Thesis Complete!

Let's see, after how many years? It's kind of an interesting story, so I'll tell it to you, even if I have before. I mean, some of it is interesting, and some might bore you, but I'll write it anyway for history's sake:

Having had wonderful experiences at Monticello apartments just off BYU campus, during my undergraduate years, I had some "meeting scenarios" in my head--some romantic, some more humorous and some even awkward, I guess, for many years--probably since I lived there. Some of these were scenarios that I hoped would work for me, to be "my story." Some were real, some imaginary and would make good stories. But obviously, none of the real ones ever amounted to anything, they just stuck in my head as beginnings only.

Well, driving home from work one fall evening in 2005, after my first summer at Hollins, I was thinking about what I could write about, knowing that I needed to start whetting my whistle to creative writing again, I had an internal conversation that went something like this: "No! I will not write a romance novel. I have not had any success in romance. I don't think I have enough experience to capture romance successfully." I think things like that were repeated to myself several times, for effect. But as I pulled up in front of my house, I finally told myself, "Maybe I'm having these thoughts because the Spirit is prompting me. I don't know, but fine, I'll try writing a romance novel." So I wrote a few pages. Then stopped.

Those few pages sat in my computer untouched after that night --until the following summer. In my first creative writing class at Hollins, the professor, Hillary Homzie, assigned us to bring 10 pages to class every week. Well, I was going to write picture books, so I brought a few attempts of that type. But it just wasn't flowing like I'd hoped. So on the third or fourth week, I think, of the 6 weeks, I was scouring my computer for ideas and things I could work on and happened upon those few pages. What the heck, I told myself, what can it hurt? I flushed those few out into 10 pages, thinking that would be that, and I'd try something else for the rest of the time.

Well, lo and behold, my peers and my professor actually liked it. I mean, it needed a lot of work. I'm not sure anything remains of those first few pages, actually--which I think I have written about before. But anyway, the concept was interesting to them--even though none of them were members of the Church and this was a story clearly about members in the height and depth of our own culture.

So I wrote ten more for the next week, and ten more for the following week. And before I knew it, I had motivated myself to keep writing during the normal year, away from Hollins, so that by the time I returned the following summer, I had over 100 pages of working text. I'm not remembering well all of the sequences of events, but it had some work in the motivation of my choosing to switch from the MA to the MFA, although I didn't know for sure that this would be my thesis. I wasn't sure it was "young" enough for children's literature, nor that I could successfully finish it.

Well, I had the same professor again for my creative writing seminar that summer, and this time, because it was a more advanced class, we had to write 20 pages per week. I was kind of set, with those 100 pages. Actually, of course, what I'd written required reworking, and although we didn't bring in rewrites through the term, the suggestions for changes based on class discussions did translate into changes into the following pages as well as the pages discussed. And for six weeks, I needed also the last 20 pages, which might have come in the middle. In short, I made progress.

At the same time, however, I had an idea for a much younger book, about a duck with some magic, and a little boy. It flowed out pretty well and I submitted it piece by piece for my other class that term. One of my fellow students was in both classes and she much preferred Dave the Duck. I liked it too. But I also knew it would be shorter, so I'd have to come up with additional stories to get it to thesis length. But it was definitely under the rubric of "children's" literature. So, I talked to Hillary about it, showing her that manuscript, and her opinion was very firm that my BYU story was the better fit for the thesis. Wow. So there you have it! I registered it with her as my advisor shortly after that.

Then continued working at it for the next several months and finally mailed a complete ms to her in the late winter/early spring of 08. She had it back to me with lots of revision suggestions just in time for me to work on it at Hollins last summer, then I mailed it back to her again by September, a deadline she'd given me, which was actually really good for me, to push me. She had a few more suggestions, but otherwise said she trusted me to make the changes and said it was good to go!

And that was the easy part. Well, not entirely. But to some extent. It was definitely not over though.

When I started at Hollins, students in their last term had to take a comprehensive exam, so you had to buy all of these books in case there might be questions involving them, covering the major critical approaches and significant books in the history of children's literature. So I had bought many of them, but then last year they got rid of the comps and replaced it with an essay. Those who had been in the program for a couple years, like myself, were given the option of still doing the comps. But having time to look over what I write and with it only being 10-15 pages, I thought it not a huge deal to write a paper comparing my book to others in the field.

Still, it was a little tricky, particularly since I was not all that familiar with other LDS works. I mean, I knew some, and I regretted knowing more than those that I liked. But it was a good opportunity for me to familiarize myself with the genre, so over the past year I bought a few books (I think I read up to 10? t's still not a huge genre--somewhere around there) and eventually pumped out a first draft and emailed it to my second reader by November 30.

I didn't get it back until February, which was a little disheartening, and discouraging, particularly since the comments weren't making a whole lot of sense to me. I discussed them a bit with the reader and eventually found that an entirely LDS approach would probably work better than what I had done, so almost completely re-wrote and submitted near the end of March.

Well, he liked this version much better, though he still had a few reservations, but he finally said if my director accepted it, he'd be fine. Well, Hillary said it was fine with her, so by mid-April, just a month before "graduation" I'm officially good to go! What a relief.