Monday –

3 hours reading.

Wanted to finish brushing up on Tawada before the seminar. Wanted to explore some more of the text. I’m starting to see Perloff’s delightfully dry sense of humor.

Total: 3 hours

Tuesday –

3. 5 hours of class

Class was amazing. I got great feedback for one of my poems. I’m glad that I can continue to write and develop as a poet and as a novelist. I love writing.

4 hours of writing

Finally finished the handwritten draft of Mauri’s story. It needs a whole lot of spit and polish, but it’s getting there. The draft is still going to be really rough, but it should end up working out alright.  Letting it sit for a while before I start trying to digitize it.

1 hour of cover letter editing

I really should not leave this to the last second every time. Hard not to with all of the other class work and then it’s always fresh in my mind for Sandy. ‘

Total: 8.5 hours

Cumulative total: 10.5 hours

Wednesday –

1 hour meeting with Sandy

She did not actually get a chance to read my script. We edited my cover letter some more, talked about what my story might need in terms of editing. She really enjoys the flow of my story, asked me some questions about what was going on with it.

3 hours editing my manuscript

There was someone online who was volunteering to edit stuff, so I emailed off a copy of my story. I want to polish it more before I send it off. She added almost three thousand words of edits, so I spend a few hours pouring over the script and polishing it up. I’ll also have to do the utterly tedious business of putting it in the format that BSB wants it. And now the big question. To paragraph or not to paragraph.

Total: 4 hours

Cumulative total: 14.5 hours

Thursday

1 hour trans* talk

Went to the presentation what’s trans* about queerness now. It was alright, mostly geared toward informing people about why transgender studies is a necessary field. I didn’t really need convincing. I knew about some of the historical erasure but not all of it.

2 hours editing manuscript

So many edits. I have some quibbles with what the person editing wanted, but we’ll see how it goes. I never realized how consciously I make a lot of my writing choices. Or rather, I make them unconsciously, but I make them deliberately. I have a lot of reasons for writing the way that I do. That’s a nice surprise. Makes me feel less like a hack.

5 hours reading

Neuro is DENSE this week. Also reading some commentary on Tamora Pierce and her strong female characters. Trying to read some reviews of fantasy. Also found a great book that deals with abortion and the regulation of female bodies. I wanted to read stories about women who had gotten pregnant from rape in order to make sure that I was doing the story a service. This is a sensitive issue and I want to do it right.

Total: 8 hours

Cumulative total: 29.5 hours

Friday

4 hours reading

Perloff this time. I love the themes, the idea of taking the mundane and making it poetic. Makes me wonder if cities have their own rhythm and if the rhythm affects speech cadence.

2 hours manuscript editing

There are so many edits. I love writing, I really do, but the rewriting gets to me after a while.

Total: 6 hours

Cumulative total: 35.5 hours

Saturday:

4 hours writing

Mostly poetry for the ealphabet.

2 hours editing

These edits will never, ever stop. There is just no end. Oh well. Price to pay if it makes my writing better.

2 hours reading

Finishing off the reading for the week. Want to have a day off on Sunday, only want to do the cover letter on Monday.

Total: 8 hours

Cumulative total: 43.5 hours

Quarter total: 327.5 hours

Class Work 10 Hours

The rest of the class was at the retreat this week. I stayed home because the woods aren’t really cripple friendly. I spent several hours writing poetry in the presence of nature, reacting to the world around me and putting it into poetic form. I revised the poem in a way that I liked, trying to adjust my handwriting into a good font and spacing out the words more. The calculated poetics class continues to be amazing and I wish I was well enough to go to the Wednesday workshop. Also did all of the reading required for the seminar and enjoyed it, still really liking Perloff.

Sunday – 4 hours

Monday – 2 hours

Tuesday – 2 hours

Thursday – 2 hours

Writing 40 Hours

So while the class has been on retreat, I’ve been writing like a person obsessed. I suppose I am. I have overwhelmed the fifty pages that I allotted in my class notebook for this draft and I have barely gotten through Mauri and a little bit of Clara. It’s so odd, that this 3,000 word story isn’t just turning into a novel, it’s starting to turn into an entire series. Or a really long novel. Either of which I’m okay with. but I seem to have a hard time writing things that go into typical word counts. My novella was long for a novella but short for a novel, and these pieces that I’m writing about the people seem like they are going to end up being about 40,000 words a person, or about a young adult novel. So all four of the people will mean a really long novel. Maybe best to put them into pairs. That might work really well. Either way, I’m loving the writing and I’m off in search of a new notebook because this is just absolutely ridiculous and I need more room.

Monday – 6 hours

Tuesday – 10 hours

Wednesday – 8 hours

Thursday – 10 hours

Friday – 6 hours

Publishing 5 Hours

More phone tag. Made some appointments for the end of week three. Ended up browsing some more literary agents. Found a couple who might be interested in my story. Not entirely certain it’s quite the right niche that they are looking for, but it’s a shot. I will start working on cover letters, although I want to meet with Sandy before I decide anything officially.

Monday – 1 hour

Tuesday – 2 hours

Wednesday – 1 hour

Friday – 1 hour

Total: 55 hours

Cumulative total: 111

Class work 20 Hours

It is the first week of class. Lots of reading, lots of different sessions to attend. All kinds of new information. This is a great idea and I am really enjoying the reading, although Rose is incredibly dense. The calculated poetics workshop on Thursdays is amazing, all kinds of great information and writing and inspiration. Excited to see more happen and for the new minds that are in class. Interesting to see all of the different view points. I also like the feedback I get in peer review. It’s kind of nice to have writing be picked apart and made better, got a little bit spoiled last quarter in that a lot of the writing that I did was mostly just… Awed I suppose.

Sunday – 4 hours

Monday – 4 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours 

Thursday – 6 hours

Writing 30 Hours

So the story that started off as being around 3,000 words is turning into a novel. Auntie/Mauri is such an interesting character and to learn about her backstory is amazing. I am still very much in the first draft suck stage, just trying to get everything off the ground and out so that I can start organizing it. This is by far the biggest thing I’ve ever written and I’ve spent about ten hours on world building alone, just starting to get the gods straight in my head, building this universe. There’s so much that I have that I probably won’t even show, but if I have the details down in my head it will make the world much more coherent. The amazingly rough draft is about 10 pages long already and it’s going to get much bigger. I allotted fifty pages for the first draft, thinking that would be enough but that seems to be more than a bit silly of me, seeing as how I haven’t even really gone past the introduction. I also have about twenty pages of world building, details, and outlines. Digitizing this is going to be a nightmare.

Monday – 6 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Wednesday – 12 hours

Thursday – 4 hours

Friday – 4 hours

Publishing 6 Hours

Mostly a lot of phone tag with people I want to meet with. A little bit of looking up literary agents. Spent about three hours reading cover letter examples, figuring out how to sell my work. Spent another two looking for literary agents and another hour tracking down people to talk about different types of publishing. I’m looking forward to having more people read my work and having more feedback. I wish I had more of an outlet because most of the peer feedback that I’ve gotten is just that my novella is amazing. Which is nice to hear for my ego but not much for the quality of the piece.

Tuesday – 2 hours

Friday – 4 hours

Total: 56 hours

Cumulative total: 56 hours