Sunday, February 25, 2007

sleepless nights--losing ground, i'm reaching for you

I saw a funny thing this afternoon. After the class that I took today, I went into Palo Alto and had a rather expensive cappuccino at this cafe on University that paid to train all of its baristas in Venice. Their training ensures that your cappuccino takes a long time for them to make because they try to make artistic patterns with the foam on top. Luckily the coffee also tastes very good, so I didn't feel completely ripped off, even though I had to sit outside in the cold due to a dearth of interior tables. Sitting outside turned out to be worth it, because I just happened to see the moment when a woman was carrying her ~8-month-old on her shoulders, and the kid drooled/vomitted all over her hair so that it ran down her face and onto her sweater. It was AWESOME, and made me never want to have a kid. The woman seemed to take it in stride, and her husband helped wipe her up; and they both seemed to react pretty calmly when they saw that the kid had the same vomity mess coming out of his nostrils, while I was staring in open shock and wonder.

It was definitely the best moment of the day--although it was possibly rivalled by when Claude told me, Vidya, and Renee the entire story of Rumpelstiltskin in CPK. I was expressing chagrin again over the fact that Vidius calls me 'swamplestiltskin', and I finally put into words that the reason it bothers me is probably because Rumpelstiltskin is a ridiculous little dwarf who dances around in premature glee before being robbed of something that really should have belonged to him. Does this mean that Vidya will stop calling me Swamplestiltskin? Probably not. Luckily I didn't get stuck with Santa Claude, so things could be worse.

So about the class--I took this class on the business of writing through Stanford Continuing Studies today. It was six hours, which was a somewhat unwelcome distraction on a Saturday; I signed up for it long before I got my new responsibilities at work, and so used to be much less busy than I am now. I really just wanted to sleep today, but I dragged myself to campus. I was glad that I did if only because I was forced to think about writing again, but in some respects it would have been easier if I had left my head buried in the sands of business instead of contemplating another path.

During the introductions, I said that I was there because I'm trying to decide between an MBA and an MFA (partially true; the other part was that I want to know how to sell my romance novel, but since the teacher is of the 'high-brow' type and spent quite a bit of time talking about his own publication history, which was heavy on short stories and nonexistent on so-called 'genre' fiction, I decided not to raise myself up for potential mockery). Awhile later, one of the other women snuck out to use the restroom, and as she walked past me, she said, 'talk to me about the MBA/MFA'. So, I ran into her during the lunch break, and she spent a few minutes telling me that I should definitely do the MFA instead. She said that she had done the MBA route and had been successful, but that it didn't feed her soul and that she now wishes she had done the MFA, and is also considering going back to school.

Then again, it may not have fed her soul, but it did feed her stomach, and that's not something to be underestimated. I don't know if I'm disciplined enough to be a writer; I work very well for other people, but I'm terrible at working for myself. I would probably have finished my novel ages ago if a publisher had given me a deadline, but I have trouble motivating myself to do the things that I know are good for me.

Anyway, I don't know if the class was all that helpful; if I want to do an MFA or go to a prestigious writers' colony, I need to be writing serious short stories and getting them published in magazines and journals. But, if I'm writing serious short stories, I don't have time to finish the romance novel, and the romance novel is in a much better place than any short stories I've ever tried to write, since I'm just too damn verbose for my own good. I can churn out six thousand words on this blog in no time, but it never feels like I could have something resembling a beginning, middle, and end. So, the dilemma is try to write serious fiction, or finish my romance novel. I'm leaning towards finishing the romance novel--and I also want to work on that Public Storage story that I was working on in my last writing class, but I think the romance novel comes first.

Now is not the time to resolve my life's ambitions, though, although that time probably needs to come fairly soon. Instead, I'm going to go to bed--the rain sounds awesome on my roof and patio right now, so it should lull me to sleep in no time at all. Goodnight!

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