How to Survive Being Blessed – 20 hours

It’s coming along fairly well. Managed to get another twenty or so pages written. Chapter 1 comes in at twenty six pages, and it’s kind of depressing. I guess I knew that when I started writing Mauri’s piece, but it’s just kind of brutal. Still in a fairly rough draft, but it’s better than what I started with and it has a coherent timeline now. A bit stuck at the moment, because I’m trying to have time elapse without reverting into a mode where I tell the writer everything instead of showing them, but considering the page count and how much left I have to tell, it’s kind of necessary. I’m still amazed at how much the writing flows and how much I enjoy it, even though so much is happening to the character. I feel like I’m going an alright job showing all of these intense emotions, but I haven’t had anyone willing to read my handwritten drafts yet, so that I will have to wait and see about.

Monday – 5 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Wednesday – 4 hours

Friday – 5 hours

Class Work – 13 Hours

Haven’t been able to keep up with the class work as much due to failing physical health. I have a meeting Monday 2 p.m with Meredith at the disabilities office to see what needs to be done. It isn’t so much that I haven’t been doing the work, or been trying to do the work to the best of my ability as just I can’t physically go out to go to class, which is why there is the reduced time. Spent a lot of this weekend doing all of the reading. I really enjoyed the Neuro, and the way that it looks at how we see mental illness. Writing the conversations is still something that I enjoy, trying to find the voices of the authors and capture them for the page. The Susan Howe was equally amazing, although it was a bit hard to follow, to see how all of the pieces connect. At any rate, after this week, I will probably have to revise my contract in order to accommodate for my healthy.

Sunday – 5 hours

Monday – 4 hours

Tuesday – 4 hours

Publishing – 10 Hours

Ended up spending way more time than I expected on this project this week. When I met with Sandra at the writing center she suggested a great resource, The Writer’s Market, which I used to research different publishing avenues for my book. Originally, she was thinking that it would do better in a literary journal or magazine, but the word count means that it doesn’t really fit into either. There is a short list of publishers that I found that work with either novella length pieces or transgender works. Now I need to write a cover letter, a synopsis, and a bio of myself. I also need to do research on all of these different publishers to make sure my cover letter is selling what they want to buy. This is going to take way more time than I originally anticipated, just in researching all of the publishers and writing all of this stuff that has to be revised over and over again. I met with Sandra twice in fairly quick succession, but she is too busy to meet with me during week five. She also wanted to make sure that I had enough time to get all of my writing done and she had enough time to read more than a few pages of my draft so I am meeting with her again Wednesday of Week 6. She also enjoyed what she had read of my work, telling me that she actually wanted to continue reading which is a pleasure and something of a rarity for her. I’m actually starting to feel like there might be people willing to pay to read my book.

Wednesday – 4 hours

Thursday – 2 hours

Friday – 4 hours

Total: 43 hours

Cumulative: 194

How to Survive Being Blessed – 20 hours

The story is starting to come along. I’m working on the second draft of a couple of people, Mauri/Auntie being one of them. It’s tough going, because for right now I’m just trying to get everything out and this story is turning out to be so much bigger than I imagined. It’s still fun, still amazing, still rewarding, and it’s especially awesome now that I’m starting to get into the rhythm. It’s starting to look like I might have to rewrite Colin’s piece in order to have it fit in with the rest of the story, but other than that, it’s looking good.

Monday – 4 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Wednesday – 5 hours

Friday – 5 hours

Class work – 15 hours

The poetry workshop this week was phenomenal. Watching everyone perform was fantastic, and it was even more amazing because of the way everyone reacted to my poetry observed video. Seminar was, as always, enlightening and it’s interesting for me to realize that I’m much less of a science person than I assumed I was. Rose is still incredibly dense and difficult for me to get through, and I don’t understand why he doesn’t try to make his writing clearer. Howe was equally dense, but somehow made my head hurt less. Maybe because Howe is the type of writing where if you relax and let it hit you it makes sense. Where as Rose is just…. Dense. Very, very dense unnecessarily.

Sunday – 4 hours

Monday – 3 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Thursday – 2 hours

Publishing – 5 hours

Met with Sean Williams who showed me how to ePublish. It looks like it could be a good option, although I would have to do much of my own promotion. There’s some basic steps I could take and my manuscript is going to need more editing before that happens. Also met with Sandra Yannone at the writing center and she gave me some excellent advice about finding and researching places like journals or magazines that would be more likely to publish my work. As it was, I also spent about three hours proof-reading it again and there are apparently still typos. Fun times. I think I need to get some fresh eyes on it because I am absolutely sick to death of it at this point.

Tuesday – 2 hours

Friday – 3 hours

Total: 40 hours

Cumulative total: 151