Glimmer Train Honorable Mention

In September I submitted my short story "Genealogy" to the Glimmer Train Family Matters contest.
Today I was notified that I made the Honorable Mentions list! And only a day after I figured out that my "Little Blue Sweater" did not even make a finalist at the CBC Canada Writes Challenge.

What a great Christmas Gift!

New Laptop.

So I promised myself that I would buy a MacBook Air when I got accepted into the MFA. It was going to be my gift for getting in. After all everybody at Starbucks is using them. But somehow, now that I am in, the prospect of spending $1,700 + tax on a laptop that I would only use for writing just does not seem so appealing. I mean, it would be a great excuse to spend money, but my current laptop is still servicable, still works, still connects to the internet.

And I do not need MacBook Air to feel like a writer - my Moleskine notebooks are good enough!

I Got Accepted into the UBC MFA!

Yesterday I received the email. The email that invited me to participate in the UBC low-residency MFA starting in September 2014. I was so ferklempt that I didn't even notice the word "Acceptance" in the subject line! And even after I read the email I went back three times to make sure that I didn't misunderstand.

I am going to be an MFA student in creative writing. Wow.

Authors' Readings.

When I was little, in Poland in the 70s, I used to go to authors’ meetings all the time. The usual format was that of discussion – the kids would ask questions, the author would answer, provide some amusing anecdotes from her life, then we would ask her to sign our books or our autograph books and everybody would go home happy.

In Canada, as an adult, I fail to understand the purpose of the so called readings. I have gone to several in the past two months (International Festival of Authors in Toronto) and two Hamilton LiveLit evenings. And I remain puzzled. What is the purpose of a writer or poet standing on a small, lit stage reading his or her work to a small group of listeners? After all, the audience can read. Many of them, I would venture, prefer to read in the privacy of their own home and their own minds, undistracted by external world, busy creating their own visions. During readings, I drift off, I do not pay attention the same way that I do when I read, I fail to be moved.

Yes, there is the social element of it – getting together with fellow writers and readers. Reading is a solitary pursuit and it can become lonely. Discussing books read and liked or hated is valid. But those readings do not allow it! You sit in the audience, lost in the river of words that your mind has difficulty following because of the ambient noise, the diction of the author, or the loud conversation the persons next to you are having and you just wait for the time to pass until intermission, if there is one. Then you can talk a little with the author or with fellow listeners. But there is no scheduled time for the author to discuss her work, to engage the audience in give-and-take. At the IFoA there was no QnA period at all. Any interactions with the authors took place in the line-ups for book signing.

And yes, I count my reading last month among these!

What am I missing?

OmmWriter and Other Things.

I have been taking Sarah Selecky's Short Story Intensive since September and during out last live QnA she suggested this word processing program. It is free of distractions, it fills the whole screen without any bars with internet, and Skype, and Google, and other distractions at the bottom. It has a lovely background to work on, it provides soothing music (I'm not sure yet about the soothing music, but I am willing to try it). I am definitely going to try it.
Things are really bad at home right now and I have not been able to continue with writing as much as I would like to. I have managed to attend a half-course at UofT called Generating Stories, and managed to keep up with the Short Story Intensive, but I have not generated very much new material. But I am going to try to keep up with my daily prompts (I skipped two weeks in October and I am about ten days behind now, but hey, I keep on trying), my new ideas and the journal that I have started which will be basis of "Out of Control: A Family Memoir" which I will write when all of this is over. Yeah, right.
Today I sent off a submission for the CBC Challenge titled Bloodlines. I wonder how that will go.
Some time soon I will also attach a link to Sarah's SSM program here as I have asked to be SSM affiliate.
And I am preparing a proposal for The Examined Life Conference about creative writing and sanity.

Penguin Random House of Canada Awards Dinner...

...took place on Thursday, November 8th. I was there and even Jimm managed to beat the traffic and get the University of Toronto Faculty Club on time.

The three winners, whose stories were published in the chapbook, were all there as were we, the other seven finalists. My two great instructors, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer and Alissa York, were both there.

I was the last one to read - it went alphabetically. It was great fun to read my work in public, although some of the people had already left by then. :(

Done!

The writing samples for the UBC application were uploaded on Wednesday. Five days before the due date, but I couldn't take it any more. I wasn't working on them, but neither was I working on anything else. On Tuesday Kathryn K. phoned me with some great suggestions, I rewrote my non-fiction piece and my cover letter and on Wednesday I finished the last revision and pressed SUBMIT.

I was so relieved to have done that! Yesterday I wrote 3.5 thousand words of a brand new story, and today I worked on an older story I had in mind. What a release!

Now how to get through the next three months? Write, of course.

Warren Wilson Will not Happen

at least not this application cycle. The deadline was September 1st, 2013. I could've sworn it was September 15th, 2013.
Oh well, there is always the next application cycle.

To Thine Own Self Be True.

Yesterday evening, after a brouhaha at home (did I mention that I have a full family life?) I went to local Chapters for a reprieve. From the magazine rack I picked up a Poets&Writers because it had applying to and living after an MFA as its themes for September.

Not a good idea. According to P&W I am not doing any of the things that I should be doing. In my cover letter I am not praising the writing of my future faculty, I am not exhibiting any literary pyrotechnics to draw their attention to my writing prowess, I am not showing off my knowledge (albeit paltry, so may be it is a good idea not to draw attention to it) of modern literature. I am not using punctuation marks creatively. I actually tell the selection committee that I did not always want to be a writer, only to show them that I subconsciously did all the right things for a budding writer. I thought that was clever, no?

And UBC does not place too well in their rankings! It is at number 19 overall, so it did make it into the top twenty, but just. Warren Wilson, however, places consistently at 1 or 2, with number 1 overall. I think I will apply there just for kicks!

I have decided that I am not going to change my writing samples much. This is what and how I write,  I want to get better at it, and this is who I am - yeah, I wanna get better at that too, but it's probably too late. So I am submitting what I have. And I am not changing myself for it either. Myself has served me reasonably well in life so far.

Application, part one.

The first part of the Graduate School application for UBC MFA has been accomplished. I have ordered and paid for my transcripts, and I have uploaded my application and paid that fee as well. I got my third referee - Chris Adrian has agreed to provide a reference letter, yey! Of course, I couldn't do it without mishaps - I mistyped Kathryn's and Murray's email addresses. Had to phone UBC and ask to be allowed to change them.

Now I only need to finish Genealogy and Once (my non-fiction pieces) and upload them and my short story and cover letter by September 15th. And then wait. For three months.

Application Time.

Working on Genealogy, a non-fiction piece for my UBC application. Well, actually not working on it, but procrastinating by doing my day job. Rather busy, there, these days. But I am pretty sure that I finished my cover letter.

I was hoping to finish Story is a State of Mind course before September and the Short Story Intensive starts. Well, I am half-way through it and I doubt that I will get to finish it before Monday. Need to get kids ready for school and did I mention my day job?

I still need to get another referee. I have a colleague from work and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer who was my instructor in one of the UofT Creative Writing classes, but I cannot come up with one more!  And I need one more.

The Infinite Jest

Trying to read it. Oh, boy, to be able to write half as well as Foster Wallace. I can't even read it, let alone write like that.

Nicest Rejection Letter Ever...

I know I said that I would not post about any more rejection letters, but I this is just too nice to pass up!


"Dear Dr. Nowaczyk:

I am writing to you concerning your article # CMAJ-13-1184 entitled "Dr Bluebeard." which you submitted to the CMAJ.

Thank you for giving CMAJ the opportunity to review your work. The piece shows a lot of potential: there's some fine imagery and good dialogue. But overall, I thought it would benefit from more revising. In particular, I didn't think the fairy-tale-esque format at the start fit in with the contemporary short story-type ending. I also felt the scene where the mother appears was too abrupt (and not entirely credible) and the ending didn't feel earned to me (more details needed perhaps). I don't usually offer detailed feedback, but I do think you show talent. And though  I regret that we were unable to select this story for publication, I hope that we will be able to give you a favourable response on a future piece.

Sincerely yours,

Barbara Sibbald
Editor, News and Humanities, CMAJ"



With a rejection letter like that there is only one thing to do! Write!!!

Random House of Canada Fiction Contest.

It is finally on the SCS website: My story "Your Father's Heart" was a finalist in the Random House of Canada Fiction Contest. I certainly hope that the entries are not listed in the order of merit!

Enough sitting on my laurels. Back to the UBC application.

Today, a Rejection from Walrus.

The Walrus Magazine, that is. I sent them my story "Your Father's Heart" two weeks ago. I did not think that I will get it, but it was worth a try. At least I am moving up in the literary rejections. And one day, when I am published there, I will know I have arrived!

My Submission Sheet is looking very red these day. I really need to write something better. Soon.

This is going to be the last post about a rejected manuscript. I have a feeling that there are many, many more to come and I do not want my readership of zero (i.e., me) to get bored with it!

Another Rejection from JAMA.

 This time the turnaround was even faster!!!


"Dear Dr Nowaczyk,

We have now completed our review of your manuscript, which was under consideration for JAMA's A Piece of My Mind column. I am sorry to inform you that we will not be able to publish the manuscript.

Every year we receive hundreds of manuscripts that are submitted specifically for the A Piece of My Mind column. Criteria for determining acceptance include priority, originality, quality, and appeal for our general medical audience. Unfortunately, your manuscript was judged by the editors not to have met the criteria necessary for publication in JAMA."

So my work is not original, of quality, appeal and interest. Should I shoot myself now, or wait till later?

Mistakes.

Douglas H. Glover, in his excellent book "The Attack of Copula Spiders" listed four common mistakes that writing students make in their stories. Darin Strauss reminded the class of them earlier this month in Paris, at the NYU MFA residency. The mistakes are:

a. the partial story - a couple of thousand words, give or take, which introduce a situation  and a conflict but which end after the first major scene. the story doesn't develop through a series of actions;
b. the broken-back story - the student loses confidence in his/her ability to move the conflict forward and shifts to another conflict;
c. the bathtub story - a story which takes place almost completely as backfill in the mind of a single character (who often spends the whole narrative sitting in a bathtub - I  am only being slightly facetious);
d. the victim story - the student fails to generate true conflict because the protagonist refuses to speak up for himself, fight back, take a stand, get angry, etc.

With the exception of b., I have committed all of the above in the handful of stories that I have written. Sigh.

On a happier note, yesterday I sent "Dr. Bluebird" to Ars Medica for their Fall Issue. We'll see if they like it.

Banish Your Inner Critic

Sarah Selecky, whose e-course Story is State of Mind I am working through right now, suggested that we put together a picture of our inner critic. Here is mine - I called her Miss Panglin, after the Grade 12 English teacher who told our class that immigrants may become bilingual, but their English will never be idiomatic. She, of course, had a different name.

Choices.

I am considering three low-residency MFA programs: 1. the optional residency program at UBC; 2. the low residency NYU program which residencies in Parish (sic!); and 3. the Warren-Wilson low residency program.

They all have their pros and cons. UBC allows up to five years to finish the program part-time. It is Canadian, and its tuition is the lowest. You do not have to attend the residencies, but if you want to, they only take place once a year, in July, in Vancouver. It has a well-known and critically acclaimed faculty (Annabel Lyon, Wayne Grady, etc.). It would be the most convenient and the cheapest. Also most flexible.

The NYU program is alluring - what more can one want than study writing in  Paaaaahris?! The faculty is accomplished, recognized and has won numerous accolades. There are at least three Guggenheim fellows on faculty and numerous National Award winners. Chris Adrian, my literary alter-ego (OK so he is gay, male, and accomplished, none of which I am, but he is also a pediatrician and in his writing has expressed many of my feelings and traumas of pediatric residency training), is one of them and I would LOVE to study with him. Cons? Paris itself, Charles de Gaulle airport which I would have to travel through at least five times in two years, cost, and family who may not want me to be away so much. And you are supposed to finish in two years. But, boy, oh boy, would I LOVE to do this one!

I do not know much about the Warren-Wilson program other than it is the oldest low-residency program in the US, and that it has produced many published authors. Also two year, but more affordable than NYU and Paris, and it's bit more convenient to travel to North Carolina.

I will apply to all three, and see who takes me!

New Leaf or How I Got an MFA.

As of today this blog will document the work and the heartbreak of getting a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. I am still not completely sure that that's what I want to do, and definitely not sure how I am going to pull it off with a full-time job, and an even fuller-time family life. But here it goes.