School's done!

So much for posting about my wacky adventures during the school year. Turns out I had just enough time to either do the assignments OR blog. Especially since my husband knocked me up, and I found myself sleeping any spare moment not absolutely allocated to something else.

I got an A in my fiction writing class, though I was far and away not the best writer in it. There was this one guy who every time he wrote something, I wanted to read it. EVERY single time. He was from Haiti or Barbados, and he would write about island life and fishing with such a beautiful voice. I hope he writes a book someday because it'd be a crying shame if he didn't.

I wasn't the worst writer either. (Though it is sort of hard to judge that sort of thing, since you know where everyone else falls in your opinion, but have no idea where YOU fall in everyone else's.) I'm basing that mostly off the fact that I could look at a couple other people's writing and know exactly what I'd trim out of it in terms of "telling" not "showing" and so on.

I am glad that I took the class though. It exposed me to some stories I'd never read, and hammered home the idea that people might violently disagree with me about which stories were better. I know intellectually that people have different opinions, but I hadn't appreciated it in a visceral way. When my class almost universally (excluding me and one other person) loved Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" over Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums" I was in shock for a couple of days.

I learned about some of my weaknesses in writing, and also that I have a distinct appreciation for drama in my reading / writing. (Go figure. I know this comes as a shock to you all.)

But given that I now have a time frame for the world ending. (I'm due June 20th), I'm planning to really focus on my book. I want to get it done, and into the query process BEFORE the baby comes, hopefully 3 months before. That'll give me time to focus on responses from agents without getting them lost in "ACK SMALL WIGGLY THING NEDS SOMETHING! WHAT! WHAT DO YOU NEED!" time. (I'm not saying I expect positive raving responses. But just in case one DID want to be my agent-buddy, planning to answer those when I won't be coherent is not a good plan.)

Fun times.