The semester is drawing to a close and obviously, everything is piling up. Exams (cringe). Committee meeting (double cringe). Grading undergraduate lab reports (a long protracted scream and running away). I have a bunch of half-finished book reviews that have been sitting around for the past month that I might end up posting sometime this week, but other than that, expect me to be, er, rather absent from the blogosphere for the next couple of weeks.
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Giving an Academic Talk. If I were the type of person to get a tattoo, I'd put this on my forehead (along with the aforementioned FAQ).
Nature, Nurture, or No Chance in Hell? Well, aside from the fact that I find it hilarious that Kurt Vonnegut referred to writers' conferences as budding yeast, I'm not so sure if it's one or the other. I feel very left out when all the other zealous writers say they've been storytellers since they were wee babes. I didn't. When I was seven, I wasn't telling stories. I was focusing on surviving the three (or was it four?) different schools I was being shuttled in and out of. The first time I actually enjoyed penning a story was in fourth grade for an assignment. It was a terribly cliched story starring a hard-boiled detective, a femme fatale, and a rich bad guy.
Page Numbering Question. I don't number my pages. I date them. And unlike Neil Gaiman, I am too cheap to buy nice blank journals to write my stories in. Well, I do have blank journals, but they're the cheapo kind and even then, I got them on sale. And I only brainstorm in them. Still, it's very interesting to look into a Famous Author's process.
Guidelines for Writing Literary Fiction. Fans of romantic fiction point out that literary fiction has its formula too--emotional hangups, dysfunctional relationships, irrelevant minutiae, unhappy endings. Yep, literary fiction would have to be a kind of genre, too.
