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.

Gratitude for digitization and search engines

When I first was hearing about Google's big scheme to digitize every book ever written, I was on the publisher's side--not in favor. Working in a job that required me to understand copyright laws to a certain extent, it seemed their goal was clearly in breach.

On the other side of the coin, though, I can't say that I would be entirely opposed to having every book available digitally. I don't think Google should take it upon themselves to do this without publishers' permission. Nor do I think they should have a monopoly. And this is not because I want to read whatever books I can for free, or have easy access to hack into them. I don't even want to read books digitally. I'd much rather read a book away from my computer.

However, there are great advantages to digital versions. For one, I've long wondered why there are never commercials on television for books. It seems such a shame, doesn't it? We get ads for all kinds of nonsense, but not for this. As I was contemplating this last night while watching a TV movie, it occurred to me that ads for movies include attention-grabbing snippets from the movie. This might be a little difficult to do with books. Sure, you could create mini visual scenes from the book, but the joy in the book for many people is the ability to imagine those things without having the media create the image for you. So it would seem more beneficial to advertise with readable snippets. How could this be done? Well, perhaps not so easily on television, but with a few digitized pages available on internet ads, it could be done.

Another reason I would love to have digitized books would be when it comes to writing a paper in which I have to quote books. I must say I would love to have searchable copies of all books available. The search engine is a fabulous invention.

Today, I am working on my thesis essay and have read a few of the books I'm using at least twice and flipped through trying to find the place where something happened on several occasions. I did this kind of thing quite a bit as an undergraduate, but not quite to the extent I have to now, I think--I mean for the same books, time after time. It does get kind of tiresome.

So today I am expressing my gratitude for Amazon because they have acquired rights to copy many books, including at least one that I have to use (found a second after the original post. Yea!). I searched Amazon for the book, then searched the book for some significant key words, and then opened my paper copy and read until I found what I needed. Ta da!

So, maybe now I'm a little torn about the Google thing. There are a number of books I'd like to quote from that aren't Amazon searchable. Could the publishers maybe possibly hurry up with digitizing everything?

The Real Valentine's Day

Just so you don't think I'm completely anti-Valentine's--the day itself wasn't too bad. We had a couple friends over and did some fondue-dipping, then watched some clips from a few romantic movies--Snow White's "Some Day My Prince Will Come" and the Sound of Music's "Sixteen." Plus a couple non-musical recent bits. Then after the friends left, we watched "Hitch" which actually did end in a wedding.

It was nice to have friends over. But I have to confess that it was interesting to watch the Sound of Music bit as well as Hitch in my critical frame of mind. (Not that I'm ever not in my critical frame of mind, but um, I guess now that it's out there.) Anyway, it was eye opening to see that in the Sixteen scene, the character was really being coy and didn't possibly believe the things she was sixteen. I think that's a very important part of the song, because otherwise the words are very subjugating of women--we all need someone at least a year older because he's wiser and can tell us what to do. It's also interesting to consider that song in context of the entire movie (which is one of my favorites!) because in the end, she was telling him what to do--leave the German army--and that is really what he should have done.

As for Hitch, well, that movie could have stood a few cuts--like the opening bit where you know Hitch has successfully hooked two people up because they wind up in bed, and then the little F bomb, and finally the date on Sunday morning, rather than Saturday morning. But otherwise, I was glad neither of the man couples had any insinuations, their conversations were about normal things--like siblings and family, and it ended in a wedding, allbeit for the secondary couple rather than the primary. But it's positive nonetheless.

It's ironic, I suppose, that I'm pro wedding ending since my novel doesn't end in a wedding. Just a first kiss, but I do have my reasons for that. But I'll just let you read it and surmise your own opinions about it. Who knows, I might even be wrong.

Wink, wink

So it’s the last day of summer, officially. Did I get my goals done? Nope. Well, I mean not the critical draft I’d hoped to get done. The writing is no further along than when I last wrote about it, but at least I did make progress on it this summer. However, I have continued reading. The books took a little longer to arrive than I'd expected, though still on time. But I have them all now and have started reading all three of them.

One of them I’d thought wasn’t worth it after a few pages, partly because there were about 10 winks per page and obnoxious dialog tags on a few pages, and the description of the campus and the new roommates meeting each other took over the plot, leaving no room for movement to the conflict—other than to repeat a few more times what continues to be repeated, and was already iterated from the beginning a few times, that the main female character had her heart broken and wants nothing to do with men. Kind of cliché in the first place.

But something told me to keep going, so I did, and I’ve actually found she’s done some things really well, with some reminders to me on things in my own story that I could stand to pump up a bit, like a physical description of the bishop and his counselors. Woops.

I also still don’t have much of a physical description of Dinah, my main female character. But this didn't require reminding. I knew that. I'm just not really sure what she looks like. But more than that, I’m not highly convinced that it’s significant. Somewhat, I suppose, but not the specifics. And maybe even her not being described has the significance I want. That is, I don’t want her to be incredibly beautiful, contributing to the myth that you have to be pretty to get a good guy. In fact, I actually did indicate, by comparison to the Melanie character, that she’s not overwhelmingly beautiful. But on the other hand, for the number of guys who consider her toward the end, reality dictates that she can’t really be a dog either. Is there anything wrong with letting the reader’s imagination take over completely there? Everyone has different ideas about what beautiful is, anyway. And frankly, with these romances that I’m reading, okay particularly this one I'm writing about now, the author describes the main female character's looks quite a bit--and quite a bit too often. It kind of makes me gag every time I hear about her beautiful hair cascading over her shoulders, and sunlight catching a sparkle in it. Maybe I’m not cut out for this romance crap, writing genre.

But I was talking about the good things the author’s done. She does have plenty of good descriptions of the surrounding area that 1. don’t mask the plot, and 2. keep her from having talking heads. Those are good things. And she does get over, to a certain degree, the need to reiterate the main female character’s worry about more heartaches. After the bombardment of winks, the plot does moves forward, too, with the characters getting to know each other and thereby revealing other significant aspects of their personalities to the reading audience. They do keep winking at each other, which gets really annoying, but otherwise she uses good verbs and good language. I don’t recall too many metaphors, or images like that, but the story moves along okay anyway.

So in the end, I might even say I'd recommend it to some young LDS people. I still need to finish it to be sure. As I've kind of indicated, I still have some issues with it, and even some I haven't mentioned. So, yes, I am all the more convinced that the LDS-romance-genre publishers could use some improvement in the editing department. However, I should also end saying I've got some issues with my own writing as well. It's not easy to write a novel, especially without the help of editors who know that people don't really wink at each other that much. Wink, wink.

Due Date, Progress Report

Though the weather is cooling and school is in session, technically, summer still has just less than two weeks left. However, I gave myself a slightly earlier deadline for my summer goals, didn't I? Actually, looking at it now, I realize I was off a little. I'd been thinking it was today, but it was two days ago! Aaah! I'm further behind than I realized.

1. Finish creative draft of thesis (I'm giving myself til Sept 7)
--I'm close. Really. As we speak I'm on p. 172 of 251 in the final editing revision before I hand it back to my advisor.

2. Have a draft of my critical part
--I have 9 pages written and I've read most of the books I'm going to incorporate. I've ordered a couple more that I'm curious about, but they may or may not get included. I also have some quotes found. It's progress. Maybe a real sketchy draft by the end of the actual summer.

3. Exercise 2x a week
--I might have missed a couple weeks, only exercise once, but I did go out at least once a week all summer. And since I've been working again, I've gone out at least four times a week. So that should make up for those other weeks, right? :}

4. Attend the temple each month
--Missed July by a hair. I planned to go the day I drove back from Roanoke, but I got a later start than I'd planned. Then I was going to go the following Tuesday, but they closed for the cleaning! Argh.

5. Get a job
--At least I didn't say "full-time direct-hire" because I don't have that. But I have a temp job, and am still applying for the other.

Evening Job

I quit the evening job. It was too much. And it's been amazing to see what a little more sleep can do.
I suppose I still feel like I have two jobs, though. Writing takes up so much of my time. But I finished round 3 since receiving my thesis advisor's comments, which would actually be round 6 total, I guess. But I felt pretty good about this one, will probably run through it one more time before giving it back, but I'm back thinking what am I going to do when it's done now? It's like sending a child off to school.
Well, I suppose it's an easy enough fix--just write another book, right?

Summer Goals Revision

So alas, reality sets in. I thought I'd be working on my Sleeping Beauty novel this summer and surely could get 100 pages out of it. If this tutorial had been like last summer's, I might have. But since Han only requires 8-10 new pages a week, as compared to Hillary's 20, and well, since I'm discovering I really need to know a lot more about Medieval life to take off with that one, it's not going to happen.

But it's seriously all for the better because I'm feeling a little liberated to work on my thesis, which I need to be doing anyway. It's almost the end of June and I'm still just editing into page 25. Only 225 more to go in the next two months. Not so bad, eh? :) Actually, hopefully it won't be that bad. I'll be cutting a lot toward the end, I think. But if the end goes anything like the beginning, I might be adding a lot too. I wish I knew how to show all these facial expressions more than just smiles. You'd see my teeth in a straight line here.

And well, the exercise thing too. Oh, I'm looking again and see I didn't end up including it. Well I should have. I had planned to write 3x a week. But that is revised. Seriously I need to get off my butt, but the weather is not so friendly as I'd hoped.

1. Finish creative draft of thesis (I'm giving myself til Sept 7)
2. Have a draft of my critical part
3. Exercise 2x a week (Reminder to self--go the mall. it's not that far!)
4. Attend the temple each month
5. Get a job

Can I do it? I have a few others I should put up, but I won't embarrass myself. Just in my head.

Dr. Seuss

As I continued reading Inkheart last week, I was thinking about writing a post about reading begetting writing, because I really did feel a little more inspired along the lines of the kind of writing I wanted to do as I read that. I made some progress in my thesis even, which isn't fantasy, but definitely lighter-hearted. I think a lot of it was feeling the contrast between reading The Woman in White compared to Inkheart. The mystery and heavy writing and adult writing of that book were not really conducive to my kind of writing, and I could feel it, a bit of a lag.

But why did you name this Dr. Seuss you're asking? Well, if you're following my booklist, which you're probably not, especially since the alphabetical format doesn't make it as easy to follow as a chronological one might--anyway, if you happen to be following it, then you'd noticed that I've added quite a few of Dr. Seuss's books today. (It's okay, you can look now.) And so, I'm discovering just in my thinking that reading does indeed beget writing because it begets thinking. How can anyone read 15 Dr. Seuss books in a day or two day period and not be forcing themselves to find rhymes for every thought that pops into their head? Now I haven't sat down to write a poem or a rhyming picture book today. I suppose I might later, but I imagine it might flow a little easier. Instead I've been working on other things for classes which are more prosy, and indeed, I've struggled a bit. But it is an interesting phenomenon to note.

So since I started with an example of different proses rather than immediately with Dr. Seuss you're not as tempted to argue that it's an isolated case that rhyming would naturally beget rhyming, but other styles, well, how can you prove that? I don't know that you can prove it, but don't you find yourself thinking more like people that you spend a lot of time with? How else could be a cliche statement to say that friends are finishing each other's sentences. It happens. And so if your mind is in books, you'll start to think like the books. It only makes sense. (Another reason to consider earlier posts about influences on children. But here, I'm just taking the case for style. I think I might have talked influences into the ground for the time being--well, actually I came up with a pretty cool metaphor yesterday, maybe I'll share that, but next post.)

When I was more interested in writing picture books, I found that if I ran to the library and read a bunch and checked out some more to read through the week, that my mind did ruminate along the lines of picture books. I had that style of plot going on in my head and that age of characters and their sillinesses and problems at the forefront. To contrast that, during one of the summers here at Hollins when I thought I wanted to work on picture books (the class was a free frall, for what you wanted to work on and there were a few who dabbled with picture books and poetry), but by in large, people were working on novels and since we were reading each other's work, my mind got to running in the circles of older characters' troubles and sillinesses and eventually I got more involved in a longer novel which is now my thesis. So, it can have positive effects in both directions. In fact, I would have to say I'd recommend the seeking of multiple styles of influences as you go about begetting writing things. I think it can help you find your strengths and your weaknesses and see where you like your mind to be.

So maybe I haven't said much, but it's kind of interesting to think about.

What is a Story?

I've been wondering this probably since the first time either it was suggested or I decided to cut a scene from something I was writing, which was actually only fairly recently (within the last two or three years) that I wrote something longer than 20 pages, making such an option, and it's kind of puzzling.

Okay so technically I wrote a 50-page thing in 2001, but I didn't do much cutting there and eventually trashed the whole thing, so we won't go there.

But seriously, although I knew authors did lots of cutting and re-writing, even in my own limited experience with poems, picture books and short stories, the concept of severe alterations was kind of new. So I'm wondering, when scenes are altered so much that they're really not the same scene at all any more, how is it that the story is still the same? I'm not arguing that such alterations change the heart of the story. In fact, quite the contrary, I think they still are, but how is it possible? What is at the heart of a story that makes such alterations acceptable?

So I'll look at the first and simplest example that comes to mind. For my thesis novel, the first very first scene that I ever wrote involved a BYU woman student (I hate the word "co-ed," so don't try to edit me here), in her apartment kitchen beginning to make some cookies for a guy she had a crush on. She remembered that he would be coming home from campus about then, so rushed to the window to watch him come down the campus stairs and into the apartment complex, and shortly thereafter, watched as he began a conversation with another woman, ward member. She got to feeling jealous and insecure and then pre-occupied in her thoughts as she started doing homework while the cookies baked and so as not to look like she's watching them out her window and the cookies burn.

That scene is no longer in my story. But it still fits the heart of the story, the story really did grow out of that. She still bakes him cookies, but she does so in an apartment other than her own. She doesn't remember he'll be coming home, but she does run into him, her arms full of baking ingredients which he helps to carry, on her way to the other apartment. These cookies don't burn. But, she had also tried making cookies earlier, and they burned. But he was not a distraction in that event, only studying. Additionally, although the woman she was jealous of is not currently involved in either of these two scenes directly, she does play the same role in the story, being an enviable distraction to the man our main character is in interested in.

Similar elements, same story, but pretty different too. What's at the heart of it? What are the similarities? The characters are the same. Actually our main character has undergone a name change, to add another twist. But she's still the same character, a little low in self-confidence, not a great cook, and having to bake cookies that she doesn't want to make. The guy is still the ward icon of perfection, although he is not at all perfect. And the enviable character is still that, a flirt and good at it. But these are fairly common characters. In the sequel, which would not be the same book, these characters would still be there. So what else is the same? The setting--the apartment complex where the cookies are made, the ward and the feeling of the ward in that time, though not directly described in these scenes, play a big role in her reason for making the cookies. The proximity to campus, the feeling about baking cookies in the setting, what it indicates about a woman who does and one who doesn't like to bake them, and what it means to bake them for a certain guy. In short, the premise. Right?

In the sequel, although cookie baking may play a role, there would be certain differences simply because the character has already been through that introduction to the world that revolves around how she feels about baking cookies and specifically for a guy and the particular guy that she's baking them for.

Although I hadn't really intended to do this, it does kind of bring up the question about copyrights, doesn't it? If someone else wrote a story that included the scene I first described, my first scene that isn't in the book, would they be infringing on my story? Would their overall story likely be the same as mine or might it be different? Technically they would be infringing if they had seen my draft that included that scene, because although it wasn't published, it was in a fixed medium, and therefore copyrighted according to current laws. But, aside from that, if it were just an idea that I'd described and not written, being just an idea, it wouldn't be copyrighted.

So the question then is, supposing they legally took that first scene, how likely is that they would actually be writing a different story all together if that were the first or early scene in their book? Or, can the premise of a story be the same in multiple books and they each be unique? I guess I'm still wondering. What do you think?

Next Phase of Thesis!

It couldn't have been more than an hour or two tops after I posted my frustration with 2nd Novel that I received an email from my thesis advisor saying she'd finished reading and was ready with her revision suggestions! She said she'd mail me the marked up copy but in the meantime I got an email with her global comments and you betchure booties I was on top of that. I was really starting to miss my characters, and now I get them back for a little while. And her suggestions are great, of course. It's interesting how much more exciting I am to work on my writing now than I was not too long ago. Hmm.

2nd Novel

Although I would never ever in a million thousand years suggest it, I'm coming to learn that the true test of your learning in an MFA program doesn't come in the completion of your thesis, but in the completion of the second book after your thesis. I think it's absolutely wonderful to get so much help with workshops and lessons and everything on the thesis, and I'm so glad I've had the help I have on it. And actually, I'm glad too that I'll have the continued opportunity to workshop another potential novel. But as I've finished the first novel, and I await comments from my thesis advisor, I'm trying to write another and finding myself pretty stuck. I have a few ideas, actually, so it's not for a want of ideas, as I've struggled with over the years, it's getting them going. I hear Keisha's lesson from last year on ignoring the internal editor, which I argued about with her --well not really, I was just trying to get it--But now I get it! And yet, I can't get it.
Press on, I guess, right? I'm so looking forward to one more summer at Hollins!

Done or not done

Friday night I felt exhilirated as I finished editing the last section of my thesis for the second time. I knew it wasn't done even at that moment, but it was a nice feeling. The next day I looked through my notebook from school last summer wherein I had jotted down some notes from my peers' comments and remembered some things that needed attention. Later that day I went to a party and was complaining about something I didn't like in a book and remembered something else I needed to do. It was a little discouraging, I have to admit.

I mean, of course I knew there would be more work than just fixing up weak language. But I was actually just looking in the notebook for a list of words to be avoided or minimized--like smile and happy and nod--two nods per novel! That's the rule!--and sigh. Sigh! Isn't it a shame that such good words need to be avoided? But of course, it's only so they can be replaced with better words--like, well, I can't think of any right now. But I know they're out there anyway--okay like exhuberant. like mouth spreading as wide as the whole orange. like bent his head down then looked up sexily through crooked bangs. like exhilirated!

So I guess that's the attitude I need to adopt. Imagine how energized and elated I'll be when all of those other plot and character situations are touched up! It's good to change good things for better, right?