/ /
I’m about a grand deep in words for my final project for my researched story class, tentatively (and blandly) titled “Miss Pavlichenko.” The target is 5-6K words. The good news is that the professor really liked my research prospectus and hinted that the core idea I’m wrestling with—attractive woman becomes sniper in WWII in the Soviet Union—is probably novel-length one. Novels, short stories, what’s the difference?

I was also surprised at the reactions of some of my classmates to the final project. It needs to be a researched story on virtually anything, as long as there’s a strong element of research, and it needs to be about 20 pages—i.e. 5-6K words. To me, none of this is alarming or even notable. But I was surprised how many people were struggling for ideas and were daunted by the length. Granted, some of them are not writers and they’re just taking the class for the exposure or to fill a requirement. 6K words is nothing and I have ideas to burn…

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last two years looking at various stories and various markets, trying to figure out what works and why, and I limited myself entirely to the spec fic world. Now I’m ready for that horizon to broaden a bit and find other cool stuff to read and take a crack at writing. In fact, I set up a meeting with the professor to talk about literary markets I might like. One of the best parts of Clarion was learning the hierarchy of which markets were the heavyweights, the middleweights, and the lightweights. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that the big time mainstreamers are the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s, but I’m wondering what are some the best literary markets I’ve never heard of? That’s what I need to find out.

On another note, there is a down side of being in a grad program that requires me to be thinking about reading and writing non-stop: the down side is that I’m thinking of reading and writing non-stop. To the exclusion of things like eating. Missing exits on the highway. Packing a nice lunch and promptly forgetting it in the fridge. Forgetting to give the dog her Kong on the way out the door.

As far as problems go, it beats the hell of worrying about putting the new cover sheet on the TPS reports.

Current Mood: Suddenly Tired |
Currently Listening To – Grateful Dead – “Workingman’s Dead”