That Pesky MFA Project

Miriam noted in a comment that I hadn’t said much about my MFA thesis. I don’t want to brag… oh, wait, what am I saying? I do want to brag! I do, I do!

First, I’m almost done with my thesis–a month early. I was pretty well done about a month ago, which is good because I’ve had three cross-country treks since then, leaving me with precious few hours for revision. I’m at the point where I’m making very few changes on the macro level. and am focusing on the formatting of each piece. I’ve made it to the middle of the collection, and this Saturday afternoon and all Sunday will plow forward as close to the end as I can get, then drive a pile to my advisor’s house. Yes, this will be another Sunday where I worship at Our Lady of Perpetual Homework… there’s only so much time in a week, and church has frequently taken a back-seat to my MFA. I’ll be good once I get to Tallahassee, I promise. (Sadly, Sandy won’t let me write about her congregations… there’s always such good stuff there.)

In late August, I will read at the graduate reading, and the next day Sandy and I will jump in a car and drive to Florida. (Because this is nonfiction, I might as well add that I’ll then return and finish packing for a week or two before the movers arrive. In real life, the endings are rarely tidy.)

Second, my advisor really likes it. “It” being a collection of thirteen essays called Departments of Defense (187 pages, not sure of the word count, but it’s Times Roman 12-pitch). Some are about my experience in the military, and some are about the battlefields of life. My advisor has been wonderful through the whole revision process, corroborating when I kicked two essays off the island, pleased when I did a major tear-down of a piece, attentive and detailed in her feedback, but very encouraging.

I also feel somewhat deprogrammed from the workshop experience. It was valuable–there’s nothing quite like sitting in a room while people tell you how your writing sucks to make you pay attention to every single word you set on paper, or whatever functions as paper these days–and I’m sure I’ll do it again. I already have play dates set up with several writing friends to swap work and then meet in person or over the phone to discuss our pieces.

But it was also a relief to follow my inner writing voice, the one that says “chop this paragraph,” “this is working,” “this is not working,” or “you need more/less/different research.” I appreciated that when I said of a couple of pieces, “My instinct is not to mess with these,” she agreed, and agreed also on the two that went bye-bye. I feel strengthened by this summer, not just within my writing but within my life.

I think of my thesis as “them,” not “it,” and I have a plan for publishing them–meaning the essays–by sending them out to appropriate venues. The essays work together as a whole, and that’s how they will repose in Gleeson Library once the thesis is accepted, but shopping around an essay collection is a nervy task to begin with, and unrealistic when none of the essays have been published. The minute the essay collection is done, out they go. I would send them out now, but I really need to focus on the thesis with every second I get.

I have two post-MFA pieces in draft already, and the day after the collection is turned in, I begin working on them in earnest. Stay on the bicycle, I keep telling myself. Pedal. Pedal. Pedal.

My big angst is not about the thesis. It’s about balancing writing for the library press–or for that matter, all the extraneous stuff of LibraryLand, from presentations to ALA involvement–with my own, much stronger interest in writing personal essays. Part of why I write is that it is an entirely different world, one of my own choice and of my own making. Much to think about, much to mull over–but all this tsuris can wait, while I get my thesis ready to be placed in its acid-free box and driven to the University of San Francisco.