Well, the semester is almost done–one final tonight (contemporary theories in cultural criticism…or something like that. I never have actually learned the name of the class), then begins the summer of self-directed…stuff!

(Only one more year until I graduate with my MA in English (Creative Writing track). Assuming I pass my German literacy requirements, my comprehensive exams, and complete my thesis. To those ends…)

(…on German…)
So this summer I need to basically re-learn German. Not that I’m really complaining, I love the German language! But I’m so far behind…. Back in my BAs, 10 years ago,  I earned enough GRM credits to get my undergrad degree, but I’m technically 2 courses short for my MA. I can either take the literacy test (which is what I’ve been thinking) or take two more classes (which wouldn’t work with my day job since they don’t offer GRM classes at night). I’m still somewhat good on German grammar, conjugation, syntax, but quizzing myself on German vocabulary…unless the test is composed of all pronouns, numbers, colors, and ways to say “I don’t know” and “I don’t understand,” I’m screwed.

I need to get some really good teach-yourself-resources this summer (any suggestions?!) and then see if I can take an advanced OTC class in the Fall (so if I bomb it won’t affect my 4.0 MSU gpa *prideful grin*), and then get that test out of the way before focusing on comps….

(…on Comprehensive Exams…)
Gah! I am SO dreading these! I have to come up with ten “questions” to write about regarding various topics in all of English literature, linguistics, theory, and cultural studies, submit them for review, get back four, write papers on them, and then on exam day find out which two I’ll be “answering” and then rewrite the papers from memory. I understand the necessity–I am supposed to be a “master” of my subject when I graduate with an MA. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to have an ulcer that’s a Master of Pain in the process.

(…on Thesis/Novel…)
And for the good news: I just finished the first half of ENG699 this semester–my thesis work course. And incidentally, have finished the first half of my novel’s first draft. As my MA is Creative Writing focused, my thesis is a “creative thesis.” I looked over past English creative thesis in the university library…and I’m sort of disappointed. Almost all of the past creative thesis are collections of poems (no, that’s cool, that’s not what I’m disappointed about), but if it’s prose it’s almost all memoir (c’mon, really? Seventy pages of personal journal writing is a masters thesis?) or a couple of short stories. I like MSU, I do. But this is what they’re accepting as master’s work in creative writing? If you’re going to do short story collection (nothing wrong with that) it should be a personal anthology! At least eight and of varied genre. I saw maybe one complete novel in the collection and two partial novels (about seventy or eighty pages).

Well, if I can’t be in the University of Iowa’s Writing Program, then I’m at least going to set my own bar higher. I’m writing a complete novel, finished and polished, with an analysis anchored in critical theory, and a supplemental journal on the process of creation (I do hope to teach creative writing after all). So, last week my first draft reached 42,900 words (or about 120 pages). When I set out and created the novel’s general outline and background, I estimated it was going to be about 95,000 words long (about 275 mass market pages), and last week I felt I reached the mid-way point in the novel; it looks like I’m estimating my goal pretty well. Now this summer (and next fall) I need to finish the draft and start working on editing before ENG699 recommences Spring 09. That’s when I should be doing final edits and completing my critical analysis.

I’m considering posting my draft thus far for only friends to be able to access, and ask for feedback….

It’s really sad, and in a way is reflective of how my life has been going.

I used to be a voracious reader. I was introduced to the works of Poe, Bradbury, and Lovecraft around the 3rd grade. I was hooked on scifi and horror ever since.

In jr. and high school I read a novel just about every other day. As an undergrad, it slowed because I actually had school work and theatre to do, but I still constantly read for pleasure. Then, nearly as soon as I graduated and I entered the work-a-day world, that came to a sudden stop. I might have read maybe maybe two fiction novels a year. From no less than one a week to one a year is an astronomical change. And my life was kind of in auto-pilot.

I suppose it’s more complex than that, to be honest. I blame the Internet. It was about that time that we (the wife and I) got hooked on Internet chatting, Web browsing, Minesweeper (well, for her. For me it was the latest 1st-person shooter game). As I think about this now that I type (which is often the case–I rarely think about things before I spew the results) it wasn’t an entirely bad thing. The Internet chatting ended up leading toward socializing in real life with more people as well (something which also stopped after I graduated). And socializing is good! For my fiction, there’s a little bit to be had in some computer games, superficially.

Well, then came a couple of years ago. (Too bad I never edit my spewing. I don’t want to reread that last sentence, but I know it was atrocious!) Things started moving and shaking. I came to certain “spiritual” realities which “fit” with what and who I am like a tailored glove. Where before, for years, I was an existential wreck, constantly worrying about the Nature of God and sin and afterlife and trying to make sense of revealed “Truths” of religion with the revealed truths of all other religions–and eventually found what I believe is to be truth that makes complete and utter, perfect sense! And that realization (revelation? *eg*) made it feel like I had a bunch of jumbled pieces inside me that had been rattling around and grinding on each other for years, and then they all suddenly clicked snuggly in place. And I felt internally whole and alive and awake. (To borrow a phrase, but it works.)

Then I realized that I needed to get my education and career back on track. Got into grad school, and immediately, in that first semester, came upon some socio-political concepts that were troubling and weird and disturbing–much like the concepts which lead me to “religious understanding,” It took me a while to play with them and research them and start to understand them, but they eventually brought me to understanding certain socio-political “truths” that I’ve come to embrace as “right.” (The religious understandings took me about…seventeen years to come to where I am, and once the click happened, I knew it was right. These socio-political beliefs are more slippery. There’s a LOT more room for subjectivity and opinion–after all, religious “truths” are or they aren’t. Socio-political “truths” are human-created ideas and so can have all kinds of spectrum of right/wrong, works/fails, etc. I know I will always be a secular-humanist because there’s objective truth in it, but I may not always be an anarcho-socialist as I am now. And even what that means is subject to change.)

And then I also learned in the process what my career goals are right for me. It used to be amorphous and uncertain, based first on just continuing my undergrad studies (which granted, I was interested in! But I kind of fell into it based on what department was willing to give me the most funding). Then I went into grad school this last time with a plan closer to what I felt I wanted–which it was and I did. Literary studies. But then I learned that it was indeed possible to focus on scifi/fantasy (speculative fiction) as a subject, and I gained a HUGE interest in cultural studies that I had no idea that I had a passion for before.

My daughter is now at that wonderful age where she’s bright and creative and full of hope and joy, and not yet hating her parents and hanging out with “wrong” people and doing things to rebel. The wifey-poo and I doing well and unless I decide I have to get my doctorate in Canada (which is increasingly likely), we’ll only get better. So, things are good right now.

Which means I’m reading again! Actually, I have no idea how the two topics relate. That’s the problem with stream-of-consciousness writing. I’m reading more again because of grad school, I would say, except even last year I didn’t read as much for pleasure. Sure, I read non-fiction here and there, and a TON for class work, but I still didn’t read novels except for class. This year: so far in about six weeks, I’ve read:

Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe
Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War
Steven Brust’s My Own Kind of Freedom
halfway through Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End
started David Marusek’s Counting Heads
read some stories out of Rewired

I suppose I’m being a little disingenuous–I’m reading/have read most of the above partly for research on my work in posthumanism–but sort of. If I wanted to, I could skim them, find what I need, read others’ research on them. But I actually primarily read for pleasure, and I’ve missed doing so. I’m also reading again because I’m writing fiction again–something I haven’t done in quite some time. And to be able write colorfully and interestingly, one needs to be reading, especially various genre and styles. And already I can tell getting back into the world of playing with words is improving my own work.

Ah, speaking of Brust’s “Firefly” novel: Remember back in my post Thoughts on this year’s ICFA where I discuss my trepidation about fanfic and fiction written in a pre-existing world developed and made “living” by actors? Well, Brust’s My Own Kind of Freedom continues the method of pulling direct quotes and actions from the show/film to create archtype representations of the characters. Except in, I believe it was chapter 11. Brust suddenly has a burst (heh) of inspiration, and his characters came alive for most of a chapter, without the need of copy-and-pasted lines and actions. Captain Mal was Mal, his dialog fit the character created by Joss Whedon and Nathon Filion without being a copy of the character. It suddenly became like I was watching (reading) a lost episode as opposed to someone trying to create an episode out of bits and pieces. I got excited reading that chapter: “Yes! Here we go. Now we’re cookin’!”

Sadly, the inspiration left, and the rest of the novel lapsed back into auto-pilot. Interesting plot, but utterly 2-dimensional characters.

Which is sad, for me, because one of the reasons Brust is one of my all-time favorite authors is because of his characters. In the early Vlad Taltos books, I completely believed Vlad. When he left his love (or she left him…can’t remember now which), I literally cried. When in book six he switched from 1st-person narration to 3rd and focused on a different set of characters, I literally threw the book across the room because I was so involved with the characters he’d created in 1 through 5, getting rid of them felt the same as their dying. So, it kind of saddens me.

Well, this post was an explosion of pointless drivel. I’m sorry for you having read it. Please email me and I will see if I have some “few minutes out of my life” I can try to give back to you. No promises, however.

(And still, the weird problem remains with using “from” too many times. I swear, the blog refuses to post unless I change some of the “from”s to “frm”. It must be some kind of bug in the module that tries to detect SQL injections, is the best I can figure.)

Yesterday I posted some of my thoughts on the ICFA after having just returned from it. I left out a lot. I’ll try to go vaguely chronologically and hit highlights.

OK, Wednesday:
I hate flying. But the flight down was fine.
The car rental place had no VW Bugs and I so wanted one! *sigh-pout*
I got a little lost trying to find my hotel, decided to give that up and go right to the conference, and made it to the opening panel at exactly one minute before it began!
Don’t recall much about the opening panel…except Brian Aldiss read an interesting poem of his that seemed to exemplify the idea of “sublime” (the theme for this year’s conference.

Brian Aldiss is an interesting fellow. Long time, well awarded, knighted, writer primarily in science fiction. Wrote the short story that inspired the film A.I.. (I’m sorry, but I absolutely loved that movie! Speaking of Aldiss and the movie, there was a session that included a paper by Andrew M. Gordon, author of (among other books) Empire of Dreams: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of Steven Spielberg, in which he defended the ending of the movie. Thank the gods! I’m one of the only persons I know who loved the ending because I see it completely differently than most people, and Mr. Gordon defended it succinctly and effectively: Most people see the ending as a sappy, Spielberg ending, and creepy because of the apparent Oedipal evocation. But that mistaken apprehension of the ending is what makes the ending all the more tragic and sad! It’s a very, ironically, tragic ending in which a fake boy programmed for obsession has his “perfect day” with a fake mommy in a staged environment set up by fake lifeforms who worship the missing human race and believe they will come closer to knowing humanity through this simulacra. And Spielberg intentionally and skillfully crafted this treacherously misleading ending. God, just writing this makes me sad. Gordon of course went into these issues at great length with superb presentation, and I believed he took a room full of people who dismissed A.I. out of scoffing hand, and may have changed some minds, or at least got people thinking. Brava!)

(more after the “fold”…)
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