ROW-oh-ing, ROW-oh-ing through the snow, writing bells are ringing…
Happy Sunday, friends and ROWers! Yes, that is my one-line attempt at a ROW-flavored holiday song. For fun, here’s Nat King Cole singing the original:
I’ve been back in San Francisco since Thursday, and right now, life is good. Here’s my mini-list of exciting accomplishments:
- Work: I’m half-way through grading final papers, and for the most part, the students have done a wonderful job. I’ve been reminded of my favorite part of TA’ing ethnographic methods classes: I get to supervise students’ research and watch their projects (and their skills) develop over the quarter. Many of them have come a long way since the first few weeks of the course, and have written up excellent accounts of their research projects. Even better, some of them actually read the feedback I provided on past assignments (you’d be surprised how rare this is), and incorporated my suggestions and edits in their papers.
- School: I had a great, albeit somewhat impromptu, meeting with my advisor before I left. She’s asked me to help her with a research project that she and I have been discussing for the past couple of years, and I’m really excited — it involves archival research about religious communities (i.e. Catholic nuns) in the United States. The project is in its preliminary phases, but if she can get funding I can come aboard as a paid research assistant. We also started discussing plans for the dissertation fellowships I’m going to apply for next year, which is really exciting.
- Writing: Now that NaNo’s finished, I’m back to rotating between my multiple unfinished projects. After some not-so-gentle nudging from the characters of my steampunk tale, I’m working on a plan for edits and rewrites. Apparently I’m also writing a short story or two of prequel-esque backstory, because Tempest Dumont has demanded it, and she’s the sort of gal that one can’t refuse. I pantsed the first draft of TELL ME NO LIES, and now I’m struggling to impose some structure on my sprawling mass of scenes. It’s too short — only 51K, with about 35 scenes, so now I have to figure out where to fill in the blanks, and what to add. I won’t lie, the whole thing is incredibly daunting. Sometimes I think I’d be better off sticking with short stories or novellas…. but we’ll see how things go.
Now that we’re firmly in the midst of December, how is everyone else holding up?
December 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
Good old Tempest, I can imagine she is on your back!
So nice to hear all the exciting things you are up to. Come to England for your overseas research! Or if you come somewhere in Europe I will come meet you! Am I getting ahead of myself? I don’t care! So exciting!
That is how I feel about my chick-lit (really need to think of a title soon!) I wrote and wrote with some idea of order as I wrote chronologically but I know my writing was too serious and I wanted to inject some humour. Scary to think about looking back at it. But I will!
Keep up the good work lovely girl!
Em recently posted..ROW80 Check-in 11th December 2011
December 11, 2011 at 11:15 am
I feel like you, juggling between multiple stories because they all want to be written NOW! lol
I’m glad you’re glad about your new research project!
You know, sometimes I think about switching permanently to novellas b/c it would be much easier to revise it (I hate HATE revising lol), but my plots are always so complicated that I just can’t write anything less than 60-70k … I’ll try someday, though, just to make sure 😉
Have a nice week!
Juliana Haygert recently posted..#ROW80 Checkin 12/11
December 11, 2011 at 11:17 am
Sounds like a fantastic week Lena! Good luck with the upcoming one.
Ref: the structure: print it out and cut the scenes apart, then you can juggle them like index cards.
Ref: the word shortage: My first drafts are often thin too. The first thing I do is check out http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/ and fix those first draft shorthand things like “He was angry,” LOL.
Best of luck with your revisions.
Raelyn Barclay recently posted..Sunday Summary & #ROW80
December 11, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Great week Lena – very productive. I can’t imagine having that mass amount of words infront of me to try and make sense of. LOL! But I have total faith in you that as you plug away at it, it’ll start to come together and before you know it, you are going to have one heck of a novel to be proud of! Write on girl…hoorah!
Natalie recently posted..ROW80 – Round 4 – Check-in #20
December 11, 2011 at 11:34 pm
You’ve got some really exciting stuff going on at school. It’ll make it easier to go back after the holidays 🙂
Sarah Pearson recently posted..Musical Stories 21: SciFi
December 12, 2011 at 1:55 pm
exciting project ahead fingers crossed on the funding – you will I feel sure manage those edits and fill in the gaps – all the best for this week
alberta ross recently posted..At least I’m off the pills:ROW80
December 12, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Eck, grading, so glad I don’t have to do that anymore!
Good luck on the research and writing goals and have a great rest of the week. 🙂
Ruth Nestvold recently posted..How Much Blog is Enough Blog? Or; how I doubled my fiction output in just one month!
December 12, 2011 at 6:36 pm
Archival research sounds very interesting. I hope they will get funding and you will be offered a paid research assistant position.
Good luck with writing this week. Sometimes it is a good idea to write a couple short stories and then go back to the novel. You will get there. I’m sending some positive vibes your way 🙂
Angela Orlowski-Peart recently posted..ROW80 Check-In Sunday, December 11, 2011
December 14, 2011 at 5:39 am
Just that, holding up. I consider “not falling down” a huge achievement in the crazy month of December. 😉 So impressed with your progress and good luck with the new project. Hope you get funding!
Looking forward to seeing you in 2012 for another supportive round of ROW80.
Tia Bach recently posted..My Mind: The Gift I Lost