So, anti-fantasy writers. I think I must have been really lucky to run in to MLC when I started taking creative writing, rather than one of the anti-fantasy profs in the English department. Like for my novella class. Now, it's kind of depressing to meet another anti-fantasy prof for workshop. I guess it's a little harsh calling them anti, but they're certainly not supporters of writing fantasy. Well, like the prof said, genre and literary kind of exist on two parallel planes. It's okay to cross over and do a hybrid, but apparently not all the way. Blah.

(And my story wasn't even pure fantasy. It was mythological. And historical. And steeped in long-established cultural sensibilities. And yes, fantasy, if you look at it that way. In your face.

...I guess I just don't like being told I shouldn't write fantasy for a graduate workshop, just because it's fantasy.)

New semester

A new semester! The first week is over, and things are looking good. My first-year composition class is really with it this time--I don't know if they're always like this during spring semester, or if I just have a savvier group this time. Anyways, they talk, they ask questions, they form groups of four like I ask them to and work together. Things my class in the fall couldn't or didn't do. So far, they're a good group.

I'm taking another fiction workshop and also a creative nonfiction workshop. Both workshops will require three pieces each during the semester, plus some readings for discussion and miscellaneous work. Hope I'm up for it. At least I know my fellow fictioneers this semester and what to expect from them, but it makes me a little nervous, wondering how my writing and ideas will be received by the professors who are teaching this semester.

Also taking Archiving Theory and Practice, which promises to be awesome. At least, I hope so. The idea of being an amateur archivist is exciting. Also, it's a service-learning course, so we get to interact with community organizations. Archive for them. I guess it's different from anything I've taken so far, so tanoshimi ni shiteiru.

Other than those three courses, I'm taking the mentorship course again, in which we were promised a lighter workload than last semester, haha. I dropped the Between Essay and Narrative course just because I suck at writing and I need more time to focus on it. Also, the idea of a three-hour discussion seminar with six students following the three-hour archiving seminar promised to be more stressful than I'm up for.

In other news, Julie Otsuka is visiting and giving a reading next Thursday evening, and I volunteered for driving duty on Friday to drop her off at the airport. Whee!

Hm. So, my second piece was workshopped tonight. Not as successful as my first piece, I think. This one was set in the Edo period and was based off of the nopperabou kaidan. I think two of my readers did not like the story overall, and these two, I think, just really didn't get it. There was confusion from other readers too on various points, and they made the good point that the characters were too flat and template-ish. I think that's why my two most negative readers took issue with the story. Also, I evidently did not bring a unique aspect to my retelling of the story, so I need to do that. Ouch. Reading two critiques without anything positive or encouraging in them was kind of painful.

There was the expected confusion over various historical aspects--did they have divorce back then (heck yes), what was Edo like (I guess I could have been more descriptive), were foot soldiers not commoners (how to show that at least in terms of class, even the lowest samurai were not considered commoners, per say)? And it's hard to know what to do with some of this, other than just show it. As much as possible, I want to avoid the Shogun-esque approach of writing while assuming complete ignorance of the audience--that way, the people who are in the know can go, ah ha, and feel smart. That's part of what pissed me off about Shogun, other than the bad Japanese and obvious exoticization of Japan. On the other hand, I also want to present historical Japan to the uninitiated, but it's frustrating, trying to figure out which of their modern preconceptions I need to address, and how much background I actually need to explain, and so on. Edit: And then there was also this comment, when I wrote that the man had married into the woman's family: "Isn't that what everyone does?" =_= No. That's not what everyone does. Even if you come to this with a completely Western mindset, where do you come up with this matriarchal society where "everyone" marries into the woman's family? I don't know where the reader came up with that misconception or what was so misleading about my original statement.

It's so frustrating, but then I think about why I love Tokugawa Japan and how I want to share that with a wider audience. Maybe I was too absorbed with being faithful to the original nopperabou tale that I wasn't able to give my characters more dimension. Anyways, I will try again with something else historical and Japan.

I turned in my first story on Tuesday (after almost dying from lack of real food and sleep for two days), and I'll be workshopped next Tuesday. My story is set in modern Japan, and is about a woman who secretly lives in a man's closet (unbeknownst to the man) (this is the first time I've ever used "unbeknownst" in my life, and it is awesome).

Things I Think I Have Going for My Story:
-An overload of cultural details and information. I can write Japan way better than I can write America. Maybe because I don't write America. Or anywhere else, besides Vague Generic Unidentified Land.
-Plot. I do have a real plot with developments, and it might be kind of interesting. The progression is mostly logical, though perhaps not linked as well on paper as it is in my head.

Things That I Think Suck About My Story:
-The ending. I struggled so much with the last scene, and it's only the way it is now because I ran out of time to mess with it any longer. I'm sure I'll be embarrassed when I go back and read it. Lame.

-My writing. I am not a lyrical, poetic, or flowery writer. I suspect my style is "fanfic style," if there is such a thing. Direct and unadorned. Gets to the action, but doesn't really have any literary merit to speak of. I guess that's what I get for reading too much fanfiction and too little of other things.

-My man character is not developed enough. I spent most of my time trying to figure out my woman, since it's her POV.

-Information overload? I think I stuff too many ideas into my story, and not all of them are necessary. Some of this is probably information about Japan that I just wanted to stick in for the sake of having it there to educate my readers.

Anyways, there is so much wrong with my story, I can't wait to be ripped apart and shredded into tiny pieces (with some sugar coating, because the workshop folk are all nice people).

Whee, Purdue. Whee, teaching. It's the second week of classes, so I'm still getting used to it, plus my fiction workshop class won't meet for the first time until next week, so I don't quite feel like I'm here for writing yet. まだ慣れてないから、なんかめっちゃ寂しい．．． Trying to socialize really depresses me too.

Argh, research paper draft. What an ugly, incomplete draft. Die die die.

Sometimes writing is like pulling teeth, but boy oh boy, trying to read Japanese for research purposes, now that's pulling teeth. I can barely get through a whole page of any one book before I start flipping through other books.

My paper topic for my research seminar is supposed to be women and politics with a focus on Tenshouin Atsuhime (wife of the 13th shogun, Tokugawa Iesada)...But I have this distinct feeling that I'm just getting sucked into the world of the Great Interior Quarters, the Oooku. It's super interesting in ways not entirely beneficial to my research paper. I spent about five minutes studying diagrams on how to partition and tie up one's hair in the way of the women back then. And many of the books that talk about the Oooku have a ton of information on clothing and hair and accessories. It's perfect material for my stories, but as for my research paper...well.

Oh, and today I finally looked at two of the library books I'd borrowed a couple weeks back. They're so awesome that I squeed with nerdy glee. See, I do have a researcher in me, somewhere, deep, deep inside, who gets excited by old books. One book, published I think in the 1930s, came with huge fold-out maps of the Oooku, while the other one, published in 1902 (!!!It's great how Yale lets you take such old books out of the library as long as they're not falling apart--on a related note, they wouldn't let me take a copy of the Analects out because it was falling apart) has a few awesome fold-out color prints and all the kanji text is glossed with hiragana. Win! Although I still have doubts about how much of these books I can actually get through or make use of, but it's exciting to flip through them.

Feeling sick again, but hopefully I won't actually get sick, seeing that I was just sick last week (for all of 2-3 days).

Grad school news is finalized: I'm going to Yale next year for my MA in East Asian Studies, and then Purdue the year after that for my MFA in Creative Writing (Purdue is a three-year program). I can still hardly believe my good fortune in Purdue agreeing to let me defer. They must really like me, right? In sum, my application results have ended in a best-case scenario, somehow. (And I have full funding on both programs, did I mention that? I'll have to teach at Purdue, but that will be a good experience, or so I'd like to believe.)

So, grad school: I'm going! Very likely to Yale for a Master's in East Asian Studies, seeing that they've accepted me. Yay! I still have to hear back from several more schools, but chances are I'll choose Yale. On the topic of grad school applications, perhaps I could have saved a lot in application fees if I'd thought out what I wanted to do more thoroughly. But the whole reason I applied to two different types of programs because I couldn't decide, and I wanted the schools to decide for me. Yay fate. Though I applied to thirteen schools (11 MFA, 2 EAS), I didn't exactly have a reach school--with MFA programs, there's no guarantee I'd get into any of them. If I had a school I thought I should get into, it was Yale. And that was mostly because Jeff got in when he applied, and I don't want to think that I'm any worse than him, academically. Hah. But Yale's not a safety school either. Because it's Yale. Obviously. So yeah. Anyways. Yay for having a place to go next year! Yay for East Asian Studies!

...And now I need to stop my brag-fest and get working on my novel before I run out of free time.