Need publishing resources? Click here!

Before I talk about me, I just want to let y'all know that #SolutionsSanctuary is running an awesome contest aimed at helping new deviants! Remember when you first joined and you were really confused about where everything was and how it worked? Now's your chance to write a tutorial for similarly new lost souls, and win fabulous prizes! Click over and enter, you'll be doing a good deed and throwing yourself in the running for points, subscriptions, and more.

It's been such a long time since I've written a proper journal. The most insane year of my college career has finally come to a close, and right now I'm just kind of hanging out until it's time for me to go home (read: until GW kicks me out of housing and I'm forced to). Between all the classes I took, applying for my major, applying for departmental honors, interning, and dealing with endless waves of lit mag drama, school has taken every toll on me -- but that just means this summer, and next year, are going to be so much better.

I promised you guys a full update on things, so basically, here's where my life is: I'm 100% stepping down from the editorial board for The G.W. Review, partially because I have to write a thesis next year and I won't have enough time to dedicate to it, and partially because the whole thing became such a huge mess of drama that the stress and the injury it all did to my mental health just wasn't worth it. When you're breaking down crying over something that you're supposed to enjoy doing, then it's no longer worth doing. I learned a lot about publishing, but I think I learned even more about people.

Classes were also taxing. I've gotten to the point where I feel like I've gotten all that I can out of the literature side of my major and I'm bored with it; I'm applying the same theories, the same techniques, to everything that I'm reading, and reading this way has made the books less fun, unfortunately. I'm looking forward to getting in some popcorn reading this summer along with some things I have to read for my thesis (but more on that later). Right now I'm in it to fill out my requirements, because I'm so close to being done, but after that, I'm just focusing everything I can on my writing.

Speaking of which, that thesis. I had to apply to the Creative Writing program at my school with a sample, a personal statement, and two letters of recommendation. There are four spots each for fiction and poetry, and fiction was especially competitive this year -- and yet, my advisor has told me that I was one of only two people unanimously chosen by the creative writing faculty to write my thesis. Which absolutely floors me. I have no time to have a big head about, though -- by the end of March, I need to have a 45-125-page fiction manuscript, which will mostly likely be a collection of short stories, plus a 10-20 page theoretical analysis of my own writing to complete the honors component (which I also had to apply for). At the end of the month, I have due a project plan about what I'm planning to write about, plus a reading list to complete over the summer (so if anyone has suggestions for books about miscommunication/alienation in relationships, or books where characters' physical gestures come across very well, please let me know!). And then I need to hand in WIPs of my stuff twice a month for the next year. It's going to be a lot of work, but if I make it through, then I know I'm ready to grapple with the challenges of the writing life. And I'll know that I can complete an MFA. My advisor and the department chair are scheming to send me to the Iowa Writers' Workshop fully funded when I'm ready for it, and I can only hope that I can live up to the potential they see in me.

On the work side, leaving my internship at Island Press is probably one of the harder things I've done in a while. I worked in one place for a whole academic year since I was a freshman, and even then I was just filing bitch at the dean's office, so this was special for me. I can only hope they have a job for me after I graduate, not only because I'll need one, but because I love the people there more than I can explain. Even when the lit mag was getting me down, they reminded me why I want to go into publishing, and why I love working at small companies. Next year, one of the proposals I pulled out of the slush pile is going to be a textbook, and that's endlessly exciting to me. At the same time, I'm looking forward to the summer -- I'll be in the trade editorial department at W.W. Norton, so I really feel like I'm moving up the ladder in terms of prestigious internships. I hope it'll be a good experience (and I have no reason to think it won't be).

Also next year, I'm going to be a research assistant for a professor, and by research assistant I mean more like unpaid editorial assistant, since she's starting -- you'll never believe this -- a journal about fandom studies. It's so fucking nerdy that it's perfect, and the professor is exactly the same kind of geeky that I am, so I'm bouncing off the walls about this one.

So basically, I've got a lot of work ahead of me, but nothing can be as crazy as this past year. I'm looking forward, for once, to absolutely everything. And I'm so ready to put this year behind me.

How's everyone else?




JOIN OR I CRUSH YOU (not really)


Clubs