Sunday, July 17, 2011

This is Where I Toot My Own Horn

Here's the deal: I'm currently working on my Bachelor's Degree in English with a minor in Creative Writing and hopefully I'll be finishing within a year to a year and a half. That means - fanfare, please - I need to start looking into Master's Programs. Holy scary, no?

So I started looking into Creative Writing Master's Programs and happened upon the Iowa Writer's Workshop (cue link: http://www.uiowa.edu/~iww/about.htm). The Workshop is exactly what I want out of my Master's Degree - I mean, coming out at the end of two years with a novel-thesis that is polished and publishable, plus being qualified to teach Creative Writing at a university level (aka, the ideal job for a person, such as myself, who is working on a PhD. and whose final goal is teaching English at a university).

The issue I've run into is that I don't have a manuscript that I feel comfortable applying to University of Iowa with. I've written a lot of short pieces, but I feel that my only current manuscript which meets the length required for the application process is not quite up to par. That thought is what prompted this novel idea of mine.

I participated in NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated) for the first time last November. The goal with NaNo is to complete a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. My novel (my longest manuscript to date) was 65,000+ words on November 30th. From that experience I know that I have the drive and ability to churn out word count.

Thus, I have decided to give my best effort toward turning out as many manuscripts as possible in the next year in order to give myself the best opportunity to produce a novel worth submitting to the Iowa Writer's Workshop. As NaNo is the most strenuous schedule for this process and I will be taking 18 credits during the upcoming semester (including two English Literature classes and a Creative Writing course), I have decided to allot two months to each project. As novels are generally 50,000-100,000 words apiece which means I'll be writing approximately 834 to 1667 words a day. This blog will serve the purpose of keeping anyone who would like to be updated updated. I will post sections of the novels on this blog, but they will be available in their entirety at http://www.webook.com/project/My-Novel-Idea.

All this craziness will begin on September 1, 2011. Until then, updates will consist of work on completing two of my current projects, found here: http://www.webook.com/project/The-Plague-Master and my NaNo, http://www.webook.com/project/Iron-Shoes.

If you're interesting in keeping up, keeping tabs, or just poking around, my next six tentative novel projects are outlined on the "upcoming projects" page (tab at the top). You can also follow this blog by clicking through the "join this site" link at the bottom of the right hand sidebar or, if you don't have a blogger account, you can email subscribe using the box at the top of the right sidebar.

There, I've done my tooting, now I guess I had better get to writing.

1 comment:

  1. When you were a little girl I wanted to get you writing in a girl's workshop entitled, "Write on Girl!" (remember?) I've always known you could write! You amaze me and I can't wait to read what you write, and most of all it will come to my inbox...YAY!

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