Tuesday’s lecture was at 8am, but it was one I was really looking forward too – Rita Williams-Garcia’s lecture on loss. She talked about everything from the losses sustained through copyediting to the catastrophic, unexpected loss of an entire manuscript by various means – fire, file failure, choice. She helped me understand that the niggling feeling of loss about the first draft of Maganda’s Comb originated in a feeling of guilt – I’d asked so many people to read it and comment on it, even paying a freelance editor to review it, yet I haven’t really looked at comments or worked on it in nearly a year. Inside I knew that the story needed to be reworked. Now I had found the courage to do the work and touched on the faith needed to know the story was still viable.
I skipped the grad lectures, unfortunately, feeling the need to catch up on my residency evaluations and write up my study plan. I was scheduled to meet with Martine over lunch, but while waiting for her, I got into an animated discussion with Rita about loss and first publication. We were having such an intense conversation, I completely missed that Martine had come into the building and ended up late for our meeting. Inside I was mortified, but Martine is a gracious, generous woman who was excited about my project and encouraging. She increased my modest proposal which included rewrites, to a full draft of the novel by semester’s end. She not only recommended books for me to read, but genuinely wanted to know about FilAm writing, asking for suggestions on what on my bibliography she should read.
I am tentative about all this – I’m coming into the program with very little experience in the subtleties of children’s writing – but she is so supportive, understanding not only the intuitive nature of my writing process but also my fears of inadequacy. She told me that I’m ‘twin-souled’ with passions in both childrens and nonfiction – and That’s Okay With Her. Being focused and directed has its advantages, but in the correct proportion and at the correct times. Otherwise, the creativity gets stifled. I love that she gets me so well.
I take the afternoon to hone my study plan and add more entries to my residency evaluation. We’re supposed to write an evaluation on each lecture, a minimum of 8, but I’ve attended the minimum and generally feel as though I need to put in a few extra. I don’t think I’ll write them all up though. My brain continues to be too full to process all the information adequately.
Grad student Lynn Acheson’s lecture on the retelling of fairy tales is particularly apt to my study plan and she provides such a plethora of information, I know I’ll need to ask her for a copy of it. Later, I get the chance to hear Louise Hawes (another fairytale writer!), Martine, and Tim Wynne-Jones read. Louise is hopeful that I’ll get the chance to work on my picture books with her and that’s a huge compliment in my book. I need to get the novel done, maybe even some supporting short stories, before I think the PBs will be cool enough to tackle in revision.
I’ve learned that letting a manuscript cool is a good thing – I’ve always been afraid that cooling meant ‘abandonment with denial’ – so I’m hopeful that when the time comes to revise the PBs, I’ll be ready to take on the comments provided to me during my workshop.
Later that evening, I had a nice chat with Sharon Darrow who had graduated from the MFA program also as a dual genre – Poetry and NonFiction. She, like Martine, assured me that my interest in two genres and even variance within those genres didn’t mean I lacked discipline necessarily. Sharon in fact pointed out that if she ever tried to divide her children’s from her adult writing that she would be less of an artist, much like being forced to favor one child over another.
Speaking of children, that evening I gave a reading of my poetry, my perhaps late-in-life child, the one I know least of all, but who seems to keep informing and enriching my writing. The reading went really well – I felt strong and capable – and I even had a chance to help with multivocal pieces created by one of my classmates. Tired but happy, I returned home feeling very full of words and creativity.