Long post ahead, fair warning....
I've been in Austin for the holiday, and I delayed my flight home from tomorrow morning to Monday. As soon as I saw the skyline from the plane (and especially after I stepped out into the low 70s temperature) I immediately wondered why I left. Yeah, I got into an MFA program, but that's been pissing me off lately. They just recently took away the option of writing a novel for our final, overall project; it now has to be a short story collection. Apparently, this is because everyone chose the novel option but then hardly anyone finished. Well, to that, I say I've already written one novel, and before the spring semester starts I'm hoping to have a second one completed. To me, that seems like a lowering of the program standards. In all honesty though, I'm not sure how high the standards are to begin with. Some of the student stories I've read lack basic English skills, such as complete sentences and basic grammar (such as paragraph breaks between dialogue and near-incomprehensible sentences). I've been trying to arrange a meeting with the program head to lodge my complaints, but she hasn't been available for a while due to some family issues.
So yeah, I saw my old Barnes & Noble store (SO much better than my current one in Maryland) and I really started to regret leaving. Maybe I should have waited around another year and tried to apply to all the schools again. I was doing all right for money while I was here; I might have been able to handle all the application fees. I let my parents talk me into believing that I wouldn't have any better writing samples a year from then and that the results would all be the same. I know they didn't mean that as an insult, but I should have taken it as one to use as motivation. Now I'm pretty much locked into a program that I really feel misled me when I was visiting.
I've just gotten extremely homesick since being here (and seeing as how I only lived here for a year, that struck me as odd). I drove by my old apartment, and all the sights I remember, and went to the Texas-Texas A&M football game. The whole trip has been bittersweet; I don't want to leave, but I have a shitload of homework I have to do before next Saturday.
I'm not very happy in Baltimore, and my girlfriend feels the same way. "We don't belong here," she told me a few days ago, only half-jokingly after enduring another terrible night of tips at her restaurant. Nobody we've met really gets either of our senses of humor, at least not like the people in Austin did.
It also doesn't help that I've been losing sleep over money issues. I've been dipping into my financial aid money, but I need that to pay for next semester. I'll have to find some way to replenish most of what I've used before the second week of January. Fun fun. I started doing this credit counseling thing, which is a good long term solution for my $9,000 worth of credit card debt (it could be a lot worse, I know), but unfortunately rapes me up the ass in the short term.
It's just been a shitty year all around. The silver lining in all this is that it does motivate me to keep working on my books, even though I have to focus a lot on the shit-ton of work I have to do for the final weeks of my classes. I need to get published, even if only for a little money just to lift the burden. Plus, there's a deeper reason behind that need: people keep telling me not to get my hopes up, that getting published before you're 30 is a real long shot. Maybe this is the athlete in me, but that makes me want to say, "Fuck you," and pull it off even more. I want to show them what I can do, that I'm not just some idealistic dreamer who will never put the work in and will spend his whole life pining for the reward that will never come. I've been terrified of being that person since I was in high school, and that fear only increases as the years go on.
And I got work done here in Austin; I wrote a 500 page book (and that was only part one of a trilogy). I don't know if I made the right decision or not....
I've been in Austin for the holiday, and I delayed my flight home from tomorrow morning to Monday. As soon as I saw the skyline from the plane (and especially after I stepped out into the low 70s temperature) I immediately wondered why I left. Yeah, I got into an MFA program, but that's been pissing me off lately. They just recently took away the option of writing a novel for our final, overall project; it now has to be a short story collection. Apparently, this is because everyone chose the novel option but then hardly anyone finished. Well, to that, I say I've already written one novel, and before the spring semester starts I'm hoping to have a second one completed. To me, that seems like a lowering of the program standards. In all honesty though, I'm not sure how high the standards are to begin with. Some of the student stories I've read lack basic English skills, such as complete sentences and basic grammar (such as paragraph breaks between dialogue and near-incomprehensible sentences). I've been trying to arrange a meeting with the program head to lodge my complaints, but she hasn't been available for a while due to some family issues.
So yeah, I saw my old Barnes & Noble store (SO much better than my current one in Maryland) and I really started to regret leaving. Maybe I should have waited around another year and tried to apply to all the schools again. I was doing all right for money while I was here; I might have been able to handle all the application fees. I let my parents talk me into believing that I wouldn't have any better writing samples a year from then and that the results would all be the same. I know they didn't mean that as an insult, but I should have taken it as one to use as motivation. Now I'm pretty much locked into a program that I really feel misled me when I was visiting.
I've just gotten extremely homesick since being here (and seeing as how I only lived here for a year, that struck me as odd). I drove by my old apartment, and all the sights I remember, and went to the Texas-Texas A&M football game. The whole trip has been bittersweet; I don't want to leave, but I have a shitload of homework I have to do before next Saturday.
I'm not very happy in Baltimore, and my girlfriend feels the same way. "We don't belong here," she told me a few days ago, only half-jokingly after enduring another terrible night of tips at her restaurant. Nobody we've met really gets either of our senses of humor, at least not like the people in Austin did.
It also doesn't help that I've been losing sleep over money issues. I've been dipping into my financial aid money, but I need that to pay for next semester. I'll have to find some way to replenish most of what I've used before the second week of January. Fun fun. I started doing this credit counseling thing, which is a good long term solution for my $9,000 worth of credit card debt (it could be a lot worse, I know), but unfortunately rapes me up the ass in the short term.
It's just been a shitty year all around. The silver lining in all this is that it does motivate me to keep working on my books, even though I have to focus a lot on the shit-ton of work I have to do for the final weeks of my classes. I need to get published, even if only for a little money just to lift the burden. Plus, there's a deeper reason behind that need: people keep telling me not to get my hopes up, that getting published before you're 30 is a real long shot. Maybe this is the athlete in me, but that makes me want to say, "Fuck you," and pull it off even more. I want to show them what I can do, that I'm not just some idealistic dreamer who will never put the work in and will spend his whole life pining for the reward that will never come. I've been terrified of being that person since I was in high school, and that fear only increases as the years go on.
And I got work done here in Austin; I wrote a 500 page book (and that was only part one of a trilogy). I don't know if I made the right decision or not....
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
I hope the upcoming holiday season brings you some joy. There has to be a way for all your, and my drama to disappear, at least for a while. As I say often in my journal entries, I value peace of mind above all else. I wish that for both of us.
Damn, u sure are in a fuct up field of work, I cant think of many jobs that are as complicated as being a writer. Its like being an artist and trying to make money soley on your art, it's damn near impossible unless you're in that small fraction of a percentage of ppl who are phenominal. No amount of schooling can FORCE an artist (synonymous with musician, writer, etc) to "make it" in the real world, and that's what sucks. I really admire what you're doing, following your dream like that. It's filled with a shit ton of sacrifices, as u already can see. If there really is such thing as karma then it will all be worth it in the end, right?