There's Still Time to Get Your Festivus Poles

Oh, Yes. I Do Love Me Some Surprise Holiday Gifts

Thanks to lovely relatives (you know who you are), I've been digging into some good Magnetic Fields tune-age. Ahhhhhhh. . . .

Done, and Done.

Residency number two has come to an end. Once again, I failed to find the kool-aid that everyone else was drinking. ("It's been life changing, this whole experience!! I love each and every one of you in this room. Yes, even you. The person in the back whose hair I mocked behind your back to my friends in the lounge.")

It was less inspiring for me this time than last, because the faculty punted on the literary analysis lectures in favor of panels on craft. Which is fine, it's just that I'm more jazzed to dissect what Faulkner does than to muse philosophically over "how much of myself" is going into my work.

My new mentor appears to be very smart, engaged, and helpful in terms of feedback. And she's already read some of my stuff, so she's had a preview of where I'm coming from and what I'm trying to do.

Alas, this term I have to cover all sorts of bases (come up with a field study, write a critical paper, do an intensive two-week online conference), so I'm going to have to hit the ground running. The sooner I knock this other crap out, the sooner I can concentrate on the writing.

I'm musing on whether I want to write a novel, though, for my final project. Everyone seems to leap into that direction because, of course, it's marketable. I'm not burning to do that, just yet. We shall see, though. Next term, I want to work with one of the ass-kicking mentors, who's pushed along folks from "Eh, don't care about novels" to "Um, okay, I'll get your a draft of my 300-page novel by that date."

We crank along toward MFA-ness.

Mad Cramming

School starts the day after tomorrow, and I am trying to wrap up (1) paid work and deadlines (hah! which allegedly runs out at the end of this month, although no one has actually discussed this with me); (2) coursepack readings; (3) workshop piece comments; and (4) any other life-related do-dads that will go out the window for the next ten days.

The nice part is that, for this stint, I'm local and have my own car.

This is Awesome

The Penmonkey's Paean:

This book is not the boss of my shit.

These characters dance when I tell them to dance. They leap, cackle, fuck and punch because I jolly well told them to and if they don’t do as I say I will have them nibbled to death by marmots.

This plot is knotted tight in the configuration I demand. With it I shall tie a noose, and with that noose I shall hang my fears and uncertainties by the neck until they void their bowels and their legs quit kickin’.

These words march in the order I choose. They are my little bitches, cobbled together of letters and made to carry heavy notions and lofty ideas and character motivations and bad-ass non-stop mad ninja action. In this way they are like ants, carrying more than they should rightfully be able to carry.

The whole thing is awesome.

This Is the Stuff We Live For

I see on weather.com that about 4 inches of snow are about to fall in Bungalow-ville . . . and I do not have to shovel it. It's a liberating feeling, even if I am chilly right now (imagine fall, before you turn on your heater; no, I'm not looking for your sympathy). And also, it's super-duper foggy out right now.

A Theory on Social Networking

People are trying to collect complete sets ("Marge! I found the last woman I used to work with at Dunder Mifflin Inc.!"). How else to explain the sheer volume of friend requests from random people I went to high school with, who were not friends and who, indeed, in some cases never even spoke to me? Does the fact that we rode a school bus together in the seventh grade really warrant continued updates into your child's hockey team/husband's beer making/baby's potty training progress or my snack-food preferences/celebrity hate watch/cat's barf status? I think not.

I'd ditch the whole thing, but for the ten people I genuinely know and like, who post pithy things, using the word "yule" as an adjective. Some people really excel in the medium.

One of Those Mysteries of Human Constitution?

Here in the House of Random Illness, all occupants--human and feline alike--have cycled through being sick the past couple of weeks. The cat and I, unfortunately, are on illness #2: The Cold That Kicked Our Asses.

Strangely, although I'm coughing, congested, and scratchy throated (sounds like a species of warbler, doesn't it?), I actually feel energetic and otherwise fine. Whereas yesterday, I could barely get up off the couch, today I'm running errands! Sweeping floors! Baking bread! Washing dishes! Logging major hours for work! Revising a piece to move toward submission! It's like a switch somewhere got turned on.

Of course, I expect that tomorrow I delve into the next stage of the cold and toss all my good energy out the window.

Finally, Seeing the Work of Peers

I've finally shipped off my last packet of writing to my mentor! And in the mix this month is a reading conference centered around our own work: I and the other handful of people assigned to my current mentor are submitting pieces and reading and responding to them.

I was curious, since the only time I've read others' work so far in this program was during the last residency. And that wasn't exactly a warm-and-fuzzy experience. I submitted a story that I'd been working on for a while, had received feedback from two of my teachers, and basically thought was in decent shape, even if the structure was unorthodox. Alas, my workshop group was a pile-on, with everyone weighing in on its many shortcomings and the ways that I could go back to the drawing board. One helpful soul opined that it was "melodrama" and had an unlikable, immature narrator. One guy who did start off with some positive comments and got drowned out by the group came up to me later to say that he didn't know what that was all about, and that he liked it.

If the works of the group had been brilliant and envy-inducing, I would have felt terrible and completely out of my depth. But they were just . . . okay. Problems with point of view, character, scene, and the standard laundry list you get with writing students at my old school or anywhere else. So the whole experience just baffled me and underscored that I was definitely not on the same reservation as these folks.

I definitely don't need universal praise, of course, though the opposite--the back-to-drawing-board-for-you and personal attacks--is unhelpful as well. I've always been of the viewpoint that most everyone has an interesting story to tell, and if they do that authentically, without trying to make it be something else, they generally get in the ballpark, even if technique needs some fine-tuning, from a reader perspective. As a reader, your job is to give that reader perspective, not tell someone how to write their own story. And you do it gently and constructively, because it's not a personal affront that someone else chose first person when the OBVIOUS solution, to you, is third.

So, we did the reader swap of our works in my tiny little online group. And I read all of their works! Which ranged from very nice (if done in a way I would have done differently) to okay but in need of some writing 101 skills to please-tell-me-this-is-a-satire-and-not-a-laundry-list-of-every-action-cliche-ever-seen. Not that I'm all that and a bag of chips. Hell no. I just expected another level among MFA students, the kind of writing that scared me away from my first class back in 2007. (Yeah, I'm a wee bit further along than I was then, but those people were objectively "Oh, I give up!" talented.)

And they have had pretty universally negative things to say about my piece. Not mean things, but more confused and tepid. (One woman actually apologized for being too critical.) The only thing I took serious umbrage at was the guy who couldn't bother to look up the literary term on teh Google to understand what I was even trying to do. In contrast, the works that are obviously in need of a lot of work are receiving effusive, almost ridiculous praise.

Again, I'm mostly scratching my head. It's an early draft that I meant to do more wholesale tweaking on after getting my mentor's perspective (she liked it as it wasn't and didn't have large edits to suggest). I get that tastes vary, and if you don't understand what someone is doing, it makes it hard to understand the piece.

But, still. Do I theorize over peoples' personal vendettas? Or do I say, as the dude did who came up to me after the first workshop experience: "When people are reacting that strongly, you must be doing something right."

And here I thought I was doing fun stuff for the masses.

Do You Think I Can Arrange Someone Singing My Writerly Praises Every Day? It's Such a Boost to Efficiency.

If you are interested at all in how my MFA program is progressing, let me give you an update. Unbelievably, I am nearly through the first semester of the program, with one more packet of writing to send to my current menor. The way it works is that once a month, I send off 20 pages or so to my assigned mentor, along with a book-report-type writeup of something I've chosen to read. (The writeup is supposed to analyze the craft tools that I'm trying to extract from my chosen reading.)

Our mentor then reads our submissions and writes up detailed responses, depending on what where we are with the piece and what type of feedback we tell her we want. If, for example, something is far along, she might look at it more for language than structure. If it's a first draft of a story, she might give ideas on how the ending does or doesn't work, or how the characters' motivations aren't really laid out.

It's been a strange setup, because one can (I'm not saying I do this, mind you) procrastinate all month until the days before the due date. In a regularly meet-once-or-twice-a-week class, one needs to crank out a certain number of pages a week, so there's not a lot of room for procrastination. Here, however, I find myself noodling around on three of four things I may or may not submit; then, hours before deadline, I realize I need to focus on one thing. So I crank until I have the one thing to turn in. It's mostly been new stories, which is great, because that's sort of the whole purpose of the effort here. But on the flip side, it also means that you begin lots of things and don't really get around to completing anything. Particularly if you're me and find the hard part to be powering through revisions, long after you've lost your love of the people and the story.

As much as I feel like I've been turning in first drafts that I've barely cleaned up for typos, I've been gratified by my mentor's responses to them. She gets what I'm doing with them, points out components that give me pause, and makes suggestions that simplify things that I've made too convoluted by overthinking. Excellent, and it makes me think that I'm pursuing a good path for myself and developing my own voice.

But I don't want to get too smug about my Absolute Genius when she tells me my things are more developed than I led her to believe by my "first draft" hand waving. (Oh my god!!! I'm a natural!! I'm like Mozart! First draft and done!!!)

I Am Given Leave To Officially Blog Athletic Accomplishments

You may have heard that la vida Laura is beachside these days. Awesome! And the beach contains a very lovely combo bike/pedestrian path that goes for miles and miles. If you're living somewhere that's mild all year round (and where no one ever bloody walks), this is an amazingly good thing.

I'm loving it. I've spent nearly every afternoon out there, actually jogging. In fact, I'm out there so much, it's doing really unpleasant things to my knees (no worries, I'm dialing back the intensity a little bit). Can't wait to get my bike.

Last weekend, we both got new shoes, which have made all the difference for my knees. And B showed me up this morning by heading to the path while I was still in my jammies and watching Castaway. We have shoes. We have a plan to step things up. I'm even considering (just considering, mind you) trying the swimming thing again. Flunking beginning swimming is not a propitious start to swimming as an enjoyable hobby. But then, I used to hate jogging too.

Signs Your Fake Job Is Stressing You Out

You dream that you are trying to get to the office, via CTA, and you're in line at the farecard machine behind John Cusack. But you don't care so much that John Cusack is in front of you, because you're too busy discussing your non-job ("You do realize I'm not actually getting paid, right?") with your faux boss ("Yes, yes, that's terrible. Now about this thing you have to do by 2 p.m. . . "), who is also in line with you at the machine.

I believe there is a forest-for-the-trees lesson in here somewhere.

More of a Roller Coaster Than I Thought

Yes, I'm hanging in, settling down, and trying to get into some kind of routine. After spending years and years taking care of myself and having a plan, I'm having a bit of difficulty rolling with things, but instead, am ping-ponging between various worries. Will I have money coming in for a couple more months, will I get paid for any of the super-human efforts I've put into working so far? It remains to be seen, and I'm starting to think I may have set myself up in a bad position, since bureaucracies can foot drag better than anything else. Whereas that scenario worked in my favor when it seemed like the status quo of full employment was in effect, the flip side of having nothing but the expectation that I work and I will get paid . . . somehow, "we'll work out the details, don't worry about it" does not.

What am I writing, how am I writing, where am I writing? What's the schedule that someone can get into who sits at home all day? I miss the calm feeling that I got when I stood in my kitchen: "Oh, hello yoga space! Your rock. Never change. Writing desk, with my little organizers I tidied up before sitting down to crank something out. I love ya!" I've never really thought about how tied my physical space is to my head space, particularly when those spaces are delineated for functions that require specific frames of mind: yoga, writing, to a less degree, cooking. (I'm sure it isn't the same for everyone, but for me, cooking is an emotional experience, delivering satisfaction, challenge, and sometimes comfort. Some people build a shelf, I try a new recipe or experiment with eggplant preparation). My old office space could have been any which way: ancient tea cups, trash not taken out, crumbs on the chair, piles of paper collecting dust on every surface. I never hung a picture, I had boxes that weren't unpacked for 8 years. And it just didn't matter to me because I just didn't derive any emotional investment from the space--it was just a place for me to knock out tasks that didn't matter and to wait for the clock to strike five. My home space, on the other hand, has always been more about me, driving and reflecting what's going on in my head.

All of this lack of control and worry is causing me to fluctuate between OCD girl--who will control every last element of controllable anything in my immediate environment--and "oh, I give up" chick, who would rather crawl under the covers all day, worry about writing and money tomorrow, and not wash dishes for three days.

But the whole purpose of this endeavor was to give myself a chance to explore this avenue and see where it leads me. Not many people get the chance, and it seems silly to squander it by being distracted and not actually writing. I expressly knew that I was taking a leap of faith, with someone who believes in what I'm doing getting my back (with reciprocation to come in future).

So I'm trying. It's hard, though. I'm finding it helps to exercise in the afternoons. I can exert myself for thirty minutes or so, running, walking, whatever, and not think about anything except how my body feels. Then, on the slow walk back, I can just feel the breeze and contemplate how gorgeous the ocean looks.

Living Beach-Side. Who Knew?

It's so bizarre to be done, to have gone through all the appropriate hurdles to light here in the land of sun, light breezes, low humidity, and no snow. I felt for sure that the transition phase would last forever, that I'd never get through to the end of the purging and the awful real estate contortions.

In retrospect, the awful real estate contortions were not so awful, and I was very very lucky to be able to sell at all, let alone sell for what I paid for it. Okay, slightly less. And I'm now untethered! Able to watch zillow with dispassionate interest! I'll miss the space and the hardwood and the character. And I will mourn my kitchen for years to come.

But we are here! Settling into a routine, of sorts. The cat has adapted marvelously and has spent precisely zero time hiding in fear. Instead, she's kept up a steady food lobbying effort and has availed herself of the napping opportunities the new place affords her. Who doesn't want to nap in the sunbeam while a cool breeze comes in the patio door, I ask?

And I'm finding it a strange adjustment to no longer be an urban commuter. I've worked out a transitional telecommuting relationship with my employer until they figure out what they want to do with the position I've left. It would be nice to just keep on in this capacity, but I will enjoy it all while I have it and set up the contingency plans for when I don't. But I see where one might tend away from wearing pants in these types of working situations. And the fact that I'm not living alone anymore is the one thread of civilization keeping up the shower frequency.

Now I just have to hammer out my writing and exercise routines. I've been so far out of both for so long, I feel like all I want to do is wontonly web surf and nap on the couch.

The Key Is Not to Obsessively Watch Zillow

Getting whiplash here, but we've cleared the most-recent hurdle by me sucking up the bulk of the difference. I loooooove being a seller in a buyer's market. When it's all over and the dust settles, I'll be pleased to walk away with anything. (And I'm not celebrating until we leave the closing.)

So, planning forward on how to unload nearly everything I own and get the ten things I want to take out to California. We're still hashing. I'm contemplating sorting and hauling out to the trash, but I'm so wiped from heroic lawn mowing that I may start tomorrow morning instead, before things get too stifling. I'm also making lists upon lists upon lists of people to call, things to do, things to cancel (useless weed-control service? check.), items to stockpile in advance on the other side (hint: elderly high-maintenance kitties need a lot of shit).

Meanwhile, C has had her intro to the carrier of terror, which will haul her along Southwest's friendly skies. She was pretty cool about it, mostly because all we did was sit on the porch and gape at the neighbors.

Spoke Too Soon

The appraisal came in $9K below the agreed-upon price. So we shall see if the deal can be salvaged.

I so wish I didn't have real estate in this market.

I Am a Master Negotiator

Crisis averted on the real estate front. I cagily countered their $4,000 demand with a $200 credit. They accepted it, and we are now moving forward on all fronts. Woohoo! Feel free to set up your visits to come help me throw shit away. There's lots of good stuff to be had, I assure you.

But I will say, as excited as I am to be moving on, I am so going to miss this house. I hadn't realized how much work I put into making it juuuuust so. My little writing corner (the realtor gushed over that), my cooking space, my feng shui-ful bedroom are all very happy making for me.

Possibly Too Good to Be True

Contract on the house may be falling through, with the buyers asking for an additional $4000 in a credit, on top of almost $5K in closing costs.

I really wish I'd never bought real estate.

Who Do You Write Like?

If you're me:

I write like
P. G. Wodehouse

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Never read him, but! But! "Acknowledged as a master of English prose"!

Or, with a different story:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

PTSD

I find it really traumatic that I'm doing these goddamned city inspections on my house, again. Paint my house? Didn't I just do this? Why???? Why do I get to deal with the headache both buying and selling?? Isn't it enough that I scraped up the hideous linoleum in the kitchen???

The Countdown Begins in Earnest

I've started my MFA program! Soon after I finish typing my inane musings here, I'm going to do some homework and shit. Can you believe that? Homework??

The residency was an interesting experience. I can't say it was "fun," exactly, but it was thought provoking. I'd like to connect more with the people in the program, but at this point, we're still in our own orbits (except the people who are getting everybody's facebook pages). The seminar sessions were very broad, topic-wise, and worthwhile from a craft perspective. It seems like the perfect follow up to my class experiences thus far.

And just before I left for my residency, I acquired a real estate agent, who suggested that we start showing the house while I was out of town. Ergo, I kicked it into gear and spent a day staging and cleaning my house like nobody's business. All the things I meant to do--carrying out furniture and so forth--went by the wayside. But the end results were pretty spectacular, even if I had to stuff some things in my basement, in a tidy fashion.

Three showings later (well, four, if you count a consolidated tour of two parties), I have a contract on the house. The price is a sad reminder of what I could have gotten, had I sold before the crash. But considering the carnage of the housing market around me--short sales, foreclosures, houses on the market for months unto months, price drops following price drops--it's a very respectable deal that gives me a bit of money for the transition to the next job in a newer, sunnier location. Don't tell the cat.

We close on August 15. Oh my god!

Contemplating Class Offerings

So I got the schedule of seminars offered for the first residency (we're talking the low-residency option here, as opposed to the traditional residency program that never, um, seemed to get around to their rejection letters). And what fun it is to consider options! Do I want to learn how to write a sex scene or approach the business aspects of promoting one's self and of being a writer in a thoughtful and organized manner? Or do I want to leap into some good old literary theory and do a nostalgic view of Faulkner and Light in August? It all feels like some unholy union of Montessori and military school.

Beyond that, we are motoring through the official crazy busy, in which there is a lot to do in a short amount of time. In addition to which, we have to hope that, in short order, some well-appointed buyer wants to pay handsomely for a gorgeous bungalow.

Why Oh Why Have I Never Made Curry?

A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a crock-pot vegetable curry recipe. I made it last night, and lo! It was so very very delicious! And also a wee bit spicy (glad I got the sweet curry powder rather than the hot), but in a good way. Look at me, learning to dig spicy things, mushrooms, peppers, and tomatoes! Vegetarianism has been a real boon to expanding my food palate, especially once I got past the "um, mac and cheese doesn't have any meat in it!" phase.

Has anyone else been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution? It's making me really want to cook in earnest (and dear god, I can never look at a chicken nugget again). It's also making me glad that my generation wasn't quite so saturated in fast and processed, pre-packaged food.

Nancy Pelosi Rocks!

Can she get it done, or can she get it done?

It's a whole new freaking world. I'm just sad for all the people whom it's too late to help.

Gahhh! The Panic Sets In: Displacement Activity!

While I furiously bake brownies, refresh my favorite blogs, and do my yoga and cardio workout, I make mental lists of everything I see in my house that requires my attention (that window cord; my god, those lights in the garage that haven't worked since the first month I lived here; shit, has that woodwork always had such huge holes?). Of course, I will have to get the city to do an inspection then and fix anything that needs to be fixed before I put the house on the market. And I will be out of vacation time, so I'm seriously wondering how I'll be accomplishing all this in tidy weekend intervals. And while I frantically bake brownies, etc., I panic more about the now-smaller weekend windows I have. . . . It's a vicious circle.

So I'm accepted into one program and awaiting word on the second. But since they're both in the same place, I know where I'm moving and can plan accordingly. Yay! Can I outsource the logistical things? Not only am I not emotionally and financially capable, I lack the physical strength to, say, move every piece of furniture I have into my kitchen so that the floor guy can sand and work his miracles.

And I'm Officially Accepted into an MFA Program!

In the space of two days, one acceptance, one rejection. One more to go and, I hope, a decision. But either way, I'm going to grad school!

Now That the Plates Are Spinning, We Just Need to Work in Juggling the Chainsaws

Wisdom gleaned: It turns out that after you take a two-week sabbatical from exercise on account of illness, it is possible to dive back into it without having lost much endurance. Yay! And not only that, but whatever you did to your legs and feet by being overzealous and not wearing proper footwear can be healed in that time.

Which is all to say that I'm getting back into a routine of regular exercise and healthful eating. On the latter, I will pass along to you more wisdom gleaned. A salad can be so dreary, can't it? Iceberg lettuce or something equally bland and uninspiring, topped with some watery tomatoes and maybe a cucumber, all drenched in some salad dressing to give it all some flavor. Today, I discovered the secret to a Laura-Concocted Ultimate Tasty Salad. Take spinach (or whatever else you like that is not iceberg lettuce), then add to it a massive amount of random vegetables and other goodies left in your fridge from other recipes: peppers, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and hard-boiled egg, in today's example. Then add the eensiest bit of the lightest salad dressing you have. Shake the mix up in your tupperware or other container. Sprinkle lots of fresh ground pepper on top. Yum.

The chainsaw we need to add to this life juggling is the writing discipline, which has gone out the window with all of my revision and application fervor. So this is a nice bit of inspiration: writers listing their ten rules for writing fiction. Margaret Atwood demonstrates why she is my favorite writer--living, at any rate.

This Is Helpful

If you want to find local sources for various fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other items. Online sources, farms, co-ops, restaurants, and markets are represented.

Also, eggs are good for you; research shows that consumption of eggs isn't related to higher levels of cholesterol and that they may provide other health benefits.

I'm also liking this place for workout tips and videos and nutrition and meal suggestions. The whole concept of nutritional content gets decoupled from calorie content and "bad" elements like fat, so it's nice to get away from the simplistic "hey, here's some diet-friendly low-calorie processed snacks off the shelf" in favor of a more holistic approach. I used to have a pull-out nutrition guide from a magazine, which featured gorgeous photographs of sample meals and portions for a week. It hit all major food groups and proper allotments of them over X span of time. It was great inspiration for nutrient-rich combos to try and also useful for measuring how much I was eating and why. (Appropriate portion of cheese for a protein boost of a meal: the size of your thumb.) And seeing the food look so yummy and lovely fed the virtuous cycle of how good eating well made me feel.

It pisses me off that we live in such an unhealthful food environment and that we blame individuals for what it does to them to eat poor diets. Based on my own experiences, I honestly think that we are so conditioned to crave high-fat, high-sodium, high-calorie processed food that it's like physical withdrawal to get away from it. Every single time I have, for example, potato chips, it's never a one-off deal. I crave and want to eat more every single day, for lunch or what have you. So I buy them and eat them--snarfing, say, half a can of pringles in an afternoon, until my stomach hurts--each time telling myself I'll moderate or stop. Eventually, I have to go cold turkey and not buy the stuff at all. And it's like hell waiting for the cravings to subside.

So I think I'm bucking the system by preparing my own foods and choosing healthful ingredients, raised responsibly. But as a solution, it's only sustainable so long as you have the income to do it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hug 'em if you got 'em. Or boycott, which is perfectly respectable. At the very least, I suggest clearance chocolate after the fact. B and I are celebrating remote cupcakery.

I am also coughing my way through day ten of my creeping illness and prepping outfit scenarios for Oprah. Set your DVR's people. I'll be applauding with great zest.

The Day in Productivity

• Got up at reasonable time.
• Filed taxes, both state and federal.
• Completed and confirmed financial aid forms (absent late-discovered correction that must now wait a week, so as to allow prior changes to go through).
• Investigated certificates of deposit.
  
• Exercised.
• Bought foodstuffs.
• Bought cheapie additional exercise gear so as to facilitate future exercise.
• Worked on languishing story.

Now I just have to clean the house and unpack all of my luggage from, um, holiday travels.

Frantic Displacement Activity?

I am sitting at my desk and fantasizing. Not about vegging on the couch, watching movies, writing, eating ice cream, or drinking an amazing wine, but about exercising. Specifically, running. I hate running. I have exercise-induced asthma, I have flat feet, and I get side stitches. I also have crippling childhood memories of forced running in gym class. Everybody else would be done, and I would still be puffing through my ten-and-a-half-minute mile. There are old ladies who can walk faster than that.

Nevertheless, I'm really really wishing it weren't 20 degrees out and/or that I had a treadmill.

For the Love of All That's Holy

I'm So Bored . . .

I may be slipping into a coma.