Posts tagged with "sea selves" - Faerye Net

My thesis as a cloud

2009-01-03T00:46:15+00:00

My friend Robert Peake, a thoughtful poet gifted in procrastination, recently turned in his MFA thesis and made word clouds of his critical essay and creative thesis (collection of poems, in his case), which you can see on his blog. (Clouds show each word at a size proportional to its number of uses in the text. Wordle defaults to removing dead-common words like ‘and’, and uses the 150 most used words unless you specify differently.) Of course I jumped at the chance to be the next to perform this act of procrastinatory genius, and plugged my opus into Wordle.

Here is my nearly-complete story collection/complete creative thesis, Sea Selves, in cloud form:

I really liked the random font and other options Wordle chose, and the layout that came out first try, so this is exactly what Wordle pumped out, transformed only in color. I took all these shades from photos I’ve taken of the Pacific Ocean. (Pretentious? Moi?)

Here is my critical essay, Sea Change: Visions of the Ocean, which I tweaked a little more:

If for some reason you want to look closer at either, you can click through to the Flickr page and press the ‘all sizes’ button right above the image. My word clouds look very different from Robert’s, which is to be expected. Not only is my thesis prose, but mine is themed. I hope someone with a non-themed short story thesis tries it next to compare! There are a few words I’m slightly surprised by on my thesis word cloud, others I’m glad came through so strongly, and some which were a matter of course. And it’s interesting to see the names of characters from very different stories and worlds nestle so promiscuously together.

For fun, here is a wordle of Sea Selves with 1500 words rather than 150. I think it makes clear why 150 is the default:

In short, I hope Robert has started a fashion. This was fun, and I hope to see other MFAers follow suit.

I made this.

2008-06-16T18:51:52+00:00

My first public reading - Forest Grove, Oregon

2008-06-09T18:28:11+00:00

To fulfill the requirements of my Master of Fine Arts in Writing, I have to give a jolly ol’ reading. The details:

When: Sunday, June 22, 4:15pm-4:45pm
Where: Taylor Auditorium (Room 216), Marsh Hall, Pacific University Campus
What: Graduate readings (15 minutes each) by me and fellow fiction student Lesley Weiss

About my reading: I’ll be reading a fabulist piece from my thesis, Sea Selves.

Logistics: Marsh Hall looks like this and is located in the middle of campus. That means you’ll have at least a short walk from any parking spot. Here are campus maps and directions.

Thesis matters

2008-05-28T12:36:18+00:00

It occurs to me that I haven’t talked too much about the nuts and bolts of my MFA program here, which is generally by design; however, now that this site is more officially part of my semi-professional authorialness, I thought I would mention my thesis.

I quickly resolved, on joining the MFA program, to work on short stories. I didn’t feel that I wanted to commit to just one story (a novel) for the whole time, and wanted to work with different voices, settings and styles as I learned. This dictated a collection of short stories as my final creative manuscript (dubbed ‘thesis’ in the program.) Then, my first semester in the program, I wrote two thematically similar pieces of fabulism which my advisor thought particularly strong, and he suggested I pursue the theme further.

So it is that I ended up writing fourteen short stories and two microfictions in the program, but only putting seven stories in my thesis. “Burgerdroid” and four other viable stories (two are dead-end drafts) are not in the manuscript.

So I have a somewhat odd accomplishment sitting in front of me: seven carefully arranged stories under the title of “Sea Selves”. Though it fills 120 pages in the program-approved format, the collection might only be 70 book pages, too short for a legitimate short story collection. I feel like I have no more ideas for this theme – and yet, I felt that way before the last story or two, some of the strongest, were written. Is this a full book? Have I written a book? And yet, even if I have, short story collections are rarely saleable. Whatever my pride and enthusiasm may dictate, I will probably just send the stories off individually to markets and work on my first novel.

But whatever the pragmatic verdict on my ‘first book’ may be, I am proud and relieved. This was a strange, ambitious project and it came together. Came together well, I dare say. I managed to discipline my creative impulses and turn them, more and more each semester, towards one goal. I even wrote my longest story yet, 29 pages, a much different mental task from the 10 page tales I often write. All these are important steps towards being able to finish a long manuscript. A few days ago, I took the important symbolic step of putting pen to paper, writing down a working title and the first few lines of dialogue. My first novel is underway. Graduation is one month from today. A world of change beckons.