Tag Archives: Research

13Jan 2011

A Resolution of Sorts

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Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

I’ve never really believed in New Year’s resolutions, mostly because no one I know has ever kept one. I’ve never made any of my own before and had no intention of doing so this year.

A few days ago, I was thinking about the rest of this year (odd, I know, since it’s barely begun). I don’t have many things planned outside of activities related to grad school. Going off of that, my one major goal—resolution, if that’s what you’d like to call it—aside from finding a full-time job is to finish one of my novels by the time I graduate next December. I’m not sure which one it will be yet, but I plan to sort that out over the next few months.

In the days since last semester ended, I’ve been thinking over a few other things. Furthering my education past the MA in English is one of those things. I’ve decided to apply to four advanced programs, at least one of which will be a PhD program. I’ve narrowed the list of school considerably over the past few months. Further narrowing needs to be done before the later half of the coming summer.

I’ve made plans to begin studying for the GRE exams as soon as I can purchase the books I need. I’ll be taking the GRE General Test, as well as the GRE Subject Test in Literature in order to be considered by PhD programs. Those programs also require proficiency, or at least the ability to translate a decent sized chunk of text, in one or two foreign languages. I’m starting to re-teach myself French and am using Rosetta Stone software to do so. I’m also thinking of making a foray into German language through the same method.

I’ll be busy throughout the coming months. Classes resume soon, and those, along with this mix of studying, writing, and novel research will be incredibly time consuming. It’s going to be difficult. Oddly enough, i’m looking forward to it.

I want 2011 to be an interesting year. I want good things to happen. I can’t say what will happen in any facet of my life, but I’m hopeful. That’s really all I can ask for at this point. And so, to my readers and anyone else who may stumble across this, take note—I’ve just made my first New Year’s resolution (of sorts).

Happy Writing,

08Sep 2010

Work-in-Progress Wednesday: 9/8/2010

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Photo courtesy of Creative Commons & blimpy.

Welcome back for another installment of the weekly theme I like to call “WIP Wednesday,” in which I report on the general progress of my own writing. I invite you to adopt this theme on your own blog or if you feel so inclined, share your own progress in the comments. Please bear with me over the next couple of weeks as I find an appropriate structure for these posts.

What I’m Doing (Overall):

  • I’ve started a short story of sorts for class. I have a complete story within the three pages I have written—something I’ve never done before. Up until this point all of my “short stories” were far too long and never had a real ending. As it stands, this story is written in first person. For class in two weeks, it needs to be rewritten through the point of view of another character in the story. That will be a bus driver (because he is the other character in my story).
  • It’s unclear whether or not I’ll use this story for my first workshop on October 12th. I would like to, but am unsure of how to change it so it’s not the same as it is now. I may write something entirely different. A friend also suggested rewriting it through the point of view of the killer in my novel, which I find intriguing. We’ll see. In any case, I’d like to use this piece in my novel somewhere.
  • My workshop dates for my Research & Short Story class are set. The first is October 12th; the second is November 9th. I’m very much looking forward to both of them.

Where I’m At (Novel-Wise):

  • Chapter seven is proving to be a bit harder to revise than I originally thought, but I’m slowly working through it. At this point, I’m about halfway through the first set of revisions for the chapter as a whole.
  • Writing an effective interrogation scene between my protagonist and a police detective is proving difficult as well. The interrogation itself seems to be structured okay, but the questions are too weak, I think. There needs to be more of them, too. At this point, I almost feel like I ended the chapter how I did just to be done with it. Writing should not be this way, and I’m going to remedy it soon, I hope.
  • I’ve begun outlining a few more future chapters. As is the case with many of my outlines, I’m sure they’ll change once I get to those chapters. Having the structure for now, though, is a comforting thing.

[How is your writing coming along? How are you keeping yourself on track? Share in the comments!]

11Aug 2010

Novel Progress: An Experiment of Sorts

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I had originally planned to reserve Wednesday’s blog posts for news about my own writing and novel progress. I don’t plan to deviate from this too often and will only do so if I have absolutely no news or information. This kind of post may be a work-in-progress for a few weeks until things get rolling again, but it’ll become more structured as I start writing more often.

  • That being said, it’s pretty obvious that I haven’t worked on the novel itself since mid-May. I have done some researching and additional reading for it, though. I’ve been jotting notes here and there and really should be keeping them all in a notebook (which I will do eventually, I promise), but for now, they’re scattered everywhere.
  • I’m currently re-reading “Columbine” by Dave Cullen. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Nonfiction on the Columbine incident. My first time through was jarring, not because of the writing or anything like that. It was because of how factually interesting the entire book was. I picked it up back in April because I thought it would give me a bit of insight into school shootings. The book offered so much more than that. I won’t go into details here because I plan to review this book after I finish reading it again, but I do recommend picking it up. It’s a fast read and oh so interesting!
  • Topics I am continuing research on include psychopathology, writing as healing, PTSD, and there’s also been a bit of research on firearms and pipe bombs (expressly for further structuring of one of my main characters and nothing more). I’ve found so much that’s it’s hard to sift through and try to process everything. I don’t think I could ever use all of the information, but it’s nice to have it all.
  • Later chapters are still being planned/outlined. I’ve written through six, all of which will be revised again countless times, I’m sure. Revision is a large part of the process, after all.
  • I’m also toying with a new title for the work. I’m not sure if “Forward Together” will continue to fit as I move on with writing. I have a few other ideas, but I feel like those would only fit if the story was written through Andrew instead of Jackson.

There is much more to talk about, but rather than spew it all in entries such as this, I’m hoping to add structure and hopefully put much of what I’d like to say into separate entries. We’ll see how it all turns out. That is one of the fun things about just starting out–the trial and error process.

[Are you working on a novel right now, too? How are you handling the process? Sound off in the comments!]