Packet Check In

I make the decision to send my 4th MFA packet as it is. I’ve been plugging away on a new fiction piece all weekend, but it’s slow going and I don’t want to rush it. I can feel my mind leaving the last batch of lyrical essays I did and therefore, it is time. Knowing it will take my advisor 10 days to get back to me, this seems like a smart move as well. By the time she’s responded, the new story will be done and I’ll have another book or two annotated. Focusing on all that work while I wait for her response will hopefully provide the little gap in both process and pressure that I need before I can return to the lyrical essays again, ideally with a set of “fresh eyes.”

Meantime, there are seventeen nonfiction submissions to read for Pacific University’s lit mag, two other editors to communicate with, and an essay to revise so I may submit it by an Oct. 31st deadline to Barrellhouse Magazine’s contest, and a reminder to send to the editor of Sculpture Magazine regarding a public art installation I’d like to review.

Ordinarily after I send a packet in, I take a breather. But at this juncture in the semester, it seems best to keep on keepin’ on. If my assumption is true – that the 120 pages or so I had thought I might revise and re-envision for my thesis are now unusable according to my new aesthetic – then I’ve got loads of new material to produce between now and, eek, next spring. Perhaps that means the fiction and freelancing will have to stop at a certain juncture as well, but for now they provide a necessary balance. Oh, the choices!