During my high school band geek phase--as opposed to my college band geek phase--I spent most of my sophmore year hanging around with 2 older section leaders. These paragons of leadership never, ever played the school fight song at football games. Never. Instead, they sang a little song they had made up to insult various band directors to the tune of the fight song:

Ed's retardo,
Fred's retardo,
Bud's retardo, too.
Every-body is retardo
--except Mr. Graham--
and so--are--you!

(Hint: The retardos probably weren't Ed, Fred, or Bud.)

I've had one of my stories floating around and around in my head recently, and last night I tried to translate the images in my brain into words on paper. Needless to say, I got one sentence down and quit in frustration. That's when the high school band song popped into my head, only with "Nee" in all the name spots. It was very frustrating, especially since I've had the writing itch for the last week, but nothing to show for it. (Not even a rash, ha ha.)

Otherwise, I have been working on editing for one of my profs. I need to finish up and get it sent out, because on Wednesday we are leaving for Stockholm! Woo! I doubt I'll get any writing done there, but it will be a nice change of pace.

When I turned in my terribly, horribly overdue paper, I wasn't actually sure that I would get it back in time to complete my registration for my master's exams. My professor's assistant had sent me a note that the professor in question would not be grading papers after the 28th of July. The 28th came and went with no message, so I figured it was not meant to be.

I haven't read for my exams as much as I would have liked to, but I have been filling up my spare time with some proofreading for one of my profs in the English department. His feedback has been wonderful--he likes me! he really likes me!--and it has been a relatively satisfying job. And to top it off, when I mentioned that I might not be taking my exams in the fall after all--he is one of my examiners--he said that he would be willing to do me a favor and talk to the other professor about my late paper (they're friends, you know).

But what do you know? Today I got an email from the first prof that she's graded my paper! I got a C--not a surprise. So now I feel like I really need to buckle down. Today I worked at my student job and cleaned the kitchen like a crazy cleaning person--did you know we have a drawer under our stove? I didn't--so I am not up to much studying, but tomorrow I won't have anything else to do but help Hannah bake cookies and wash some laundry. And read, of course.

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."
Henry Ford, 1863 - 1947

For the editorial minded, here is a funny video, "Font Conference":

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Exam prep (Sunday): read one chapter of a textbook on child language acquisition.

DONE!



I turned in my final paper on Friday, after writing seriously for 4 or 5 days. I ended up with a 19-page linguistics paper (23 pages with cover, contents page, and bibliography) in German. I call that quite an accomplishment.

I still have a master's thesis (80 pages), 4 oral exams (one half hour each), and 2 written exams (5 hours each) to finish before I am done with my degree, and I have a year in which to do them--or rather, 6 months for the thesis and 6 months for the exams. But I have learned from working on this paper--something I should have learned a long time ago--that to really learn something, I have to work on it a little every day. Otherwise you lose your forward momentum. So that is my goal, one I will try to keep tabs on here.

Right now I am still playing catch-up on household things, but I know I can't do everything at once, so I am trying to spread it out so I can read for my exams AND not live in filth AND not go crazy. I think I can do it.

Exam prep (Saturday): read one chapter of a textbook on child language acquisition.

Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over Windows versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
-Jack Lynch, English professor, author (b. 1967)

Query letter update...emailed 7/5...Rejection received 7/9.

It was a standard form rejection.

Oh, well.

I'll keep trying.

Query letter update...Mailed 21 days ago...Rejection received 7/7/08

It was a plain jane form rejection with a name stamp, but it was dated 6/30. That meant it was a fairly fast turn around in her office. The most delay was probably due to the holiday mail service.

Oh well.

I did email a query 7/5. I'll keep you posted.

My paper-writing has ground to a halt. First, I was in a frenzy of reading, making notes, making connections, and there was...something...I was just not quite connecting. It was on the tip of my brain, and I still can't seem to quite grasp it. Sort of like trying to see a floater* in your vision, but when you try to focus on it, it moves off to the side.

Then when I was going back over the article that is the impetus for my paper, it already seems to be including points I wanted to make myself. Shit--where did that come from? I have already read the article more than once!

Grumble, grumble, grumble...


* Yes, I have very bad eyes, and yes, I try to keep track of the floaters in case I suddenly get more of them. No one wants a detached retina.

Query letter update...Mailed 14 days ago...No response yet

In re-reading my goods, I can tell you there is a marked difference in the stuff at the front and the stuff at the back. I had hoped that all of the over compulsive editing I did in the first few chapters was only my own need to tweak it. Apparently, if the back is any indication, it must have pretty much sucked when I first started.

The end is going to take more work that I thought. Aside from the few plot pieces I knew I needed to add, it just doesn't read smoothly. It's almost like I missed writing down half of what was in my head. So it feels very stark, with little emotion or depth. I NEED DEPTH! And I need it quick, cause I've been on a roll writing lately and these damn characters are in my head constantly, and if I call out the hero's name in my sleep, well I think I'll be headed to divorce court.

There was a fascinating article in the NYTimes about the sworn virgins of Albania. Up until recently, women could vow never to have sex and presto-chango! They were men. This was only an option if the male head of the family died or was killed and there was no other male to take charge of the family. A female family member could make the switch, so to speak, and suddenly have the same status and respect as men. Nowadays, there is much more gender equality in Albania, and these family-heads are a dying breed.

I am often struck by how much weirder reality is than fiction.

A NYTimes article on the role of the copy-editor. True, the newspaper copy-editor may be on the way out, but that is not the only variety of copy-editor in the world, so my career aspiration hasn't already died out.

There's this Chinese girl in my department (in both my departments, actually--she's on the same degree program I am and started at the same time), and we occasionally go out for coffee, like once a semester. I saw her in the intro meeting on the first day, and I had her pegged for a bumbler right away. Every time I talk to her, she is really down about school, and she is always behind on her work--even worse than me! She is just now finishing a paper that was due 2 years ago!

Today we had coffee again, and I realized something--I don't want to be like her! It suddenly hit me that I was on the long slide toward turning into her, and I was horrified. I went and worked like a demon possessed on my paper after that, and my stuff is sitting on the table right now so I can work on it some more after I sign off here.

Nothing else has worked to get me motivated to work. It looks like snobbery and fear are my prime motivators.

I have been gone for a good reason. I have been working. On the book.

But I may be gone for a while longer because I may have gotten myself in a bind.

Okay, I have no problem admitting that I listen to the universe. In my world, it keeps me aware of things going on around me and makes me feel like I'm not so alone. Well, I haven't felt like doing a lot lately. To put it mildly, I have been depressed. Things have not been going well on a lot of fronts and I have lost all sense of someone watching over me. This is bad. Not even going to church has restored my feeling of being connected.

Well, it seems like rock bottom is where I needed to be to get serious about my book again. Nothing else has settled me the way writing has, so it's been the only thing I've been able to accomplish. Then, out of the blue, the universe decides to speak to me again. Was there any "I am sorry for not getting in touch lately?" Hell, no. Only a "Pssst, listen up. I've got something I need you to do." That something was to send in a query letter to a VERY big name agent. And that would be a good thing if the novel was complete and ready to send if she wants a full ms. It'll be my luck, or the universe's perverse joke, if she does actually ask for it (it could happen).

So needless to say, I have less than a week to pull together the pieces it's in now and at least get it done. I had just rationalized to myself (before reading your last post) that the most important part was to get all the plot structured in so I could complete a reasonable synopsis/outline (usually 2nd step if agent wants to see more). I think it's about the same thinking. It doesn't have to wow. I just need that big step done. Like yesterday. Then I wouldn't feel bad making the agent wait to tune it up.

We'll see. The universe has cleared the path for me and I have about a week to spend some serious time working on it. Rock bottom is not looking so bad.

Yesterday I sat down and worked on my paper for most of the day. For all that effort, I have a pretty pitiful amount done, but today I am going to power on as soon as I get home.

I was telling John about my paper, and he had a very astute observation to make: My paper doesn't have to be the best paper in the world, it just has to be good enough--and finished.

I think that is one of my major stumbling blocks; I feel like my school work has to completely wow my instructors, but scholarship isn't about making amazing discoveries with every single work. It is more about adding incrementally to the total of the scholarship that has gone before you. In my case, I am writing a paper for a class, so the point is more to show that I can synthesize information into a coherent whole, not so much that I have something new of my own to say.

I wonder how I can turn the above into a mantra for when I start to backslide?

J.K. Rowling's commencement speech at Harvard University

It's very touching and thought-provoking, what she has to say.

I once had an idea for a children’s book: an American child moves to Germany and learns her way around her new town and/or shows her visiting relatives around town. I was moderately pleased with the idea.

Then I saw in the library today that someone has done exactly that for the city of Stuttgart. It looks a bit like a visitor’s bureau guide for the 12-and-under set, complete with maps.

I had envisioned an artist’s rendition, maybe in watercolors, of some of the highlights of Heidelberg interspersed with pictures of the characters.

Just because someone else has done something similar to my original idea here doesn’t mean that there might not still be a market for it in America, but it is kind of disappointing on the one hand, that someone beat me to the punch, but exhilarating on the other, to know that the idea I had was a viable one.

My boss in the English Department is sort of on sabbatical this semester—she swapped places with a professor in New Mexico. Back in April, she was in town for a conference and arranged to have lunch with us lowly student employees. She told us a really outrageous story about the goings-on in her department-away-from-home (which I won’t go into here, but it was way out there). Then she wanted to hear about how we were all doing.

One of the other student employees, S, brought up the creative writing class she is taking. Apparently there is this core group of students who keep taking the class every semester and are very resistant to any suggestions for change. (Of course, the student who brought up the changes prefaced her statement with, “In America, we….” Dumb, dumb, dumb.) S is very disappointed in the class, because she was hoping that they would actually work on specific problems—say characterization, for instance—and would get and give honest feedback. But no, the old-timers want to churn out new stories every week and cash in on a warm fuzzy in class, not work on improving what they’ve already written.

And to add another layer of frustration with the class, there is a fellow student who only writes really icky porn. Badly written icky porn. She says she can tell that he is mostly trying to freak out his classmates. She is more freaked out by his lack of interpersonal skills and disregard for personal space.

What was really strange about her mentioning this guy was that I had just read some of his stuff not 30 minutes before our lunch. I was working in the English Department library, and I finished up with a little time to spare before lunch, so I was browsing the course materials on the hold shelf. Creative writing caught my eye, so I thought I’d see what was in that binder. There were a few stories in there, one a take on Snow White that I really liked and which induced me to keep reading. That’s when I found the ick-meister. As I told S and everyone at lunch, it seemed that he was trying to show off how many synonyms for “semen” he knew. At which my boss did a spit take and declared that she had missed me.

I read a fascinating article in the New York Times earlier in the month about willpower, “Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind,” in the context of changing spending habits in a worsening economy. Here are some excerpts:

“The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the long run, buying less now may improve our ability to achieve future goals.
…
“The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.
…
“Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another.”

This totally makes sense to me. I find that if I complete one task toward writing my paper—for example, reading an article—I can hardly bring myself to keep going and read a second article, or make notes, or work on my outline. After reading this, I realize that it is not really fair of me to kick myself for not powering through. On the other hand, I should be aware of this tendency to fag out and should take steps to train my willpower in this area.

"It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating." Gustave Flaubert