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lenora_roseThis week has been... well as of Thursday at the start of Ceramics class, I described it as, "ONE good thing happened this whole last week, and that was N & ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiene's wedding, which didn't happen to me."
This isn't exactly true, but it did seem like everything that happened was, one way or another, unpleasant, uncomfortable, or led to uncomfortable thoughts.
(The only thing that was uncomfortable about the wedding, I should say, is that my shins were aching like anything when I got home from too much dancing. Which is, well, a sign all else was well.)
The upshot is thatbrannie_bird, um, you don't need to do that referral thing.
Okay, bear with me. This will take a while to come together. But it's all related.
Last Friday was the deadline for the Education application for the U of M. One of the things required is a mini-essay (Well, to me 500-700 words is mini) on why you want to go into education.
So I started to type one up.
And deleted it.
And tried again. And stared at a blank screen, and wrote one sentence, and deleted it.
This is important. You see, I don't delete crappy first drafts, even if they're a paragraph long. If I did, I'd never write second drafts. I save crappy paragraphs and either get back to them, or don't. (Once in a blue moon I delete a crappy final draft.)
And made one more try shortly before the whole thing was due, at the university computer.
And then went to the office, lied and explained that I'd left the thumb drive at home, and could I hand that part only in late? One of the two office girls seemed sure it wouldn't be a problem, the less was more doubtful that the committee would be okay with this, but they let me pay and put the application in.
(At, I should say, 4:28 when it was due by 4:30 that day. Talk about cutting it close...)
Not so bad. I immediately went into the ceramics building and started to make my "test tiles" and handles for my mugs. (And then the fire alarm went off because the pipes in the kiln room had burst. By the time I left for the night, and would have left anyhow, the water from the tank had *just* run out. But that's another story.)
That weekend, I learned about an opportunity to submit a novel to an agent for a guaranteed response in roughly 24 hours, and a critique of the first chapter regardless of acceptance. And Sighed, because it required a whole novel, and I had none. Well, I had Raising the Storm, but the last time I'd started to revise it based on the critiques, I'd decided my brain wasn't ready yet. (I'd made two attempts at a new scene needed somewhere close to the opening, and both sucked with a capital suck. And yes, a loud sucking sound.)
Then I was sitting at the computer again, and supposed to write the mini-essay. And instead I opened the first part of RtS and decided to see if I could tweak it. I succeeded in cutting out even more words, in that and subsequent sections, and decided maybe I'd make a pass through it after all. I'd just cut the new scene idea until later, since the version I'd started within the file was crud in every way (wrong event, wrong point of view, had an as-you-know-Bob...)
And went to bed.
The next day, at the university, I opened the other version of that bonus scene, the one I'd tapped out on the dana. It, too, was crud. But it was from the right point of view, and from *almost* the right moment in time. Then and there I ended up writing the whole new thing, in a blazing flash.
That night (The window of opportunity closed at 8AM the next day), after saying goodbye to mom, I opened the file, and started to hack apart and rejoin words, tidied up the new scene, fixed another point I recalled one of my critiquers complaining about, hacked out a handful more paragraphs, then skimmed the rest at lightning speed looking for only the worst of errors. Then had to go and fix the summary. And finished at 5:00 AM. And sent the e-mail off.
Except it turned out there was a problem with my e-mail. Don't ask. It gets weird. No biggie. Except, also. I needed tog et the answer and know what was in fact going on sometime on Thursday. (Plus, I didn't want to have to go home from the ceramics class early, ven for choir practice. I had twelve mugs to produce!) I could not get into the internet at the university. In any lab. At any time in the whole day. Even though it accepted my password and let me use the word processor. I don't think I can emphasize how much this had me almost in tears, and frantic. Because even though there are other routes to getting an agent, wasting one this good was a terrible thing. And my god, if I didn't get on the computer anywhere, I'd have to leave ceramics at the end of class.
Illogical, even for me. But both aspects felt important.
I ended up at the library system, which is not supposed to be used for general internet purposes, but which worked, though I needed the librarian's help to figure out how to get in, making me, usually computer-savvy, feel even more frazzled and stupid. And almost in tears, and almost biting heads off.
Still, all got resolved.
And that's about when, again, I thought of the education essay that was now badly overdue.
I did indeed stay at the university for an extra four hours after class, and stayed on the wheel. I did indeed wind up with 12 more mugs.
________________________
The weird thing about that essay is, the individual sentences weren't bad, prose wise. But they kept including things like, "I thought about it off and on..." or "I guess..." and any time I tried to remove those hedging bits, my "You're lying!!!" alarm went off.
I'm a fiction writer. I'm a role-playing gamer, which is a different kind of fiction. I'm pretty good at spin, and BS - and you'll note I flat out lied to the girls in the admissions office to buy time.
This was another kind of lie. The kind I can't tell. I can't say, "I want to be a teacher". I do sometimes enjoy showing a co-operative co-worker how to use a computer program. I sometimes think it could be cool to be in front of a group explaining how I do things I like to do. (The way the demonstrators at the ceramics conference were doing.) And I can see why _aura_ wanted to teach. But I can see it from the outside.
If I want to teach at all, it's outside, on the periphery. A writer who sometimes explains to people why and how she writes. A potter who sometimes shows people how she does her own weird stuff.
On the other hand, I had a most disturbing thought in the middle of all this; last Friday, I'd bene kind of planning to try out their afternoon exercise class, because one more in the week would probably be good for me. After the bureaucratic running around, I found myself feeling more like heading to the ceramics building. And I tried to remind myself, "Which is more important? Pottery or your health?"
The answer came back instantly, and it was, from the outside, the wrong one. Like I said, a week of uncomfortable self-knowledge.
(I also justified it to myself at that moment as "Well, you're probably going to be dancing for HOURS at the wedding tomorrow.", which is far better than the usual Saturday night sedentarism of gaming.)
I'd like to know why it took that combination of things to make me really decide that, no, I'm never going to make a teacher. For one, if I'd decided *sooner*, it would have saved another $90.00 on the credit card (In fact, it was the crappy timing that I was actually worried Colin would hold over me more than the decision itself.)
tiene's wedding, which didn't happen to me."This isn't exactly true, but it did seem like everything that happened was, one way or another, unpleasant, uncomfortable, or led to uncomfortable thoughts.
(The only thing that was uncomfortable about the wedding, I should say, is that my shins were aching like anything when I got home from too much dancing. Which is, well, a sign all else was well.)
The upshot is that
brannie_bird, um, you don't need to do that referral thing.Okay, bear with me. This will take a while to come together. But it's all related.
Last Friday was the deadline for the Education application for the U of M. One of the things required is a mini-essay (Well, to me 500-700 words is mini) on why you want to go into education.
So I started to type one up.
And deleted it.
And tried again. And stared at a blank screen, and wrote one sentence, and deleted it.
This is important. You see, I don't delete crappy first drafts, even if they're a paragraph long. If I did, I'd never write second drafts. I save crappy paragraphs and either get back to them, or don't. (Once in a blue moon I delete a crappy final draft.)
And made one more try shortly before the whole thing was due, at the university computer.
And then went to the office, lied and explained that I'd left the thumb drive at home, and could I hand that part only in late? One of the two office girls seemed sure it wouldn't be a problem, the less was more doubtful that the committee would be okay with this, but they let me pay and put the application in.
(At, I should say, 4:28 when it was due by 4:30 that day. Talk about cutting it close...)
Not so bad. I immediately went into the ceramics building and started to make my "test tiles" and handles for my mugs. (And then the fire alarm went off because the pipes in the kiln room had burst. By the time I left for the night, and would have left anyhow, the water from the tank had *just* run out. But that's another story.)
That weekend, I learned about an opportunity to submit a novel to an agent for a guaranteed response in roughly 24 hours, and a critique of the first chapter regardless of acceptance. And Sighed, because it required a whole novel, and I had none. Well, I had Raising the Storm, but the last time I'd started to revise it based on the critiques, I'd decided my brain wasn't ready yet. (I'd made two attempts at a new scene needed somewhere close to the opening, and both sucked with a capital suck. And yes, a loud sucking sound.)
Then I was sitting at the computer again, and supposed to write the mini-essay. And instead I opened the first part of RtS and decided to see if I could tweak it. I succeeded in cutting out even more words, in that and subsequent sections, and decided maybe I'd make a pass through it after all. I'd just cut the new scene idea until later, since the version I'd started within the file was crud in every way (wrong event, wrong point of view, had an as-you-know-Bob...)
And went to bed.
The next day, at the university, I opened the other version of that bonus scene, the one I'd tapped out on the dana. It, too, was crud. But it was from the right point of view, and from *almost* the right moment in time. Then and there I ended up writing the whole new thing, in a blazing flash.
That night (The window of opportunity closed at 8AM the next day), after saying goodbye to mom, I opened the file, and started to hack apart and rejoin words, tidied up the new scene, fixed another point I recalled one of my critiquers complaining about, hacked out a handful more paragraphs, then skimmed the rest at lightning speed looking for only the worst of errors. Then had to go and fix the summary. And finished at 5:00 AM. And sent the e-mail off.
Except it turned out there was a problem with my e-mail. Don't ask. It gets weird. No biggie. Except, also. I needed tog et the answer and know what was in fact going on sometime on Thursday. (Plus, I didn't want to have to go home from the ceramics class early, ven for choir practice. I had twelve mugs to produce!) I could not get into the internet at the university. In any lab. At any time in the whole day. Even though it accepted my password and let me use the word processor. I don't think I can emphasize how much this had me almost in tears, and frantic. Because even though there are other routes to getting an agent, wasting one this good was a terrible thing. And my god, if I didn't get on the computer anywhere, I'd have to leave ceramics at the end of class.
Illogical, even for me. But both aspects felt important.
I ended up at the library system, which is not supposed to be used for general internet purposes, but which worked, though I needed the librarian's help to figure out how to get in, making me, usually computer-savvy, feel even more frazzled and stupid. And almost in tears, and almost biting heads off.
Still, all got resolved.
And that's about when, again, I thought of the education essay that was now badly overdue.
I did indeed stay at the university for an extra four hours after class, and stayed on the wheel. I did indeed wind up with 12 more mugs.
________________________
The weird thing about that essay is, the individual sentences weren't bad, prose wise. But they kept including things like, "I thought about it off and on..." or "I guess..." and any time I tried to remove those hedging bits, my "You're lying!!!" alarm went off.
I'm a fiction writer. I'm a role-playing gamer, which is a different kind of fiction. I'm pretty good at spin, and BS - and you'll note I flat out lied to the girls in the admissions office to buy time.
This was another kind of lie. The kind I can't tell. I can't say, "I want to be a teacher". I do sometimes enjoy showing a co-operative co-worker how to use a computer program. I sometimes think it could be cool to be in front of a group explaining how I do things I like to do. (The way the demonstrators at the ceramics conference were doing.) And I can see why _aura_ wanted to teach. But I can see it from the outside.
If I want to teach at all, it's outside, on the periphery. A writer who sometimes explains to people why and how she writes. A potter who sometimes shows people how she does her own weird stuff.
On the other hand, I had a most disturbing thought in the middle of all this; last Friday, I'd bene kind of planning to try out their afternoon exercise class, because one more in the week would probably be good for me. After the bureaucratic running around, I found myself feeling more like heading to the ceramics building. And I tried to remind myself, "Which is more important? Pottery or your health?"
The answer came back instantly, and it was, from the outside, the wrong one. Like I said, a week of uncomfortable self-knowledge.
(I also justified it to myself at that moment as "Well, you're probably going to be dancing for HOURS at the wedding tomorrow.", which is far better than the usual Saturday night sedentarism of gaming.)
I'd like to know why it took that combination of things to make me really decide that, no, I'm never going to make a teacher. For one, if I'd decided *sooner*, it would have saved another $90.00 on the credit card (In fact, it was the crappy timing that I was actually worried Colin would hold over me more than the decision itself.)
