MFA Flashback: Office Space

I entered the MFA program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a Teaching Assistantship. In return for teaching one section of a beginning composition course each semester, my tuition was waived and I received a small stipend. 

Magazines about MFA programs urged me to consider TAships carefully. "Do you really want to spend your graduate career teaching instead of writing?" In the end, I decided that I wanted to take as few student loans as possible, and a TAship was the only way. 

What I did not realize when I started teaching at UAF was that learning how to teach would become an invaluable part of my education. I believe that being a teacher made me a better student in my graduate classes, and helped me to grow socially. 

All TAs are offered desk space on the English department floor. The desks are out in the open, somewhat divided by office partitions. 

My first year as a TA and as a graduate student, I had a small desk with the right side pushed up against the wall. There wasn't much space, but I was ecstatic to have it. 

First year TA desk at UAF

It was a small space, but I was surrounded by fellow first-years. If I was having problems teaching or writing a story, there were always people around to offer support and advice.

"How is your class going?"

"What do you think about Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?"

To have people who not only ask you how you are doing, but who are genuinely interested in the answer and will talk with you for twenty minutes until you feel better - I would have missed out on all of this if I had not been a TA. I would not have had a desk, a space where I could work and talk and run into my fellow grad students.

At the beginning of my 2nd year, I moved to a much larger office space that had been given up by a 3rd year student after he graduated. I had my own bookcase, a filing cabinet, lots of wall space, and a coat rack that I misguidedly covered in blazers.

2nd & 3rd year desk

The best aspect of my 2nd and 3rd year TA space was that it was good for hanging out. Sure, I had much more desk space on which to sort and grade papers, and I could roll my desk chair back and forth without worrying about knocking into anyone. But for the first time I had a cozy guest chair that was also out of the line of traffic.

My MFA friends stopped by to play with the dinosaur that made silly roaring sounds when you pushed a button, or to borrow a book to teach in class. We talked about the stories we wrote, the literature classes we took, the students we taught.

View from a visitor's seat

Before I left UAF, I had to clean out my desk space. What I couldn't keep I gave away, leaving a plant on one friend's desk, a plastic Gloomy bear on another. I turned in my keys to to the Writing Center and the 8th floor to Leah, the wonderful administrative organizer for the English department. Turning in those keys felt like losing the last link to all of the wonderful friendships I'd gained during my MFA program.

"Don't worry," Leah said. "You'll have new keys soon."

"The Internet is our new Writing Center. We can hangout anytime," another MFA friend said.

But as wonderful as the Internet is, as lonely as I would be without it, I still miss the experience of having a physical space amid a community of writers. These last two, long years since I left UAF I've been working on my thesis at my small desk in the corner of my bedroom. There isn't another chair in the room, just an Internet window open, hoping someone drops by. 

Trek Out: TNG at the Movies

Last night I went to a screening of two episodes from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation at my local movie theater. It was a one time showing, and was mainly to promote the release of the Blue-Ray editions.

My local chapter of Starfleet, the USS Wernher von Braun, was there handing out free Star Trek trading cards and entering people in a raffle for an autographed picture of Brent Spiner (Mr. Data).

I picked two trading cards to bring home. I haven't gotten a good look at the trading cards before. Quite a few of them were trivia questions with slightly blurry photographs from episodes. But near the bottom of the stack I found these beauties:

Star Trek trading cards

I'm going to try framing them in a shadow box using tips from my favorite craft & geek blog, Epbot. I'll let you know how it goes.

One of the cutest moments of the evening was when two young boys came in dressed in Star Trek outfits. They got their picture taken with the head officers of the USS Wernher von Braun, with everyone grinning and proudly signaling "live long and prosper."

I was also able to borrow a uniform for the showing. It was my first time wearing a Star Trek uniform, and I was a bit nervous I'd look goofy or out of place.

Me in a Star Trek uniform

I wore black dress pants and black shoes, and then borrowed the top and the pin. This style is from Deep Space Nine. I like the simple cut and style of the top, even though my heart is more with TOS and TNG. I'd really love to have a science officer uniform (blue) from The Original Series someday, and make my own tricorder. In addition to my Gorn costume, of course.

The screening itself was a lot of fun. Watching Where No One Has Gone Before and Datalore was really enjoyable with a theater full of people. Where else can you hear the right kind of laughter when Picard says "Shut up, Wesley"? Fan community is why I love going to midnight screenings, why conventions feel like a party with friends I just haven't met yet, and why I love to write and read genre.

The USS Wernher von Braun is having a workday next spring. We're getting together to make tribbles to give away at the Star Trek 2 movie coming out next year. I hope they do what tribbles do best - multiply, and grow Roddenberry's vision of a better future.

Studying Up on YA Fiction

I'm narrowing down my focus for my next project: writing a novel.

What I'd like to do is write a young adult novel. I don't think young adult novels are any easier to write than novels for adults. But somehow, in my mind, writing a young adult novel feels more straightforward. I think that perhaps the concept of writing a non-YA novel is tied up in my mind with obligations to try experimental forms of plotting. Whenever I try this in my short stories, readers wind up confused and unsatisfied.

YA seems to be everywhere these past few weeks. The July 2012 issue of Locus Magazine has a feature on young adult fiction with articles from writers and editors. And I ran across an excellent YA writer blog after looking at the list of writers accepted to this year's Launchpad Astronomy Workshop

One of the best resources I've found is distraction no. 99, the blog of Nova Ren Suma, author of Imaginary Girls. She's been keeping the blog since 2006, and it is really interesting to look back at her earlier posts where she's feeling those writerly doubts everyone has and then to look at her more recent posts and see the books she has published, the residencies and workshops she's participating in.

I know that every published author was once an unpublished author, that they probably all felt doubt and uncertainty. But sometimes looking at a published author, it seems as if they were always successful. Awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant when they were two, and at four a fellowship to Yaddo. So it is extremely helpful for me to see the arc of a writer's career. To hear the voice before, and not just the voice that's buoyed by their hard earned success.

But it's more than just the scope of Suma's blog that I find helpful. She also has a wealth of great posts. Two of my favorites are:

• "Why I Write YA"
• "My Turning Point"

She also hosts tons of really excellent guest posts on her blog from other YA authors. My favorite so far is the "Turning Point" series, where authors describe what set them in motion on the path to becoming published. There's also a series on "What Scares You?" and "What Inspires You?"

I've checked out a few books from the public library on writing fiction for young adults, but so far they're uninspiring and geared towards complete novices. I feel like I'm getting so much more helpful and timely information from Suma's blog than there even exists in book form. I hope she keeps blogging for a long time, and that the archives of her journal stay online if she ever decides to stop.

Do you have any suggestions for great online or print resources for writing young adult fiction? What YA books should I absolutely read?

Baking, Reading, Writing

It's baking hot here in Alabama. I step out of the front door, and a wave of heat envelops me. The heat messes with my brain and burns my skin. I have headaches, and get light sunburn from walking out to the car.

The heat is bad for my head, but good for some vegetables. 

Bounty from my parents' garden

We have more squash and zucchini than I know what to do with. And not tiny little squashes and zucchinis, either.

Furball and Zucchini

Zuchinni the size of a small cat.

I've never been someone who likes to cook anything beyond very simple meals that involve lots of cans and pasta. My attitude for a long time has been that it would be wasteful to try to learn even rudimentary cooking, like baking. I'm afraid of using up a lot of ingredients and making food that is completely inedible.

But we got a huge bag of zucchini from my parents this week, and I'm determined to use it before it goes bad. There are a few foods I remember making with my mom when I was a kid, and one of them was zucchini bread.

So I found a recipe for zucchini muffins online, and I started gathering the ingredients. Then I started to panic. Wait - no applesauce. Maybe I could chop some apples in the food processor? Wait - we don't have brown sugar. Would our other, non-bleached sugar still work?

I started to freak out. The scales were slowly tipping. With every missing ingredient the voice in my head said "Give up now. Don't be wasteful, the muffins aren't going to turn out right anyways."

So I took a break. I searched for a different recipe. And in just a few minutes, I found a recipe for banana zucchini muffins. This one had just three steps, fewer ingredients, and hey, even called for over-ripe bananas, three of which I had sitting on the kitchen table.

To someone who cooks regularly, I'm sure watching me as I mixed together the ingredients would have been a painfully boring experience. I went really slowly, making sure I wasn't confusing tablespoons and teaspoons, repeating the directions out loud. But my boyfriend was at work and even my cats were taking naps. If I failed, I planned to throw away the evidence, take out the trash, and never tell anyone that this had happened. I could be wasteful once, I reasoned.

But my muffins came out great. They didn't have the delicious alchemy of a gifted chef like my boyfriend, but they were solid, tasty muffins.

Banana Zucchini Muffin - My first baked thing

My attitude about wastefulness also applies to my writing. I've been wanting to try writing a novel for a while, but I've been holding off, reasoning that I need to get better at writing short stories first. The thought of spending a year or more on a novel, and never seeing it published, is terrifying. The same voice that keeps me from trying to cook also tells me how complicated writing a novel would be, how much time it would take, and how in the end it wouldn't hold together. I'm afraid I'd be forced to throw the whole thing out, and pretend my first novel never existed.

Supporting this voice are the novels that I love most. I like complicated, lengthy novels with twists in perception that creep up on you. I've just broken a two-month long novel-reading drought with Sarah Waters' Affinity. It's a gorgeous book, and I'm reading it slowly, because I love the characters and I don't want to stop hanging out with them.

I'm worried about writing a novel because I feel like I don't have all the skills that an amazing book calls for. How can I hope for the expert alchemy of Peter Carey or Sarah Waters or John Crowley when I'm still learning how to make short stories?

What I think I need to do is plan a novel in steps: make an outline of a character's journey and set myself the small task of taking each step. Tell myself not to stress over writing the best novel the world has ever seen. But write a good novel, that holds together, and that I'll share with a few friends. Tell myself as many times at it takes that trying something new isn't wasteful.

*

{Here's the easy, yummy Recipe I used to make my muffins.} 

Organization: Submission Board

When I have writer's block, I organize. 

Sometimes it's furniture, sometimes wall decorations, but often my organizing has to do with my writing. Organizing helps me stay up to date on my projects, reminds me of goals I've set, and unearths old stories I once thought were rubbish but now think are quite ok.

My latest organization project is a submission board. 

Submission Zone, still in progress

Separating the Creative Self from the Business Self

I've been having a lot of writing anxiety lately - just completely unable to get a first draft done. Today I remembered the advice to separate the creative writer from the business writer. The creative writer writes the stories; the business writer sells them.

I've had my submission sheets taped to the wall behind my laptop for the past few weeks, and today I decided to move them - to create two different spaces. One for the creative writer and one for the business writer.

I'm making my desk space, where I create, free of clutter and surrounded by inspiration and encouragement. On the other side of the room is a small bookcase. Inside the bookcase are short story journals that I love to read (both SFF and literary) as well as my rejectomancy and acceptance boxes. Above the bookcase are my submission boards.

I have a few genre stories on submission at the moment, and I'm gearing up for a big submission push once the literary journals open back up in the fall.

Since I'm submitting to both genre and literary magazines, I needed to make two separate systems.

My Genre Submission Board

Genre magazines usually do not allow simultaneous submissions. They have a faster turnaround (some as fast as two days) and usually ask that you do not submit to the magazine again for a certain period of time after being rejected (usually a week or two).

So I need to make sure that I don't submit multiple stories to one magazine at the same time and also respect the magazine's guidelines for waiting to submit again.

My SFF submission board is organized by the name of the magazine. I put the names of the stories I'm submitting on post it notes and move them around the board.

There are more genre magazines than I could fit on a wall, but for the purpose of this board I'm sticking with journals that are SFWA qualifying markets (Pro markets), pay at least a token amount, or have an aesthetic similar to my own. I've narrowed my initial submissions to magazines that I love to read and where I think my stories would fit.

If I've been rejected from a magazine that has a courtesy period, then I put a different colored post it with the date rejected or the date when I can submit again.

I can also use the post its to mark when a magazine is closed to submissions, so I don't waste time wondering if a story is a good fit.

Submission Board for SFF Stories

This tactic is working really well for me so far. I can see where my stories are at a glance, and it also reminds me of all of the magazines where I'd love to be published. This makes me consider which of my stories might be a good fit for those markets, and encourages me to send them out.

My Literary Submission Board

The submission board for literary stories is a bit different.

Literary magazines usually encourage simultaneous submissions, as the turnaround time can take up to a year. Like genre magazines, multiple submissions to the same magazine are not allowed.

With my literary stories, I need to make sure that I've got each story out at several different journals for consideration at any given time. This way they have the best chance of finding the right reader at the right market.

My literary submission board is organized based on the stories that I currently have on submission.

Each sticky note has the name of a journal, with a little "E" or "P" at the bottom to designate whether I submitted electronically or through the post, and therefore where I should be on a lookout for a response.

I've also got several journal sticky notes that have a star in the corner, to indicate that the last time I submitted to the magazine I received a "please send us more" or similar encouragement.

I like to think of these submission boards as the volume control. If there aren't any bars beneath a story title, then it's too quiet. I need to find some new markets for the story and send it out.

Submission Board for Lit Stories

My submission board is pretty cheap - just printed pieces of paper and post it notes. But one day I might upgrade to a dry erase board or cork board.

I prefer to keep my own submission board low tech, but I bet this would work really well on Kanbanpad or in a simple spreadsheet.

I'm hoping that these submission boards and the separated spaces will help me push through my block. From my desk I can look over my shoulder and see by the colors on my submission board that my stories are out in the world, doing their work. Then I can turn back to my computer and be the creative self who worries about the story at hand.