current writing and reads, etc.

So, I know it's been a ridiculously long time since my last post. That's probably because I got real burnt out from the two writing conferences I went to (Indiana U and U of Mass-Amherst), and up until last week I couldn't think a bit about writing about writing. However, I got some good headway on some stories, specifically Strange English and The Naked Diner, and wrote a new story, Icarus, which needs a tiny bit of revision, and started another story that's probably kind-of sort-of a lesbian version of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and certainly more modern, and shorter. It's probably less interesting of a plot, but, that's not my focus considering that it's a short-short and Tiffany's is a novella. I really need to work on plot, though, so I'm thinking of purchasing a couple spy novels, hopefully something about a heist, a good mystery, and I got some Truman Capote from Amazon for only about $5 a book: Breakfast at Tiffany's, of course, and In Cold Blood. I probably won't be able to get to these new books for a while, though, because of my Honors Project.

I haven't been submitting anywhere recently but that's because I'm real busy from working on The Truce--I'm on about page 50--and I need 100 pages done by the end of the summer. (Technically, by December, but hell, I want to work on editing the first draft and on the critical essay in the fall semester). So, I'm doing about 5 pages a day this July, so I can unwind a tiny bit in August, and do some reading for the project before I delve into really working on the essay in September-November. I want to have something totally concrete by December, so I can put some finishing touches to everything. Of course, The Truce won't be a final draft, but it will be a good one. And that will be pretty cool. I should contact Prof. Faber sometime in late July, to let him know how everything's going. With all this planning, all of this seems to be going very well--especially since reading Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast really gave me a good kind of voice to come from. Benedetti's a very quintessential Uruguayan voice, so it only makes sense that I pick an essential American one. I'm so excited about this, and I need to stop being silly and just work!

As for reading, I decided that I really need to get back to Virginia Woolf, because Paul Lisicky, who read my manuscript at the UMass conference (I promise to talk about the conferences in the next post), told me I should read her because she'd be good for my work. (He said this in response to Strange English). So I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway right now, and it's absolutely wonderful. I'm sure I'll be finished with the book in a couple of days. I'm also reading Camus' L'étranger in the original French, and while I have to look up words every once in a while, it's ver readable. I should keep doing this, so that whenever I pick up French again (I certainly hope to do it at graduate school--many MFA programs require taking language classes), I can really know what I'm doing.

Just a note: Scrivener, the computer program, has done wonders for me. It's just great.

Watson Fellowship

I'm considering applying for the Watson Fellowship. Scary stuff.

Some more news, of course. I didn't get into the creative writing workshop with Dan Chaon and Bernard Matambo. A lot of majors apply, and it's hard to get in if you aren't one just for that reason. I'm not hating myself for not getting in, or anything like that, but I do think it's a shame that I won't be able to study with them. It seems like they'd both be totally awesome, and that I'd learn a lot. But, ah well! That means I can take the Odyssey class P/NP, and concentrate fully on finishing up my philosophy and comp lit majors, as well as honors in comp lit. Tres exciting.

I finished reading The Golden Ass yesterday at Oberlin's commencement (the speech was terrible, so I read instead), and then I bought Hemingway's memoir Moveable Feast at the bookstore and now I'm on about page fifty of that. It's a short book, and I'm cheating--I should be reading in French right now. But the book took me in, and I'm thinking that stylistically, I'd like to make my Honors translation sound a bit like that. We'll see. Benedetti a la Hemingway. Hmm. I'll think about it.

Job, IU, etc.

In case it wasn't obvious from the last post, now I'm definitely going to the conference at Indiana University. I also ended up finding a job that's only 8-12 hours a week, and that allows for academic leaves (I'm basically going to end up being a secretary at Career Services). This'll allow for work on my Honors Project, and now I'll be able to attend both conferences. It was harder to get into the UMass one, but it must have been just as difficult to get a scholarship from IU, so at this point it's my responsibility to myself and my work to attend both. At this point in life, anyway, I'm very attracted to IU, so I probably should have been careful in saying that I might not have gone. But I was too stressed out about my job search, probably, to notice that. But I'll have my priorities better set starting right now!

This summer is totally, totally going to work out. Yay!

IUWC Scholarship

Dear Elisa,

Your manuscript has been selected as one of the best submissions to the 2009 Indiana University Writers' Conference. We are pleased to offer you a merit-based scholarship in the amount of $100. You will receive an official letter with an invoice in the mail soon.

Congratulations and we look forward to seeing you this summer!

Sincerely,

Bob Bledsoe Kelly Wilson

Director, IUWC Associate Director, IUWC

Awesome. They know they like me, and hopefully they'll feel that way when I apply for their MFA Program! I'm very happy, and overjoyed about my story, Strange English, which won the scholarship.

Dahl Prize, etcetera

Hey everyone!

So, good news, separate from creative writing, but certainly not from writing. I won the Dahl Prize, which is a prize for the best undergraduate essay submitted, and that's ridiculously exciting, yay! I'm winning $150 for that. If only I'd get this sort of reaction for my creative writing. (But, then again, this is far less competition.)

Among my own writings, I'm going to no matter what finish up the Los Ángeles story today, because I need to use it for the creative writing apps that I'm also finishing up today (which are due tomorrow by 5 p.m.). I'm really hoping to get into the fiction class, as Bernard Matambo and Dan Chaon are teaching it. I did a winter term with Dan Chaon, and it was absolutely, terrifically amazing. I wrote a bunch of stories and he went over them with me, and our tastes totally clicked. It probably helps that before I wrote the stories as I traveled for the month of January of 2008, I read an entire huge collection of Raymond Carver stories. Read, read, read. That's the only thing to keep us writers good and going.

So, I've decided that this summer, I'm going to read 3 books a month (at least): one in Spanish, one in French, and one in English. It's going to be a bit of a drag to not allow myself to read that much English, but it's just, totally necessary for my education in the other languages. Going abroad in Paris, and then taking a super-intense 400-level Spanish class this spring, just goes to show what reading in other languages can do for your writing. On top of the 3-books-a-month plan, I'm going to be reading a lot of theory, and working on my Honors project. Still keeping my fingers crossed for a job.

So, it's finals time at Oberlin. Crazy. That's the only word for it.

Love,
Me!

Juniper Summer Writing Institute

So, among many other things that have happened, I was accepted into the Juniper Summer Writing Insitute at UMass. I've applied to a good amount of summer workshops, and I've gotten into two (that one and the one at Indiana University). I'm definitely going to the Juniper Institute, because it seems to be highly lauded, and is at one of the *top-ten* schools in the country. The other one is at a school I absolutely adore from a paragraph I read about and visits to its website, but the program itself is for just about anyone. Which is fine, but that all depends on my summer job.

Currently I'm doing summer job stuff, and I've been meaning to see if anyone in the Hispanic Studies Department is interested in having someone do research over the summer, so I need to make sure I do that. That's not really writing-related, though. So sorry to get on that tangent, I'm just thinking about it lots lately.

As for how writing is going, I'm working on an expansion of the Los Angeles story, and then I'm working on some creative writing applications for next fall. I'm really busy, but I'll post something better soon.

--Me!