Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Explanation and Contests

First, an explanation of the progress bars to the right:  the top bar indicates how far I've gotten on a full draft of my thesis (I'm currently working through the second draft).  The remaining bars indicate progress on individual stories, which make up the thesis as a whole, and the numbers next to each title indicate the draft I'm currently working on for that piece (2.0 = second full draft, 4.2 = fourth draft with some other minor changes, etc.).

In other news, I'll wax update-y and tell you how I've sent stories in to three BYU writing contests in the past day or so.  We'll see how things turn out; during my undergrad I was 2/2 for the contests to which I submitted.  Last year was less encouraging (0/2, to be exact).  So we'll see how things unfold this time around.  I'm also in the process of submitting some of my stories to various literary journals--nothing but rejections so far, but rest assured I'll holler as soon as I hear some good news.

Oh, and happy Valentines Day.  I happen to have the best wife in the world, so yeah, I bet you're jealous of that.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

The Homestretch, or, Why I'm Going to Start Blogging Again

I've been hanging out at LTUE this weekend, and its gotten me thinking about a number of things--one begin that I want to get back into blogging.  My plan was to start up again after I graduate in April/June, but I really have no reason not to start right now.

It's sort of a moment of kairos, as we say in my Writing 150 class.  This is an interesting semester for me; it's the last full semester I'll have (hopefully) before I graduate, so I'm taking 6 credits of thesis hours and no real literary/criticism or workshop classes, which has actually been great.  Devoting most of my working hours to revisions on my thesis is not a bad way to end the program, if you ask me.  Of course, I'm also teaching two classes--the typical Writing 150 (Writing and Rhetoric/Freshman English) as well as English 218R (Intro to Creative Writing)--which adds quite a bit to my workload, but so far both classes are going well.  I'm teaching an experimental section of Writing 150 that focuses on blogging as a medium for rhetoric, and that has been an educational experience (and all the more reason to keep up my own blog, of course).  And English 218R is awesome--workshopping and talking about interesting pieces of writing, what more could I want?

Anyway, other than a few "student activity" courses I'm taking (basketball and a spinning class), that's pretty much my semester.  Hopefully I'll defend my thesis in early April (speaking of which, I've updated the Current Projects and Backburner pages of the site, so check them out if you're interested), and that will be that.

So all this is to say that I really have no excuse not to be blogging right now, and I want to di it anyway, so why not start (again)?  It might even serve as motivation to attack my thesis revisions with a fiery vengeance.  So let it be written.