On Writing

Heat Lightning

2012-02-11T17:30:00.001-05:00

This book by Leah Hager Cohen lent an interesting twist to the ideas I've been playing around with as of late about the female Bildungsroman. As expected, it seemed to have all the elements I've discussed in my last two posts (such as inappropriate interactions with a much older married man), yet what I found interesting was that the two young girls of this novel, Mole and Tilly, go about encountering the coming-of-age process in entirely opposite ways.

While Tilly passively seems to allow her youth to fall away as an inevitable part of life, Mole fervently fights it and strives to maintain the naivete of her childhood, yet in doing so, becomes helpless as she watches the chasm between her and her sister become larger and larger as the book progresses.

Their separation seems to begin during a picnic Mole and Tilly have with their newly moved-in neighbors. Bill, the father of the neighbor children, makes a move to read Tilly's palm (an excuse to touch her) and catches the red-beaded bracelet she wears. She snatches her hand back, but in doing so, causes her bracelet to snap and the red beads fall to the ground.

Tilly picks up the beads and keeps them in one of her dresser drawers and in what seems to be a move to reconstruct Tilly's lost innocence, Mole steals them and reconstructs the bracelet in order to give it to her on her birthday. Sadly, when Mole does give it to her, Tilly doesn't wear it past that day, a move that signifies that her childhood cannot be reconstructed as simply as a bracelet that is restrung and given a new clasp. Once her childhood has been disrupted, it cannot be pieced together again.

While Tilly seems to accept this without a struggle, Mole is constantly searching for a way to preserve the purity and innocence of her childhood. Throughout the entire book, she constructs houses made out of mussel shells, but holds a special place in her heart for the "baby's room," namely the cradle and what she will put inside it. Yet, even as she takes measures to protect it, her houses get destroyed over and over again, whether by the elements or by Bill coming and accidentally smashing it with his foot when he drunkenly finds her alone with her shells.

But Mole makes these houses up again and again, collecting shells, arranging them exactly how she had before. When she finds a baby mussel shell, she is filled with longing to keep it and place it in her makeshift cradle in the house made of shells, drawn to its delicate whiteness. Yet, the "meat"--the animal itself--inside the shell is long dead and I can't help but think that this is a metaphor for her own death as a child (one that becomes irreversible as she, too, becomes the object of Bill's inappropriate attentions from his licking her wrist to see how she tastes to his making up a game of words that rhyme with fellatio). It is a death she sees in her sister and one that she fears for herself, so she refuses to acknowledge it as she keeps the white baby shell for the crib in her house of shells, even protecting it in a shoebox in the very last pages of the novel.

Mole is right to fear coming-of-age, because more and more as I read these novels for my exam on the female Bildungsroman, it seems as if the process is one that is not altogether good. By the end of many of these novels, the girls seem to have found their voice as an individual and have had that voice acknowledged and validated by another in their community, but the process in getting to this point is so sad, because so often, by the time these girls find their voice, they are scarred by the process of getting there.

I'm sure that my last remaining books for the exam will have sadly similar lessons. I have three novels left to read before February 22nd (the date of my exam) and I will have finished my entire reading list. Think I can make it? It will be close!

Sex and the Bildungsroman (Part II)

2012-02-08T18:44:00.001-05:00

Thank you all for the feedback you've given me on my last post! You have certainly given me some things to ponder and I am so thankful to have friends to bounce ideas off of like this--its fun and extremely enlightening as I make final preparation for my last comprehensive exam.

After having thought about the issues a bit more, I am going to try to revisit this topic again. However, I have been battling a cold these past two days and the cold medicine makes me feel a bit spacey and unfocused, so I am nervous that my writings here will also be kind of all over the place today. But I want to address this again, so I will do my best to make as much sense as I can :)

In my last post, I wrote about the prevalence of sex in the female Bildungsroman and questioned the purpose for this, especially in relation to other coming-of-age stories. Yet, when I finished The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer yesterday, there was a very poignant section near the end of the novel when Consuelo says, "You are what you hear, what you read. And how you remember words, how you tell a story to yourself, makes you up. You tell yourself as you live your life." How you tell a story...makes you up, she says. What you say, the language you use, makes you who you are.

To better explain, as readers, we can see this in many coming-of-age novels (not just those in the female category). A person confessing their name, their identity, and who they are as a means of standing up and presenting themselves as individuals to the world around them is everywhere in literature (past and present) regardless of genre or form. Kim, Tom Jones, Push, The House on Mango Street, The Meaning of Consuelo, Roots, and M. Butterfly are examples among many many others. People have always used language to identify themselves and make themselves known to those around them--to express their maturation as an individual in their respective communities.

But--and this is where the puzzle pieces are starting to come together for me--language does not always have to be spoken. Protagonists can express themselves as grown and mature individuals through words, yes, but also through language that is not spoken, but expressed all the same--bodily expression or as we see in many of the books in the female Bildungsroman category--bodily expression through sex (and I am only referencing to consensual sex scenes in this post). Interestingly, many of the sex scenes in these novels are silent, composed only of actions, purposeful and urgent.

So it seems like these girls are attempting to express themselves as women--as grown and capable of thinking and acting for themselves when they becomes involved in these relationships. Many times, too, these girls take the lead in instigating these relationships, regardless of how old their partners are. They make the first phone call, lead their partners to quiet, secluded places, take off their own clothes without a word. Raised in a society that views puberty and sexual awakening as a marker for womanhood or manhood (in The Meaning of Consuelo, Consuelo is referred to as senorita after her first menstruation), these women attempt to find validation of that womanhood in their sexual (or romantic--not every single relationship is sexual, although a large majority of them are) partners, but sadly, the validation is often false or short-lived.

However, whether they are cast down emotionally afterwards (called a puta in The Meaning of Consuelo) or they discover that the union was nothing more than a fling (and sometimes, not even that in The Adults or The God of Animals), sex in the female Bildungsroman seems to be a pretense in establishing one's maturity, a false avenue that so many of these girls try in proving themselves as women.

After Astrid's relationship with the boyfriend of one of her foster mothers in White Oleander, she remains unfulfilled--still very much a girl whose identity has not yet taken shape--a movement she makes with language (or rather the lack of ordered language) as she sends a letter to her mother in prison with the cut out words, "Who," "Are", and "You" haphazardly thrown inside. She does this, because she doesn't yet know who her mother is, and more importantly hasn't yet established her own identity in language she can express.

It seems to be that sex is not a factor in fulfilling one's coming-of-age, though so many of these girls/women are convinced that it will be otherwise. Rather, language is the key to growing up--more importantly, language that is recognized and validated by another party (a person or even a community).

Language is the key to finding one's face, one's identity in the world.

What do you think?

Sex and the Bildungsroman

2012-02-05T16:46:00.001-05:00

I had originally wanted to wait to blog about The Adults until I knew exactly what I wanted to say about it and the issues it brings up in the traditional female Bildungsroman (coming-of-age story), but the truth is, I am still wrapping my mind around all of it, so I will just share what I have so far and maybe, you can help me fill in the gaps.

First of all, I loved this book, I mean loved it. While the book doesn't quite meet the awe factor of The Virgin Suicides or White Oleander, it comes pretty damn close. Such a beautiful story--sad, but still very beautiful--and with such surprising and eloquent language to describe childhood, adulthood, and all the steps in-between. The characters are wonderfully crafted, their dialogue lovely, and some of the scenes just so perfect, I wanted to read them over and over again. I really had a hard time putting this book down once I started it--it was that good.

It also brought up some interesting issues that, like my last post, I had not given a lot of thought to until now. *However, some of the issues I bring up in this blog post are violent and distressing, so please proceed at your own risk from here.*

For one thing, there is a lot of sexual activity going on in these female coming-of-age stories--much more than in your typical male coming-of-age story--and I am trying to figure why that is and to what purpose these girls are engaging in these acts (usually with much older men).

This was something I had pondered in my last two exams--especially after I read Push, Bastard Out of Carolina, and Bailey's Cafe--however, it seems as if sexual activity is not a determining factor in the coming-of-age process. In fact, forced sexual activity--as in when these girls are raped (as readers discover in these books)--seems to stunt growth, if anything.

For example, in Push, Precious is repeatedly raped as a child (and later bears two of her father's children), but remains very much a child after she becomes a mother to these children. While Precious handles many of responsibilities around the house and cares for her mother (who also sexually abuses her), the abuse becomes almost a tool for subjecting her into a submissive position in the household. Precious eventually achieves a sense of selfhood in Push, but only after she leaves her family (and the abuse) and is nurtured to maturity by Miss Rain.

In Bastard Out of Carolina, Bone is also raped by her father at the very end of the book and the attack is devastating to her, not only physically, but emotionally and psychologically as well. After the rape, Bone speaks to no one and when her mother comes to see her at the novel's end, Bone breaks her silence and weeps the cry of a "baby bird." The metaphor here is heartbreaking, because the experience has broken her, destroying all growth she had made up to that point--so much so that she can only communicate like a young child would, in cries without words.

Finally, in Bailey's Cafe, Sadie is already a grown woman, yet when she drops something to the floor and Bailey helps her pick it up, she looks at him with the eyes of a young child. Although her body is mature, emotionally, she has never gotten past the times when her mother would prostitute her as a child and her eyes betray her halted growth--growth that has been squelched by violence and pain.

The House on Mango Street, The Meaning of Consuelo and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents also has scenes in which the girl(s) are taken advantage of--although to a lesser extent than the novels I mention previously--and these occurrences produce the same effects: confusion, betrayal, shame. These feelings, in turn, make them question themselves and robs them of the independence and the feeling of safety that they had before.

However, the issue that I am very curious about is what happens to the coming-of-age process when the girls have consensual sex? Does that have an effect on her maturity and why does she make the choices she does? What is her purpose behind these things?

The reason I ask this is because many times, the girls become involved in sexual relationships in the books I am reading for my exam and while I understand that curiosity is a part of growing up and these girls want to explore, more often than not, these girls engage in secret relationships with much older men. I find this intriguing, because I wonder why--is this a psychoanalytical relationship in which these girls are trying to replace their absent (or emotionally absent) fathers? Are they looking for stability that they don't think they can find in relationships with peers their own age? Are they looking to find power in these relationships by "replacing" the woman in these men's lives (many of them are married in these novels)?

It's astonishing to see how prevalent these relationships are--you see them in The Adults, The God of Animals (though, their relationship is inappropriate, but not sexual), Anywhere But Here, Carmelo, White Oleander, and The Virgin Suicides. Yet in these relationships--while often illegal--do not seem to stunt growth in the same way as if they were forced. Instead, these unions are consensual and sometimes, even encouraged, but I am curious as to what these kind of experiences do to the coming-of-age process, if anything.

And also, why do these women gravitate toward these older men (who are often married or in relationships)? Do these girls feel that they cannot adequately explore and express themselves sexually otherwise? Is this their way of gaining validation to what they think a "woman" should be? I'm not sure yet.

I feel like I am rambling through this whole post, but the issue still intrigues me...what do you think? I'd like to know...

And WHY is it that when I conduct an image search for "coming-of-age," I get this picture of a naked woman? Surely, maturity is more than just physical. I firmly believe that it is an emotional transformation as well. Thoughts?

The God of Animals

2012-02-03T20:08:00.002-05:00

Goodness gracious, what a week. Exam reading and preparation. Teaching and draft workshops. Meetings to prepare for future library sessions (I got special permission to get a library session in the maps department at the library later in the month and it is going to be awesome! The maps librarian is fantastic and is planning a complete hands-on session for the students that will be so fun). Grist meetings and sending the newest issue off to print. Attending poetry readings. Submitting book orders for summer and fall classes.

It's been a good and productive week, but weekend, I am so happy to see you! I'll finally have a chance to catch my breath and catch up on grading and reading.

Speaking of reading, I know that I've promised you a review of The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle, so I won't make you wait any longer...

I have to say, though, this book really opened my eyes to some patterns that I hadn't noticed were forming in a lot of the books on my exam list...patterns relating to gender roles specifically in the female coming-of-age novel and when I saw it, I just wanted to smack my forehead and say, of course! What didn't I see that before?

To better explain, The God of Animals is centered around a family who breeds and trains horses, but throughout the book, women are treated and expected to behave like the horses themselves--as calm, submissive creatures that can be controlled at will. Alice's, the protagonist, mother is an invalid--bedridden by severe depression. Sheila's (Alice's father's sole riding student) mother listlessly sits in her kitchen, drinking wine after discovering her husband's affair. These women are no different than the broodmares on the ranch itself--quiet, submissive, almost without any life at all.

However, when these women resist the confines of their surroundings, they are viewed as pariahs--as dangerous women who cannot be trusted. Nona, Alice's older sister, is an example and when she elopes with a rodeo rider, the town shuns her family's stable, because if Jody (her father) cannot "control" his daughter, then he cannot be trusted to control other matters--such as a stable and the horses that reside there. Additionally, one of the mares he buys at an auction is especially spirited and because she resists confinement and abuse, she is viewed as "dangerous" and untrustworthy, much like Nona is for leaving her father and resisting his control.

When Alice tries to test these waters, taking smalls steps of rebellion herself, her father is quick to punish her, taking such measures to choke her and force her into submission much like he does the horses in his stable. Additionally, when women are put into their "place," there is usually an approving audience to reinforce this kind of behaviour. People witness Jody choking Alice. There is a crowd that forms to watch Darling (the spirited mare) be tied down and bred to her first stallion (because pregnancy in the dead of summer will apparently "break" her). Yet, when the situation is turned around--such as when some of the colts need to be gelded--everyone is rushed off the farm except for Jody's father and the veterinarian, because no one can witness any kind of weakness on the part of a man (or colt).

I found this very strange--and fascinating--because this kind of forced submission does not seem to be the case in male coming-of-age stories. Men are encouraged to be strong and independent, so their journey toward selfhood is almost laid out for them, whereas, women undergo a more difficult journey, because traits that are essential in achieving selfhood--independence and validation as an independent woman--are looked down upon.

Women who resist the confines of society and become strong and powerful are instead viewed as lethal, strange, wicked, or shameful. For example, Ingrid in White Oleander, Marin in The House on Mango Street, Lala in Carmelo, Lux in The Virgin Suicides, Nona in The God of Animals, and so on. Yet these women were the most interesting characters...because they are strong, they stand up for themselves and live as true women who aren't ashamed of strength and perseverance.

As a result of this, it is a greater achievement for a girl to come of age, because rather than following a set path as a boy would, she is making her own way, cutting out a path where there was none before.

Very interesting...

I'm beginning to notice another trend as I read The Adults by Alison Espach (an amazing book, by the way!) and will write another post soon, I'm sure, about it (I'm almost finished with the book).

Meanwhile, I hope you all have a wonderful Friday night!

Busy, Busy, Busy

2012-01-31T10:09:00.000-05:00

What a busy week it has been and it's barely Tuesday! Yesterday was a flurry of activity. Library teaching sessions. Answering emails. Getting my student teaching evaluations back from last semester (very high reviews--including a 4.75 out of 5 average in one of my classes! I knew I liked that class!!). Officially scheduling and reserving the exam room for my specialized PhD comprehensive exam for 9:30 AM on February 22! Whew!

And I got a lovely email back from Dogzplot saying that they loved my revision of "Woman Things" and wanted to publish it in an upcoming issue. I am not sure when it will go live, but I am thrilled to get acceptance #3 for 2012. Now, only 27 more to reach my goal for 30 for this year....am I crazy or what?

Today is looking to be just as busy, but I am going to try to fit in some exam reading today. I am working on The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle and will probably have a long review of that one coming up here shortly. Lots of things to discuss!

Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful Tuesday!

Object Lessons

2012-01-29T18:44:00.001-05:00

I finally finished this book by Anna Quindlen today. The book had gotten off to a slow start and for a while, it was difficult keeping up with all the characters in the book, but eventually, the book hit its stride and ended up being a very nice read.

It reminded me a lot of Ferris Beach actually, but I think Object Lessons was a little better plotted (Ferris Beach had a rush of things happen at the very end rather than steadily throughout the book). The characters were also well-rounded in this book and I found myself empathising with not only Maggie, but Monica, Connie, Tommy, Joey, and Helen, too. Lovely characters in this book. Absolutely lovely.

I found some time to write today, too, and revised one of the "secret stories" I had written for Margaret Lazarus Dean a few years ago, then sent out "The Game." I worked on a few more stories, too, but I am having trouble coming up with titles for some of them. What do you all do when you have trouble with titles? How do you know what to title your stories/poems?

Something More

2012-01-28T18:23:00.001-05:00

One of the short (very short) stories I have been working on lately was originally part of a poem I wrote in Marilyn Kallet's class a few years ago. She gave us an assignment to write a poem separated into parts--separated more so than just stanzas...these parts had to be almost different poems altogether, but held together by a common thread. The first section of the poem was "Momma and Me" that I had published in Emprise Review. The second section I've long since abandoned since I never really liked it in the first place, but the third section was "Things Momma Said."

I've been sending it out regularly over the past few weeks and been getting rejections just as regularly back. After getting my eighth one for this story yesterday (uh, make that nine--another one just popped up in my inbox), I took all the rejection emails and put them side by side to see if all the editors were saying the same things--and they were. While the reception had been very positive for this piece, it was still missing something, the characters needed development, the story needed to be fleshed out a bit.

My most encouraging rejection came from Dogzplot and they had loved it, but said that it needed just a little something more. Yet every time I sat down to revise the piece, I didn't know what "something more" meant and while they wanted to look at a revision of the piece, it couldn't go over 200 words, so I had to add "something more," but not too much.

So this morning, I decided I was going to rewrite this piece no matter how long it took me and I was going to find out what that "something more" was. At first, I just made little tweaks--changed it from past to present tense, took out a few words, added some commas, but that was more procrastination than anything as I tried to figure out what to do with it. Eventually, I just had to dive in and that's when the real revision began. The reason why I had been having so much trouble adding to it was because I kept trying to add to the end--it was the beginning that needed the real work.

"There is no great writing, only great rewriting"--Justice Brandeis

So I rewrote the beginning and then, it finally started coming together as I tied in the second half. I deleted the second to last sentence, changed the ending a little bit and boom--it had that "something more" only now the title didn't seem to work so well, so I renamed it "Woman Things."

Then after polishing it off and reading it through again (and again), I sent it off! It really is a new story now--one I am much happier with, but now it is up to the editors to decide...

Let's hope for good news!

If I Could Hear Rain

2012-01-25T18:44:00.000-05:00

I have to say, after today, I've never had more conversations start with, "So I read your blog..."

I had no idea that so many people read it and am flattered and grateful to all the encouragement and advice you all have been giving me. Everyone from my husband's parents to colleagues at school have reached out with love and encouragement and I can't say how much of a blessing that has been to me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

After thinking about it for a little bit, I think that things won't be so bad after all--it was just overwhelming coming all at once. As for the specialized exam being so much earlier than I thought, I'll still be ready and the exam will be over that much quicker and that magical ABD status (I hope!) that much closer. After a round of emails from my committee, I may just have a date a time nailed down for the exam, so stay tuned!

As for the hearing aids, that's a bit more of a drag, but it will be a good lesson for me. Not only will I be able to replace the ones I've had for thirteen years (can you imagine the technology jumps they've made in that time?), but I've been told that the hearing aids the manufacturers make now are digital and the sounds sharper, louder, and crisper. I can only think of when my little cousin got glasses for the first time and was astonished that trees had leaves and ladybugs had little dots on them. I wonder if it would be the same--if I could hear little things I've missed...quiet whispers, the shuffle of a page as I read a book, the sound of rain. I've always wanted to hear the rain and have felt jealous when people rave about how relaxing it is, especially when they write or sleep to the sound of it.

I imagine that it's comforting. I remember that I would dance in it as a child.

As for the lesson itself, though, it will teach me that it's okay to make a large purchase for myself (though it won't be nearly as fun as anything else I could get for the same price). For years, my husband has always tried to get me to shop--to buy clothes, go to a nice salon, get my nails done. He tried and tried to get me to pick a nice fancy wedding band with diamonds all across it, but I insisted on one that was plain. You see, I get so uncomfortable with anyone spending money on me or spending money on myself.

It's no secret that money was constantly tight when I was growing up and that we were on food stamps for a while. That's not to say my family didn't work hard--we did--and it taught me a lot about the value of counting every cent, because it could be the difference between having the things we take for granted--water, electricity, food--and not.

It also taught me that nice things come at a price. Granted, my dad worked very hard, but he spent hard, too, and too often, whenever we would have something really nice, it was the result of a gross mismanagement of money.

For example, a huge, big-screen television, a playstation, weekly double-features at the movies with popcorn and candy, fancy ski trips to Austria when that money could have easily gone to pay bills. And as a child, I knew that, too. Bills were always on my mind as a kid, because I would watch Mom balance out her checkbook at the end of every month and would hide in my room whenever she and Dad talked about money. Every month, it was the same.

Spending was always a precursor to stress in the house and everyone knew it, but the spending continued. I think it's been hard-wired into me not to spend, because to this day, I will not buy anything except what is absolutely necessary and only if it is on sale and above all, I hate, hate spending money on myself.

But with the necessity of hearing aids now, I'm going to have to break that thinking I've grown up with and allow myself to believe that it's not like that anymore. My husband has a great job (thank goodness) and he is very wise in how he helps save money. I have to remember that I am not my parents. We can and will be responsible and pay our bills. There won't be stress. It'll be okay :)

I Would Ask If This Day Could Get Any Worse

2012-01-24T19:54:00.002-05:00

But I really don't want to tempt fate, so I won't chance it.

First off, this morning, one of my hearing aids, after years of standing on its last leg so to speak, finally bit the dust, so I am half deaf now until I can get a new one (and health insurance doesn't cover them at all). The ones I had were ones I had gotten as a teenager when my father was in the Army (and thus all medical expenses were covered--unlike now, especially on university student insurance), so they were on borrowed time anyway. When I got them repaired a few years ago on my own dime, the audiologist had to dig out an old piece of equipment from the basement to adjust the sound in them and I actually had to show her how to use the machine, because my hearing aids "were so old" that she never had to use it before. So that's got me in a funk, since they are expensive, and insurance will cover nothing.

Then, I got an email today that the specialized exam will be much earlier than anticipated this semester....as in next month. And that's got me in a panic, because I don't have anywhere near the time I thought I did and need to finish my reading list, memorize the books for the oral exam, and turn in an excerpt of my dissertation to my committee beforehand (as in now)...my dissertation being the novel I started from scratch over the school break...the one that is still in its baby stages (baby, baby stages as in my husband hasn't even read a word of it yet).

Then, while thinking about all that, I was making dinner before my husband came home and the chicken I had been thawing slipped causing a torrent of raw chicken juice to spill everywhere. It was on the counters, the front of the dishwasher, the floors, everything. If I hadn't been pushing my suddenly ravenous dog out of the kitchen, so that I could clean it up without her getting into it and getting sick, I know I would have just sat on the floor and cried, because the whole day was becoming just so ridiculous at that point.

So after cleaning everything up and scrubbing the kitchen down, I managed to finish making dinner (which actually ended up being very good--I inadvertently tend to burn food when I cook...or try to cook--so that was a nice addition to an otherwise sucky day).

*Sigh* I am really hoping tomorrow goes better. For now, though, I am going to read and fret about my dissertation and the exam and how to read people's lips until I can replace my hearing aids...

Maybe tomorrow will be a thumbs up day? Please, oh, please?

Getting Back Up

2012-01-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

Well, today was much better. My husband and I went out to run some errands. We had a tasty lunch at Red Robin's. We took a great nap. My husband read a little while I planned out my classes for this week. In a few minutes, we will watch the newest movie that came in via Netflix--Super 8.

I haven't read emails all day except for just recently to answer a student's question and inadvertently saw the only rejection that came in today--one from Word Riot (my 8th rejection from them)--but that's okay. I had a bit of a detox day today, so I am ready to tackle things again this week.

This writing/submissions thing isn't for the faint of heart--that's for sure. You get knocked down a lot, but you just got to pull yourself back up.

A Frustrating Day

2012-01-21T19:29:00.000-05:00

Today's been a frustrating day on the writing/submissions front. You know how I mentioned that I had some poems and stories out for two to three years and had yet to hear back? Well, one of you suggested that a query would be warranted and I took your advice.

I heard back today.

The reason I hadn't heard back was that they lost my submission and couldn't find it anywhere. Now, if it were a print submission, I could understand that, because it's hard to keep track of envelopes, especially as it goes from reader to reader. But my submission was submitted through Submishmash (and it still shows up as "in-progress" on my account). Through my experiences using Submishmash as fiction editor for Grist, you can't "lose" a submission on Submishmash. Even if you archive a story, it is still in the database and shows up when you search for it by the title or author name.

They did say that I was welcome to submit again. *sigh*

Then after ten rejections this week, I got my sixth from Bartleby Snopes for a story I thought would for sure make it in the journal. For sure, I was convinced.

But no. The standard form rejection.

Typically, rejections don't bother me so much, but this week has been full of them, so they just seem to be piling on top of one another.

I've decided, though, that tomorrow is going to be a "fun" day. No submissions. No rejections (I won't even check my email).

I'm going to see a movie with my husband. I'm going to have a nice lunch with him. No deadlines. No stress. No nothing.

How about that?

I've Been Looking Forward to Today

2012-01-18T20:52:00.002-05:00

I've been looking forward to today.  Today (well, tonight) is the deadline for my students in my memoir classes to set up their personal blogs and my email inbox has just exploded with students sending me the links to the pages they have created...which is awesome, because this is my favorite part of the memoir class.

Typically, the papers teachers have to assign in English 102 are very research-heavy which is a good thing, but unfortunately doesn't leave a lot of room for students to really express themselves how they would like, say as they would in a real memoir.  That's why I created the blog assignment, because that allows students to really be themselves and share their writing without having to worry about the constraints of a research paper.

Everyone is so different, too, which I love, because every blog is unique, authentic, and real. It's a lovely project and I still keep up with some of the students who have kept blogging long after they finished the memoir class.

Needless to say, though, that has kept me busy throughout most of the day, so I don't have any new book reviews to share with you today. I do, however, have a great tidbit of unexpected news, though! I got an email that I've been assigned to teach a writing course this summer at UT, so I am thrilled about that. This will be my first time teaching a summer course (a mini-term where we meet every day for an hour and a half) and for so many years, I've watched as other teachers got the summer classes and my name was never drawn out of the hat.

In Auburn, graduate students didn't get summer funding and never taught summer classes and here at UT, it was more of a hierarchy thing where the fourth and fifth-year PhD students got the chance to teach summer classes before any other students did. This summer, I will be a fourth year (yikes!) and in my teaching request, I put myself down as available for any time and for any class, so the summer teaching gods have finally smiled on me :)   Now, to figure out how to cram a semester's worth of information into a mini-term....luckily, I have time to plan that out.

I think for now, though, I am going to finish answering emails, then go to sleep. I'm tired...

This is my husband with our Weimaraner on the couch. I think they have the right idea!

The Hunger Games

2012-01-17T14:15:00.000-05:00

Every day when I teach my freshman composition classes, I'll ask them a question during roll call such as what is their favorite movie, favorite place to eat, favorite sport, and so on. In the last class, I asked about their favorite book and the vast majority of students replied without hesitation, "The Hunger Games."

My husband just finished The Hunger Games, so I decided that I would read it and see what all the fuss was about. So I read it last night and this morning, and it was actually really good and took me back to when I would read library books as a child late at night, angling my book to catch some light from the streetlights outside so that I could finish without my parents knowing that I was still awake. It's been a long time since I read a book straight through, ignoring other distractions, because I wanted to find out just what happened next and The Hunger Games had that sense of urgency that made the book hard to put down.

I found myself getting sucked into it much more than I expected and found myself saddened when Katniss rushes to take Prim's place in the Hunger Games and their heartfelt goodbye and especially when Katniss says goodbye to Rue. I loved Rue's character and when I discovered her fate, I found myself tearing up and that never happens no matter what book I am reading. I had to shake myself a little bit then and say to myself, come on, Tawnysha, this is silly, this is just a book.

But it's more than a book and now, I can see why so many of my students love it. It was interesting, fast-paced, and had such a lovely imagination behind it.

The only thing I disliked about it was how awkward and silly some of the "love scenes" were, because Katniss and Peeta are so dramatic and kiss and kiss and kiss. I have to admit, I rolled my eyes in some of these parts.

But it was an entertaining read overall and I'm looking forward to finishing the series. My husband has the second book on my Kindle, so I have to wait until he finishes for me to start the next one, but it is just as well, because I should finish up my exam reading list before any more "fun reading."

I know some of you have read it and I would love to hear your thoughts!

I'm curious to see the movie adaption now. Luckily, I don't have long to wait!

Icy Sparks

2012-01-16T11:17:00.002-05:00

One of the benefits of filling up a reading list for your specialized exam with books you haven't read is that you have the chance to read a lot of new material in a short span of time. Many of those books will be wonderful. Unfortunately, though, some of those books are going to be awful, too.

Now, before I get to what ruined the book for me, Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio did have some redeeming qualities. The story is about a young girl who grows up with undiagnosed Tourette's Syndrome in rural Kentucky and shows how her condition isolated her as a child. Some of the scenes illustrated this well and I liked the growing tension and panic Rubio describes when Icy feels a spell coming on. Those scenes were believable and readers could feel Icy's same fear and dread in these pages.

The rest of the book was a bit melodramatic with over-the-top descriptions about Icy's overweight friend, the patients she meets at the facility where she is sent to be diagnosed and treated for her condition, and the nurses there.

Those things could have been forgiven and the book just deemed okay if not for the end. Oh. My. Goodness. The end.

To make a long story short, basically, Icy goes to a Pentecostal church revival service and is magically transformed. She becomes gifted with a beautiful voice that she uses to sing and thus help calm her urges that she had struggled with before. She becomes increasingly involved with the church and sees Tourette's not as a curse, but something she can overcome with the grace of God.

Of course, I am not saying that these things are not possible--many people have found comfort and healing in God--and I even attended a Pentecostal church like the one Icy goes to while I was growing up (complete with tent meetings and slaying people in the spirit and everything). However, the way Rubio brought the story to a conclusion with this just made a melodramatic story become one that was downright smarmy. The ending totally ruined the book for me.

Luckily, though, there are better books in the future. My husband just finished The Hunger Games, so I may try that next even though it isn't on my reading list. It makes me feel guilty, though, like I am cheating on my study list, but truth is, I only have a few books left on the list until I am finished, so I think I can spare a few hours for The Hunger Games. Have any of you read it? I'm curious to see what it's like...

Ferris Beach

2012-01-15T17:10:00.000-05:00

I finally, finally finished Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle last night. I had originally started it during the break, then had put it down and pick it again several times between traveling and getting ready for classes, so had only been able to read it a few chapters at a time.

A friend with whom I used to work in Auburn University recommended this book when she heard that I was looking for novels in the female Bildungsroman category and I am so glad that she did, because I really enjoyed this book overall. Kate's journey to maturity is a poignant one and I love her interactions with Misty and Angela, especially. The quiet way that the tension between Angela and Kate's mother increases throughout the novel is especially intriguing and I like the way that McCorkle handles these scenes.

The verisimilitude of certain moments were especially impressive--for example, Kate describes moments alone in her room when she closes her eyes and pretends that she is Helen Keller, robbed of sight and sound, so that she must find her way by touch. In another scene, she seeks the comfort of a heavy blanket even in the summer, because the weight of the sheets alone are not enough. Yet in each moment like this, understated and subtle, I kept thinking to myself, yes, I totally know what you mean. McCorkle really captures what it is like to be a girl growing up--awkward and unsure--and does so beautifully.

I'll probably visit Jill McCorkle's work again in the very near future, because I enjoyed Ferris Beach so much and look forward to seeing what other stories she has to share. I am working on Icy Sparks now by Gwyn Hyman Rubio now and should be done with it shortly (I am marked at 52% done with it on my Kindle), so I hope that I will have more to share here soon. Meanwhile, I hope you all are enjoying the weekend and are finding lots of time to read and write!

Wigleaf Top 50

2012-01-14T10:19:00.000-05:00

What a whirlwind this week has been. School starting back up. Turning in the paperwork for my specialized (and final!) PhD comprehensive exam. Teaching classes. Making final preparations for the new issue of Grist.

I love being on campus again and seeing everyone back from the holidays and with all the excitement and anticipation, it seems like the semester has already been going full-steam for longer than it has. Last night, a friend asked me when school had started back and I almost answered a week ago, but then had to think...was it only Wednesday that we started back...as in a few days ago?

I think that this is going to be a great semester, though. Already, my classes are wonderful and full of such great students with fantastic ideas and inquisitive minds. Many of them are hard-working, too, and have even talked to me about their plans for their final projects already. I'm very impressed so far :)

Speaking of good things, too, I got a wonderful (and completely unexpected) email the other day about the annual Wigleaf Top 50 project--a list that comes out every year recognizing the best flash fiction stories published online. A very prestigious honor, the list has featured writers like Matt Bell, Roxane Gay, Tina May Hall, Len Kuntz, and Amber Sparks among others (last year's list is here). The editor of this coming year's list asked if I wanted to be a reader for this year's prize.

And of course, I said yes! I am so excited about this and can't wait to start the reading process. I'll get my list of journals I am responsible for soon and then at the end of the year, I send in my nominations and then the editor picks the final few to be featured in the Wigleaf Top 50.
Looking forward to it!

First Day Back

2012-01-11T19:07:00.000-05:00

Today, the Spring 2012 semester officially started and what a beginning! First, I taught my class in the Haslam Business Building (which is everyone's favorite place to teach, because each room has technology and the building is brand-new and complete with study areas with comfortable chairs and benches). After teaching an awesome group of students there, I hiked on over to one of the oldest buildings on campus...Estabrook Hall.

Now before I show you pictures of my classroom, let me explain that while I am teaching the memoir as my English 102 focus, I teach Stephen King's memoir On Writing (which the title of this blog comes from) and share excerpts of his work (and movie clips) when we reach the parts where he discusses writing Carrie, The Shining, and so on. Needless to say, Estabrook Hall is perfect to teach this book, because the building is dark, creepy, and even unnerving at times, because the floors creak, the hallways are full of shadows, and building eerily similar to something you would see in a horror film.

For example, this is the outside...

This is the hallway leading up to my classroom (very much something from The Shining). I kept expecting to see the little boy riding down the hallway on his little tricycle...

And this is...*gulp* the door to my classroom...

...complete with a little note on the door saying not to lock the door, because "there's no one with a key."

Creepiness aside, though, the students themselves were absolutely wonderful and I think I am going to have two very bright, talkative classes this semester. My new assistant teacher is also fantastic, so I am looking forward to working with him as well.

So here's to a great semester! Good luck to you all who start teaching tomorrow!

Journal Musings

2012-01-09T07:30:00.000-05:00

Today's blog post is an early one since I'll be running errands all day, but I just wanted to check in real quick. I'm getting used to the semester schedule again (4 AM wake-up) since classes start up on Wednesday and one of the good things about getting up early in the morning is the extra free time you have to go to the gym, write, and send in more submissions. The house is quiet, it's dark outside--it's nice.

After I sent out two new stories this morning, I scrolled through my old emails to scan through past rejections from years ago to look for journals to submit to again. As I was looking through, I realized just how patient I was at the very beginning of the submissions process as the journals I initially sent to would give me a response thirteen, fifteen, sometimes, twenty-seven months later. I still have a poem and several stories out to places where I sent them three years ago. The journals are still functioning--one of these places being a very, very good journal that would be an absolute dream to get into, so I don't want to pester them too much with queries.

Now, though, I submit to places I know will get back to me relatively quickly as in a few months. Some places that I would love to get into like elimae responds in days...but I have also gotten seven rejections from them over the years (many of them form rejections), so just because a journal responds faster doesn't necessarily mean that it is easier to get into--take Beloit Poetry Journal for example, they usually respond very quickly, but they also have a less than one percent acceptance ratio on Duotrope. That's a place I would love to get into, too, and I actually have a poem in consideration there that hasn't been rejected yet (fingers crossed!).

I'm always looking for new places to send poems and stories, so if you know of any good journals, please let me know! I've got to get out as many submissions as possible before school starts, because then, I know that my submission pace will slow down a lot. What are some of your favorites? Least favorites?

First Acceptances of 2012

2012-01-08T08:24:00.001-05:00

I got back late last night and went through all my emails today. Got three rejections...and two acceptances! "Glass" will be appearing in Still: The Journal and "Trees" will be appearing in The Poydras Review.

So happy to find a place here!

My poem, "Glass" is in the same series as most of my other work, but "Trees" is one that's completely different. It's an older poem that I wrote in Marilyn Kallet's class after getting an assignment to write a poem in a minimalist fashion in order to tell a story in as few words as possible. It's also not a prose poem (one of my very few), so I am happy to get a variety of things published.

So two acceptances down....28 to go! Whoo! That means, in addition to working on syllabi, I've got some serious submitting to do. I've got a new story already ready to send out, though, so I'm excited.

How have you all been? I've missed you the last few days. I hope that those of you getting ready to teach have wonderful starts to the new semester! School here starts back on Wednesday and I'm looking forward to it. I'm teaching the memoir again which is my all-time favorite class to teach, so it will be a lot of fun :)

This Was Close. Closer.

2012-01-02T17:24:00.000-05:00

My husband and I did enjoy Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol today, but for a truly entertaining review, I would suggest visiting Roxane Gay's blog. All her movie reviews are hilarious and witty (be sure to check out the one on Transformers--that is my favorite movie review of all time--oh, and the one on Twilight, too.)

I like movie days :)

When I got home, though, three more rejections were waiting for me in my inbox--bringing today's total to two form and two personal rejections. The personal ones were encouraging and one even had a note at the end that's the title of this blog post--"This was was close. Closer." I had sent this one journal two submissions now, so it's nice to know that I'm getting closer. Thinking back, that's how I slowly got my way into PANK, Monkeybicycle, and other journals. Slowly, slowly...

I'm leaving early, early tomorrow to visit family, so the next post I put on here will probably be in a few days. I will be on Twitter, though (TawnyshaGreene1). See you soon!

Starting the Year Off Right

2012-01-01T20:11:00.000-05:00

I love the new year and the sense of strength and determination it gives so many people. My Facebook feed was full of declarations of losing weight, finishing novels, traveling new places, paying off debt and it was exciting to see so many people in great moods ready to tackle their goals for 2012.

I have to admit, my own goal of 30 publication acceptances has me a bit intimidated already, but I hit the ground running today. After putting up all our Christmas decorations in the attic and washing and waxing the cars, I was hard at work. First, I went back and revised two new poems and one short story and researched places to send them. By the end of the day, I had 17 new submissions out and I have to say, my eyes are tired now.

I'll submit more tomorrow, especially after having gotten two rejections back today (but they were very kind and praised the work I sent them, so that was encouraging). I think tomorrow will be a bit more of a fun day as my husband and I are going to catch a showing of Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol.

Fun movie plans :)

Then, there will probably be a small lull in blog posts here (a few days at most) as I go to visit family in Virginia for a belated Christmas (and to meet my brand new baby niece)!

I will take some books with me on the plane rides, so will have several book reviews ready for you when I get back. What are you all reading for the new year? Any good finds?

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

2011-12-31T17:06:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite days of browsing the blogs of fellow writers is New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, because everyone is charging themselves up for the year ahead. It's invigorating and inspiring to see such resolutions and really helps spur me on in making my own goals, too.

It is wonderful, too, to see writers reflect on the past year and the things they've learned about the writing life. Sandy Longhorn wrote a wonderful post about writing and submitting work to journals and even shared some impressive numbers as far as acceptances for this year. Her post reminded me of just how hard-working and consistent a lot of writers have to be to survive in the publishing world. You inspire me, Sandy! So proud of all your success this year.

I have to say, though, one of my favorite blog posts ever as far as New Year's resolutions go has to be one that Josh Robbins, one of our poets here at UT, wrote last year. After Ruth Franklin's example, he took some of the most common resolutions (losing weight, quitting smoking, and so on) and applied it to writing and I thought that was absolutely brilliant.

So in that same fashion, I'll try to compose my own list. Of course, I don't mean these resolutions literally (as I don't smoke and so on), but in terms of writing, I think these resolutions apply well. So here goes...

Lose Weight--in 2011, my goal was to get 12 acceptances from literary journals. I got 19. For 2012, I want to increase that to 30 acceptances. I thought about 40, but then retracted, because that would be a bit too lofty of a goal. Even 30 is going to be really hard. It will mean lots of revising and sending out work (old and new), but it will help me get more poems and stories out of my submissions queue and added onto my CV.

I want to participate in National Poetry Month again, too. It was a lot of fun last year and I have a lot of poetry books and chapbooks to give away, so stay tuned!

Exercise More--now that I've started seriously working on my first novel, I plan to work on it consistently a little bit each day (even when it's frustrating and makes me crazy--see previous blog post).

I also want to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I've never done it before and have always watched from the sidelines--often too busy to join in, because of classes and exams, but this November, I will be teaching, but my classes and exams will be behind me :)

I want to blog more here, too. I think this is my 187th blog post for this year. I'll shoot for 200 blog posts in 2012.

Learn a New Language--read popular fiction. Now don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction and the classics, but I want to know and understand the fan base behind Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Julianna Baggott has a novel Pure that looks very interesting and has already gotten a lot of publicity. There's other books, too, that have large fan bases. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The DaVinci Code. Not sure if I'll be able to make it through Twilight, though. I might give it a try...

Quit Smoking--A lot of times, people quit smoking to live longer and to feel better and stronger. In terms of writing, I'll start submitting work to stronger and more competitive journals. Clifford Garstang publishes a great list of ranked journals every year and this year, I'll submit to some of them for the first time. I'll try out The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review. I'll try some journals (again) like Epoch, Willow Springs, Georgia Review, and Tin House. Who knows? Maybe something good will come of it.

Spend More Time with Family and Friends--I want to get back into creative writing conferences. I want to workshop with other people working on novels/dissertations more. I want to read more of the books my writer friends are publishing. I want to do more book reviews and be more a part of the writing community.

So, those are the biggies...

All in all, 2011 was a pretty good year. I met Pam Uschuk and really found my voice in my stories/poems (and discovered my novel/dissertation topic). I was fiction editor of Grist: The Journal for Writers (and was fortunate enough to read some of the best submissions we've ever gotten). I passed my PhD written comprehensive exams.

I am hoping 2012 will be a good year, too. A lot looms on the horizon...my last PhD comprehensive exam...ABD status (hopefully!)...work on my novel. In either case, though, the year will be full of reading and better yet, writing, and this makes me very happy.

Pages Hard Won

2011-12-30T16:21:00.001-05:00

One of my writer friends (and upcoming contributors in the new issue of Grist), Celia Alvarez wrote the perfect blog post today. Her latest post focused on how one can become a better writer in the coming year, but the video she posted at the end was the perfect illustration of my day (and really, any writing day). The video is one the opening scene of Throw Momma from the Train, a movie I have not seen, but one that I will definitely see now.

Billy Crystal does the perfect job of showing a writer's frustration when writing that first draft and while the scene is a bit dated, the level of exasperation is the same. Instead of throwing papers away and looking out the window, now, writers are checking Facebook, checking email, fiddling around, sighing when the words just won't come.

While I did finish a chapter today, the chapter was short and it took a long, long time to get from one sentence to another. A lot of my pauses were composed of looking up to the ceiling for inspiration, talking through some scenes aloud, looking up information about cross country skiing (which ended up not being necessary, so I just took all that out), then taking big steps across the den to measure how a child would measure a room (steps rather than feet and inches), but my dog thought I was playing a game and only started jumping and barking in her excitement. Haha, it's good that I do a lot of my writing when I am alone during the day--people would think me crazy otherwise :)

The chapter isn't one of my best, but it's progress and one more chapter than I didn't have before. The good news is that everything will only get better in revision. Thank goodness...

I'll probably write again tomorrow before the new year, but if you all are traveling for the festivities, then I wish you safe travels!

Bless Me, Ultima

2011-12-29T16:21:00.000-05:00

This book was originally part of my novel exam reading list, but I didn't have the time to read it before exam time (oooh, did I just admit that? *blushes*). However, it was a book I still wanted to read, so when my husband and I went to a bookstore briefly while visiting his family this past week, I immediately picked it from the shelves.

While the book couldn't really be used in any of my exam questions, I did like the story and the sense of magic in the narrative. I liked Ultima and the way she had the special power to heal the sick and dying and the way she could defeat evil with the use of herbs and certain rituals. Antonio's dream sequences were interesting and I found his dream depictions of his brothers and the men he saw killed most intriguing. I think my favorite parts were the scenes of doubt for Antonio--especially the scene in which he discovers a broken cross on the ground--the cross that was supposed to determine that Ultima was indeed not a witch.

My only misgiving about the book was how overly dramatic it seemed to be. For example, there were so many exclamation points, sentences in all caps, and places where words themselves were drawn out such as "Antonioooooooooooo." However, the story is told from the perspective of a young boy, so things are going to seem more dramatic to him, but it just got a bit grating after a while.

It was a good book, though, and I did like it and all the characters. Rudolfo Anaya utilized setting well, too, and I liked how he allowed the place to come alive--that was nice.

Stills from the film adaptation...

Antonio and Ultima in the film...

I am working on Ferris Beach now by Jill McCorkle, but think it may be a day or two before I post something on that book, because it is a bit long. I am going to try to squeeze in a few more writing days in here soon, too, before the next semester starts up (and specialized exam-ing and dissertation prospectus-ing). Busy, busy!

Mama's Girl

2011-12-28T10:51:00.001-05:00

Now that we are home and things are getting back to normal again, I've tried reading as much as I can as the remaining days of the school break become fewer and fewer. My husband's car broke down yesterday and while that is in the shop getting fixed, he is using mine, so I am cooped up in the house which is good in a way, because it forces me to read and write more than usual.

One of the things I am finding out (as I am sure all you dissertation-writers know) is that once people know that you are writing your dissertation, they ask you how it is going--and how close you are to finishing--all the time. While this can be annoying, I am discovering it to be motivating, too, because each time my husband asks how many pages I wrote today or what kind of scene I was working on, it guilts me to write more, and in the long run, that will be a good thing.

Meanwhile, I am keeping up with my exam reading, because my last exam is so close now. The latest book was Mama's Girl by Veronica Chambers and overall, I liked it. The voice was engaging and it was a quick read.

The only thing I didn't particularly enjoy about it--and this is something I became more aware of in writing workshops--is how flat a lot of the characters were--in that a person was all good or all bad. For example, Veronica herself seems to be an impeccable character with perfect grades, a strong work ethic, a generous attitude, while everyone around her has no redeeming qualities at all. Her father is closed-off and verbally and physically abusive, her brother is a lying thief who constantly disappoints the family, her mother is a victimized woman who refuses to help her daughter in her time of need. It was frustrating, because I wanted to see it balanced out a bit. I wanted to see why these characters were the way they were. I wanted to like her brother. I wanted to like her mother.

I wanted, too, to see a weakness or shortcoming in Veronica that would make her more human. In Anywhere but Here, Ann takes inappropriate pictures of the children in her neighborhood when she is young. In White Oleander, Astrid sleeps with her foster mother's boyfriend. In Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, Berie steals money to pay for her best friend's abortion. These are all secrets--dark sides to an otherwise good person. Veronica doesn't seem to have one.

I think if more scenes were illustrated rather than told--such as the scene in which Veronica's father hits her mother over the head with a hammer--then the characters would come across as more multi-faceted and we, as readers, could see why Veronica felt the way she did about her family. But so much is told instead--for example, she says her father is "sadistic" and "mean," but if we could see that as we do in the hammer scene, then would be so much more believable.

Overall, though, the book was enjoyable and I think that reading and analyzing books so closely these past few years has just made me more critical of writing in general. There are very few books that I read (especially since studying for exams) that are perfect and I wonder if that innate criticism that I can't seem to shut off in my brain will die down when my last exam is behind me. I'd like to read books like the Harry Potter series and the other popular books that everyone seems to be reading now, but I remember when one of my sisters was reading the Twilight series, I glanced through a page and couldn't get past the first few paragraphs without laughing hysterically at the absurdity of it all. If you want to see what I mean, there is a funny site here that points out some especially funny lines.

My husband just got the first book of the Hunger Games series, so I am hoping to maybe try that one out before the next semester starts up. Have any of you read it? Any other books that you all enjoyed after exams were over and you could read "for fun"?

Christmas in the ICU

2011-12-27T08:20:00.001-05:00

I'm sorry for the absence in blog posts lately. My husband and I had to leave town very quickly after my mother-in-law had emergency open heart surgery, but thankfully, she is doing much better today and should be home sometime soon.

While the circumstances were unfortunate, it was such a blessing to see all her family and friends rally around her like they did. While she was having surgery, there was a waiting room specifically for families of open heart patients and while most patients had two or three people waiting, my husband's family filled that room to the brim as her friends, siblings, children, neighbors, and in-laws all sat and waited for news. It was heartwarming then and after the surgery, too, as more people came to visit and tell her how much they loved her and how much she meant to them. It just goes to show what a special lady she is :)

Now that we are back home, I am going to try to resume the exam reading/dissertation schedule and keep up with my postings here, but I'll save that for a bit later. I just wanted to give you all an update and wish you a belated Merry Christmas. I hope that you all enjoyed the holidays and if you are still making your way home, that you have safe travels.

Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?

2011-12-21T13:47:00.000-05:00

This book by Lorrie Moore was beautiful--and lived up to all the fantastic things I had heard about Moore and her writing. A story of Berie and her best friend, Sils, during the years they worked at Storyland together and afterwards, Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? captured the joys and struggles of growing up so perfectly. I love, too, how Moore illustrated the closeness between these two girls even to the point of Berie stealing money, so that Sils could have an abortion without her family knowing and then, how that closeness seemed to fracture as they got older and began to live separate lives.

Lovely, lovely book. I will be reading Lorrie Moore again.

With that book finished, I should go back to the dissertation for another chapter...but I am trying to find the motivation. Writing is a lot like running, I am finding out. It's great exercise and you feel so good once you've had a good run, but it's so hard to get started, especially when your muscles are sore and stiff from the last day's run. I feel like that today. I really should write...but it's raining out and the sky is dreary...wouldn't it be the perfect day to watch movies? Or read another book? Hmm?

More Dissertation Musings

2011-12-20T10:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's dissertation chapter was my hardest one yet--and longest--and after struggling with the ending (of course--endings seem to be my nemesis with this novel), I finally got it wrapped up this morning.

Things are coming along now which is exciting--little puzzle pieces are coming together and the protagonist's background is taking shape. One thing I am a little worried about, though, is the fact that there is hardly any dialogue...like at all. Granted, several characters in my novel are deaf and I use some dialogue through sign language and observations of spoken conversations, but so much of the story is visual and sensory in terms of the other senses (smell, touch, and so on) that I hope this isn't offputting to the reader. I'm trying to think back if I've read too many books with a deaf narrator and can't think of many. Children of a Lesser God comes to mind, but I think that's a play (before it was a movie). Do you know of any books? I'm curious how other authors have dealt with the absence of sound and spoken dialogue and how they've been successful at it.

Another thing that concerns me is that, like my flash pieces, the character and place names in this novel are very generic--the mountain(s) for Big Bear, California...sister for so and so...brother and so on. The reason for this is that my protagonist is a young child and I remember that when I was young, I never said specific names for a place that I wanted to go. It was always Grandma's House, the mountains, Cousin's House, and so on. I never said the place on such and such lane in such and such city--that just seemed silly, so I am thinking I might be able to get away with that and just add some place markers here and there to orient readers a bit.

The names for characters--I don't think I can get away with, though, it makes me sad. I like referring to sister or brother as such, because there seems to be a sense of intimacy there. When children are very young (or at least this is how is was for me growing up), they identify their siblings as a part of them--this is my sister or my brother or my mother. When kids get older, they develop their own personalities more and become their own people with separate lives, especially when they become adults, but the time when they are very young kids, there seems to be a special time where everyone is a community--part of one another. Has that been the case for anyone else? I'll probably have to put in names later, but for the time being, I think I'll save that for when I go back and revise. I tried putting in a name for sister and it felt so wrong and that I was distancing that character so much, so I changed it back and may just keep it that way for now, and see what my committee members think when they read it.

Today is for exam reading, though, and I am going to start Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore. Have any of you read that? I hope it's good--I've heard great things...

Monkeys

2011-12-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

When I first got my Kindle--an early Christmas present--and posted about it here, some of you said that you read books faster when they were in ebook form. I wondered if this would be the case for me and doubted so, because I thought that the screen might hurt my eyes after a while.

I was happy to be proven wrong when I set to read my first ebook on the Kindle. After I fiddled with the controls and set the background behind the text to a tan color to lessen the glare, I started reading Monkeys by Susan Minot. While each "page" didn't have a page number and I couldn't keep track of my progress like I could as if I were reading a real book, I did find it interesting that the Kindle would give me a percentage as to how far I was in the book. What was 18% quickly became 56% then 99% and I finished right before the finale of Survivor was set to air.

Granted, the book is not extremely long (I think the printed version is just under 200 pages), but I think it took all of maybe 2 1/2 hours to read it, so I think the ebook theory is true--you do read faster on it.

It could have been because Monkeys was such an enjoyable read, too. Centered around the story of a large family and their struggles growing up (including the death of their mother), the book captured some nice moments of what it means to love one another, to keep the family together after a tragedy, and how to say good-bye.

The only things I didn't like so much about it was how similar a lot of the characters were--so many of the siblings were alike in the way that they acted and talked to each other that some of them even blended into one another in certain scenes. I wanted to see more variety in the characters.

Also, I think the book would be better if there was a single narrator, because the swapping around, so that people are referred to as different names--for example the father as "Dad" then "Mr. Vincent" then "Dad" again--just got confusing after a while. Also, details that should have been explained early such as which sibling was older or younger didn't come till nearly the third story because of these swaps, and that just jumbled things up more, but these were my only reservations, because I really liked the book as a whole.

The way the mother calls her children "monkeys" was great and the scenes that showed little, but expressed a lot such as when the father dumps a glass of water over his head at the dinner table while on vacation were wonderfully executed.

So overall, while there were flaws that were distracting, I would still recommend the book. It was a pleasant read and I'm glad that my committee members for my specialized exam suggested this book to me.

Well, I just wanted to share that with you all. I'm off to start the week with hopefully another chapter in the dissertation, but we'll see how it goes today. See you tomorrow :)

Breath, Eyes, Memory

2011-12-18T14:03:00.002-05:00

I decided to spend most of the weekend reading and get back into the dissertation tomorrow, so I read Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. It is not one of my exam books (though I thought about including it), but I still wanted to read it, because I had heard so much about it.

Yet after reading it, I have to say that my feelings on it are somewhat mixed. I liked the story and enjoyed seeing bits of Haitian culture and the mystic quality of the way of life there--from the power of dreams to the belief that a child born out of wedlock bears his/her father's face. The narrative was sad and Danticat does a good job of portraying the conditions girls and women have to endure--from nightly testing for virginity before she is married to her fingers being named for each task she was born to perform in life. Some of the scenes were especially moving--my favorite being one in chapter 34 when Sophie sees Buki's balloon trapped in a tree. Buki had released the balloon in hopes of being free from her past, sending the balloon off to the sky to travel to Africa where her struggles began, but the balloon never left and I love the subtlety of this scene, love what it says in this small image (though it's sad). When Danticat is subtle in scenes like this, her writing is so much more powerful.

But this kind of subtlety is rare and that's why I didn't love this book, though, I wanted to. Too many times, I felt that Danticat was being overly obvious in what she wanted to say and I felt beat over the head during certain scenes. I felt, too, that the book rushed too much and the scenes were not as developed as they could be. I wanted to know the characters more, but felt frustrated by the distance I felt when reading. Too much was cold, clipped, and told rather than shown. I was told too much what to feel, what to see, what to think and this frustrated me as I read the book.

So while the book was limiting in these senses, I did like certain parts of it (like the balloon scene). It was enlightening and a book that I am glad that I had a chance to read. Have any of you read the book? What were some of your thoughts about it?

Letting Go

2011-12-16T15:18:00.000-05:00

The dissertation safely retrieved by my Superman husband, it was back to work for me yesterday. I got another chapter done and the novel is starting to really gain momentum which is exciting and scary at the same time, because I have no idea what I am going to write from one page to the next. Of course, I have a direction that I want it to go, but as I am finding out, I can't force this story to go anywhere. I have to let it go and trust it which is hard, because much of the time, I find myself writing blindly, not knowing what my next paragraph or even the next few words will be.

It is like driving in the dark, not knowing where you are going, said Richard Bausch during a reading he gave while here in Knoxville and I find myself comforted that the process is the same, even for writers who have been writing their entire lives. Sometimes, it’s terrifying, because you think you are lost (and sometimes, you are), but like Bausch said, you just have to back up and turn around.

Even, though, sometimes, it feels like this...

Try again. Write again, he said. There is always another road. How true that is.

Everything Made New

2011-12-15T10:05:00.002-05:00

Ha! So much for rest and relaxation while reading a book yesterday. Granted, the day started off well as I set myself to finishing Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros, but then after a while, when I had about one hundred pages left in the book to read, I woke up my computer to check email only to find a very peculiar error message on the screen.

It wasn't one I had seen before and it concerned me, because I couldn't exit out of it as the entire screen was locked. So I rebooted the computer, only to have the same error message pop up again...only this time, taking all my files on the desktop with it. The desktop was blank. All my files, including the one marked "dissertation" was gone.

Getting nervous now, I took a picture of the error message with my phone and sent it to my husband who is a computer genius and he replied back. It didn't look good. Looked like the computer was toast...and everything on it.

Can you save anything? I texted. I had copies of all my files saved in multiple places, thumb drives, emailed copies, the like, so it wouldn't be a total loss if everything was gone....except for one thing. I had made a copy of my early work on the dissertation, but the latest writing I had done--the last half of the first chapter was only saved in one place--and that was the desktop...the one that was blank now.

Did you click anything? he texted. Apparently that would make a difference on whether you could retrieve files or not and I thought, uhm, no? I had shut the computer down, but would that make a difference?

Just leave it be, he said, and I'll fix it when I get home. No worries.

No worries?

I tried to busy myself until he got home to keep my mind off of the computer, but the water company was fixing a leak under the street in front of our house, so the water had been turned off, so I couldn't do laundry, I couldn't do dishes, I couldn't mop or really, do anything. The whole time, I was thinking about how I had just foolishly posted on here about how happy I was to start work on the dissertation and how I had finished what I thought might be my first chapter and now, this...serves me right for being boastful and not checking myself when I needed to. Serves me right.

So after I was done beating myself down, I read and finished Caramelo (which really and truly is a wonderful book--especially the last half when Lala begins to grow up) and it helped me not to focus on all the work I had potentially lost.

When my husband came home, he pulled out a big folder with carefully labeled CDs, picked out the one he needed, and shazaam, the computer files were found, the files transferred, the computer wiped, and everything made new again.

And as simple as that, the dissertation is back up on the desktop just as my husband said...no worries. It's a huge relief for me, so now I can go about writing on it again today....only instead of saving it to my desktop after every page or so and emailing it to myself when the day's work is done, I will be doing this much more often.

I am so thankful to my husband, though. I've said before that he is Superman and he still is...no germs or viruses (in any form) can touch him.

If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again

2011-12-14T08:49:00.000-05:00

Whew, this last dissertation day was hard. And frustrating. And frankly, not very fun.

But, I think I may be done with my first chapter! Now, granted, writing a novel, my chapters aren't going to be 30-50 pages like they would be in a literature-based dissertation, but it's a start!

I think my chapters, while on the short side, will still be a bit longer than the ones Cisneros uses in her books, and I am trying to make them all related, so that together, they follow a sort of a narrative arc, but also be able to function as stand alone pieces.

While aiming for this goal, I am learning a lot of lessons along the way...one being that trying to fit some of my flash pieces into this novel is kryptonite for my writing. Kryptonite in the worst way possible. I had started this chapter fine, then tried fitting some of "The End of the World" in it, but oh, that did not work at all. Not only was the pacing and the writing wrong for what I was trying to do, but in my frustration with trying to make it fit, it completely messed up my focus, so I had a hard time getting back into the rhythm of the story even after I had deleted it.

So I took a break from it, submitted some more stories (because I got two more rejections yesterday), then recharged, I tried again and made it through the scene I was struggling with earlier.

As I was writing, though, I learned that even if you have a chapter mapped out in your head and know exactly what you want to say, most likely, it is not going to turn out that way, because I had an ending for this chapter all ready, but the ending actually came much earlier than I had expected. I finished the scene...and that was it. That was the end was right there and the more I read the chapter over, the more sure of it I was.

But the words weren't right. I was telling too much and it seemed overdone. I knew that first drafts weren't supposed to be good, but this was killing me. I couldn't go on to the next chapter, knowing that the first one looked like this.

So I rewrote the end. And it was a little better. But I still didn't like it. It was still too overdone.

Then I took another break and watched one of the movies on AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies list--a list of classic movies I've been working on for years now. Netflix had Raging Bull with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci on instant view, so I had that in one window on the laptop, my dissertation open in another window.

As the boxing matches played on and the actors' faces got bloodied up with each punch, I realized that I was being too timid in writing this chapter. I had to throw it in a ring, bang it up, then knock it out in one solid blow.

So I did. With the movie still playing, I obliterated it. Took out the entire ending and wrote in a new one, guided by the sounds of the boxer's gloves making contact, the roar of the crowd, the ring of the bell at the end of each round.

By the time the credits started to roll, I had an ending. One that I absolutely loved.

Now I know it's dangerous to like what you've written, because you may have to cut it out when editing, but at the time, I didn't care. It was an ending. And hot damn, it worked.

The rest of the editing was easy. Changing verb tense here and there to reflect flashbacks and current time, getting rid of word repetition, making sure all the punctuation was correct.

I tell you, though, even though there was a victory at the end of the writing process, the dissertation days are exhausting. You eat, breathe, and dream dissertation, or at least I do as I find myself talking aloud through scenes when driving somewhere or doing the laundry. I dream about the writing and even woke myself up last night, thinking, "I need a comma after 'sometimes' on the second page." And sure enough, I did.

I'm glad for these reading days in-between. I am going to finish Caramelo today and am looking forward to the rest!

Caramelo

2011-12-13T08:57:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was reserved for exam reading, so I started Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros. Overall, I like it and was pleased to see that although it is a novel, it is composed of (almost) isolated chapters much like The House on Mango Street.

Narrating the lives of the members of the Reyes family, Cisneros seamlessly travels through the lives of Inocencio, Soledad, Narciso, and others while giving a lovely portrait of what it is like to grow up in Mexico. My favorite sections are the ones with Lala, though. She is a delightful character and I like the way she sees the world around her--it is very enlightening in the way that only a child's viewpoint can be.

The book reminds me a lot (well, a little) of A Hundred Years of Solitude and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in that the book is a narrative of an entire family, rather than a single person, everyone's voice overlapping and speaking simultaneously. However, although I like the variety of these voices and the richness of such a narrative, I miss the intimacy of The House on Mango Street.

One of my all-time favorite books.

Caramelo is still a very enjoyable read, though, and I love the way Sandra Cisneros writes. I'm a little more than halfway through the book and am looking forward to finishing it tomorrow on my next day reserved for exam reading.

Today, it's back to work on the dissertation, so I am going to get to it. Wish me luck :)

Two Novels?

2011-12-12T09:31:00.001-05:00

After a weekend of serious dissertation writing, I've come to realize two things. One is something that I already wrote about in my last blog post--that I have to learn that the dissertation will be far from perfect in the first draft and will often have ambiguous placeholders like "some kind of beginning" before I really have it figured out.

The other thing that I think I figured out yesterday is that I have two novels that I am working with here. That's right--two. One starts when my protagonist is seventeen and goes on from there. The other happens before. I can't fit all of it in one book--the more I think about it, the more I am sure of it.

So after thinking about the dissertation as a whole--a document that will be about 250 pages (sometimes more)--I started breaking it down. About 50 pages of that dissertation will be a critical introduction. About 6 or 7 of those pages will be introductory material--table of contents, title page, signature page, acknowledgements page, and so on. That leaves me with about 193 pages. Then adjust all the margins to the proper dissertation standards and you've got even fewer pages than that. Now, folks, that is not a whole lot when you are thinking about a novel.

So I started writing a new beginning--to the novel that happens before my protagonist is seventeen--the novel I know will be shorter and correspond more closely to the short stories I have been writing recently.

I started the story in the mountains from the story "A Safe Place" and went on from there. And it actually went very well. I didn't struggle with it nearly as much as I did on Saturday, so I think this is the route I'm going to try for now. Who knows, though, it could always change.

While I am working on the dissertation over the break, though, I have to make sure that I don't get too behind on my exam reading, since I don't have an entire summer to devote to studying like I did for the previous two exams. So what I am going to do is write on the dissertation for a day, then read for exams the next day, then write, and so on.

Today is going to be a reading day and I'm working on Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros. I've got to sneak in some submitting to journals time in there, too, because in the last 48 hours, I got six rejections in my email box. Half of them were personal rejections which wasn't so bad and one of them was a very positive note from Beloit Poetry Journal which had me thrilled, but when it comes down to it, it is still a rejection, so I have to work on getting these stories/poems back out.

What are your Monday plans? Anybody submitting to journals today, too?

Some Kind of Beginning

2011-12-10T18:08:00.001-05:00

Well, this was it...the first official day of serious dissertation writing and it went...worse than I expected, then turned around at the end and got much better, so all in all, I am happy with the way things turned out.

After cleaning up the house this morning and getting rid of any sort of distractions, I sat down on the couch with my laptop and a stack of books I hoped would give me inspiration to write that first page of what will be my first novel. I had my favorites--Anywhere but Here, White Oleander, The Poisonwood Bible, Push, Woman Hollering Creek, Room, A Complicated Kindness, The House on Mango Street, Cat's Eye, A Complicated Kindness, and The Virgin Suicides all spread out before me. I turned to the first chapters, read them again and again, looked to my earlier stories, tried to find first lines.

How I wish it were this easy! But all you thesis/dissertation writers know that it is not...

No matter what I did, the inspiration wasn't coming. My first lines were silly, told too much, didn't hook the reader like it should, and/or needed too much explanation. Hours went by and I only had five versions of the same sentence on my computer screen. Needless to say, I wasn't going anywhere.

So I stopped and walked away from it for a little while. My husband and I took a nap and while I drifted in and out of sleep, I thought about how to open the story, what lines to use and nothing came.

When the alarm went off, I thought about what Judy Troy, my thesis director at Auburn University, once told me. Stories come about when the rhythms of life are broken, she said. It's based off of another famous quote, though I don't know who said it originally, but the advice was sound...because I was trying to start at the wrong place.

Starting with "Sensible Things" or "Unclean" or "The Bad Things" wasn't working, because the events in these stories, while unusual to readers, was commonplace in my protagonist's life. The rhythms weren't broken there, so I went forward to a time when the protagonist is about seventeen.

But the present tense and the child-like voice wasn't working for a seventeen-year-old girl and I started to get frustrated again. Then I remembered something Richard Bausch told me what to do when stuck on something in a story. "Lower your standards," he said, "and keep going."

So I deleted what I had and wrote, "some kind of beginning" and went onto a later scene. That later scene was so much easier to write and in no time at all, I had something I really liked. Meanwhile, the words, "some kind of beginning" are still written on the top of the page, but you know what? That's okay and one of the lessons I know I will have to learn when writing this dissertation is that I will have a lot of spaces like that where I'll have "fill in scene here" or "add something here" and this will all be okay as I am writing. Nothing is perfect in the first draft. You can always go back and maybe then, you will know what to write there, what "some kind of beginning" really needs to be.

Just like Pepakura

2011-12-09T11:13:00.003-05:00

Wow, what a wealth of wonderful advice you all are! I love it that this blog helps me connect to you writers and you have been so kind to share things you've learned along the way as you have written novels and dissertations of your own. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to not look at the dissertation as one huge project to tackle, but rather as one manageable chunk at a time.

This was also something my husband told me as we were talking after I had written my last blog post. His face lit up as he said, "It's just like my arts and crafts project!" and when you think about it, it is actually a pretty good analogy.

To explain, for the past few months, he has been working on what he calls his "arts and crafts" project--a full-sized model of Pepakura Halo armor modeled after the soldiers in the Halo video games. These pieces of armour are actually made out of paper--thousands of pieces--that are cut to a certain shape then glued together. Each shapes then has a series of tiny numbers along the edges to show where each piece attaches together. It's a very time consuming process, but the end product is pretty cool, especially when you remember that it is made out of paper.

This is a close-up, so that you can see the numbers and how it is put together.

This is what the whole set of armor looks like.

This is what the finished product looks like.

You can actually wear the armor and my husband wants to have a full set ready by Halloween next year. But it requires so much patience and you can only do it one piece at a time...much like writing a dissertation. The only minor difference is that there is a computer application that will take each piece and point to where it needs to connect with another piece (since the tiny numbers are often hard to read and match together). If only there was an application like that for dissertation writing! I would love little arrows :)

The dissertation writing will officially begin tomorrow...no more little isolated stories here and there...but a for-real dissertation with a concrete order of events and a narrative arc and everything. Oooh, I'm nervous though.

Meanwhile, today, I am revising the last of my stories and sending them out. I already sent out "Hanging Lights" and "The Light of the World." "Hanging Lights" already got two rejections which is really sort of maddening, but one of them was a sweet, personalized one with a lot of positive encouragement, so that one wasn't so bad.

"Hanging Lights" is one of my "tamer" stories that I writing to make the characters in this collection more multi-faceted and real. One of the biggest criticisms for the set of stories I've been writing is that certain characters are too flat and either all bad or all good, so I am trying to change that a bit and show a different side to them. These nicer stories are so much harder to publish, though, because, isolated, these stories don't hold as much weight or tension as say something like "Unclean" (page 70) or the upcoming "The Bad Things," also appearing in Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. The tamer stories are much more subtle, and even sweet at times, which I think parts of the dissertation need, so I am not going to give up on them quite yet.

I've got one more story, "Glass," that I am finishing up revisions on and then will send out this afternoon. Then, tomorrow will be it--official dissertation writing will begin. See you on the other side!

Dissertation Musings

2011-12-07T16:11:00.001-05:00

I finished grading the last of my papers this morning and end of this semester is finally in sight. Just one more final exam to give tomorrow morning and once final grades are submitted, the Christmas break can officially begin!

I have so much that I want to get done over the break, so I am itching to get started. I've specialized exam books to read, stories to revise, and now, a dissertation to really start working on. I met with my dissertation director yesterday to fill out some paperwork for the specialized exam next semester and he casually asked me if I was about 60-70% done with the dissertation yet and a blinding bolt of terror jolted through me....especially when I saw that he wasn't joking.

Uhm, no...I am not 60-70% done with the dissertation, I stammered, pulse quickening as I tried to think about how to write the dissertation while reading for my last exam...as in write seriously, not just a story here and there.

Gulp...so that is what I will be working on primarily over Christmas and New Years. I've been doing a lot of thinking about form and content and while the content of the little stories I've been publishing lately will be part of my dissertation, I am not sure that 250 pages of one-page inter-related stories are going to work. They are going to get tiresome after a while and just seem like the same thing over and over.

I really wanted to format my dissertation after Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, but that book is small, as in barely 100 pages. The stories in that book work very well, but I am wondering if that kind of power and momentum can be sustained in a longer work like my dissertation. I am thinking not, so after reading A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews which has short anecdotes like The House on Mango street, but ones that are longer and shared in groups of moments rather than one at a time, I am thinking that this form might work better for my dissertation. I would still be focusing on the anecdotes, but I feel that this format may be better for a longer work and be able to keep the reader's interest longer.

I am also wondering about how to share these anecdotes--as in chronologically, in retrospect, or a combination of the two. Personally, I find the child's voice as always more engaging and whenever I try to write in the adult voice, I am terrible, and I mean terrible at it. My thought process freezes up, I can't write, and when I do write, it's crap. That is why I am not eager to write the dissertation with my protagonist as an adult looking back, but this may be something I have to do, because classmates were always curious after reading a poem or story--how did this affect the protagonist later in life? What is she like now? Who is she? What did she learn? How did she grow?

Also, this would help break up some of the childhood scenes, some of which would be too much for the reader to read all in quick succession. So I am thinking of possibly following Margaret Atwood's strategy in Cat's Eye where she starts off each section as an adult, then quickly lapses into the memory as a child.

But God, where to start? How do you start a book when you know everything you want to include in its pages, but don't know the order in which to write it? Which memories come first? Which ones last? Why?

I remember that when Julie Barer came to campus and was kind enough to give me feedback on my stories, she mentioned that I should choose one of the paragraphs in "Getting Away" published here and branch out from there. I am going to try that and see where it takes me, but what do you all think? You've been so kind in reading my stories these past few years that I am curious for your feedback--was there one that stood out to you that you think would be a good beginning or launching point?

Where to go from here?

I am going to start writing on it this week and revisit some of the books I have loved over the course of this year--White Oleander, The House on Mango Street, and most recently The Virgin Suicides. I just finished that book today and all I can say is that it was gorgeous...absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way. Stunning to the last page.

When Something Has Promise Part II

2011-12-04T16:04:00.001-05:00

Not too long ago, I wrote about revising "Refugio Beach" here and sending it out. However, just a few days later, got nothing but form rejections back. Two of them came yesterday and discouraged, I started to second-guess my decision to send it out.

But then I got an email today from Monkeybicycle, saying that they loved it and wanted to publish it. I had submitted to Monkeybicycle before, but had only gotten very quick rejections, so it was more like a "dream submission" for me, much like the way people submit applications to dream schools in addition to safe schools when they apply to college. I considered it a compliment that they had held onto the story for a little while, not rejecting it on the spot--the phrase "in progress" in such encouraging blue letters on Submishmash. Little did I know that they would accept it! I looked down at my phone, reading the message today, then stopped and read it again, thinking, wait, what? Monkeybicycle wants it? Really? Hot damn!

Whew, this means I have to get back into writing hard-core. With "Refugio Beach" accepted, I've only got two stories still out, so I have to get some more material out soon. Good thing the school break is almost here. Just a little more grading and two finals to give and I'll be able to devote all day every day to writing (and specialized exam studying). Can't wait!

A Complicated Kindness

2011-11-30T15:51:00.000-05:00

My goodness, you can get a lot done when you wake up at four in the morning. Usually, I go straight to the gym, but this morning, I wanted to concentrate on getting all the end-of-the semester things out of the way. So I edited and proofread the entire fiction section of this next issue of Grist and sent that off, and my goodness, I really loved these stories before, but going through them slowly with a fine-toothed comb really brought out the beauty of these pieces. These writers are so amazing. I can't wait for this issue to go to press--it is going to be stunning.

With that done, I finished reading one of my specialized exam books, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. This is the first book I've read by Toews and while it fits in very nicely with my dissertation topic, my overall impressions of it were a bit mixed. Overall, I liked the form a lot. Each chapter was a collection of short moments strung together by memory and reflection and these small moments were beautiful. I loved the scenes in which Nomi's father sets little pieces of paper on the top of his shoes to remind him of what to do the next day, the way Nomi's mother seems to withdraw from the family, neglecting to cook for them one night until Nomi protests and the mother answers by writing "eat," a reminder for herself and the family for each remaining day of the calendar. The characters, too, were nicely fleshed out and I liked Tash, especially.

However, these moments were few and far between, because there was just so much of what seemed like empty chatter from one scene to the next. So much could have been edited out to make the story tighter and more poignant. I felt, too, some of the scenes to be lacking in believability, because if the community (or even Nomi's father) is so strict that it/he would disown and shun some of its/his own members/family, why would they/he turn a blind eye on Nomi's drug use, language, and promiscuity? That didn't make sense for me, because while not everyone knows the full extent of Nomi's actions, her father has a pretty good idea of what is going on, but is strangely passive on the subject.

The book even has a scene in which tourists come to Nomi's Mennonite town and everyone puts on a show for them, inviting them inside a fake schoolhouse with the word, "obey," scrawled along the chalkboard as a joke (but the tourists believe everything to be real). The scene seems to be representative of how I felt the book to be--a show of something the author wants me to believe, but ends up coming short of what is the truth. I believe Nomi and Tash as teenagers trying to escape a repressive way of life, but at the same time, is it really repressive? Tash proclaims herself an atheist, Nomi uses drugs and swears openly in front of her parents, shaves her head, and acts out repeatedly, but there are no repercussions--and that's where it fell flat for me.

I keep going back and forth on it, though. Reading it, there were some moments where I loved the book, some moments where I hated it, some where I was just bored, but I think in the end, I liked it more than I didn't like it if that makes sense.

Have any of you read it? What did you think of it?

A Bit of Pank to Brighten the Day

2011-11-29T19:38:00.001-05:00

So the day didn't start off on the right foot. Along with the typical end-of-the semester stresses, more unpleasant things were being added to the pile and needless to say, all of it had me stressed out a lot...

But as I went grocery shopping on the way home from campus, I casually checked my email on my phone and got a delightful little note from PANK that made the day brighten by a hundred-fold....

Now, before I tell you what the note said, PANK is an awesome magazine run by the amazing, talented Roxane Gay. I love the journal and it's always been a dream of mine to publish something in it--and gosh darnit, I've been trying to place something there--and getting lots of rejections, then finally, some kinder rejections, then more recently, some encouraging "you almost made the cut" notes.

Then today, I got the acceptance! I could barely contain my excitement in the grocery store as I looked down at my phone, the words, "We would like to publish your work in the February 2012 issue of PANK," staring up at me.

This journal has published so many amazing authors such as Sherman Alexie, Lauren Becker, Matt Bell, Meg Pokrass, and Molly Gaudry. And did I mention that Roxane Gay runs it? I admire her so much, her blog, her Twitter feed, her writing, her books. She is so inspirational and when I got the acceptance email from her, I couldn't write back fast enough, saying, yes, yes, of course you can have the story!

The news has put me in a little happy place right now. End-of-the-semester deadlines and stresses are still very much here, but PANK has made the evening nothing short of wonderful. Thanks, PANK. You are amazing :)

Playing with Fire

2011-11-28T07:43:00.000-05:00

I know I just wrote a post about the evils of Black Friday and the crazed pandemonium of panicked shoppers who will stop at nothing to get their sacred "deal" at midnight sales, but little did I know, my husband was doing a little Black Friday shopping of his own and I didn't even know it.

He had gotten something online and was so worried that the package would come on time that he often checked the tracking number and made sure that I was home when it was scheduled to arrive. He already knows what he is getting for Christmas since he had to help pick it out, so he said that when the package came, I could open it early.

So the box came and when my husband came home from work, I opened it up and beneath the wrapping paper was...a Kindle Fire!

I've long been holding out on the Kindle movement, preferring the physical touch of the books themselves in which I could turn the pages and then see all the books I've read stacked in my library, and I've never even touched a Kindle before I got this one. But I'm excited to usher my reading into the 21st century now :) Already, I've found so much to read and am happy to be able to access some of the ebooks my friends have published over the years and be able to read them on the go.

I'm still figuring it out and seeing just what it all can do, but I like it so far. Do any of you have a Kindle? What do you like better--reading on the Kindle or with an actual book in your hands--and why?

The Un-Black Friday

2011-11-25T10:37:00.001-05:00

I've never been a Black Friday shopper. Frankly, shopping in really crowded places stresses me out. The pushy people, the whiny kids, the backed-up aisles full of shopping carts, the fighting over a limited number of items for sale...no, thanks...

My sister, on the other hand, is a die-hard fan of Black Friday--braving Wal-Mart and department stores at midnight through the wee hours of the morning--this year, nine months pregnant with two kids under three in tow. My aunt shops every Black Friday, my cousins also. This morning, my Facebook feed was covered with various stories about friends and acquaintances who had gone shopping and the crazy things they saw...including a woman using pepper spray to keep shoppers away from the things she wanted to buy. To me, that is just ridiculous. When people trample over each other and intentionally hurt others around them, just so that they can score a cheaper piece of merchandise, that is absurd.

So I stayed home this morning and leisurely wrapped the presents I had already purchased online weeks before (for the same price as many of these "Black Friday" deals) and read on the couch, curled up next to a warm dog, finishing Girl Talk by Julianna Baggott. Seems like a good un-black Friday to me :)

Thankful

2011-11-24T19:22:00.001-05:00

What a wonderful day! With my husband having to work this week and us being unable to visit the family as planned, today could very well have been depressing and frustrating as we were faced with cooking a Thanksgiving meal by ourselves...and uh...the extent of our cooking thus far has been making sandwiches or wraps or on the days we are feeling extra adventurous, a mixed salad or chicken on the George Foreman.

I've helped in the kitchen on Thanksgiving growing up--peeling potatoes, stirring gravy, setting the table, washing dishes...but never made any of the dishes from start to finish, so I was nervous...especially about that turkey...there were so many ways to do it wrong. My husband's family also makes dishes and casseroles that I never had growing up, so all that was new to me, too.

So after braving the grocery store on Thanksgiving Eve to get all the necessary ingredients, we had a plan! Bright and early this morning, we set to work--making candied yams, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, yeast rolls, beans, gravy, vegetables, and butterscotch meringue pie! And miracle of miracles...nothing burned, nothing caught on fire, nothing...went...wrong! I was delighted...rushing back and forth between the stove and my open laptop on the counter displaying multiple pages with all the necessary recipes as my husband washed the dishes. Everything was delicious and as soon as we ate and put away all the leftovers, we had a nice, long nap. Forget about the turkey making you tired on Thanksgiving....it's all the cooking leading up to the meal!

As evening approached, we played dominoes and called all our family back home. All in all, it was an amazing day and I am so thankful to have such a helpful husband who doesn't mind helping me cook and wash the dishes. I am thankful for family and all the new additions we've gotten in the last few years (plus a new baby who is due to arrive any day now). I am thankful for our house and our jobs. I am thankful for my teachers and friends at the University of Tennessee. I am thankful for my students who show such passion for learning and remind me more and more why I chose to teach. I am thankful for you all and the opportunity to meet you/keep up with you through this blog. I am so blessed and am glad for this day on which to reflect on these things. Let us be thankful every day like this :)

Hello, Break!

2011-11-22T18:31:00.002-05:00

After conducting forty-six student conferences yesterday and today, I am officially on Thanksgiving Break! And rather than calling it a "catch up week" like I do Spring Break, this is the first year that I can officially consider Thanksgiving Break a break, because I don't have any seminar papers to write this year.

And no papers to grade. No assignments to read. Nothing pressing to do whatsoever....and it's glorious!

So I'm going to cook a Thanksgiving meal (our first all by ourselves since my husband has to work through the week--as we found out today), wrap some early Christmas presents, enjoy some relaxation, and read.

Nice and cozy by the fire as rain drizzles outside...perfect!

Reading for the specialized exam has been what I would consider fun reading. I've enjoyed the books a lot so far and am currently reading Girl Talk by Julianna Baggott now.

I read through Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid a few days ago, but didn't particularly enjoy it, so I took it off my exam list (I felt too much was summarized and some of the scenes fell flat). I like that I have so much freedom with this next exam and that I can add and remove books if I feel it necessary (as long as it is before the deadline). I am still on the lookout for a few more books to round out my final list, though. I am concentrating on the female coming-of-age story in which the protagonist finds herself in a place of displacement or isolation either it be from her location, disability, religion, and so on. In many of these books, these girls find comfort and/or companionship in another (a sister, mother, friend) and most of the books below, I feel reflect that. I am short a few titles, though, and wondered if any of you had suggestions?

The preliminary list is below:

Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson
How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
A Complicated Kindness by Mariam Toews
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
The Adults by Alison Espach
Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Object Lessons by Anna Quindlen
Girl Talk by Julianna Baggott
A Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence
Heat Lightning by Leah Cohen
Monkey King by Patricia Chao
Mama’s Girl by Veronica Chambers
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood

I have to keep these books in the fiction category, so no memoirs or poetry collections. But what do you think? Any books I forgot?

The Handmaid's Tale

2011-11-20T09:28:00.000-05:00

While waiting for some of my specialized comprehensive exam books to come in the mail (they should be here by Tuesday), I am continuing to read books not on my exam lists--books I've always wanted to read, but never had the time.

The latest book is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, a book so many people recommended to me after I enjoyed Atwood's Cat's Eye. It, too, was a beautiful read and I am constantly amazed by Atwood's talent to effortlessly shift back and forth in time and portray characters with such honesty. Her prose is stunning and like in Cat's Eye, I found myself rereading my favorite passages over and over again to fully absorb them.

Even though A Handmaid's Tale was sad and beautiful, I think I still liked Cat's Eye better. I have Atwood's The Blind Assassin still on my bookshelf left to read, so maybe after I read some more exam books, I'll give that one a try...

Meanwhile, I am trying to get back into writing as best I can. Last week, I revised "Refugio Beach" and "Homing Pigeons" and sent those out. A few days ago, I worked on "Momma's Prayers" and sent that one out as well. Already, on Submishmash, these stories are marked as "in-progress," so it's exciting knowing that these are being read. Here's hoping for some good news!

Child of God

2011-11-17T17:27:00.002-05:00

I think that if I hadn't read McCarthy before, I might have had a different reaction to this book. However, having read The Road and Blood Meridian, I knew to expect violence and disturbing things in Child of God...and there was a lot of unsettling scenes in this book from murders to pedophilia and incest to multiple scenes of necrophilia.

Yet what I found incredible was that McCarthy displayed such scenes in such a simple, nonchalant way. Everything was to-the-point from the minimal description to the simple dialogue with no quotation marks and I think that the combination of these things made the book that much more forceful, Lester Ballard's actions that much more chilling. Additionally, the chapters are so short--often only two pages long--so these scenes seem to crash over themselves, intensifying with each page. When I finished the book, I was in sort of a daze.

While the story was unnerving, I did like it. McCarthy's writing is astounding in its brevity and each sentence is so tightly strung, each word so impactful. Some of the scenes were especially chilling--Lester buying clothes for and dressing his corpse women then using them, killing another woman then burning her house down with her young child still inside, hiding his other victims in caves, then getting lost in the caverns. So much senseless violence with not so much as a speck of emotion or any kind of reactionary thought from Lester and this made him seem all the more frightening.

Overall, an incredible book. Incredible examination of character. Incredible, incredible ending.

I recommend the book if you like McCarthy. For me, it was better than Blood Meridian, but not quite as good as The Road in terms of writing style and overall story, but still very much worth a read....but brace yourself...it's a book that will stay with you for a while.

So It Goes

2011-11-15T17:11:00.003-05:00

When I met with my specialized exam committee, I learned that the reading list for my last exam won't be near as huge and intimidating as I had anticipated, so while I am waiting for my list to be approved, I thought I would dabble in some books I've been wanting to read for a while, but either never had a chance to or could never quite fit them on an exam list.

One of them was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. It seemed like everyone had read Vonnegut, even some of my freshmen, and I felt a little out of the loop, so I picked it up yesterday and read it.

And I have to say, I liked it. It was a very strange book with lots of unexpected twists and sudden changes in time and space and even some moments where I actually said, WTF, aloud as I was reading. I described some of it to my husband and he said it sounded like an interesting book to read which is a lot even for him since he's read all of a half a book this year...

I think I'll definitely read more of his books. His writing style makes for quick reading and I appreciated his sense of humor. Have any of you read his work? Which book did you like best?

This is actually the design of a t-shirt, which I thought was cool

and fitting for the book. If you've read the book, the phrase,

"So it goes," appears every few pages or so.

Taking the Leap

2011-11-14T10:48:00.001-05:00

Julianna Baggott wrote an interesting post today about the leaps one makes as a writer and what is responsible for those leaps. Cleaning out my closet this past weekend of old drafts and manuscripts, I became painfully aware of what my writing looked like before any of those leaps as I read through unpublished stories and poems that I wrote as recent as last year.

Baggott says that a writer makes the biggest leaps in skill when he or she is just starting out as the learning curve is high and the writer is working on eliminating his or her main weaknesses. The leaps become smaller and smaller as the years go on, but if a writer decides to try a different genre or kind of writing, the leaps once again become bigger as a writer is placed in a sink or swim situation (Baggott describes it as being immersed in a foreign country and learning the language).

I can think of two leaps for me--the first was toward the end of undergrad at Auburn University when I took the first of two directed readings classes with Stephen Gresham. The one-on-one meetings, the intense study of craft, and the new territory of writing the novella jumpstarted a lot of new things for me--including the idea for what is now my dissertation.

After that, the progressions became less and less apparent as I finished my masters at Auburn University and started my PhD at the University of Tennessee. I still learned great things from all my professors, but as I looked through all my stories from the past few years, they were becoming more and more the same--the same comments from all my classmates scrawled along the margins. My characters were types, they were lifeless, unchanging...

Then, I think my second leap came when I reverted to writing flash fiction (or at least, the very short story) as part of the final assignment in Margaret Lazarus Dean's class last year. The new genre allowed for a new style of writing and a way for me to show characters in a way that I couldn't do in the longer story. Then, when I took Pam Uschuk's class that following semester, Pam streamlined that leap and showed me where to go.

Baggott says that these leaps happen more often if you surround yourself with good teachers and I wholeheartedly agree. If not for my teachers, especially Stephen and Pam, my stories would still be the flat, lifeless stories I wrote before meeting them.

Good books are also wonderful teachers and I've learned so much from all the ones I've read this past year for comprehensive exams. While the exams do take time away from writing, they do act as great teachers of story and craft.

I am curious about you all--when do you feel that you've made leaps in your writing and what was responsible for them?

When Something Has Promise

2011-11-11T22:13:00.001-05:00

Remember "Finder Girl," the piece I was working on in my last blog post? Well, it was accepted the very same day I sent it out by Barely South Review, a journal based out of the MFA program at Old Dominion University! I'm not sure when the issue will be out--the editors said it could be anywhere from April to January of 2013, so I am hoping for sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to catch up on everything else--student emails, Grist things, specialized exam preparation--so that I can not feel as guilty when I write. I also went to see William Pitt Root, a wonderful, wonderful poet and teacher, speak today at the UT campus and enjoyed myself a lot. I am going to be so sad when he and Pam leave Knoxville at the end of the semester--they've been such fantastic mentors and friends this past year.

I love this photo of Bill (and it looks like his dog, Happy)

While I was at William Pitt Root's reading, though, I saw one of my poetry professors and she said that she had shown one of my early poetry drafts to her undergraduate class. It was a poem I hadn't looked at since her class last year and I said as much, but she said, "you should stay with it--it has promise."

So when I got home, I looked at it again and remembered back to when I had workshopped the poem. Certain stanzas didn't seem to work and the title was ambiguous, but I liked the idea of it and thought it could still work, so I opened a new Word document and started chopping it up. I cut a character out and replaced him with someone else. I changed the title. I worked on the middle--the one that seemed to trip some people up and changed around some details, fleshed some other parts out.

It's closer to being finished, I think, now. The ending still seems a bit sudden to me, but the students in the workshop seemed to like it that way.

It's strange now, revising stories and poems when I am not in classes or workshops anymore. I feel shakier when I revise, because I always want those extra set of eyes, reading and reassuring me that the choices I am making are right. It's part of growing as a writer, though, learning to listen to and trust your voice...

Ending the Drought

2011-11-09T10:32:00.000-05:00

I have a confession to make...I haven't written a poem or a story since May...haven't sent out any work to literary journals since May also.

And it killed me not being able to write. Stories crowded in my head. I dreamed about them, thought about them while walking to class, while studying for exams. They needed to be written.

This semester, I always told myself that the stories would eventually be written...after comprehensive exams were done...after all the editorial duties at Grist were completed....after the grading was finished...but the time in which I could write kept being pushed further and further into the distance until I could barely see it anymore and it made me sad. I missed writing so much.

Even my husband commented on how I wasn't writing anymore and last night, I decided I would put an end to the writing drought of the last few months. I had Grist things to do, a reading to attend, a house to clean, an interview to conduct, numerous errands to run, prepping to do for teaching...all things that had to be done right now...but I had put off writing for too long.

So while my husband played the new Call of Duty game, I revisited stories I was unhappy with and rewrote them. I finished one story last night and began on another. The second one was a story I had struggled with since the first draft, because of the time shifts and the multiple perspectives. The ending especially bothered me, because I was telling, not showing as I should, and I knew it.

So I deleted the entire ending and for a long time just watched the blinking cursor on the screen. I didn't know what to say.

But this morning, when I opened up my computer to the same document, new words quickly moved that cursor along the screen as a new ending came to be--one that I absolutely loved.

Then, after updating my submissions log of all the rejections I've gotten over the last few months for stories I sent out earlier this year, I started over with these two new ones.

"Speak" was the story I finished last night. "Finder Girl" was the one from this morning. I sent them to three places each, so we'll see if some good news comes.

Meanwhile, I'm going to push hard to find more time to write. As Julianna Baggott, a writer I admire so much says in her blog, "But most of all write. Always that. Write. It's what you are called to do."

Pushcart Nominations

2011-11-04T10:36:00.000-04:00

What better way to start November than with some good news? Now that we've made it official on the Grist's website, I can finally share it here. We've announced our Pushcart nominations!

It was so hard to narrow these down, because we had so many wonderful writers to choose from, but here is the official list:

Andrew Kozma’s essay, “99 Problems”

Michael Peterson’s poem, “Fugue for Sinking”

Ryan Shoemaker’s story, “The Crossing”

Ira Sukrungruang’s essay, “Bloody Feet”

Patrick Whitfill’s poem, “Lines Near Buffalo Mountain” nominated by William Wenthe

This was also the first year we've gotten an outside Pushcart nomination (Patrick Whitfill's poem), so this is an especially exciting time for us. Congratulations to all the nominees! You've made us proud!

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

2011-10-30T12:34:00.001-04:00

As soon as one of my committee members for the novel exam heard about my dissertation topic, she said I had to read Junot Diaz. So, I quickly added Drown to my supplemental list for that exam, but had to wait to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the book for which Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize. Published in 2007, the book was too recent to include in my list of readings, but luckily, I have more freedom in choosing books for my specialized exam next semester. I am allowed to include more recent books, especially since my dissertation will be contemporary in nature, so The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao quickly found a home at the top of my "to read for exams" list.

After finding the book at McKays, I brought it with me to read between student conferences and throughout the day, had so many random strangers come up to me and say how much they enjoyed the book. "I loved that book." "That book is so good." "Is that Oscar Wao? That book was amazing."

At first, I didn't realize these people were talking to me as they would say these things as they walked by, but I found it so interesting to see how much of an impact this book had made on those who had read it. Now that I've read it myself, I understand why everyone made all those comments. It was a great book and a quick read. The characters were wonderful and I liked the themes Diaz incorporated into the book. The ending was very fitting, too, and managed to bring a sense of happiness into a sad outcome.

I'm glad that I was able to read it and am so thankful for helpful professors who recommend wonderful writers like Diaz. While preparing for exams is stressful and time-consuming, books like this one make the exam experience a positive one, because you get to discover such brilliant books along the way.

The Poisonwood Bible

2011-10-23T04:30:00.002-04:00

One of the things I love about writing workshops is the insight of my colleagues and how wonderful their suggestions can be. During my last poetry workshop earlier this year, one of the girls in my class wrote on one of my poems that The Poisonwood Bible was a book that I should read.

I had seen the book briefly in bookstores, but never knew what it was about, so after workshop that day, I bought it to read once my written exams were over. I took it off my bookshelf yesterday and not even 24 hours later, had finished all 546 pages, closing the book with a sense of breathless awe. My God, to write like that...

Everything about it was beautiful...the characters, the place, the dialogue, the words themselves. The book was just insanely good.

I loved the characters, especially Adah. The way she thought and reflected was fascinating and added so much to the story. Though with such a beautiful book, it's hard to pick favorite sections--Orleanna's chapters just broke my heart and Ruth Ann's, too, toward the end of the book. Some of the passages just took my breath away.

Amazing, amazing story. Pick up the book if you haven't read it yet.

A Huge Weight

2011-10-19T16:11:00.000-04:00

...has been lifted, because as of Monday, the entire fiction section for Grist: A Journal for Writers was deemed officially complete! The stories I had sent to the editor were approved and all day Monday, I was sending out acceptance emails (so nice to be the bearer of good news after sending so many rejections these past few months!).

This picture cracked me up when searching for images for this blog post...although our rejection letter is kind and encouraging, I always feel like the bad guy when rejecting stories...I would much rather be the happy face on top with the thumbs-up!

Happy faces aside, though, I am really excited about this next issue, because we've got some great stories lined up for this year. We also have an amazing emerging writer in fiction whose work I can't wait for you all to see (we will have one of her stories in our print issue and another story online alongside her interview).

So now that Grist is that much closer to being finished, things are settling down a little bit now. The reading period for Grist is still open until November 1st and even though our fiction section is full, we'll make extra room for a particularly amazing story if we find one, so if you have a story that you'd like us to look at, it's not too late to submit.

Between reading the few stories we have left, I've been catching up on my own reading. I finished Anywhere but Here a few days ago and continued to enjoy it to the end. I read through Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris today (just a quick little book I had gotten at McKays).

I have to say, though, that I liked his other book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, a whole lot better. The opening story of Holidays on Ice, "SantaLand Diaries," in which the author works as an elf was funny and engaging, but the ones after that....eh, not so much. I am hoping that his other books are better (I picked up a couple of them as "fun books" to read between comprehensive exam books), but we shall see.

Have any of you read his books? What are some that you feel to be his best?

Worthy of a Spartan

2011-10-16T20:40:00.002-04:00

Good heavens, what a weekend. We had originally planned for a low-key weekend full of relaxation (video game playing for the husband, Grist reading for me), but during the Grist slushie party on Friday night, I realized that this just wasn't meant to be.

As the night wore on and my readers and I were busy in the den reading stories, I could hear a bunch of noise coming from the back of the house where my husband was--things getting knocked around, the screwdriver whirring, the hammer banging. Then my husband making hurried trips to the garage then returning to the back of the house as he fetched sandpaper, the caulk gun, more screws. Well, as I've come to find out, when my husband gets in a "productive mood," nothing gets in his way until the task is finished.

So goodbye restful weekend...and hello weekend full of trips to Home Depot, Lowes, Office Max, and Wal-Mart, because guess what...we are painting and reorganizing the man cave. Starting with a six o'clock wake-up call on Saturday morning, we were sanding, taping, spackling, and prepping the room for painting and by two in the afternoon, the room was done.

As the paint was drying, though, my husband started to second-guess his choice of paint color (a light grayish-green) and he asked me if I thought it was "manly" enough for his man cave. I pulled out the paint swatch from the store and pointed out the name of the paint to him--Spartan Stone--and said if it's got the word Spartan in it, I think it's pretty safe to say it is masculine. That seemed to satisfy him...that the color (and his man cave) was worthy of a Spartan name.

When I think of Sparta, I think of Gerard Butler in the film 300

Strong, tough warriors you don't want to mess with...

A fitting name for a man cave, I think...

Today was spent mostly cleaning up from painting and putting together new "man cave" furniture and now, things are finally starting to wind down. Even though it was a busy weekend, I'm glad we did it, because the room looks so much better than it did before and we both felt productive.

While he is watching The Walking Dead, I'm going to go through some more Grist submissions and see if I can finish those out before the week starts up again. I sent a batch of stories to the editor yesterday that I am hoping that he will approve, so the fiction section may just be finished for this issue....I hope, I hope, I hope...

My Last Year

2011-10-15T16:43:00.004-04:00

With the Grist reading period quickly coming to a close, I had what's called "slushie party" at my house last night--a set time where all my readers and assistant editors get together and we read through as many stories as we can from the slush pile. I've had similar nights of reading with the Grist editorial board in past years, but last night, I think, was the most fun I've ever had reading through submissions, because our group of readers this year is so fun and gets along so well.

Wading through the slush pile...we've gone through more than 2,000 submissions in two months!

I think, too, when you are reading in a bigger group like that, the great stories are just that much more amazing and the cringe-worthy stories that much more hilarious. Some stories just had us in tears--I don't think I've laughed that much in a while. Good times. We found some great stories, too, so now I'm going to pass them along to our head editor for a final decision and our next issue is that much closer to being done. It's going to be our best yet, I think, because the talent is just phenomenal and we've gotten some pretty big names already lined up (along with some stunning debuts). The issue is going to be pure awesomeness...

After last night, though, I think I've finally come to a decision I've been wavering on these last few weeks. Originally, after serving on the staff for three years, I had planned on serving as head editor for Grist next year, but when one of my readers asked me last night what I was working on as far as my writing, I was sad at my reply...because it was nothing. I haven't written a single thing since my last poetry workshop in May, haven't submitted anything to journals, haven't done anything creative, and that seemed to hit me last night. Granted, studying for exams has been a huge part of not having time to write, but Grist is a heavy responsibility as well and takes a lot of time, especially when teaching your own classes.

I love Grist and editing the fiction section these last few years has been an amazing experience. I want to edit Grist for one year, because I know that I would be good at it. The design will be stunning...the publicity would be out of this world...the issue would be even better than the last...because I could finally be allowed to have a hand in these things. I would pour my heart into it, but I know that I would have to make tough sacrifices as well. I would have to push back graduation by a year, because I couldn't edit Grist, write a dissertation, teach, and enter the job market all next year--I couldn't do all these things well, anyway, and I don't want to have to half-ass anything, because that is just not me. I want to be proud of my work.

So I am going to say good-bye to Grist after this year and focus on my writing. I want to write something I know will be my best work and publish it as a book by the time I graduate, but that is going to take some serious time and focus--much more time and focus than I am giving my writing right now.

For the time being, though, I'll finish out Grist on a good note and focus on my last comprehensive exam, then hopefully, hopefully, start writing again. I miss it...

Anywhere but Here

2011-10-10T17:03:00.002-04:00

I'm on page 400 and still have a quite a few pages left to read (it's a long book), but I am still liking the book so far. Ann's voice is still one that I am loving, especially because she conveys such unique characters like Adele (her mother), Benny, Ted, and Peter through such telling observations--details only a child would notice, yet through such descriptions, we can see that Ann is so much older than she really is...the way she unzips her mother's dress after Adele has come home from a date, the way she lies to cover up her mother's plan to commit suicide after their Christmas tree falls off their car, or the way she holds her mother when they discover the news of Benny's death. Her voice rings true, especially, because Ann doesn't hold anything back and even shares what makes readers uncomfortable like the pictures Ann takes of her neighbors or the way Ann's mother treats her in certain scenes. These moments darkened the story a lot and made the characters more complicated, even frightening in a way.

The film with Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon...

Ann and Adele shopping...

Ann and Adele driving to California...

I still don't like the time/point of view switches from Ann to Lillian or Carol, but thankfully these switches don't happen often and Ann is the most frequent narrator. Overall, these sections can be cut out (and some of Ann's sections as well), because the book does tend to meander a little bit, but even so, the novel is a nice look at character and the tensions that can happen within a family.

I am hoping to finish this book tomorrow, then will pick up another that I think will be on my specialized reading list for spring. I am putting together the list now and on the lookout for contemporary American novels as told by a female voice. This list isn't due until January, but I want to have all the paperwork done early, so I can do as much reading as I can. I won't have an entire summer to read for this exam like I did for my two written exams, so time is important. Do any of you have any book suggestions?

Just the Opposite

2011-10-08T19:01:00.001-04:00

With my written comprehensive exams behind me, I've been finding it strange reading books "for fun" again--my brain still reading in exam-mode as I find myself memorizing passages, contextualizing information, categorizing scenes and themes in each book. Even when I pick up a book that I will likely use for my specialized exam next semester, I find myself thinking of my dissertation and the things I need to be learning to get ready for writing the book. I look at tone, narrative strategies, conflicts, ways of treating flashbacks and changes in time, characters and their development.

A lot of times, exam-mode reading helps me remember books better, but sometimes it just ruins the reading experience. For example, I started Gilead by Marilynne Robinson a few days ago hoping that it would be as enjoyable as her book, Housekeeping. After all, the book won a Pulitzer prize, so it had to be good. And I tried to like it, I really, really did, but every time, I picked it up, I found myself more distracted by the questions I was asking myself--Where is the tension? What are the stakes? What are these characters struggling with? I set the book down for a day and tried to go back with a fresh perspective, but only got halfway through the book before just deciding to shelve it and revisit it later.

I like the writing, but I felt that I could never grasp the story like I needed to, the voice too far away, the characters glimpsed through a lens rather than close enough for me to see and touch. I missed the ugliness of Housekeeping--the dark rooms where the girls ate their dinners, the cluttered countertops, the dirty floors. These things made the story real.

I think, too, that Gilead is just the opposite of what I am trying to do in my dissertation and that's why I couldn't really connect with the characters.

Meanwhile, I picked up Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson and am about 150 pages into it so far. Although the time shifts and changes of narrators are confusing at times, I am already liking the book a lot more. The book is drastically different than the movie with Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon (though these parts were perfectly cast, I think), but I am liking the constant tension between Ann and her mother. I like Ann's observations of her surroundings from the way her mother tries to fix the family a fancy Thanksgiving dinner to the way her mother pronounces her name as "A-yun"--each moment is telling and carries a weight to it that I felt Gilead lacked. These moments felt real.

Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman in the film

(a movie that largely glosses over a lot of the issues in the book)

It seems to be a trend that I dislike the books that other people love and like the ones that people seem to hate. I didn't enjoy Tom Jones....or Gravity's Rainbow....or The House of Mirth...books others told me I would adore. Meanwhile, I loved everything I read by Faulkner...The Sound and the Fury being one of my absolute favorites. I loved White Noise. I enjoyed reading works by James Joyce.

I'm not sure why this is, but I have to keep this tendency in mind when people ask me for good book recommendations. My mom asks me all the time for good books to read and I always have to stop myself from blurting out the titles of the novels I've loved, because we tend not to enjoy the same things, something I found out the hard way when we both read Wide Sargasso Sea to polar opposite reviews--I loved it, and I mean, loved it, and she hated it with just the same amount of passion.

Same thing for Maus I and II...I loved these books and thought my husband might like them, especially because of the comic book style, but he couldn't get past the first ten pages of the first book. Same for A Clockwork Orange, a book that I thought he might also like, because he enjoyed the movie so much, but the result was the same...the book just stayed on the night stand, the book mark not moving past the first chapter for months until I just put it back on the bookshelf.

Oh, well, I like what I like. Everyone has different tastes in things. Have any of you had polar opposite reactions to books others told you that you would love/hate?

Passed

2011-10-06T19:34:00.000-04:00

That one word--that beautiful, magical word--finally came in an email yesterday! Last week was part of Fall Break, so results took longer to come in, and what a moment of celebration when it came!

All day, a lot of the other third-year students who had taken exams waited tensely, milling about in the mail room when making copies for classes, eyes darting to the clock, whispering to each other....have you heard yet? Same thing in Starbucks (where a lot of us have our office hours), nervously checking emails on laptops, waving down other exam-takers with the same question...you hear anything?

Then finally, when the emails went out, what smiles and joy! So much relief! And best yet, an end to all this waiting. I have officially passed all my written exams...

I'm so happy right now...all written exams are finished...grading is finished...it's time to enjoy the weekend, don't you think?

Happy...

A Whirlwind

2011-10-03T14:16:00.002-04:00

These past few days have been such a whirlwind. I finished up grading papers for most of my classes, then went down to Gatlinburg with my husband for the weekend. Every year, his side of the family rents a cabin and everyone, including parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, neices, nephews, and second cousins all come together for a few days and enjoy the sights and each other's company.

Beautiful mountains...

Stunning colors...

Leafy walkways...

We got back from there last night and today has been a day of catching up, picking up the dog from the kennel, and getting ready for the new week ahead. I'm getting my specialized exam committee together for next semester (and I just got the confirmation that a little addendum I found in the Graduate Student Handbook allows me to choose to take the oral examination rather than the written one for the last of my exams--something I will certainly do). I still haven't heard the results of my Novel exam yet, but Thursday and Friday of last week were part of a school break, so it may take a little longer to hear something.

Meanwhile, I am gathering possible titles of books for my specialized reading lists and trying to fit in some reading. I started Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, but am not quite taken with it yet. I am not yet halfway through it, but am hoping that once I clear this next stack of papers to grade off my desk, I can sit down and enjoy it a bit more. Have any of you read it?

I Am Hopeful For Good Things

2011-09-29T05:47:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was a good day. I look my second load of comprehensive exam books over to the library and now, the guest room is looking pretty good without stacks and stacks of books strewn about everywhere. I find it frustrating, though, that the library on campus does not have a dive-by slot in the parking lot (or anywhere) where you can drop off books. Instead, you have to park in the student parking garage and lug around your suitcases of books across campus to the library to drop anything off. I'm not sure what the distance is from the parking deck to the library, but it's a hike and there are lots of hills and that suitcase gets heavy after a while.

I think I've got about one load of books left to drop off, but I may just bring a few books at a time and drop them off when I have office hours in the library. I do still think the library should have a drop box where people can drive up and drop things off...I say we start a petition...

After I carted back my books, though, I met with a student about a grade and it went so much better than I expected. It was one of those potentially awkward and tense meetings where you lay things out for the student and give them the choice to either drop the class or stay, but really turn his/her performance around, and this person ended up being very positive and we're going to start meeting once a week outside of class for extra tutoring.

During my first year of teaching, I had a student who was a lacrosse player, but who couldn't read and write (I'm very serious). Through extra tutoring and a lot of revisions later, he was able to get to the level of writing a coherent paper by the end of the semester. I think the student I met with today will be a similar challenge, but I am hopeful for good things.

Today starts Fall Break for students at UT, so I think I am going to use the time to catch up on grading. Let's hope for lots of good papers!

Deja Vu

2011-09-26T10:24:00.002-04:00

This whole weekend felt like one big moment of deja vu...waking up on Friday morning, waiting for exam questions, getting them, writing the whole weekend, then in one triumphant moment on Monday morning, turning in the answers...

This is probably because I just had an exam weekend not even two weeks ago, but after emailing my answers to my second and LAST written comprehensive exam--the Novel--I am in a state on euphoria. Are they really done? Are the exams for which I have been preparing for years actually...actually done?

And they are. They finally, finally are..

It's a strange feeling now. After I finished my 20th Century American exam, there was no time to lose as I jumped headlong into studying and reading again--reading Wuthering Heights and Clotel and tons and tons and TONS of theory--to get better prepared for the next exam. I am so glad I did, too, because I used a lot of theory on this exam--way more than I did on the 20th Century American exam--and used Wuthering Heights as an example in one of the answers. Everything was fresh, so that helped out a lot.

I ended up having four questions--not the three I thought I was going to have--but I think just having finished an exam with the same number of questions was a big help, because I knew exactly how much space I had to work with--three paragraphs to establish this point, two paragraphs for this, and so on. Fitting all the theory, historical contexts, and examples ended up not being so bad after all and I got to write about a lot of the books I've enjoyed reading over the years (or at least found interesting) like Robinson Crusoe, Wide Sargasso Sea, If on a winter's night a traveler, A House for Mr. Biswas, Cat's Eye, Push, Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Lolita, and so many others. Graduate school certainly doesn't call these tests comprehensive exams for no reason--I discussed everything and I mean everything on this exam.

After reading the exam though again and again yesterday and this morning, I feel good about it and not near as stressed about passing this exam as I was about the last one. I was actually done writing and editing all my answers Sunday morning (a day before they were due) and could leisurely go through and proofread it. My husband and I even hung out a bit and watched Thor on the couch. It was a much better exam experience for sure.

Now to wait to find out if I passed...

Meanwhile, I am going to catch up on all the things that have fallen behind during the exam period...like grading, Grist reading, working out...and writing stories (I've missed writing creatively so much lately). But first, something fun...

Time to celebrate!

We Are Pleased To Inform You

2011-09-19T19:28:00.001-04:00

This was from a letter I received today from the director of graduate studies....that I PASSED my 20th Century American Comprehensive Exam!

I am so relieved, I can't even tell you. I was hoping to find out on Friday, but the day came and went with no word. Today, before conferencing with my students, I went by the graduate secretary's office hoping for some news and casually asked if we would get an email when the results came in or if we should look for something in our box in the mail room. Imagine my suspense when the graduate secretary motioned for me to wait a moment as she looked through the test results, silently whispering through the names while she searched for mine...and my terror when I realized not everyone passed this round of exams....then my exuberation when she reached my name, smiled, and said, "You passed!"

I had so many nightmares these past few days that I failed...horrible dreams that I was kicked out of the university, but I am SO glad these dreams never came true.

Thank you all for your wonderful support these last few months! I take my second comprehensive exam this weekend--the Novel--but I am feeling a lot better about it now that I've passed my first exam.

Accepting the Challenge

2011-09-18T11:51:00.000-04:00

It's a strange sensation right after you finish a comprehensive exam. The day after, I was in such a fog, weirdly disoriented in everything I did. I repeated myself when I talked, not realizing I had just said that very same thing two minutes ago. I often didn't make any sense when I did talk.

It went away after a few days, though, and now that I finally have my brain back, I am setting my sights on my next exam just a few short days away. I still haven't heard the results on my last exam, so I seem to be in sort of a limbo, because I am so close to being done, yet not really, because I don't know if I've passed. I am hoping that tomorrow will bring some news, because my committee probably took the weekend to read the exam and decide whether it qualified as passing.

As for my next exam, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I'm not as nervous about it, because now that I've already taken an exam, I know what it's like and how to pace myself through it. As far as I know, there will only be three questions on this exam, rather than the four I answered last time, so it gives me more room to work with as far as word count. The reading lists cover a much wider span of time. There are more themes to explore. Generally, everything is a lot more open and I like that about it.

But it seems like I should be very afraid of this exam as I am finding out from other students. For my last exam, my committee was very helpful, but also very serious as they warned me of common pitfalls to avoid. Failure was a word mentioned a lot, because if I didn't answer the question exactly, that was the outcome I was looking at. They were upfront with me and I appreciated that.

However, prepping for the Novel exam with this other committee was an entirely different experience, but in a good way. Meetings were light-hearted, we smiled often, and failure was a word dismissed with a wave of the hand. You won't fail, you'll be fine, the important thing is not to worry about it, they all said. It was a relief and I looked forward to the Novel exam, because if anything, it was going to be fun.

But, as I'm sure a lot of you past comp-takers know, there are lots of whisperings among those taking exams and those preparing for them about who is good to have on committees and who is not. Quick words in front of the elevator, in the stairwells, walking to class--who is on your committee? As I name the professors off, everyone nods approvingly until I get to a certain person's name and every time, without fail, their eyes widen as they gasp, the more honest people saying, girl, are you crazy?

Now granted, this professor is very nice and every meeting we've had together has been wonderful, this person offering the same encouraging feedback as everyone else on the committee. But this professor is also exceedingly brilliant and expects the same calibre of excellence from students.

But that's okay with me. I want to be pushed to do my best and have found that in my hardest classes with the hardest teachers, I have learned the most. I write my best papers in these classes. I do my best research with these teachers. I may have been half-dead by the end of their courses, but I retained what I learned and did my best--because they expected nothing less.

It frustrates me that so many people equate easiness with greatness in terms of teaching. On ratemyprofessor.com, there is a box marked for easiness and the easier a teacher is, the higher their overall rating on the site. Easier teachers have higher class enrollments, they have more advisees, they have more people who want to work with them. But you have to wonder, are teachers who give every student an A just for showing up to class (or even just being enrolled in some cases) really teaching their students? What is the wrong in challenging students? Why is being fair equated to being hard and thus, being "bad"?

I know when I teach my own students, I push them to be their best, and they turn out brilliant work. They learn how to write better and it shows in their improvements with each paper. It's wonderful to see, especially when these students take more than one class with you. I had a student last year in my 101 class who needed a lot of help, because he couldn't even put a single coherent sentence together, but by the time he finished the class, he had improved by so much and was actually writing good-quality papers. He took 102 with me the next semester and improved even more that by the time he turned in his last paper for my class, he got one of the highest grades I have ever given in all my years of teaching. He turned out to be an astounding writer.

But I don't think he could have improved by that much otherwise. It took some failing grades and afterwards, some rewritten papers and a lot of conferences to get the writing where it needed to be, but oh my goodness, by the end of the semester, I was so proud of him and his papers.

So I understand the value of challenging students and expecting their best. These teachers aren't "out to get you," they are only trying to help you.

Going into this next exam, I am going to keep this kind of mindset. I am not going to be afraid of this professor or the questions I know this professor will have written for the exam. I am going to prepare for this exam just like my last one--with all the seriousness and respect this kind of test deserves. I'm going to accept the challenge and will write my best essays, because that is what is expected of me.

Haha, even though the caption is spelled wrong, this picture was too good not to repost...

Back to reading and studying for me! I'll let you know how it all goes...

But I Don't Want To Be A Weed

2011-09-14T08:17:00.002-04:00

On Friday, September 9th, the day I had been waiting for for years had finally come. Years of reading. Years of intense study. Years of late nights working on the reading lists. The first exam had finally begun.

All morning, I had been pacing the house, trying to get my mind to settle down for the email I knew I was going to get before noon. The house was already clean, but I vacuumed the floors, checked my email, scrubbed the bathrooms, checked my email, cleaned the stove and the refrigerator again, checked email. Then finally, at 11:56 AM, I got the email with my exam questions.

The document loaded onto the screen and I raced through the questions--over drama, poetry, fiction, and my specialized genre--the Bildungsroman. And my heart sank. "Oh, God..." I squeaked.

The questions that I had thought for sure would be on the exam were nowhere to be found. The questions that were there were frightening. And they needed to be answered...and fast...the clock was ticking.

Okay, okay, just relax. Trust yourself, I said. That's what so many past comp-takers told me before the exam. You know the material, just trust yourself.

I went to the last question first, the specialized one--it was the one I felt most comfortable with--and started writing. I knew which texts to use, so I started there--the others would have to wait.

As the hours passed, I heard the garage door open and close as my husband got home from work, I heard the dog run to greet him, but still I wrote, looking back to the question after every few sentences, making sure that I was answering it correctly--that there wasn't a word I had missed that would change the entire question. That was one thing every person on my exam committee warned me about--the most common reason someone fails the exam is that they don't read the question, or that they start to answer the question, but then end up on a completely different topic by the end of the essay.

Okay, okay, focus, focus. I tried to write topic sentences like never before. Every word was deliberate and steered the entire course of the essay. Every sentence got right to the point.

It is here that my practice essays really helped me out. I knew how much space I had for the introduction, for each text, and for the conclusion. By the time I was done revising, I was over 153 words...a lot better than my initial attempts at my practice essays in which I was over by way more. So I cut it down. Checked again. 71 words over. Cut it down again. 32 words. Almost there. Cut it more. There. Made it--answered my first question.

I looked at the clock...it was 8 at night. I could hear my husband watching television in the den. I missed him...and the dog. Usually, at nights we would be on the couch together--him playing games or watching a movie while I read or studied, the dog curled at my feet. But this weekend was different...this weekend would determine if I would be an official candidate for the PhD or if I would be dismissed from the university. And I actually thought about what I had read about the exams--that they were there to weed out those who were fit for the degree and those who weren't...and I thought with dismay, I didn't want to be a weed....

Okay, mind wandering, need to get back to it, focus, focus. I started my drama question--that seemed the next easiest. I remembered back to the Grist meeting the night before and talking to two of the editors who had taken their exams the year before...answer one question the first night and start on the next one, they said.

I needed three examples for this question and I knew two of them right away, but the third one escaped me. I could use this text, I mused aloud, looking through the reading list, or this one, but no, this doesn't qualify, nor does this one, nor this one. There was only one left to use...so I used that one and added a footnote about why I had chosen those three texts and the reasons the other "obvious" choices had to be disqualified.

I wrote. And wrote. The house got quiet. I wrote some more, then looked at the clock. I was 1:30 in the morning. So I stopped for the night, saving everything, then quietly slipping into bed where my husband was already asleep.

But I couldn't sleep. The questions loomed in my head, especially the harder ones I knew I was putting off. I lay in bed, trying to rest my body, knowing it was futile.

Then as soon as the sun started to light the windows, I slipped out again to the guest bedroom where all my books, my laptop waited for me and worked on the question some more. I finished at noon. I read over the essay to make sure that I had answered the question--the warnings about not straying off-topic had made me so paranoid. I made sure that I not only answered it, but I did what one of my committee members told me--to question the question itself, to complicate it. I remembered him saying this to me in his office, smiling, that is when the essays really begin to spark, he said. Okay, sparky answers! We need sparky answers, I kept telling myself.

It was time for a break when I finished that question and I could smell a Papa Murphy's pizza cooking in the oven and hear the clatter of plates as my husband prepared for lunch. I went out, a little dizzy after I stood up, my eyes having trouble viewing things at a distance after having stared at the laptop for so long. We ate lunch together and the dog, sensing I was tired and stressed out, came to me gently, her ears fanned out the way she does when she's excited or nervous. I pet her head, talking to my husband and telling him about how frightening the exam was so far. I was working on editing down my drama question to the right number of words and was frustrated, because footnotes counted as part of the word count. He smiled, That's easy, he said. Just use headnotes! He was trying to be funny, but as I gave him a wary smile, I tried to think of ways to cut the essay down. My mind never left the exam.

I went back to work, edited the drama essay down enough, so that it fit the word limit and started on the poetry question. And that is where things started to unravel.

I picked the poetry question that sounded like it was going to be the easiest to answer. But halfway through it, it was just getting too complicated. It required too much context and background to really answer. It asked for too many examples. I couldn't answer it with the word count I was given. So I abandoned it.

And started all over again on the other poetry question (maybe to better explain this, I should say that I was given eight questions--two in each genre--and I had to answer four total questions--one in each genre). That went a little better and although the topic was a bit more obscure, I found that I had more to say about it and could tinker with the argument to make it "spark." Remember, sparky answers!

During this point in time, I began to be very thankful for the teachers I had in graduate school, especially the ones that scared the living shit out of me. One of my first teachers in my master's study had a reputation for being especially terrifying, but her class was the only one available in American literature that semester. So I read my can off and wrote COPIOUS notes in all the margins of my books--I'm talking more notes than I've ever written in a class before (and that's saying a lot especially since I worked as a notetaker for a while in undergrad). So imagine my relief when I opened up William Carlos Williams's Paterson and found everything I needed in the margins...even ways to make my essay answer sparky.

When I was done answering that question, my brain was tired. I was writing slower, my mind more easily distracted by the light patterns on the wall, the way the blinds hung on the windows, anything other than what I was writing on my laptop. So I called it quits for the night. I had one question left...and that was the hardest question of them all.

Sunday morning came and I locked myself in the guest bedroom again. It was just me, my books, and the laptop. It was time to finish this thing.

So I read the question slowly, thinking hard about what my examiner wanted in this answer, then closed my eyes with a deep breath. Then wrote.

So close to the end now, I was able to write faster this time and the more I wrote, the clearer the answer became. At eight that night, I was finished. All the questions had been answered. I had done the revisions, I had gone back and edited the poetry question some more, I had printed it out and read it aloud to catch little grammatical mistakes. I was done.

I wanted to turn it in that night. I wanted to be done with it, but something held me back. What if I missed something and I just wasted an entire night I could have used to fix it? What if I misread one of the questions? What if?

So I decided to sleep on it and look it over again in the morning. The answers were due at noon. I got up at 5, printed it out again, read it aloud, made changes, tinkered with some transitions, made sure everything was cited, each comma was in the right place. It was done.

So at 8:33 AM, I sent it in. Then after I got the confirmation that the answers were received, breathed a sigh of relief. I should know sometime late this week or early next week if I passed....

Then in nine days, I do it all over again with the Novel exam. Then it will all be over...

Late nights will soon end...

Last Preparations

2011-09-01T20:28:00.000-04:00

Whew, the practice comps were...how shall I say this...humbling. If you are taking comps this month, I would recommend doing a few practice essays as soon as possible, because in the last few days, I've learned so much about my strengths and weaknesses and how to adjust my writing process for these exams.

For one thing, I do not procrastinate when I write papers--I start writing them at least a month before, so that I can think on my topic, research more about it, think on it some more, then I write, then I revise, then I write some more. I've written a paper the night before it was due once in my entire life in undergrad and never made that mistake again (I still made an A, but I think the professor was being overly generous or graded on some kind of curve). I don't work well when I am rushed and frankly, it just freaks me out, because I need time to think and process everything out.

I've been trying to adjust all of this and force myself to hurry when writing and processing my essay answers, because you are only allotted three days to finish the exam, but the first day of trying this was an utter, complete failure as I found myself sitting in front of my computer hours and hours later with no answers written--just twenty-six introductions to a single question, all of the introductions ones I equally hated. Frankly, I was a wreck and was so frustrated, because I knew the answers, the exact books to use as evidence for each question, the theorists to refer to, but all of that didn't matter, because I couldn't frickin' convey that on the page.

So after dusting myself off and deleting all of which I had written, I tried again, keeping in mind that if I tried to make each sentence perfect, I wouldn't get anywhere--I had to just dive into my argument and worry about revising later. That went a little better, but then came another lesson--the word count, which I thought wasn't going to be a problem. And it's not a problem--to reach it, but definitely a problem not to go over the limit. By the time I got through my first example (of the required four), I had used up all my allotted words for that entire question--and I hadn't even written an introduction or a conclusion yet. Oh. My. God. Don't freak out, don't freak out, don't freak out, I kept telling myself.

Okay, so let's try this again. After deleting three-quarters of what I had written, I started altering how I was answering the rest of the questions--using only the most important examples (and even cutting some of the ones I really liked for conciseness), using no adjectives whatsoever, getting to the point immediately, checking the word count obsessively. It got better after that, because I had a better idea of how much space I could use.

So that's where I am now. Still writing practice essays on everything I discussed with my exam committee (which really is everything), but really concentrating on speeding up my efforts and being concise.

The exam is a week from tomorrow. September 9th-12th.

So I am going to take a small break from the blog to concentrate more fully on writing more of these essays, but I'll come back on the 12th if my brain is still functioning and update you all on how it went. I would like to ask you all a big favor, though. Pray for me/send calming thoughts, please, that my mind is clear and that my fingers fly over the keys when the time comes. I know I am ready, but I am so nervous, too.

I'm going to study some more, but I'll be back on the 12th!

Practice Makes Perfect

2011-08-29T08:48:00.000-04:00

That's what I'm hoping for anyway as today marks the beginning of what I am going to call my "practice comps." I have 11 days left before my first exam (20th Century American Literature) which I think will probably be my hardest exam, but luckily, also the one for which I feel most prepared. So to get myself in the right frame of mind, I am going to write practice answers for questions I anticipate receiving on exam day. Of course, I have no idea what these questions are and won't know until the day of the exam, but I can think about some of the topics I've talked about with my exam committee and practice formulating answers that pertain to these topics.

There is also a very strict word count required for the exam, so this will be good for me to practice condensing my argument down in the limited space available to me. The word limit was increased this year, so I have a little more room to move around in, but I will definitely be taking the advice that I give to my own freshmen when they are writing their papers--get straight to the point, make every word count, be specific, and so on.

I am hoping that this will help me focus more and prepare me for the writing portion of exam weekend. If there are any problems that I encounter, I want to find these out before exam weekend, so I can fix them in time.

I'll let you know how it goes. I think I'll try just one question today and if there's time, do some more reading. Over the weekend, I was able to get through a lot--The Latin Deli by Judith Ortiz Cofer, Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, Blue Blood by Georgia Douglas Johnson, poetry and essays by Adrienne Rich, poetry by Denise Levertov, essays by Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, What the Living Do by Marie Howe, and The Bridge by Hart Crane. Throw in lots of theory and criticism, too, and you've got a full weekend!

I'm hoping today will be easy. The question that I have in mind to answer today has been in my head ever since I've met with the drama professor on my committee, so I've been mulling over my answer for a while (I've even dreamt about it several times). So I'm off to write! I'll be back soon!

My plan for the day :)

Two Weeks

2011-08-26T10:21:00.000-04:00

At exactly noon today, the gong will strike that exams are two short weeks away! All week, I've been meeting with committee members about the exams and now that those are over, I actually feel better and more prepared for all the writing I will do September 9th-12th.

Based on the advice examiners and past comp-takers are giving me, it seems as if quality is better than quantity in terms of book knowledge for these exams, so I've been busy these last few days rereading a lot of key books on the reading lists that I've read years ago (or even earlier this year), just so that I am fresh when I actually get the questions come exam weekend.

I've been reading new works, too, just to keep my brain open to new opportunities in answering certain questions and have enjoyed the ones I've had a chance to go through--Winterset by Maxwell Anderson, My Life by Lyn Hejinian, Garbage by A.R. Simmons, Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein, and Golden Child by David Henry Hwang. I've been reading as much theory and criticism as I can, too.

I think I overdid it yesterday, though, with the reading, because my eyes and brain were so fried that I could only squint and hold my aching head if I looked anywhere off the page. When your eyes can no longer focus and you've got shooting pains through your head, it's time to call it quits. So today, I think I am going to read all day, but then take the night off after my husband gets off work. Today is his birthday, so I want to make the day special for him :)

I hope you all are doing well! I'm off to read some more...

Here's hoping I'll be in a little better shape than this when exams are over!

Notes of a Native Son

2011-08-22T10:49:00.000-04:00

I read this book by James Baldwin last night and while it was interesting, I think I enjoyed his Go Tell It On The Mountain more. The essays included in this book range from his thoughts on Native Son, movies, to life in Harlem, Europe, and even prison for a time. In all of the essays, though, Baldwin writes on ongoing racial tensions and I was quite intrigued by a point he makes near the end of the book. He writes that "Joyce is right about history being a nightmare--but it may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them" (163). History seems to always act as a shadow from which no one can escape, he implies.

However, these shadows can be used for a greater good, because we can learn from our pasts that can "prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today" (175). We can be new men, he says, in a world that "is white no longer, and...will never be white again" (175).

Baldwin's thoughts are intriguing, so if you are curious to read his essays after reading his fiction, I encourage you to take a look at those in Notes of a Native Son. It's a quick read, too.

Meanwhile, I am going to head out to campus to pick up some books. Now that I have library access again, I reserved some theory books that I couldn't find on Amazon (or were just too expensive to buy), so I am going to pick those up and read as much as I can in the 17 days I have left until my first exam. So if you see someone walking around campus with a suitcase of books, that would be me :)

The Catcher in the Rye

2011-08-21T11:27:00.000-04:00

Books like this one by J.D. Salinger make me resent being homeschooled growing up, because I missed out on all the books everyone else had to read in high school...Animal Farm, Anthem, 1984, Brave New World, Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye. Granted, I still read a lot...the Bible (many times over), Pilgrim's Progress, This Present Darkness, the Left Behind series (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these books), but when I got to college, I had a lot of catching up to do as an English major.

Needless to say, I've fallen in love with all the classics I missed over the years, The Catcher in the Rye being one of them. I read this book yesterday and was very impressed by Holden's voice and the way he viewed the world around him. His attitude (which I am learning from a discussion on Facebook turns a lot of people off) actually intrigued me. I knew that a book that started off with "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth" (1) had to be worth the read and it was.

This book being on my supplemental list for comps, I tried to focus especially on Holden's coming of age process throughout the book and what exactly coming of age means in 20th Century American Literature (something I may very well have to answer in my comprehensive exams). What has to happen for a person to come of age? What changes need to take place? How is coming of age determined in multiple genres? What holds all of these things together?

Some themes which seem to be prominent in a lot of the readings so far is the need for physical displacement from one's home, even if just temporarily, in order to attain or at least begin a process of growth into selfhood. More importantly, one needs to acknowledge a truth about himself and one's identity, whether it be one's name, one's past, or who one has chosen to be. Finally, and this seems to be very crucial, but one must confess this identity as truth, whether it be voiced or in writing, and have that truth acknowledged by someone outside of one's self. This last step is crucial for the culmination of selfhood, because not only has one found and accepted who one is, but one has been validated as such.

In the case of Holden in The Catcher in the Rye, he has long left home and has shuffled around to various boarding schools, but remains very much a child, because not only does he act spoiled and immature, but he is a compulsive liar, lying about everything from his name to his age to his life experiences. The people around him chide him for his childlike behaviour often, saying everything from "When in the hell are you going to grow up?" (146) to "Your mind is immature" (147) to "You're a very, very strange boy" (193).

Holden seems to act this way deliberately, because he is afraid to grow up. All the adults he knows are "phonies," because they are seemingly insincere and fake. One of the reasons Holden hates his school is that it is "full of phonies...everybody was always locking their doors when somebody wanted to come in" (167), yet he is guilty of these very same things. Holden isolates himself deliberately and projects a fake persona of himself when he meets girls at a bar or the mother of one of his classmates on a train. He rejects his true self continuously throughout the book until the last few pages when he secretly goes home to visit his little sister, Phoebe.

It is at this point that Holden finally progresses forward in his journey toward selfhood, because with Phoebe, Holden can finally tell the truth and be himself, no longer needing the charades he has used on other people. Phoebe asks him if he is coming home and he replies with the first truth he has told in the entire book to another character: "Yeah," I said. I meant it too. I wasn't lying to her. I really did go home afterwards" (212). While not a groundbreaking confession by any means, what matters is that Holden is finally truthful and voices that truth aloud to his sister.

Finally, his sister acknowledges and accepts that Holden is now own person and validates his growth by giving him back his beloved red hat that he has carried around during the entire book and had given to her for safekeeping. The hat symbolizes Holden's uniqueness and refusal to assimilate into the world he has grown to hate and Phoebe gives this back to him in a sign of her acceptance of him. The hat is Holden and she acknowledges his maturation into selfhood by taking the hat and placing it on his head (212).

Of course, that is not to say that the maturation into selfhood is always a positive experience, but rather bittersweet. In Holden's case, he seems to regret acknowledging the truth about his life and telling it, because he is "sorry [he] told so many people about it...Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" (214). With maturation usually comes pain, guilt, and even nostalgia and Holden finds himself in this place by the story's end.

I am still trying to piece together what coming of age means and what is necessary for such a process to take place, but The Catcher in the Rye just seemed to have all the necessary steps. What about some of your ideas? What do you think needs to happen for one to come of age? Do you think Holden grew up a little at the end of this book? Why or why not?

A Little Bit of Everything

2011-08-19T13:48:00.002-04:00

The first week of classes passed by very quickly, I thought, but it went well. For the first time in my life, I am not taking classes (finished with coursework in the spring), so it feels a little strange, but I am still teaching this semester and think I have the best two classes in tandem that I've had yet. Usually, when I teach two, one class will be energetic and talkative and the other a bit more quiet, but this semester, it seems that both groups will be outgoing which is awesome. Lots of students are active in class already, so it's definitely an encouraging start to the semester. My mentee is also wonderful and I am loving the opportunity to work with her.

Now that the week is over, though, I wanted to dedicate the morning reading for exams...so I read Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, poetry by Langston Hughes, Joy Harjo, and Charles Bukowski. Joy Harjo, as always, just blows me away with her work and before I wrap up this post, I'll leave you all with one of my favorites from today's reading.

We Must Call a Meeting

Joy Harjo

I am fragile, a piece of pottery smoked from fire

made of dung,

the design drawn from nightmares. I am an arrow, painted
with lightning
to seek the way to the name of the enemy,
but the arrow has now created
its own language.

It is a language of lizards and storms, and we have

begun to hold conversations
                                       long into the night.
                                                                    I forget to eat.
I don't work. My children are hungry and the animals who live
In the backyard are starving.
                                                I begin to draw maps of stars.
The spirits of old and new ancestors perch on my shoulders.
I make prayers of clear stone

of feathers from birds

who live closest to the gods.
The voice of the stone is born

of a meeting of yellow birds

who circle the ashes of a smoldering volcano.
                                                                The feathers sweep the prayers up
and away.
            I, too, try to fly but get caught in the cross fire of signals
                         and my spirit drops back down to earth.
I am lost; I am looking for you
            who can help me walk this thin line between the breathing
                                                            and the dead.
You are the curled serpent in the pottery of nightmares.
You are the dreaming animal who paces back and forth in my head.
We must call a meeting.

Give me back my language and build a house

Inside it.
A house of madness.
A house for the dead who are not dead.
And the spiral of the sky above it.
And the sun

and the moon.

And the stars to guide us called promise.

Joy Harjo

Isn't she amazing?

Crimes of the Heart

2011-08-17T08:53:00.000-04:00

I loved the characters in this play, especially Lenny, Meg, and Babe. Chick was an added bonus and together, they all just lit up the page with their laughter, their retorts toward one another. The play portrayed sisterhood very well, I thought, and I loved how although the women lived very different lives, they were bound together by their mother's suicide and their love for one another.

I found, too, that the play made some very interesting points about confession and how it brings the women closer together from Lenny's lost virginity with a random man from Memphis to the real reason Babe shot her husband to Meg's failed singing career. In Act I, Meg says that "it's a human need. To talk about our lives. It's an important human need" (29) and I loved the quote, because it was a fitting one for the play as a whole.

If you haven't read the play yet, I recommend picking it up when you get the chance. You won't be disappointed!

Sisters :)

The Will to Change

2011-08-16T18:21:00.000-04:00

This will be just a quick post, but I just wanted to share some thoughts on Adrienne Rich's The Will to Change. I have long been an admirer of her work, but there were some poems in here that were just magical with such power and grace. I especially loved "The Blue Ghazals" and "Pierrot Le Fou," but both poems are a bit long to reproduce here, so I will leave you all with one of my shorter favorites from the collection--"Planetarium."

Planetarium

(Thinking of Caroline Herschel, 1750—1848,

astronomer, sister of William; and others.)

A woman in the shape of a monster

a monster in the shape of a woman

the skies are full of them

a woman ‘in the snow

among the Clocks and instruments

or measuring the ground with poles’

in her 98 years to discover

8 comets

she whom the moon ruled

like us

levitating into the night sky

riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there

doing penance for impetuousness

ribs chilled

in those spaces of the mind

An eye,

‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’

from the mad webs of Uranusborg

                                                      encountering the NOVA

every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us

     Tycho whispering at last
     ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

What we see, we see
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the

direct path of a battery of signals

the most accurately transmitted most

untranslatable language in the universe

I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-

luted that a light wave could take 15

years to travel through me And has

taken I am an instrument in the shape

of a woman trying to translate pulsations

into images for the relief of the body

and the reconstruction of the mind.

(1968)

How about you all? What is your favorite Adrienne Rich poem?

White Oleander

2011-08-16T16:07:00.001-04:00

I finished this book last night and I am at a loss for words to truly describe how utterly beautiful this book was to me. Ingrid's cold, brilliant mind...Claire's sweet, fragile heart...Yvonne's quiet strength...and Astrid's scarred, hardened soul. Every sentence of every page took my breath away. Janet Fitch's language in this book breathes such life to this story and makes each character unique and real. Truth marked itself in every chapter.

I found it especially interesting how Fitch portrayed the relationships among women in this story and how they could be raw and honest with each other versus the seemingly fake relationships they had with the men in their lives.

The middle of the book shows this most clearly in which Astrid's foster parents Ron and Claire are suffering marital difficulties. Astrid spends her first few days in Claire's care while Ron is away on business and gets to know her from her paranoia of evil spirits and bad karma to her willingness to let a homeless man on the streets touch and smell her hair to the way she wants to die. However, when Ron returns, Claire becomes a different woman and puts on a front, so that he didn't "see how damaged she was. As long as she didn't show him, that was all he asked for. A good show" (286). What is natural seems to disappear as Claire distorts herself and her house to meet her husband's wants in what Astrid frequently calls "a man's world." Claire wears make-up, she is on a rigid schedule, she smiles when she is unhappy. Counters are cleared, trash is taken out, clothes are washed and bleached. Everything is perfect, but unnaturally so.

Ron seems to be oblivious to the true state of his house and of their marriage, not acknowledging Claire's depression and alcoholism until after she commits suicide. However, one can see why, because of the way Claire hides herself from Ron, unable to show her true self to anyone other than a fellow woman who can understand her doubts and needs. When Astrid and Claire are alone and going through Claire's old jewelry, Claire puts a string of pearls in her mouth and closes her lips, resting for a moment before starting to choke and this seems to be the perfect symbol for how Claire's false lifestyle in front of Ron eventually kills her. The pearls are perfect in every sense--white, flawless, round--but they are not real as Claire is--they do not live and breathe as she does, so when Claire adopts the persona of a perfect wife for her husband and hides away who she really is, it suffocates her.

When Astrid finds Claire dead, again, Ron is gone as Claire is alone on her bed, the French doors "covered with blinds" (287), no light--no openings anywhere--the room dark and stale. Yet at this moment with Astrid when Claire doesn't have a smile "painted on" (287), she is at her most beautiful, because in death, she is "more complete, more sure of herself now. Not trying to please anyone anymore" (292).

Astrid later forms a similar relationship with Yvonne, a foster-sister pregnant with her second child, and they go to birthing classes together. Her boyfriend long gone, Yvonne opens herself up to Astrid and exposes her fears and doubts to her, because she knows that she can trust her as opposed to a lover who impregnates her and leaves.

Their relationship becomes stronger when Yvonne goes into labor and readers see that the bond between the two is not only the result of them both being foster children, but because they are both women and can be real with one another. Yvonne calls out for her mother during labor and Astrid understands, because although Yvonne's mother was flawed and treated her daughter despicably, she was not a string of pearls as Claire projected herself to be for her husband, not a fake projection of what a woman should be in a man's world, but she was real, "the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away...someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us" (404).

Unfortunately, after Yvonne has her baby and becomes involved with another man, the bond between Astrid and Yvonne is broken, because Yvonne attempts to conform herself to find love and acceptance in "a man's world." She wipes at her mascara and pretties up her face to look like the girls on Miss America, a show she has newly grown to like after meeting her boyfriend, watching while she gets stoned, then taking "some dusty silk flowers Rena had lying around and [walking] up and down the living room, waving the mechanical beauty wave" (412). It is a sad moment, because Yvonne who carried such a quiet strength and seemed so strong in carrying her baby to term even after her boyfriend left her seems to lose a little bit of that strength as the flowers are "silk," the wave "mechanical." Even her happy state of mind in this moment isn't genuine as she is under the influence of drugs.

Astrid seems to recognize this when she says goodbye to her friend. Yvonne tells Astrid that the boy who has been writing to Astrid will come back to her and be her boyfriend, but Astrid lies to her, saying, sure, knowing "nobody waited for anybody." The honesty between them is broken, because one is living in the man's world, while the other is not.

Right before Claire's suicide, Astrid has a similar moment with Claire, lying that Claire's husband loved her, because she knows that Claire will always try to be that perfect pearl for her husband, that she will eventually die with that illusion lodged in her throat. It is fitting that Claire is an actress and obsesses about her lines and her movements on camera, because she carries this mentality to her personal life as well, pausing between dainty bites of her meal to look at her husband, folding her hands just so--for the approval of the director, of her husband, but never for herself. When Claire is dead in the morning, it is not a surprise, but rather a relief that Claire can finally be at rest, without the fear and criticism of others.

This book reminded me a lot of Housekeeping, actually, in terms of relationships between women and naturalness versus what is fake. For example, Sylvie keeps her house in a disarray and often eats with Ruth and Lucille in the dark until Lucille, who under the influence of her friends and teachers, becomes upset at Sylvie's "unconventional" practices and calls for light in the evenings and cleared surfaces where there is dirt or grass from outside. Lucille attempts to conform to the image of what was right and clean in the eyes of others and rejects what had previously been natural in their lives. Meanwhile, Ruth and Sylvie form a closer bond, because they accept the natural wildness, the flaws of the outside world and do not attempt to restrain it for the approval of others.

While not exactly the same kind of thing readers would see in White Oleander, I found that the conformity/authenticity and the consequences of such were quite intriguing. Have any of you read both of these works? Did you see the same things?

The Last Push

2011-08-16T14:12:00.000-04:00

With the first day of classes starting tomorrow, this officially marks the last push of reading/studying before exams. Today during the department photo shoots and meetings, it seemed as if everyone was talking about the same things...teaching tomorrow, but more so....exams which are very, very soon. Some people are delaying their exams to next semester while others are choosing to take only one exam rather than two this semester and when I hear these things, I have to fight to believe that I am doing the right thing by taking two exams rather than the normal one exam per semester.

The reading lists are nearly done. The criticism and research has been read. I'm meeting with my committees this week and next just to be sure, but I want to believe that I am truly ready for these exams. I'm ready to write about ideas that have been bursting within me these past few years and more so this summer as I read more intensively. I'm excited about putting these things together and discussing books that I have fallen in love with....but I am nervous, too....oh, my, goodness, am I nervous...the biggest exams of my life are just around the corner.

Coming Back

2011-08-12T07:01:00.000-04:00

This week has been full of orientation panels for the incoming graduate students here at UT and it has been fun seeing everyone back from summer vacation. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak on the creative writing orientation panel "What I Know Now (What I Wish I'd Known!)" and enjoyed being able to speak with some of the other creative writers and listen to their advice.

This morning, I'm on the "Establishing and Maintaining a Productive Classroom" panel, then afterwards, will be able to meet my mentee for this semester. I'll be mentoring an incoming MA student in one of my English 101 classes and am looking forward to it very much. I had a wonderful time co-teaching with my lead teachers when I was an MA student, so I have great examples to follow. Luckily, too, some of the teachers here who have taught alongside new students have given me wonderful advice on what works and doesn't work when mentoring a new graduate student. Though, I'm curious to hear from some of you all as well--have any of you mentored students while teaching? What were some strategies/teaching practices that you found to have worked in a classroom of two teachers? What were some things that didn't work so well? This is my first time mentoring a graduate student in the classroom, so I want to do the best I can.

I hope you all are doing well and that your new semesters are beginning smoothly. I will keep posting reviews on my comprehensive exam readings here soon, especially now that I found out that exams will be much earlier than I expected this semester. After a moment (okay, several hours) of complete panic and some pep talks from my husband, I realized that I have read as much as I could have possibly read these past few years and am ready for these exams. I'll remember all the books I read and be able to put together strong, cohesive arguments about the material on the reading lists. A good attitude helps so much, I've found out, so I'm not going to waste time worrying myself sick over it (though it is tempting). I would appreciate prayers and kind thoughts these next few weeks, though! I'm sure I will need them...

This will be me very soon!

The End of Summer

2011-08-09T16:23:00.002-04:00

I apologize for the lull in blog posts lately. Last night, I got back from a week in California for a family reunion and while I fully intended to blog on my phone while I was away, it just didn't happen with all the activities during the week.

While I had seen my grandparents two years ago, I hadn't seen the majority of my Dad's family for fifteen years, so it was interesting to see how everyone had grown. I also got to see my sister who lives in Hawaii and her two little girls whom I hadn't seen in a year and a half, so it was nice being "Auntie" or "Sheesha" (what my nieces say when they try to say my name) again.

The last time we all took a family photograph was when I was quite young and I have a copy of that photograph below (I'm in the middle next to my aunt in the pink dress). This seems so long ago, because my brother and a lot of my cousins hadn't even been born yet.

California 1990

Now fast-forward across several divorces, remarriages, and a lot of kids later to 2011 (the next big family photograph) and you've got this (I'm in the middle again behind my sister who is wearing pink and white and between my mom and my other sister both holding my nieces in pink)...

California 2011

And just think...we were still missing fourteen people in this photo (and that's not even counting all the girlfriends and boyfriends who were the ones taking the pictures)! My Dad's family is huge, so reunions like this come very rarely, but I'm glad everyone was able to get together and see each other again.

Now that I am back, though, everything is in back-to-school mode. I paid my school fees and got my parking pass today and will be on several panels this week for graduate student orientation. Classes start next week and in about a month...is my first comprehensive exam...

I hope you all had a great summer and that those of you starting up the school year again have awesome classes and wonderful students!

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

2011-07-31T18:39:00.000-04:00

This will have to be a short post today, but I just wanted to update you on my latest book--The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and found her writing to be lovely from the stories of her growing up in America to those of her mother in medical school to the myths of her homeland. I liked that women were so prevalent in these stories and understood the frustrations Kingston expressed about the expectations of women in a patriarchal society, both in China and in the United States. She depicted older traditions such as foot binding and infanticide and portrayed them alongside her own experiences in the United States from the continued belittlement and shame for being born a female to the arranged marriages she fears for her and her sister.

Maxine Hong Kingston

It's a good book if you have the chance to read it...

I wish I could write more, but time is increasingly short now with summer coming to a close and school starting up again, so I am back to work for the novel exam. Next up...Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon...

Quicksand and Passing

2011-07-29T13:03:00.000-04:00

On the 20th Century American list, these books by Nella Larson are listed as one work, but they are actually two separate books. I finished Quicksand yesterday and Passing this morning and out of the two, I have to say I liked Passing better.

Both addressing similar themes of racial identity, these books both followed the stories of young women searching for their place in various sections of the world. In Quicksand, Helga Crane leaves her work as a teacher at Naxos and attempts to reconnect with her estranged uncle, only to be shunned because of her mixed ancestry. Helga decides to leave America altogether and visit Denmark where some of her white ancestors originated and there, she is treated much differently than she is in the South--revered for her blackness rather than shamed for it. However, Helga becomes homesick for the sincerity of the African-American people and moves back and marries a southern minister. Despite her fervent claims to never have children and introduce them to the hardships many African-Americans faced during the time, she has five children with her husband, nearly dying after the fourth (who also dies in infanthood), and the book ends with her listless and broken, moving through life robbed of the vitality she had shown earlier in the novel.

The other novel, Passing, is about two childhood friends of mixed ancestry (or rather, "strangers," because one chooses to live the life or "pass" as a white person while the other embraces her ancestry). Clare, who lies about her past and her lineage, marries a white man who has harsh views toward African-Americans, but she still longs for the company of those she grew up with as a child. When her husband is out of town, she visits Irene for parties and dances and lavishly lives a double life until she is found out by her husband in a climactic scene in which she falls to her death from a high window. The end is famously ambiguous as to whether her death is a suicide or if Irene, who disapproves of Clare's falseness and suspects Clare of having an affair with her husband, actually pushes her out the window, but in either case, Clare and her duality is at an end as the truth (or part of it) comes out.

Both books were quick reads and I found Nella Larson's themes to be quite intriguing. Have you read either of these books? Did you have a favorite?

Go Tell It On The Mountain

2011-07-27T16:26:00.003-04:00

Told from the viewpoints of several different characters in different time frames, this book by James Baldwin does a masterful job in portraying the plight of Gabriel and his family (both legitimate and illegitimate). At first, I found this narrative style a bit disorienting as chapters would shift suddenly in voice and time, but then once I thought about how deeply the book is rooted in the culture of the Negro spiritual (hence the name of the book's title), this narrative strategy made a lot more sense.

Thinking back to my childhood when my own mom took us to the kind of churches depicted in the book, I remember that when the congregation sang songs, there was often the call-and-response pattern you would see and hear during the pastor's sermon. Just like someone would wave their hands and shout out an "Amen!" or a "Preach it, Bishop!" or a "Shame, shame, shame!" while the preacher was speaking, so would this interjection type strategy happen in song. Sometimes, everyone would sing, sometimes one person took center stage while the congregation repeated the singer's verses or sang in counterpoint. In either case, there was never a gap of silence, because voices were constantly overlapping over one another and enriching the song/sermon with their own words.

Same thing with this book--there are so many voices that fill in the gaps--the voices of John, Gabriel, Florence, Elizabeth, and so on. John's voice begins the story, then the others came in, filling the gaps and giving the reader information that John didn't even know about himself--that he was not the son of Gabriel, that he was born out of wedlock, that his father had multiple lovers and fathered other children.

So while I admired the style and the way Baldwin told the story, I still had a few reservations about the characters themselves. While I absolutely loved the characters Esther and Florence for their strength and honesty, Gabriel irked me to no end, because of the way he lived a life of hypocrisy and tried justifying everything he did in the name of God and religion. A preacher in a very active church, Gabriel spends so much time criticising those around him him that he often neglects to see the terrible things he is doing in his own life. Married to Deborah, a humble and faithful woman for years, Gabriel becomes interested in Esther and follows her around, inviting her to hear him preach and to confess her sins to God. He even goes to the point of cornering her in the house where she works, professing loudly about God and how she needs Him in her life, yet doing this while ripping off her clothes and having sex with her in a wild bout of passion that results in the conception of Royal, his illegitimate son.

When he discovers her pregnancy, he sends her away, so that no one will learn of his actions and so continues this string of committing a sinful act and hiding it all the while severely punishing others for these very same things. He calls two members of the church for prayer and repentance for lust they have "not felt yet" and these people are shamed for doing nothing. He beats "the sins out" of his sons and withholds fatherly love from John, a very good-tempered child, because he was conceived out of wedlock while openly loving Roy, a wild and rebellious man simply because he was born "on their marriage bed." He is dishonest to his wives, resorting to physical violence when they try to stand up to him, and although he constantly calls to others to call upon God and repent of their sins before the altar, Gabriel does none of this, but rather hides his misdeeds, saying that God has forgiven him and that everything is in the past which may be, but he refuses to change his ways as he calls upon others to do.

Maybe this is why I liked Esther and Florence so much, because they tell him the truth that he never wants to acknowledge about himself. When Esther finds out that she is pregnant, she tells Gabriel, "I'm going to have my baby and I'm going to bring him up to be a man. And I ain't going to read to him out of no Bibles and I ain't going to take him to hear no preaching. If he don't drink nothing but moonshine all his natural days, he be a better man than his daddy" (156). By that time in the book, I was so tired of Gabriel's hypocrisy that I just wanted to jump up and say, "Yes! Tell it to him, Esther!"

I found it sad, too, that John who does anything and everything for a father's love never attains it. He goes to his father's church and weeps, throwing himself at the altar, and confessing himself a child of God and the church, something he thinks his father wants, but in the end, his father remains the same cold, unyielding man as he was before.

So while the title is solely based on verbal prophecy of "telling it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere" ("It" meaning the news of Christ's birth in the original hymn) as a means of happiness and redemption, this doesn't seem to be the case in this book. Gabriel is silent, because he never outwardly confesses and atones for his sins and John, who actually does cry out, does not find the redemption and love he wants from his father.

Still thinking about what this all means as I'm knocking around ideas in my head, but I'm curious as to how you all enjoyed the book. How did you all like it?

Seize the Day

2011-07-25T19:07:00.002-04:00

With a title like this one, you would expect this book to be a super-charged inspirational story, but this was actually quite depressing.

Focused on a single day in the life of Tommy Wilhelm, a man estranged from his wife and two children, this novella by Saul Bellow portrays a man struggling to turn his life around to no avail. Living on his last few dollars and shunned by his father who views him as a failure and a "lazy slob," Tommy decides to gamble his money in stocks to make enough to pay his rent. He trusts his money to Tamkin who ends up swindling it away and Tommy loses everything. In desperation, he pleads his case again to his father and his estranged wife, but they both turn him away and Tommy finds himself in the streets.

A large funeral is held at a church nearby and Tommy thinks he briefly sees Tamkin there, so he goes inside to investigate, but Tamkin is not there and Tommy finds himself stuck in a processional line to see the body of someone he does not know. When he sees the body, Tommy becomes so overcome with the sadness of his misfortunes and the novella ends with him weeping at the casket.

Overall, I found the book interesting, because it is always a brave and risky thing to have such unlikable characters in a book--Tommy came across as sulky and immature, his father as prideful and power-hungry, Margaret as cold and manipulative, Tamkin as dishonest and conniving. Looking back at the novella, I felt sorry for Tommy, but then again, he was often foolish in his decisions, so it was hard to sympathize with him completely throughout the book after seeing him make mistake after mistake and trust questionable people who would only use him in the long run.

Even though the book wasn't what I expected, it was nice to see Bellow's writing style and how he could depict the story in such a short time frame.

When doing an image search for the cover of the book, though, I came across some pictures from a 1986 film adaption starring Robin Williams.

Robin Williams as Tommy Wilhelm

A still shot from the film...

I had no idea there was a film made of it and Robin Williams seems such an odd choice as someone to play Tommy, so I'm curious as to how faithful of an adaption it is. Have any of you seen the film? Is it worth checking out?

The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes

2011-07-24T19:27:00.000-04:00

I took the day off yesterday and my husband and I drove down to Pigeon Forge and spent the day at Dollywood Splash Country. It has been years since we've been to a water park and with the weather being so hot, we decided that it was time to go and have some fun. Luckily, the weather cooperated for us and the rain didn't start until after he were heading back home.

Tan and refreshed, I read for most of the day today and finished two plays by Lillian Hellman--The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes. I enjoyed both very much and was impressed by some of Hellman's characters--Mary in The Children's Hour and the majority of the characters in The Little Foxes especially. The way these characters lied and manipulated the others onstage was chilling and I admired the way Hellman portrayed these things.

I liked The Children's Hour best and after doing some research on where the play was being performed, I found that there was a recent revival in London starring Kiera Knightley and Elisabeth Moss. I'm sure it would have been a wonderful play to watch--I enjoyed reading it very much.

Kiera Knightley played Karen Wright while Elisabeth Moss played Martha Dobie.

Karen and Martha speaking with Mary who has made up a story that the two women are lovers to devastating results...

Have any of you seen productions of this play? How did you all like it?

Miss Lonelyhearts

2011-07-22T15:36:00.001-04:00

This short book by Nathanael West is about a newspaper columnist who writes an advice column for a New York newspaper. Overwhelmed by the sad and desperate letters he gets daily, Miss Lonelyhearts (a man) spirals into a depression fueled by drinking, sex, and violence, all of which only get him into trouble and worsen his self-perception.

When Miss Lonelyhearts begins an affair with one of his unhappily married readers, things really start to fall apart and in a moment of desperation, he beats up the woman rather than fall prey to her sexual advances again. The woman claims Miss Lonelyhearts tried to rape her as he was beating her which infuriates her husband who then pays Miss Lonelyhearts a visit. By this time, Miss Lonelyhearts who had previously resolved to give up his newspaper column has a religious experience in which he believes he is called by God to continue his work at the newspaper. When the beaten woman's husband comes to visit Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Lonelyhearts is so overwhelmed with his new found love from God that he rushes to hug the man, only to find that the man has come to kill him which he does by shooting him to death.

It is a strange and very depressing story, however, still well-written as it certainly captured the gloomy essence of the Great Depression. This is the first work that I've read by Nathanael West, so I don't know how it compares to his other books, but overall, it was a very quick read, albeit a dreary one. I hope that my next book is a little more light-hearted. If not, I have a date planned tonight with my husband to go see Captain America and that will serve as a nice reading break :)

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'll write more soon!

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

2011-07-22T09:07:00.000-04:00

So many people have told me that Joyce is extremely difficult to read, so I confess that I steeled myself for a book that would take me a lot of mental effort to finish. I found myself pleasantly surprised, however, because the book was actually quite enjoyable and one that I could easily get through in a few hours. Now, I think Ulysses is the book everyone was referring to when describing Joyce to me (a book I have not read yet), but after reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I am not as afraid to venture into Ulysses as I was before.

Portrait follows the story of a young Stephen Dedalus in Ireland from his days as a young schoolboy through his years in college where he begins to live the life of a writer. While he is growing up, he falls prey to physical lusts and has difficulty controlling his desires until he becomes so remorseful of his actions that he renounces it all for God and adopts a strict religious lifestyle in an attempt for atonement. Finding that he was happy "and often unhappy, [because he] was someone else then" (399), Stephen lets go of the religious lifestyle and chooses to live a life in which he doesn't constantly feel remorse, but yet can also appreciate life and beauty to its fullest.

While reading this, I was impressed by how the writing style changed as Stephen aged throughout the book. The beginning in which Stephen is a young boy reads very quickly and is composed of simple sentences with simple ideas in which Stephen explores and questions the things happening around him. Then as the book goes on and Stephen grows older mentally and physically, the language becomes more complex and more emotional as Stephen begins to explore not only what is going on around him, but what is happening within him as well. During the time in which Stephen adopts an extreme religious lifestyle (and is even encouraged to joined the priesthood), he takes measures to inflict pain upon himself whenever possible and the language, too, in this section becomes quite painful to read as the book nearly slows to a standstill. While reading, I confess that after every paragraph or so, I impatiently looked to see how many pages of that section were left, but now that I am finished with the book and can look back on it, I can understand why Joyce took this strategy, so that readers could also feel Stephen's pain as he goes through this period in his life.

When Stephen lets go of his religious convictions, the book begins to progress a lot faster and the language begins to change again as Stephen takes bits and pieces of his life and uses them to express himself from Latin phrases to verses of poetry until the very last section in which the story unexpectedly changes from third person to first person and Stephen finally finds his voice and can speak as himself without the aid of verses and phrases from the mouths of other people. Stephen finds his identity, his voice, and may finally speak for himself in a culmination of selfhood.

When Stephen is younger, he dreams of this moment, saying that in his maturation, "weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment" (246) and in the end, this happens as he finally has the strength and courage to speak to the woman he has loved from afar and to go out into the world on his own--as an artist and as a man, now emotionally, intellectually, and physically mature.

Overall, I really liked this book and found it to be a wonderful exploration on what it means to come of age (this will be the focus of my specialized exam as well as my dissertation). There were some amazing discussions Stephen has with others toward the end of the book on what it means to grow up, to create something and what makes theses creations true or beautiful that I found fascinating. I know I will certainly go back and read these sections time and time again as I study this genre further...some of these sections were absolutely brilliant...

Now that I'm crossing off this book as finished on my novel list, I'm getting very close to being done with my readings altogether, so I think I'm going to hop on back over to my 20th Century American list and read for a bit, before coming back to the novel just to keep things even. I hope I'll have another update for you soon!

The Trial

2011-07-20T13:43:00.001-04:00

This book, the first full work I have read by Franz Kafka (other than small excerpts of The Metamorphoses), impressed me a lot. Though incomplete, with some chapters ending quite abruptly, the book still manages to capture its readers in a claustrophobic and nightmarish plot that holds on and doesn't let go until the very last sentence in which the story ends so quickly that readers find themselves unprepared for such a lurching stop.

The book begins as Josef K. is accused of an unnamed crime then follows his struggle for an acquittal. K never learns of what crime the courts accuse him of and it seems that every time he looks to someone for trust and guidance, they, in actuality, are members of the court. Court proceedings consist of drawing up documents that according to Block, someone who is also undergoing a trial, don't really say anything, and in the end, are worthless. When K tries to take matters into his own hands and speak for himself, his future immediately turns bleak and the court proceedings take a turn for the worse (K hears this from other people, because everyone seems to know more about his case than he does). Finally, after a year of the supposed trial, two men take K away and kill him in the streets for his crime.

Right before his death, K. thinks, "Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached?" (165) and these are questions the readers find themselves asking all throughout the novel to no avail. Court offices exist in seemingly abandoned attics, artists and priests act also as court officials, everything is a maze from hidden doorways to windows that don't open. Often, K. feels suffocated and becomes ill when he attempts to find out the details of his mysterious trial and becomes better only after he walks away from the situation and allows his circumstances to take their due course--powerless to intervene as he finds out at his death.

Overall, I found the book interesting and am still thinking about it after I've read it, turning over the events in my head, hoping things will come together a bit more as I reflect on them. At times, I was frustrated, because Kafka wouldn't reveal any of the details I wanted to know, but I think this is what was intended, so that readers can emphasize with K and his discouraging situation a bit more.

I can't think on it too long, though, because I'm off to read my next book--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Hope to give you all an update soon!

Kim

2011-07-19T11:38:00.000-04:00

It has been a long time since I read The Jungle Book, but it was good to revisit Rudyard Kipling for a while as I read Kim. The book did take me a bit longer to finish, but that was because I was so busy marking page numbers and scribbling notes all around the margins where I found some interesting developments on the part of Kim and his experiences growing up in India during the time of the Great Game.

Born to an Irish father and poor white mother, Kimball O'Hara (Kim), is soon orphaned and raised on the streets. Making ends meet by begging, he eventually meets a Lama from Tibet and becomes his student or chela. He accompanies the Lama for a time and helps him in his search for a legendary river, but on the way, is discovered by his father's former regiment and then forced to attend school.  Years later, Kim eventually reunites with the Lama during the most crucial time in his search for the legendary river and is able to become his chela once more.

As Kim grows and develops over the course of these years, he is able to easily transcend between multiple identities--that of a sahib and that of a native.  Essentially a white boy, he carries documents of his father's including his birth certificate in a small amulet (which is how his father's regiment recognizes him), but speaks and lives as a native even to the point of thinking and dreaming in "Hindustani, with never an English word" (253). As a result of this duality, Kim is able easily identify with anyone he comes across as is often called "Friend of the World" for this ability.

However, living with both identities--that of a sahib and that of a native chela--becomes difficult for Kim as the two identities tend to clash over time. Kim enjoys the respect and the prestige he gains as a sahib, but does not enjoy the cost that comes with such a position--the lessons at school, the bland food, the scratchy and restrictive clothing, the banishment of all things native.  As a white boy, he must "never forget that one is a sahib, and that some day, when examinations are passed, one will command natives" (163). However, this mindset is foreign to him and although he holds the appearance and the birthright of a white boy, his natural identity is that of a native as he yearns "for the caress of soft mud squishing up between the toes, as his mouth water[s] for mutton stewed with butter and cabbages, for rice speckled with scented cardamoms, for the saffron-tinted rice, garlic and onions, and the forbidden greasy sweetmeats of the bazaars..the smells [make] him forget he was to be a sahib" (163-64, 194).

Interestingly, when Kim thinks on these things, he feels more alive as his senses are filled with such longings. He realizes that his identity as a sahib is an outer one only and takes measures to match his outer identity with his inner one, asking a friend to darken his skin with dye so that he may visit a girl in one of the neighboring quarters unnoticed. When he can leave and wear the clothes of a native again, he feels bliss at the lack of restriction and the freedom to dress as himself--as Kim, the native.

His duality brings much attention to himself, causing others to make remarks that he is like "little India in transition...the monstrous hyrbridity of East and West" (313). Even with this hybridity, though, I think Kim is able to come to peace with who he is by the novel's end. He says, "I am Kim--Kim--Kim--alone--one person--in the middle of it all" (294). He accepts that he exists in the midst of several cultures, but by this time he has cast off the sahib's clothing and no longer wears his father's name around his neck. He is no longer Kimball but Kim--his master's chela.

If you've read the book, let me know how you liked it and how you thought it compared with Kipling's other works. A lot of people say this is Kipling's best, but I'm curious as to what you all thought.

Look forward to hearing from you! Meanwhile, I'm going to start up my next book--The Trial by Franz Kafka...