Despite my relative lack of productivity at the day job (or perhaps because of it), today was quite lovely. It was all writing focused (with the exception of the pieces of work that didn't involved writing emails or thinking about communications, which were pretty small -- oh, and with the exception of my retinseling endeavor, to be described in a bit). I won't bore you with the details of the day job; suffice it to say that I blew that popsicle stand at 4:30, stopped at 7-11 to grab whatever snacks I could find (an excuse to buy that deliciously awful Tostitos salsa con queso), and headed to Stanford for my last creative writing class of the quarter.
I had arranged to meet the instructor and hour before class started at the cafe on the second floor of the bookstore, and so I got to see a bunch of college kids milling around the redesigned, almost desecrated White Plaza. I really like the instructor, and I wanted to hear her perspective; she was at the creative writing program at Iowa, and then became a Stegner fellow at Stanford, so she has seen several writing programs and has been thinking seriously about writing as a career for awhile. Her opinions about all of this were quite interesting; having gone through it, she seemed to think that the primary advantage of a writing program is to build a community of other writers whom you can work with as readers and critique partners. Of course, the ability to devote some serious time to writing is a plus as well -- but, she seemed almost wistful about not having a more standard, higher-paying job, and thought it sounded like I have it pretty good.
Sadly, I'm an ungrateful wench who refuses to see how good I have it, so what I do with her advice remains to be seen. She pretty much confirmed my own suspicions that an MFA probably isn't for me, but the bottom line is that I need to find a way, somehow, somewhere, to eke out more time to write (both zee romance novels and more literary fiction, and possibly squeezing in some young adult epic sagas that I've been brainstorming as well). If I can't quit writing, move to a cave someplace, embrace a harshly ascetic lifestyle (complete with trading my Stuart Weitzmans for newspaper-stuffed gumboots and my lovely maxstudio dresses for flour sacks cinched in with twine), and write full-time, I at least need to get more serious about it in my off-time and stop procrastinating so much.
After our discussion, we walked over to the quad, where we met up with the rest of the class. It really was a great group; the caliber of the other students was pretty high and everyone was working on stories that interested me, so I found it useful despite the fact that I didn't really have time for it this quarter. We spent tonight doing a potluck (complete with a lot of wine, which seemed to lead to a degeneration of the discussion of "Last Summer of the World" that led to a couple of guys digging a really deep hole in a female-dominated class about how a guy living in prewar France who had a couple of affairs with dancers was probably normal and a good husband, and that the wife who divorced him over it was overreacting). Then, we all went around and read a couple of pages of one of our favorite authors, as well as a couple of pages of something else we've written that we feel good about. I chose to read a page from Haruki Murakami's "A Wild Sheep Chase"; my choices were limited because almost all of my books are in storage, but this is a book that I go back to occasionally, and I think the time to read it again is fast approaching.
Class got out late, so I got home at 10:30, and spent 45 minutes or so retinseling my hair. I've gotten pretty good at doing it myself; I think I put in ~12 strands of green and six strands of gold (St Patrick's Day theme, obviously), and pulled out the 12-16 strands of other colors that were in my hair from the Olympics. And now, I really need to get some sleep so that I can be more productive tomorrow -- goodnight!
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