Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
February 14, 2019
A few years ago I joined a local fiction-writers’ workshop here in Naples, FL, which has helped me immensely in getting my writing done. I have to turn in a new story every few weeks, and I prefer to treat that deadline as sacrosanct, to practice finishing work. In addition, the feedback is excellent, and I am forced to confront my own writing with more and more discerning eyes, working ever to improve. Both of these things have been beneficial.
But perhaps more interesting than how the workshop has helped my writing, a little more than a year ago, I talked with Kristine, the founder of the workshop, about expanding it. We discussed putting on readings, starting a podcast, developing paid seminars and workshops, providing a writing space for local writers, and even perhaps one day creating a literary magazine. A couple of those things have already come to fruition.
I thought I should mention those projects here on my own site. Please visit the Naples Writers’ Workshop website for more information.
I am one of the hosts of our podcast, which launched with its first episode on this first of this month. It’s called Why Is This Good?, and we discuss excellent fiction to try to glean lessons that can help inform the craft and artistry of our own fiction. The first time I discussed this idea with Kristine, I thought it would be a great podcast for aspiring writers or anyone who is interested in thinking about the art of fiction, and I think the results are proving that intuition to be true. The first episode is now available on Apple Podcasts and Google Play, and the next will be available tomorrow (the 15th). Please check it out.
Kristine and I are also running a Teen Fiction Workshop geared to high school students who are interested in writing fiction. The high school curriculum does not encourage fiction writing, and we hope to provide some modicum of encouragement for young writers. So far our students are really excellent writers with enormous potential, and I’m encouraged for the future of this workshop. A few issues have come up, but overall I’m pleased with what we’ve been able to do.
We’ve also been able to host a couple of fiction readings at local venues, and we’re planning for the next one. These have also been successful. You can see some pictures from the events at the workshop page I linked above.
Anyway, I thought I should mention some of the things I’ve been working on this past year other than incomplete drafts of Death and Life, which progresses in spurts now and then as I find moments to press forward with it. We were running a novel workshop which helped, but that was a project we were forced to reconsider. In the meantime, my daughters are getting more amazing every day, and I love being their daddy.
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May 8, 2017
I have at long last finished my degree and graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Studies. The program was highly interdisciplinary and self-directed. My dissertation incorporated Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Epistemology, and Literary Theory/Criticism and Poetics.
In addition, I welcomed my twin daughters into the world last fall. They are now six months old and strong and healthy.
I will be spending a lot of time taking care of my girls, but now that I’ve finished the PhD program, I should have much more time to work on the many novels I’d like to write. I would also like to turn some of the ideas I used in my dissertation into books. I’ll try to keep this space updated.
Posted in Life
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July 12, 2016
I updated my “Projects” page to reflect the fact that I’ve advanced to candidacy in the PhD program and am now writing the dissertation.
I got a Summer Research Fellowship to support my dissertation writing, and this summer is focused on that writing. I’ve made good progress, though recently I’ve paused writing to read a few books. Within the week I’ll be writing more intensely again.
It’s not novel-writing, but it’s good to be once again so focused on writing.
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March 6, 2014
It’s a shame I don’t post more here.
Since my last posting, I began a PhD program at Florida Atlantic University in Comparative Studies (Cultures, Languages, and Literatures). My specific interest, and the focus of my study and eventual dissertation is a mixture of cognitive science, linguistics, and literary theory. Specifically, I want to argue for a more cognitive approach to literary critical practice rather than the post-structuralist assumptions that have guided its theoretical underpinnings for the past several decades. Our minds and hence our subjectivity are inherently pre-discursive, but post-structuralist thought denies this and assumes that subjectivity is constructed by external influences. A great many things fall out of this assumption, and my goal is to build up an alternate foundation for critical theory based on recent findings of cognitive science. This project may be much too large for me, but it’s where my fundamental interests in this domain lie, so forward I must go.
Meanwhile, I have not written any novels. This is wildly dissatisfying and leads to erratic moods as I contemplate further years passing me by without having published my writing. I don’t know how to overcome this, as the PhD program requires almost all of me. Through some naive optimism, I’ve kept a copy of Death and Life in my bag with the hope that I’ll take it out once in a while and write it. I do intend to write more this summer when I will only be adjuncting and planning for the fall semester.
I’ll write here that I intend to update this more often, and perhaps I will restructure the website to include a section for school and things that emerge out of the PhD program, but writing that is mere optimism.
Posted in Life
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January 22, 2013
I did graduate last Spring, and I’ve moved back to Florida. I am now an Adjunct Professor at a local college.
Last fall I rewrote the prologue to Angie to give it a “softer” open, and Angie is now near some editor’s desk awaiting consideration. I also spent a bit of time reworking a few chapters of Looming Thunderheads to make them stronger, hopefully. I’m going to read through the text again and then hopefully Looming can go sit on some editor’s desk for a few months too.
I’ve applied to a few PhD programs, and we’ll see if I get accepted into those. If not, I may spend some of my time doing my own Literary Critical research and thinking. I have ideas, I do.
Meanwhile I think I want to return to Death and Life, as I have been mulling over how to narrate that story for some time, and I want to try and see if it works. That means redoing what I have, but for the better I think. We’ll see.
I also intend to update the website soon, and that may mean ditching this WordPress journal for something I write myself. Not sure if I want to spend the time programming that project, but for very many reasons I want to change this part of the site.
I apologize for the long-broken sections of the site, and the weird accumulation of various stages of page revisions. Hopefully as I move forward with this project I can fix that. We’ll see.
Hey, if you’re reading this, drop me a line. Thanks!
Posted in Angie Star, Death and Life, Life, The Redemption Saga, Website
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July 11, 2011
It’s probably obvious to anyone paying attention (which is likely no one) that I’m terrible at keeping up this Journal. I don’t anticipate that changing, primarily because (as I noted in my last entry) I’m not concentrating on writing at the moment, but on graduate school, which involves too much reading.
Anyway, my first year of grad school did not end as expected. Just before finals week a tornado destroyed a broad swath of ground through the middle of town and the semester was over. I had to finish writing papers for class, but school was effectively over at that point as we all set about the task of recovering. My house had relatively minimal damage, and my landlord was quick with the repairs. Most of the beautiful old trees that once shaded our street are gone, so the view outside is irrevocably changed. My immediate neighbor’s house was smashed, and another house beyond that was demolished soon afterward. And slowly the city rebuilds.
I’ve been reading this summer and relaxing a bit, and I’ve even done a bit of writing on Death and Life, though nothing substantial. I’m programming a webpage for the English Department, so that keeps me busy (and paid). For the rest of the summer (in addition to more website work) I’m going to begin a directed reading that will last through the end of the year. It’s supposed to be for the fall semester, but because there is so very much to read, my professor and I agreed to start the readings now.
I do not expect to update this Journal very much or at all for a while. The MA program is complete after next Spring, at which time I should graduate, so perhaps I’ll have more time then. However, if I am accepted into another program after that, who knows how long that will last.
Despite having said that, I know that I will write here again, and I will definitely write more on my various projects.
Posted in Death and Life, Life, Writing
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July 31, 2010
It might be obvious that I haven’t made any progress since my last entry. The problem has been that my attention is scattered. I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing, in that I have not really been idle, but have made progress (however limited) on many projects—no less than seven in total.
I think I made the most textual progress on Death and Life and Samantha, which I have discussed in this journal. But I also made some progress with a stage play titled (for now), “What do you want?” In fact, at my wife’s advising, I took a single scene out of that play and tried to strengthen it as a stand-alone ten-minute play, which is easier to get produced, and for which format there are numerous contests.
Additionally, I did some planning and a little bit of writing on a few other novels: The Death of Aaron Jamison, which is an expansion of a short story I wrote in 1998, itself only a sketch of an intended longer work; The Assassination of Prince Rolin en Qarriel, which was intended to be a light and easy work just to give me a bit of freedom—I started writing it because I was annoyed with my more “literary” ambitions and decided to write something purely plot-driven, based on all the tired tropes of pop literature—and instead, it has turned into an attempt at writing a Greek-styled tragedy.
Between the Stars I worked on just a little bit, but the story hasn’t come together for me quite yet. But also this summer an old story I’ve been thinking about for several years got a new bit of inspiration—working title, Immortality—and I wrote just a little bit of that and have a rough framework developed. A new story occurred to me, about a serial killer, but it needs something more, a second piece that eludes me. I sketched a bit of it and wrote a bare introductory chapter, but got no further.
And last, I did quite a bit of work on an essay titled “A Philosophy for Writing Fiction,” which was a response to my experiences on the website “Authonomy.” I will probably continue to touch up that essay for the next few years, and at some point I will post it on my website.
In the meantime, I am about to start grad school. So my current project is now Graduate School, and it is also my primary focus. I do not expect to write very much fiction while I am enrolled. I want to give school as much focus as I can, and to that end, I will not work on fiction with any regularity. Obviously inspiration in such a fecund environment as academia will be ongoing, and once in a while I will probably touch a project or two. I will update this space.
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April 21, 2010
So I’ve updated the main page to reflect the fact that I’m no longer working on Death and Life and instead have returned to a story that has been calling to me for more than ten years—Samantha. I actually made the switch at the end of March, but I wanted to make sure I would make progress on Samantha before I updated the page to reflect it. Since I have now reached 10,000 words in that book, I think it’s safe to say that Samantha is my current project. I anticipate the book being complete somewhere between 60-80k: much, much shorter than Death and Life will be.
There are two primary reasons for making this switch. First, in February and March I was faced with quite a daunting bit of writer’s block (the writing only dribbled, a few hundred words a day). It wasn’t until mid-April that it finally started to crack open. The second reason is that I have been accepted into the Graduate Program in English at the University of Alabama with a Teaching Assistantship. So starting in August, my life will be completely taken over by pursuit of an MA degree. Death and Life is such a large work that I’m not sure I could have finished it by summer’s end—in fact, I never expected to do so. I’m not sure I’ll finish Samantha by August, but the chances are much greater, since it’s likely to be less than half the length of Death and Life. In any case, I should at least have a rough draft.
After we moved to Tuscaloosa so Jenny could get her MFA, I decided to sign up and take the GRE. I’ve thought about returning to school for a long time, but my undergraduate grades were so bad I never thought it was a realistic goal. Having scored fairly well on the GRE, however, I applied to UA (and only UA—I can’t go to school anywhere else while Jenny is going to school here). The next few months were painful anticipation as my life was being decided by strangers (though I’m accustomed to that, having sent out Queries and Manuscripts to hundreds of strangers). In February, I finally got the letter that I was being accepted. Last week I signed up for the classes I will take in the fall. I’m on my way. I intend to eventually try for a PhD., but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.
Meanwhile, I will devote the summer to Samantha, and I also have a notion (time permitting) of taking another look at a stage play I started last year (working title: ‘What do you want?’). Jenny will be working an internship in Illinois, while I stay here in Alabama working at the University library and writing—until August, when everything will change…forever.
Posted in Death and Life, Life, Samantha
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