School’s Out!

Dear Maggie,

When are you finished with school? How was your semester?

Sincerely,

Scholar in Skokie

Dear Scholar,

I just turned in my last assignment for the year yesterday, and the semester officially ends this week. My first full year of grad school is in the books, and, wow, it was a busy, challenging, creative, productive year! This semester alone, we read about twelve novels and wrote discussion board posts for each of them, we were assigned seven creative writing exercises, penned two short stories for workshop, practiced writing developmental and line edit letters for our classmates, and completed two longer craft essays. Of the short stories I wrote over the course of the year, two sold into the market, one is becoming a full-length rom-com novel, and one I plan to use one for an anthology collection our cohort wants to produce.

Our last craft essay invited us to think about where we were when we started the program, what craft tools we added to our toolbox this year, and how we hoped to use those tools in our respective writing careers. Here’s how I summed things up:

As my writing toolbox has slowly grown to the size of an extra-large suitcase, all this information has been percolating in my brain. I’ve already noticed ways in which my learning has impacted my writing. Mostly, I have a real approach for when I feel stuck, or for when a scene isn’t working. Am I using the right tense or point of view for this particular story? Is something out of balance between plot, character, and theme? Is my narrative structure supporting my story? Am I hitting the right beats? I literally have pages and pages of notes to rely on when things aren’t working to help get myself back on track.

Because of this deeper understanding of craft, I’m also willing to experiment with my writing and go beyond my comfort zone. I’ve tried writing more horror this year, and I crafted a mystery story, a genre I’ve never written in before. I’m using the first person, present tense in one of my romance novels for the first time, and I’m eager to try working with more than two POV characters for a Space Western I’m thinking about. When my mentor and I decide which project to tackle for thesis, I know this deeper understanding of craft will push me to write with intention and to level up, so to speak.

As a writer who’d like to teach, I now have language to put around many of the craft elements needed for good storytelling. I feel more confident sharing these concepts and guiding other writers, and I look forward to teaching opportunities in the future.

This week, I’ll meet with my thesis mentor, and we’ll choose the project that I’ll be working on for most of next year. The summer semester begins in early June, and then I’ll be on campus for residency the last week of July. I can’t wait to see my classmates in person again, and I’m really excited to start work on my thesis novel. In the meantime, while I’m on break for a couple of weeks, I’m working furiously to finish Run, Harry, Run, the rom-com I mentioned above, while also enjoying our time in SoCal with the kids and all the really cool travel we have planned!

Do you have a question for me? Send it to maggie@msmaggieclare.com, and I’ll answer it here on the blog.