Monday

4 hours writing term paper

Total hours: 4

Tuesday:

4 hours writing term paper

8 hours digitizing story

Total: 12

Cumulative total: 18

Wednesday

4 hours digitizing story

7 hours writing term paper

Total: 11

Cumulative total: 29

Thursday:

6 hours digitizing story

Total: 6

Cumulative total: 35

Friday:

8 hours digitizing story

Finally finished. Took absolutely forever. Figures that I’m such a perfectionist that I had to edit it a whole bunch. I hope it turned out well.

Total: 8

Cumulative total: 43

Saturday

2 hours writing poetry

Total: 2

Cumulative total: 45

Sunday

2 hours writing poetry, digitizing work, retagging post

1 hour poetry observed.

Total: 3

Cumulative total: 48

Couldn’t find the drivers for my camera, so I had to go and install a new program to use it. Took longer than I was expecting.

Grand total: 415.5 hours

Monday

4 hours editing Your Journey Home

3 hours digitizing How to Survive Being Blessed

My handwriting is terrible

Total: 7 hours

Tuesday

4 hours writing poetry

Too sick to go to class, wrote a reverie on Perloff. Took a while to get it right because I tried to reference a fair amount of the chapter.

2 hours writing term paper

As I did last quarter, I have way, way more term paper than I need. I’m going to have to cut it down.

2 hours digitizing my story

This draft is nigh incoherent. I need to work on my handwriting.

1 hour editing my cover letter

Total: 9 hours

Wednesday

4 hours editing Your Journey Home.

2 hours digitizing my story

2 hours writing poetry

Not all of my poetry ends up being exactly on topic with the class, but it still fits in a lot of ways. Still often inspired by the class and reveries that I have.

Normally I’d have my meeting with Sandy but her mother was just diagnosed with cancer. She believes she’ll be able to meet with me again week ten. In the meantime, I will continue working on my publishing goal without her and check in when she becomes available.

Total: 8 hours

Thursday

2 hours writing term paper

Started incorporating pieces of my bibliography. I need to get less wordy about describing the books I’m using. I like the abstract, though I’m worried it’s a little bit hokey.

3 hours edits

Seriously, editing Your Journey Home just won’t end

Total: 5 hours

Friday

4 hours reading Neuro and writing reverie

This reverie was tricky because I wanted to do the conclusion justice. I hope I did.

2 hours editing Your Journey Home

Total: 6 hours

Saturday

5 hours editing Your Journey Home

And it is finally done. Passing it off to a friend to look it over.

Total: 5 hours

Weekly total: 40 hours

Cumulative total: 367.5

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

Classwork – 10 Hours

The reading from Rose this week was particularly dense with medical jargon. It was a bit of a difficult read. Also hard to think about the idea that it might be our own biology that makes us sick and prone to criminology. I share Rose’s skepticism (or perceived skepticism  about whether or not this field can ever truly come out of the dark ages of racism. It is an interesting idea, although it is proving once again that no issue is as simple as we would like it to seem. Life has to be pretty persistent to survive under all those conditions. The guest speaker was also fantastic, it was an awesome class full of great ideas. I love the core portion of the programs.

Sunday – 4 hours

Monday – 2 hours

Tuesday – 4 hours

Publishing – 10 hours

Sandy hadn’t yet gotten the time to read my manuscript, so no feedback  yet. I scheduled a time with her next week, should be able to get my feedback then. I did much more research on the different publishers, looking in to the exact requirements and trying to start gathering ideas for different cover letters. Only one publisher actually has the requirements that fit my novella, but it works out rather well because they are such a good fit. My cover letter apparently blew Sandy out of the water, although she and I both had ideas for revision of course. I need to reformat my manuscript in order to fit the publication standards, and I will definitely do that. I will also wait to submit until I hear back from her more about the story. I’m also having a friend look it over for edits and grammar mistakes, trying to get it as edited as I possibly could.

Tuesday – 3 hours

Wednesday – 3 hours

Thursday – 2 hours

Friday – 2 hours

How to Survive Being Blessed – 20 Hours

Far and away the toughest section that I have had to write. Got to the part about Mauri’s attack. It took me about six hours to write four pages, which is incredibly unusual for me. I want to write and write well, because I want to do this serious issue justice. Still frustratingly on the handwritten draft, even as the page count climbs to 76. Spent the normal amount of time writing but because of the difficulty of the subject matter, ended up not writing quite as much. Because of the length of Mauri’s story, I’m not certain how much of the others I will be able to finish. It just feels unbalanced without them, though it looks like I might want to try to break it up into either a series of novellas or maybe a book or two depending on length. I’m amazed that all of this writing is coming out of me, that I have this passion for writing that I can express so well.

Monday – 6 hours

Tuesday – 2 hours

Thursday – 4 hours

Friday – 4 hours

Saturday – 4 hours

 

Total: 40 hours

Cumulative total: 284

Core Program – 20 Hours

The chapter from Neuro was absolutely amazing. It was easier for me to read, somehow, despite the fact that normally I find Rose a bit dense. Susan Howe is also an excellent writer. I love the fact that when I read her, I have to relax and kind of let it hit, to let all of the pieces gather. I find that when I read it, it doesn’t always make very much sense, but it makes much more sense when it is time for seminar. There were more hours this week than usual because I stayed for the guest speaker. There was also much more reading this week than usual, making for a much denser load. It was enjoyable work, but there was a lot of it.

Sunday – 4 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Wednesday – 4 hours

Thursday – 4 hours

How to Survive Being Blessed – 20 Hours

The story continues to grow and grow. The rough draft got up to 62 pages and once again it’s going to get longer when I revise it. I couldn’t pull off the time lapse very well and I realized that there was a whole bunch of stuff I needed to put in so that there wouldn’t be plot holes. I’m starting to get into the parts that I know are going to be hard to write, about Mauri’s assault. I’m starting to get a little bit concerned that the only thing I’m going to be able to get finished is a copy of her story, but I am putting in the required hours and the story is more than a bit of a monster.

Monday – 5 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Wednesday – 8 hours

Thursday – 1 hour

Publishing – 10 Hours

I continued to do research on several of the publishers. That was tough work because they don’t always make the sites easy to navigate. It turns out that my story is not quite right for any of them, being about 3,000 words too long for all but one of them and 400 words short for that one. I will work on drafting my first cover letter, as well as a bio and a synopsis of my story, in time for my meeting with Sandra. She agreed to see me as long as there was flexibility was involved because of her busy schedule. Much of the work I can do independently so long as she is there as a touchstone  I can also email her as often as I need to. I’m looking forward to hearing about what she thinks of my story in our meeting on Wednesday.

Tuesday – 3 hours

Wednesday – 4 hours

Thursday – 3 hours

Total: 50

Cumulative total: 244

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