For years I've invested in education. Non-traditional forms of education. I believe doing and experiencing are the best methods for learning. I also tend to educate myself based on what I need to know at the moment. When I sought my Bachelor of Science degree in Computing, it started as a Bachelor in Science in Applied Mathematics but when I saw how fun computing was it became an easy switch since both degrees shared many of the same prerequisites.
After college, I sought classes to give me more experience to lead me down a varied career path. I have to admit that like most women, my desire for family life led me down a path where I wanted to have a consultant sort of career; more contact with different people from a widespread areas within the company would help me find a husband (which it eventually did) and friends. It also led me to more and more responsibility. Programming is fun, but designing programs are more fun, and being able to build complicated, embedded systems is even more fun, but tieing them directly to the profitability of a company by changing inefficient business process steps to fewer, automated, or automated supported steps was even more ideal. Cost savings, cost elimination, cost reduction, improvements in quality and efficiency, these became possible as I added on to my education.
So now that I'm writing novels and plotting future history in the form of my stories, people wonder why I am having such difficulty with completing an MFA program.
Part of the problem is people telling me that that is what I need and then when I test it it doesn't seem to fit my ideal.
Then there's the problem that I'm cheap. I want the biggest bang for the buck meaning a program where I can see a direct correlation between the coursework I am taking and the outcome in my writing projects that I have committed to i.e. the China story primarily. I have a backlog of novels started ready to go as well as several series of short stories that I will eventually get to, too, but I don't want diversion into other projects.
So writing fiction for me has come to mean a number of things:
1. writing scenes, having them critiqued
2. integrating scenes into an overall plot scheme
3. building the world around the overall plot
4. researching a broad spectrum of real world issues, setting, ideas
5. editing, editing, editing, editing, editing, editing, editing
6. building a writer's platform
So where am I now? Well, I'm not writing scenes because I have a bunch of real world issues that feed into scene dialogue that I want out as articles as part of my platform. And I'm brainstorming the world around the plotline--basically how my story about present day China edges over into a fantasy world of make believe and this part requires expert input before it becomes workable, so I've decided to go offline on the novel while I get those bits worked out with the help of a class on the universe at Oxford.
And changing MFA programs requires me to look for and get references again and possibly have to take a GRE test over again. So I am looking at short term solutions to my education needs and maybe a start in June or September again when I have things in a more viable way with a program. I hope to still generate more scenes, too.
Meanwhile, Bob (my husband) is through Chapter 9 or more of my supposedly last edit of my nonfiction book, although he has suggested a rewrite on one chapter that might require a followup and mostly really minor edits for the rest. I've got the proposal in good shape, working on my synopsis and query letter.
After college, I sought classes to give me more experience to lead me down a varied career path. I have to admit that like most women, my desire for family life led me down a path where I wanted to have a consultant sort of career; more contact with different people from a widespread areas within the company would help me find a husband (which it eventually did) and friends. It also led me to more and more responsibility. Programming is fun, but designing programs are more fun, and being able to build complicated, embedded systems is even more fun, but tieing them directly to the profitability of a company by changing inefficient business process steps to fewer, automated, or automated supported steps was even more ideal. Cost savings, cost elimination, cost reduction, improvements in quality and efficiency, these became possible as I added on to my education.
So now that I'm writing novels and plotting future history in the form of my stories, people wonder why I am having such difficulty with completing an MFA program.
Part of the problem is people telling me that that is what I need and then when I test it it doesn't seem to fit my ideal.
Then there's the problem that I'm cheap. I want the biggest bang for the buck meaning a program where I can see a direct correlation between the coursework I am taking and the outcome in my writing projects that I have committed to i.e. the China story primarily. I have a backlog of novels started ready to go as well as several series of short stories that I will eventually get to, too, but I don't want diversion into other projects.
So writing fiction for me has come to mean a number of things:
1. writing scenes, having them critiqued
2. integrating scenes into an overall plot scheme
3. building the world around the overall plot
4. researching a broad spectrum of real world issues, setting, ideas
5. editing, editing, editing, editing, editing, editing, editing
6. building a writer's platform
So where am I now? Well, I'm not writing scenes because I have a bunch of real world issues that feed into scene dialogue that I want out as articles as part of my platform. And I'm brainstorming the world around the plotline--basically how my story about present day China edges over into a fantasy world of make believe and this part requires expert input before it becomes workable, so I've decided to go offline on the novel while I get those bits worked out with the help of a class on the universe at Oxford.
And changing MFA programs requires me to look for and get references again and possibly have to take a GRE test over again. So I am looking at short term solutions to my education needs and maybe a start in June or September again when I have things in a more viable way with a program. I hope to still generate more scenes, too.
Meanwhile, Bob (my husband) is through Chapter 9 or more of my supposedly last edit of my nonfiction book, although he has suggested a rewrite on one chapter that might require a followup and mostly really minor edits for the rest. I've got the proposal in good shape, working on my synopsis and query letter.
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