Friday, August 26, 2005
Stuff and.... a cat party
Let's see. I'm tired. Taught my first class at SSU last night. They're juniors and seniors plus creative writing majors, so it's a good group, a great group. When I've TA'd in the past, it's been for lower division courses and most of the students were there because they had to be. My students all had really interesting ideas for projects and it was clear that many are already deep into their stories. So, I think this class will be fun. Who will be the brilliant one, whose story takes your breath? I know I'll be surprised. The first writing class I ever took, it was a UC Extension course, I never turned in a thing. The thought of letting anyone see my work paralyzed me. And there was a brilliant, brilliant writer. Prize winning quality (Howard Ockman, where are you?) But, I sold my first novel less than a year later. The class was short story writing and novel writing is vastly different. But I was in class every week, reading and absorbing everyone else's work, and that was good for me.
I'm taking the reading survey class for the oral exam this semester so I have a lot of reading to do. The reading list is different than the one I saw earlier. This one has even more stuff I've already read so most of my reading will be review and refresh. There's an advantage to being old. But also, I took both halves of the British Lit survey before I applied to the MA program and everything in the Brit Lit section I've already read. I'm re-reading the Canterbury Tales now. Fun.
I've been plugging away on The Rake. I was reading it today, I think it was good. Uh oh. I may be close to sending it out to a few people to read. Then to my agent. I've been developing my dark elf idea on the sly.
Tomorrow my son has a soccer tournament, Saturday and Sunday. I'm driving down with one of the other parents. I guess I'll do school reading in the car. We may spend the night because the last game is kind of late. And, I'm thinking maybe that wouldn't be bad because my son will be entertained by the other kids and I can hunch over the laptop and get some writing done.
This afternoon, my son and I attended a birthday party for my sister's cat, Whiskers, AKA Nightmare. Interestingly enough, a lot of people came. None of them had ever been to a party for a cat before. Nightmare got lots of presents. Someone brought her tuna. Not tunafish, actual tuna. My cats got her a nice card and some kitty treats (because they don't have a big allowance.) It was fun.
