the Last Two Days

So. Here goes. Yesterday I had a good talk with my old creative writing teacher, who's actually very young. I really love her and like another old prof, who's also actually young, I hope we become good friends now that the teacher/pupil line is muddied. Anyway so we talked about books and the develops in my life with writing. Of course I forgot to ask her help on my POV problem which was the whole reason I'd asked to meet with her in the first place but whatever. I think I might have already figured out what to do but seeing as all the solutions I come up with are going to take MASSIVE rewriting I want to work on something new for awhile. Enter Shep, Adolph and... good question our leading lady still doesn't have a name. Well there's Chloe, but she's a sheep and not as important as Shep thinks she is. Besides the point.
So talking with Karen was nice and hearing her reassure me that taking a year off will be a good thing. She's very proud of me for all the things I'm doing to work toward getting published. In fact she said, "You're totally going to get published before me. Tell me how it feels." lol. She's still getting rejection letters. But I think creative nonfiction is a way more difficult market to break into. I dunno if I have readers out there you tell me. In our age of the confessional self I think creative nonfiction is a pretty saturated market. But what do I know?
On another front today I went to a wedding for a girl I graduated with. She's 19. Yeah she was the youngest in our grade and won't turn 20 until August. Crazy. This is why people start getting married too soon. First one and then everyone follows suit and most don't make it. Well I won't be trapped in that. I don't really keep boyfriends because unless they're someone that can actually put up with me and I'm genuinely interested in (meaning they meet my impossibly high standards) then they're not worth my time. Those guys rarely come around and I have too much other shit to worry about to waste valuable school, friend, family, or writing time (in no particular order). It was just super weird being at that wedding. *shiver* So I'm going to try and forget it. Now I'm off to dinner. Sorry this turned into a post about my relationship views. Haha. Not my intention.

Ok final stretch................

This week is my final stretch for polishing up the Merlin Story and entering it in the FenCon short story contest. I also need to work on writing something new for the FenCon writers workshop. Which I hope I can do fast enough to secure one of the last spots. I have the beginning of the Shep story but I don't know whether that's worth working on right now or if I should try to get the first chapter of the Muse story done. Well the prologue and first chapter. *sigh* I dunno. But finishing up the Merlin Story first is imperative because I'm going to try and mail it thursday. So seems like I'm going to be spending all my free time this week writing! But that's always fun. I think I write better with deadlines and expectations. So off to class then finish up at work and get home to write!

I had a story idea last night about people with empathy type powers. But that there were other people out there that were emote'rs who give off negative and positive emotional energy. Hmm. I dunno it was right before I fell asleep I'm surprised I even remembered it.

I need to leave for class...

But I'm just going to cross the street and catch the bus on the way out. I think I hear it at my stop right now. Oh well. So.... I think I've decided to wait a year to apply for graduate school. Then I can apply early next year and have been able to take the GRE as many times as needed to make a kick ass score. Plus my GPA will be higher after the spring semester than this fall and I'll have had plenty of time to write an amazing critical writing sample (all 20 pages) that will knock the socks off the admission staff. It all just seems much better the more I think about it. However that also means while I'm biding my time somewhere (probably Austin or Houston) I will have time to really get to writing. I'll just got a grunt job somewhere part time for rent money and write full time! Woot. I think this is a brilliant plan and more conducive to both career goals.

Here are my goals for the summer:
-Edit and finish off the Merlin story, submit it for the FenCon Short Story Contest and then do market research on where to send it. According to Amy Sisson this weekend I should look into online publishing because they'll be able to do cooler things with the formatting. According to Kate Sanger I should look into some of the more humorous/light fantasy venues. She said she would email me a more detailed list. They were so nice!!
-Work on the Shep story. Send it off as soon as possible for FenCon writers workshop.
-Keep researching and taking notes for both novels. Which my American Foreign Relations class is really getting my head spinning again about the Xavier world. I'm planning a weekend trip to Austin mid-July to research for the Muse world. But there's plenty of world building I can do here also. WOOT! Which I think I'm going to start on right now. Although I should be working. When do I ever do that?

drusilla

I want to use this name somewhere. maybe in the Xavier world. which needs to have a name and I need to work on an outline for those novels. I love outlining.


The Merlin story has taken a turn for bad ass lane! What, what! Who's brilliant?! Me! lol. No but really this next draft is gonna knock Karen's socks off. Ok I should get back to my paper on King Lear. I'm going to get started on the new draft of Merlin tonight though. I'm super excited its all coming together, which makes me think about what I'm writing next after this. Maybe I should go back and finish the muse story. But then again maybe I should keep going with what's looking like a collection of humorous short stories with the Amazon who wants to be a housewife and the unlikely hero in a lowly Shepherd named... Shep. lol. Yes I know lame but it just fits and he won't have any other name. *shrug* But they all fit together really well and I hope I can market them together, or at least one day I'll market them together maybe after my novel comes out. The publisher can put these out in anticipation of the next installment in the series. That will send my fame sky rocketing, because here will be this serious commentary on family loyalties and world politics then BAM! hilarious commentaries on archetypes. :D Maybe I'll work on my novel next. Even though I really do want to finish the Muse story. humpf. That one paragraph I had was really good and I thought a great starting place it was finally taking shape. Ok SHAKESPEARE PAPER!!! That's what I need to concentrate on. I might put the outline for my paper up. Since this is supposed to be my lit crit blog too.

New ideas and an update

The urge to put an update on me applying for a writing workshop makes me wonder, why? No one currently reads this. It's really only for my own use. Maybe my creative writing prof reads it every once in awhile. Although I doubt that with all the treadmill journals she has to do. BTW I'm a firm believer in treadmilling now. I will most definitely continue it on into my professional career and make my students do it too. Even my lit students. You could kind of tweak it for lit students and instead of writing, reading or if they have papers to write, writing too, but for reading you could change #4 to a reflection on what you read. It would be very helpful I think. Plus then I could see if my students were actually reading or not. lol. YES! Another strategy to ruining my future students lives. Really just enriching and helping them out in the end. But yeah they'll love and hate me all the same. :D I get goosebumps just thinking about it. hehe. Yes I do think I will take too much joy in being a mean ole professor who tries to make people learn. RAWR! hahahaha. ok enough of that.

SO! I didn't make the Clarion. I seriously doubt I had a chance of getting in but I tried. I'm now applying for Odyssey instead. This one seems more beneficial even in a professional way (although meeting Neil is still a life goal now) because its run by a former senior editor for Bantam Dell. HUGE publisher known for its science fiction and fantasy titles (its an imprint of Random House if that means more to you). Her critiques of your work they say are typed and about 1,000 words. How incredibly life movingly helpful will that be! Anyway I only have to submit one story for that under 4,000 words and its due to them by April 10. I'm planning on mailing it WAY before then. If I concentrate just on the Merlin story I should have it done in no time. I plan on staying in town to work and write all Spring Break. How nerdy and lame am I? lol. Oh well. I really think this all worked out for a reason because if Neil hadn't been an instructor for Clarion I never would have even tried for it. But now that I have and have the beginning of two great stories plus a butt load of confidence about myself as a writer I really might be able to do this other one. They say on the website they have around a 50% publishing rate for their graduates. But when you're getting comments from an award winning editor that's not surprising. You'll learn to write better and write to actually get published.

The story ideas I wanted to record for future use are as follows:
A shepherd boy (16-17 in age I think) who becomes an unlikely hero when his village is pillaged. He's shy, relates better to sheep then people and has a smart ass sheep dog who talks.

Also an Amazon woman who doesn't want to be a warrior but a housewife. I thought it would be funny because I'm writing an academic paper on characters who are all warrior women/heroines and don't want the home life. What if it was opposite, where the societal norm was to be a warrior and instead someone wanted to be a housewife. Also my mom is a housewife and people think she doesn't do anything. This would kind of be a tribute to my mom. :D Kind of a parallel to our world where the modern working woman is respected more than the housewife because she's helping contribute monetarily to the household.

Anyway that's all I got for now. More ideas will come to me I'm sure. I think I might do my exercise from creative writing on here later. The making a list thing. I want to make a list of things I'm passionate about. It helps inspire things to write.

Brilliance has struck. BOO YA!!!

Ok. So I was randomly looking up writers like Mercedes Lackey and Neil Gaiman not that I was planning on using the treadmill journal alternative but I just wanted to do some research. Ursula Le Guin and Jacqueline Carey had talked about inspiration. Le Guin talked about writing about things she was passionate about like when she found out taoism had almost been wiped out in China under one regime. She said she didn't know hardly anything about the Chinese but she wanted to say something about it so she put it in a world she created herself with the same setup where a very old religion had been almost stamped out. And I can't remember if it was Lackey or Carey but someone said they just write about things they know about like animals and something else I can't think of. But anyway so I was chewing over all these things... what issues are important to me? what kinds of things do I know about? Which has kind of given me hope to really tell the world about all of those things I know and care about in my own way. Through my novels. Ok but that's besides the point. The story idea I came up with is this:

something that's always bothered me is the way the job market doesn't care as much about experience (like YEARS of it) than having a college degree. neither of my parents do and that's why my mom got fired when I was little and decided to become a housewife instead. (for which I'm forever grateful, but still.) also when I was around 12 I guess, middle school aged, my dad lost his job with a company he'd worked for for almost 20 years because of a merger then he went from one job to the next all of them way below the level he deserved to be working at. (at the other job my dad had been the chief safety inspector and in charge of that whole department. they got rid of the whole department during the merger, which is kind of funny for an oil company to not care about safety. lol.)
so this is an issue that's always bothered me (I wrote an essay in high school for u.i.l. ready writing about it actually). how could I turn it into a story? well the idea for the story and the idea of turning it into a story came almost simultaneously.
what if a court wizard got fired and replaced with a much younger wizard that had just graduated from wizarding college or whatever. I could imagine the scene perfectly with a "your services are no longer needed" and then this wizard trying to find a new job and meeting with more rejection until he ended up at some ridiculous job not worthy of his abilities. it would be funny right?
then I was telling my friend amanda about the idea and it struck me what if the wizard was MERLIN! because he's like the most iconic wizard figure of all. and then merlin tries to find another job somewhere else and gets rejected, it makes it 10 tens more ridiculous because he's friggin' Merlin! who wouldn't hire Merlin?
ok so that's all I have so far but I think it's damn good. it'll have humor but also really SAY something. and about something that matters to me. plus it's a one shot. just one story no continuation or anything. it'll be great. I'm super excited to get started. I almost don't want to go home tonight and stay here and write instead.