I sent in and got feedback on my next 20 pages on my third assignment packet of scenes but now need to get my essays done. Part of the delay is finding adequate support from the reading, so it involves a lot of cut and paste from a lot of 300+ page books. I'm hoping to find several examples from several texts that show the principle being discussed.

In the process of doing the one essay, it grew into four essays or articles, since some tend to be just facts and data.

The four books I'm using as the main source are my semester reading assignment selected by me and Evelyn Conlon:

1. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li
2. East Wind West Wind by Pearl S. Buck
3. Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
4. The Writer and Her Work by Janet Sternburg

I'm also using 4-8 other resources in support of these essays, so all in all it adds up to a lot of work.

I spent several days doing submissions and will hope to do some more after I've finished these essays.

Also finished reading Birds of America by Laurie Moore, she really uses dialogue to good purpose in these stories. Most have a distant portrayal of painful situations that affects the readers emotions.

My "volunteer work" or getting out and about these last weeks surrounds Zoouniverse, my work on my model, and this month I'm the coordinator for the Central Florida Golf Club. Also loved seeing Mama Mia at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center.

I also did some place setting research for the novel and worked on the keyword specification of my blogs. I may well start a new political oriented blog. 

I'm looking forward to judging my first poetry soup contest in two weeks along with a visit from my niece.

This week I worked on writing an essay for my Carlow University MFA program about voice in contemporary Chinese literature. So, I have 500+ words of my essays in fairly good shape for the next package to go into the university. I'm working on several since I'm finding lots of content and because I won't be at home with as many of my resources for awhile. So I will use some of my notes from my residency as posts while I'm away.

Meanwhile, I've read through fifteen books on writing looking for various meanings of how voice is presented in literature. I've also looked for footnotes in One Thousand Years of Good Prayer by Yiyun Li. I've collected five other books on China related to voice, and a similar set on the emigrant experience.
I wanted a good comparison between voice in memoir and voice in fiction and so read Brian Leydon's Home Place since I remembered his readings containing tales of the experience of having family members who emigrated to the US. 

I also realized I didn't have any resources about plant life in China, ordered those books along with more Chinese fiction to read to have a fuller view about what authors are writing about China at home and in China.

Meanwhile, we've made our arrangements to go north to Canada, furthering my research about geology that will be used in the next book down the line and exploring more golf and escaping the anger of those around me that has me stressed out to the max. People don't realize how empathetic I am to the slightest signal.

Some are less slight, such as the Home Owner's Association showing up and wanting gravel previously given the okay to be stored on the side moved which leaves me having to do a lot of gardening.

Via A Broader View Volunteering program, I saw that I can work in China, but I would like to take my niece with me as a way of introducing her to travel outside the country. I'd like her to have some other opportunities where I can send her on her own, but there is so little time before she's off to college I might not get the chance to do so if I don't take her with me. I would go this year in November or December, but it seems like such a far way to travel for just two weeks of time. Bob and I are debating next years schedule of away from town and I hope maybe I will get to spend time in China then. 

I've also started putting together my packet of first scenes to send in to my mentor, finishing four scenes and revising an earlier scene to match up with the more defined outline. I've still one more scene to write and quite a few to edit. 

The edits add more scenery from China, alter names, foods, and other lifestyle issues in the book. I also had various ages for the main character and I'm altering those references so that the scenes fit together without conflict. I've also worked on expanding my villian's role into a side plot.

These scenes are still present time, I haven't decided on how much in the future I will change them to be. I've also worked on a new short story and one sonnet. I guess if it works out, I'll work on calls for submissions tomorrow and maybe the next day.

I guess if people were to ask me why I was taking an MFA program, it would be to quiet all the outrage about me writing books. I'm paying to write and learn, not to volunteer, not to play jump to my whip. I can does those without paying for an MFA degree. And no, the money would not go to someone else to write, I would use it to write and I have rights as a citizen and needs just like any other person.

So with my main assignment for my Carlow University MFA program residency complete, all I had to do is write, right? Sure thing, clear sailing, but then this little bitty niggly worry thingie kept plaguing me. Stare at the ceiling. Stare at the garden. Stare at the floor. Stare at the piles of books. What was I missing?

Eventually, I get it. I'm missing a plan. I know I have another essay due on the 7th along with 20 pages, but what pages?

Why am I uneasy? Is it because I haven't submitted anything recently? Yes, that, too, but what should I submit and where?

What if they all get accepted? Am I ready?

So I did accomplish something. I did figure out I needed to send the rewritten beginning, still in modern time rather than future. I always build from the existing because we may forgive and forget but we always have our roots. I collected data, invented a subplot, wrote 3000 words. I did pick out various stops along the main character's route and found pictures and background data about some of the cities, and some points along the plot line enhanced by history. I discovered I could go to Shandong Province in China with A Broader View Volunteers, too, which sounds fun but probably not possible until next year--this year is pretty booked up. A lot of my brainstorming comes out of longer range parts of the story where I need to backfill to the first part of the novel.

So then I had to wonder, am I ready for such a trip to China? So I bought MacGraw-Hill's Chinese Dictionary & Guide by Quanyu Huang--it focuses on teaching written Chinese via the marks and mark count. I bought the Tuttle Mini Chinese Dictionary by the Tuttle Editors because it has a word oriented way to find words and meanings. Finally I bought Side by Side Chinese and English Grammar by C. Frederick Farrell, Feng-hsi Lui, Xiaozhou Wu, and Rongrong Liao. I've wanted to check my names so that I don't inadvertently call something using a Chinese-English homonym that might embarrass me. Also the equivalent names in the languages especially sounds might create a sense of common knowledge. I also found a Pinyin Pronunciation Guide from the Centre for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in order to understand how the different tones were sounded as marked by accents in various directions.

My reading consisted of my book that I'm reading for this month--One Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li--I'll have a review, soon. I also came up with some ideas of what to look for in writing the essay. 

I also read, Chinese Intelligence Operations by Nicholas Eftimiades since I may have a thriller plot, I don't quite know how it will affect the story yet. I already know I have one character whose purpose is hidden maybe even sinister and I know that I need my villain(s)--how political is that? Sometimes character's don't even know their purpose so they act without knowing and only understand at the very end.

I also couldn't help peeking into Laurie Moore's Birds of America: Stories which I found quite charming, more eventually on that topic.

Note: Some of what I cover in this overall blog, especially reading materials, will be covered in some of the other blog sections where I talk specifically about stories, poems, etc.

Then I built a list of item I had close to ready for submission and matched them against a potential list of calls for submission. I worked on a letter for an agent but ended up not liking it.

I took a look at my marketing plan--matching up my blogs and other online activities against those products I had created and found some holes--these will come about eventually.

I made an error in my essay when I said I needed to write 600,000 words, like many who find connections I combined word count and page number so I really meant 150,000 words and 600 pages, divided into three volumes.

Good news--I received notice that Loconeal Publishing is interested in my short story "Death and the Fishbowl Pontoon" for their Pirate Anthology, more about that in later reports.

And I think I may be near agreement on the illustrations for my golf book.

I've been home a week and finally settling back into a routine. I haven't written as much as I hoped, but have done at least 1000 words, just not necessarily on a scene from my new book, although I did get one and a half scenes written.

I have been compiling notes from all the lectures and reading and drafting my essay. I bought at least one or two of all of the lecturers books as a way of matching what they said to their writing and to maybe go into deeper thematic issues that would flesh out my essay. So far I've read:

• The State of the Prisons and Through the Square Window by Sinead Morrissey. (The latter I lost when I left it in the airplane at JFK airport
• Skin of Dreams by Evelyn Conlyn
• Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry ed. by Peter Fallon and Derek Mahon
• The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
• Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
• The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story ed. by Anne Enright
• One Thousand Years of Prayers by Yiyun Li
• Even So and Selected Poems by Mark Roper (another airplane loss)
• Talking Steel Towns by Ellie Wymard
• The Writer on Her Work Vol. II by Janet Sternberg

and I've begun Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

My required reading for this term at Carlow University is One Thousand Years of Prayers by Yiyun Li, Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian, East Wind West Wind by Pearl S. Buck, and The Writer on Her Work Vol. II by Janet Sternberg. Evelyn Conlon suggested the first and she allowed me to pick two, so I chose the two prize winners. We were going to do a poetry selection and I chose "Push Open the Window Contemporary Poetry from China" published by Copper Canyon Press, but then decided that a book featuring essays would probably help me a lot since I'd like to improve my essay writing.

In addition to the lecturers, mentors and readers, most of these people had suggestions for reading that would help our writing that I've begun to compile.

My mentor also had a set of recommended reading that I've purchased and plan to read; many of the writers are from around the world and by women writers whose journey to publication mirrors mine in many ways: read "Flight" by Sinead Morrissey in the State of the Prisons if you need clarification.

The photograph is from the inspirational courtyard outside my mentor group classroom at Trinity College.

I did find I'd gained weight and felt slow, bloated and not very healthy after 10 days of not much exercise. I should have been up at 6 everyday walking campus as I planned; I guess more and more I am feeling my age.

So our three days of golf a week plus walks and swimming has my muscles somewhat achy, suffering from the heat with headaches several times but happier. 

Meanwhile, I started talks with an illustrator who would like to produce the illustrations for my book; my husband and I hope to hire a lawyer to look over the contract for us. The talks have made me focus on the type of details needed to flesh out the illustration and have resulted in revisions needed for the book where I hadn't included enough detail. When the contract is ready, I'll need sketches for each of the drawings to give to the illustrator. I've already paid him for one sketch to see if he can do the type of illustration I would like and provided him a list of illustrations with size requirements.

The photograph is from today's hike at Lake Jesup Park. I swear, the huge oak at the center of the picture looks just like a dinosaur sized moose.

My husband also had his birthday this week and he pleased me by wearing his matching Trinity College shirt (even if it didn't have a pocket). 

Since my return I've had several talks with my nephew Tom about his plans to go on for his Bachelor of Science in Biology as pre-med coursework to become a doctor. He's found that the Army has a program that might help him during his graduate work to become a doctor; we're very proud that he's finally focused on what he'd like to accomplish.

I've also heard from my mother several times about my niece, my nephew and my nephews best friend--they all recently got jobs, hurray! And my nephew set for college in the fall. 

Photograph is of my husband Bob at 70 years old and one day, with his nightly drink and reading the Economist; we both were horrified to read the account in National Geographic about numbers of migrating birds declining in Europe due to wide spread poaching.