MFA Year One Wrap Up-
My dog, Jupiter on a trip to the Oregon Coast
Whoo! What a year! This year I worked with Renee Simms, who exceeded my expectations about what a mentorship would look like. Once a month I submitted a packet of creative work (fragments of novels in progress or short stories) along with 2-3 critical papers, and then we’d meet a week or two later to discuss the assigned books, themes, my critical writing and my creative work.
What. A. Gift. Renee is a wealth of information and so, so encouraging. Over the last year I’ve become more confident in my abilities and choices, I’ve learned what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are, and I feel I have a solid foundation for entering my second year.
Things that were easier than I expected:
-Sharing my work. I was convinced that each meeting was going to be a gauntlet of reasons why my writing wasn’t up to snuff, but Renee was so generous with encouragement that even when she told me things weren’t working I felt inspired and positive. I really felt like she believes I’m a capable writer, and our meetings felt very supportive and informative.
-Balancing Homework and Work-Work. I really worried that I would feel burned out by the time May came around, but the program wasn’t overwhelming at all! It came down to reading about a book a week, and writing papers and creative work during the weekends for a total of about 15 hours of schoolwork a week. The work was engaging and rewarding, and I never felt that school was detrimental to my mental health or work life balance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for the month-long break between my final packet and preparing for the residency (which will be in person this year) but mostly because I can read ANYTHING I WANT.
Things that were more difficult than I expected:
-Hoo, by far the most difficult thing was adjusting my writing to deal with the various crises that emerged this year. We had family emergencies, health emergencies, weather emergencies… I really like my routines, so when something unexpected comes up it’s hard for me to regroup and adjust my routine to make sure that I’m balancing everything adequately. There were a couple of times that I had to ask for an extension so that I could finish something, and luckily Renee was very accommodating around those times.
-Getting back into the swing of writing critical papers. My early papers weren’t great, but with Renee’s help and input I feel much better about writing papers, and I even look forward to some of them.
What’s next? The residency! Rick, our program director, has begun to send out information about the residency, and I expect more will follow in the next few weeks. I’ll have some pre-residency reading to do- for the classes I’ll take and the workshops. I’ll also be revising some of my own work from the year to submit for the workshops, so that will keep me busy. The residency will take place over ten days at the end of July, and this year we’ll actually meet in person.
I am so excited to see my cohort. I already feel like I know them, but it will be nice to see them in person.
That’s all for now. I celebrated by going to the library and I now have a zillion books to read before I get my first readings for the residency. Thanks for reading!
Twyla says “Bye for now!”