A Red Letter Date...
Hey, do you know what today is? Besides a Wednesday, that is. It is the first of March. Mm Hm. That's right. Oh, what's that you say? You don't know the significance of the 1st of March? Actually, let's just capitalize all of that. The First Of March.
Well, March is when I am supposed to hear back from my graduate schools that I applied to, oh, three months ago and have been waiting on pins and needles on ever since. To flip everyone over to the same page, I am trying to get my Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, both to become a better writer, to have time and energy to devote full time to writing and the writing community, as well as to earn the credentials necessary to teach the subject at the university level. This is also my third year of applying. So nobody talk any fluffy breezy dryer-sheet-commercial spring-fresh-scent BS about me being a shoe-in or but of course you will make it and you will be smacking them away with a ten foot pole. Okay, that last idiom got a bit turned around but you get the point.
It is very very competitive. Everyone thinks that they can be the Next Great American Writer and, of course, everyone can't be. Why? I excruciate over the why I haven't gotten in but, well, I can never know. It's not like they write you little notes back with your rejection letter. It's just the thin little, one sheet of paper with the school's insignia. It does seem, however, that graduate schools lately have been making a lot of "safe" choices of late--choosing well-crafted fiction that mimicks what seems to be selling well it the book stores currently. Not pushing, but rather comfortably smoothing and sealing the envelope with a satisfied smack. That sounds arrogant or ignorant, perhaps, and maybe it is. I have read some articles in the writers wrags and journals that supports this. But I also have to say something to build up myself enough to send more stuff out there to be rejected.
Now last year I didn't actually hear anything until Mid-March and into April. But the school technically say decisions will be made in "March or early April." And so, I have been marching, arduously marching, away the minutes until March. Well, it's March, damn it and I'm sure that time will not march any longer but slink along like a garden snail, making a sticky smacking noise with every miniscule movement.
Well, March is when I am supposed to hear back from my graduate schools that I applied to, oh, three months ago and have been waiting on pins and needles on ever since. To flip everyone over to the same page, I am trying to get my Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, both to become a better writer, to have time and energy to devote full time to writing and the writing community, as well as to earn the credentials necessary to teach the subject at the university level. This is also my third year of applying. So nobody talk any fluffy breezy dryer-sheet-commercial spring-fresh-scent BS about me being a shoe-in or but of course you will make it and you will be smacking them away with a ten foot pole. Okay, that last idiom got a bit turned around but you get the point.
It is very very competitive. Everyone thinks that they can be the Next Great American Writer and, of course, everyone can't be. Why? I excruciate over the why I haven't gotten in but, well, I can never know. It's not like they write you little notes back with your rejection letter. It's just the thin little, one sheet of paper with the school's insignia. It does seem, however, that graduate schools lately have been making a lot of "safe" choices of late--choosing well-crafted fiction that mimicks what seems to be selling well it the book stores currently. Not pushing, but rather comfortably smoothing and sealing the envelope with a satisfied smack. That sounds arrogant or ignorant, perhaps, and maybe it is. I have read some articles in the writers wrags and journals that supports this. But I also have to say something to build up myself enough to send more stuff out there to be rejected.
Now last year I didn't actually hear anything until Mid-March and into April. But the school technically say decisions will be made in "March or early April." And so, I have been marching, arduously marching, away the minutes until March. Well, it's March, damn it and I'm sure that time will not march any longer but slink along like a garden snail, making a sticky smacking noise with every miniscule movement.
posted by Gnomey G at 8:24 PM
2 Comments:
If you want to get rejection letters for your writing, you don't have to wait until March. You can send stories off to magazines and publishers and agents all year long.
I've got a drawer full of 'em.
Ah yes. I hope to one day re-paper by bathroom with those. Then, a bit later, the whole kitchen.
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