The Scribbling Novelist: New Projects... looming thesis reading

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

New Projects... looming thesis reading

I've written 98 pages to a new novel and I'm still going strong. Yay! It feel like AGES since I've written like this and I'm just enjoying every afternoon that I sit down and write. I feel about 95% back to normal. I still feel like my MFA degree may have killed 5% percent of my desire to write while making me a better writer in the process. I'm not sure how that works, that's just how I feel. I'll keep plugging away though--it would be amazing to have a draft of a new novel done by Christmas. Of course it would be an incredibly ROUGH draft, but still a draft. So, there's that.

For the past two nights I've been dreaming about school. The first night it was a semi-nightmare about being unprepared for my upcoming (and first ever) reading. I do not want to do this. I really don't. The dream gave me more anxiety about it all. Last night it was more about MFA student drama. It's like I've immersed myself in the rumors that have reached me in Maryland. Oh the drama. I wonder what tonight has in store for me. Hopefully no more dreams about my reading--maybe something will happen and they'll give me my diploma without that mandatory step. Such foolishness. I don't even know how to prepare for such things.

I have comments from two of my faculty members and so far things have been more positive than negative. I feel like they're being truly honest with me too, which I'm very happy about. My final comments should reach me by next week (hopefully) and then I'll have to take a brief hiatus from my new project. Or just split my days up so half is to old work and half is to new. Lord knows I'm not working at present and have all the time in the world, plus no money. It's a win-lose situation.

1 comment:

Allison said...: Thanks for your supportive comment! Looks like it's the time of the year for writing - and the enthusiasm it requires! I'm glad you learned a lot from your MFA, even if it killed 5% of your desire to write - I worried that mine would/already did kill more than that.; September 29, 2010 at 4:09 PM

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Writers aren't exactly people.... they're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. ~Ernest Hemingway

From "Byron" a BBC movie: Shelley to Byron:
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Real writers can't sleep because there are stories batting around inside their heads. Real writers create characters they weep over, because they are so real. Real writers can't NOT write. I think you can make a person a better writer technically by having him/her attend workshops and creative writing programs… but I think that at the basal level, writers are born, not made. ~ Jodi Picoult

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

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I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. ~Jack Smith

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One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~Goethe

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