Schoolwork Heats Up

[davetheanalyzer]

 It’s already that time of the semester where most of my writing time gets taken up by schoolwork. I’m on the second draft for my twelve page Senior Seminar paper and basically have to rework everything. For the essay to make sense, I introduced the entire mythos of Godzilla, with a section about the first film and another about the entries that followed. By the time I was done with that and finished introducing what the essay was about, I had already taken up three pages. I don’t know if that’s too long or if the Godzilla mythos needs that much detail to be understood by the average layman.

Since my professor said that my major categories are about monsters as symbols vs monsters are characters, I should group the sources that talk about them that way, with lots of “Critic A said this, while Critic B said that.” On the first draft, I seemed to merely report on what various scholars said. I kind of did the same with the second draft, so at the halfway point, I looked it over and rewrote a lot of it. It isn’t comparative as the professor suggested but the quotes seem support each other and writing the essay is no longer such a chore. When I’m done, I’ll look it over again and reword any confusing sentences. I didn’t the last time and that confused my professors and fellow student reviewers.

Last Monday, I finished a Human Rights six page midterm essay. It was a bit difficult. It involved writing and analyzing the points of a video and article, but since I only focused on certain sections, I had to pull from my own reading experience to complete the six page minimum. The professor said drawing from my own experience is okay but I wasn’t sure how much leeway there was in just mentioning what I’ve read without citing sources, so I pulled up some online articles that had enough information to enforce my point. Revising and checking for mistakes on Monday was such a chore, since a lot of the sentences had to be modified or rewritten to make sense to me. By the time I had to send it in, much of my other writing time had been eaten up.

And to top it all off, when I tried to attach the document to the Microsoft Outlook school email, a message popped up about Onedrive not being connected instead of going straight to my documents. That caused me a bit of a panic until I figured out I could drag and drop documents from my file explorer and later googling told me that clicking the computer icon on the left of that message would get me to my documents. That had been a right dick move, causing users to panic in an attempt to get them to use their shiny tool. Fortunately, I got around it and will know how to get around it in the future.

I recently finished a thousand word presentation for Human Rights too. It wasn’t so bad, since it’s summarizing the main points of an article and diluting down each page to two lines each. I read it over and neatened it up, deleting or moving around any sections that don’t fit or repeat themselves. That means there are fewer words to the presentation but the professor stated that wasn’t important. The good news is that she delayed my presentation to this Tuesday, which gave me enough time to proofread the document, send it to her, and set aside time for other writing projects.

And speaking of those other writing projects…I finished the first draft of my a thousand word Statement for Purpose. It’s part of my application to get into Southern CT State University’s MFA program. I went to a sort of fair for potential students of the school and the head of the program explained how to get in. I really want to pursue my terminal degree in the creative writing field., Me, my mom, and a family friend are doing what’s required to get accepted in. The Statement for Purpose is a major part of that.

When I began, I realized I didn’t know the particulars of a Statement of Purpose, so I googled. Apparently, you should start with an anecdote that relates to why you want to get into the program, since those are much more attention grabbing than simply stating your motive. I began mine with an anecdote of my very first The Land Before Time fanfic, which transitioned to how I like to play with characters and put them in challenging situations. I spoke of how I would like to have the opportunity to learn how to more swiftly and methodically write such stories, with an honest admission of my non-literature influences for genre and the fanfiction that influenced my writing style. I’ve send the Statement of Purpose to my Senior Seminar professor, who’s also my advisor. No response yet, but he’ll come up with suggestions on how to clean up and refine the statement.

I wrote three pages of story that goes with the Senior Seminar paper. I know now I can use it as a writing sample for my MFA application. Between the application and class requirements, the story must be between twenty and twenty-five pages. So far, that seems like enough space to write a story about monsters who fight each other. Even though it will be double-spaced, the monsters don’t speak, so there’s no worry about dialogue making the story overrun the page limit. Writing a story double-spaced is weird, since you have to make sure the paragraphs aren’t too long and so you need to be as brief but detailed as possible. I try to keep in mind how to portray emotions in the monsters – I always picture them as being near but not quite human in thought process and so need to word things in a way to remind the reader they are still animals. The monster fighting choreography is going to be a bit of a pain. I need to make it interesting and character related, and that can be hard with fight scenes. Hopefully, I can pull it off.

With my writing time swallowed up, I’ve decided to edit one of my fics during the segments where I usually read. It’s not exactly a contradiction. I’m usually reading the fic I wrote, but I’m usually editing or changing stuff along the way. This new pace does make editing go by faster and I have something else to occupy myself besides schoolwork and schoolwork. Maybe I might actually post some fic in the near future. Since I’m doing this with much more enthusiasm for my The Land Before Time story, I’ll post that first and then the Digimon Xros Wars story. I’m thinking of just alternating between posting The Land Before Time and other fandoms tales since the former is where my enthusiasm is.  In my little writing time, I’m gradually adding to my 22 chaptered The Land Before Time fic. It’s going to be a bit of a doozy, so might as well start soon.

I’ve been able to more or less keep waking up around 10 am so far. Sometimes I can only get seven hours of sleep but I always seem to make up for it in the next few nights or so. I try to go to bed around midnight and 1 am but all the schoolwork writing tends to take a longer time than my fanfic writing, so I go to bed between 1 and 2 am instead. Maybe if I keep this pace up, going to bed at a consistent schedule will become normal for my body.

Also, I’ve finally transferred from taking baths to taking showers. I got some brief skin condition that initiated the transfer, but I find that taking showers allows me to get to what I want faster. I didn’t change sooner because I’m a person of habit. When it’s confirmed the skin condition has finally gone away, I’ll likely stay with showers. Time is a precious item, so why linger on things you don’t want to linger on?

Anyway, that’s all for now. I can’t wait for this election to be over. It’s revealing some unpleasant sides to people. When I next write, it’ll be two to three weeks away from my end at Quinnipiac and hopefully I’ll have everything prepared to enter the MFA program at Southern.

Happy Halloween!