mfa

And Waiting Some More

Posted on by kellyvincent

Right now the biggest thing going on is I’m waiting to hear about Finding Frances. It’s been with the senior editor for two weeks, and the editor I’ve been talking to said it should take no more than three. So hopefully I’ll find out this week if they’re interested in publishing it. I’m pretty sure I’m going to do it it they want to publish it. 

I’m on my break from the MFA now, not going to be back until January. I’m going to finishing the collection of stories about Sarah, as there’s just one left to write (and four to revise…). 

The other thing I’ve been focused on is getting Ugly out to quite a few agents, hoping that one of them will be interested. I also entered it into the BookLife Prize, a contest from Publishers Weekly that considers unpublished and self-published books. It received 9 out of 10 points and I got a really nice report back from them (they read the whole thing and give you some feedback). I’m including it here:

Plot: This story has many subplots that weave together seamlessly, with the most poignant being Nic’s struggle to identify her gender and sexuality. Things come to a swift, yet satisfying, conclusion.

Prose/Style: Vincent’s prose is straightforward and clear. Her talent shines as she develops Nic’s voice throughout the novel; Nic is unafraid and unforgettable

Originality: Nic is not your average teenage narrator. Her cynicism and honesty make even the most basic observations feel refreshing.

Character Development: Vincent’s characters are well-developed and in tune with their emotions. The story’s protagonist, Nicole “Nic” Summers, is surrounded by a cast of complex family members, friends, and frenemies.

Blurb: Readers will rally behind fifteen-year-old Nic Summers as she navigates the pitfalls of adolescence in this moving and timely YA novel.

—The BookLife Prize

Progress for Now

Posted on by kellyvincent

I finished up my second semester of the MFA. Now that’s on hold until January, when I can start the third semester (stupid work vacation policy…). It was a good semester, where I got a lot of work done (I’ve done 36 of the 45 total short papers I have to do in my first three semesters) and some good creative work, as well. I’m still working on the short story collection about Sarah. I got one story completed and about two-thirds of the next one done. I’m working on finishing the second one. Then there is one more to write, and I’ll have drafts of all six stories. I expect to get this done during my semester off. 

This week, I finished up judging for the two contests I judged for this year. Judging is mentally exhausting. I sort of want to just lie down and sleep for a week now. 

Something I’m excited to get back to is the Ugly manuscript. I had one rejection from an agent, but the other agent and the two editors haven’t responded (since November), so I’m assuming those are no’s, as well. So I’m free to make the rest of the edits my last reader recommended. Then I’ll start sending it out en masse. 

In other news, I heard back from the editor who has Finding Frances. She’s waiting on a report from a reader (she has to send an official reader’s report to the senior editor and I guess this person has been slow in getting to it). So it’s still in the running. I also made a little progress in getting the permission for the lyrics I need in the book—I have spent hours researching how to get this permission with no success—then someone pointed out I should just contact the band’s fan club. I did this and they told me they forwarded the email to the appropriate person. Of course, I haven’t heard back in the several days since then, but it’s progress. And I still have a solution even if I don’t get the rights—I wrote “song lyrics” for a made-up song and use that in the appropriate places in an alternative manuscript. It’s just that the real band has much better lyrics. 

More waiting. The publishing industry is slow.

Holding Pattern

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I’m still waiting to hear back on Finding Frances. I’m debating whether to follow up or not. I think part of me doesn’t want the possibility to be over, since I’m not submitting it anywhere else if this doesn’t pan out. Maybe I’ll follow up at the end of April if I haven’t heard by then. I probably shouldn’t seem uninterested. I don’t really know…

I mentioned earlier that I was taking a playwriting class this semester. I finished it up early and got good feedback from my instructor on the 10-minute play I finished and the shorter scene from a different play I haven’t written yet. She even said she hoped I’d write more drama over my little break (since I’m having to skip the fall semester). This has me sort of excited about possibilities and I checked with my playwright friend for how to submit plays for consideration for contests and production. I found one that my 10-minute would be perfect for (it deals with mental illness, which is the theme for the theater), so I’m planning make some revisions to it and submit it. 

Other than that, I’m wrapping up the semester. I have four more papers to write and I feel very swamped at the moment (technically one of the papers is a revision of a rough draft, but still). I also have to finish up revisions to my creative work, though I really only have one scene left to revise so that’s not too bad. And I’ve only got about three weeks left before it’s all over. Then I’ll be halfway through the MFA, which is cool. 

Oh, and there’s one more time-consuming thing coming up: I’m judging for two writing contests, one YA and one adult mainstream. Entries for both are due around the middle of May. Sigh. It’s rewarding but not easy.

Working and Waiting

Posted on by kellyvincent

Well, I missed posting something last week. I didn’t have the book I was reading finished yet and I was too worn out to write a post. I still don’t have much energy, so this one won’t be long, either. 

This semester is going to be intense. It started out that way because the first “month” was only 3 weeks and I was supposed to read five books and write four short papers in that time. I only made it through three of the books and half each of the other two, but I did manage to get the papers done. I’m playing catch-up this week. Then, I’m volunteering for five hours every Sunday at the writing lab of an area college, which takes a large chunk out of my weekend work time. 

Other than that, thing are quiet on the writing front. I’m waiting to hear from the editor on Finding Frances and on the editors and agents for Ugly. It’s been about 1.5 months on the first and almost 3 on the second, so I’m hoping to hear soon. 

MFA Residency Spring 2019

Posted on by kellyvincent

I got back Friday from the residency for the current semester, which has already gotten going. I’m scrambling to get my first annotation done today for the book I just finished this morning, which I’ll be reviewing next week. And of course I have loads of other things to work on, too… But it’s all good. 

I haven’t heard anything on any of the manuscripts I have out in the world, Finding Frances or Ugly, which is disappointing. 

But one of the things I’m doing for the MFA is a strand called professional writing, which involves learning how to query magazines and journals for shorter pieces. Now, I really could figure it out on my own because it’s not that different from querying on longer projects. But the main point is to really try to get something published. So I’m taking one of the stories I wrote last semester—the shorter one—and prepping it for submission. I’ve contacted my line editor so I should have it ready soon. It sure would be nice to get a publication credit.

The other strand I’m working on is the pedagogy one and for that I will be volunteering at the writing center at Bellevue College. That starts tomorrow after work. Supposedly, they get a lot of students in there with personal essays for transfer applications. Still, I’m hoping it helps me learn how to judge/grade papers faster, as that was something I always struggled with when teaching before. 

I’ve also expanded my platform a bit. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram, kvbooks on both. There’s nothing exciting there yet, but maybe that will change. One never knows…

Writing in 2018

Posted on by kellyvincent

2018 was a tough writing year in some ways, but also good. I had a bunch of rejections on Finding Frances, but I finally heard back from the editor I sent it to in September and she requested a full. This is the last shot for that book, but she sounded really interested in the sample she read, so I am hopeful. I should hear in the next few weeks. I’m sincerely hoping that even if it’s a no, she’ll give me some feedback on it. I’ll be setting it aside, but it would be good to have some pointers on what to try next, when I do decide to crack it open again.

I also spent a good portion of the year frantically working on Ugly, my 2017 NaNoWriMo book, trying to get it ready for the PNWA conference in September. I had several requests on it, which is pretty exciting since those were my first pitches on it (six pitches and six requests, including four fulls). The five I sent are all still out there (I skipped one of the agents because she doesn’t like something that appears in one of my other books, so she probably wouldn’t be a good fit for me). I didn’t send them until early November so I’m not expecting to hear anything for a bit. 

Also, of course, I spent half of the year on the MFA, which was great. I got two short stories done, both of which I’m happy with. One of them is going to be expanded a bit, but I like the short version and plan to enter it in some contests. I’m looking forward to the residency coming up and starting the next semester, especially the playwriting course (should be fun). I already made up my reading list and just need to get my faculty advisor to approve it or make her changes to it. This semester my mentor is Allison Amend. She’s written a few novels for adults. Still, I’m hoping to learn a lot from her, even if she isn’t focused on YA. 

I also judged for the mainstream category of the PNWA contest, which was a challenge and time-consuming, but also beneficial. It still took up most of May. I was bummed not to final in any of the categories I entered, but such is life. 

I was bummed not to do NaNoWriMo this year after a five-year successful run, but I had to prioritize the MFA. I may be able to do it 2019 because I won’t be doing the MFA that semester (I don’t have enough vacation so I have to wait until 2020 to start back).

Not directly writing-related but still significant to me, I also lost my favorite cat, Marvin, who would have been my muse if I’d had one. But I got a new little guy (Maddox) who’s actually a lot like Marvin. Not that he’s a replacement, but still. He’s affectionate but not overly so. 

Marvin made creepy by a Happy Light
My favorite picture of Marvin
Maddox posing for the camera by the window
The new guy, in a rare moment of calm

I suppose that’s it for 2018. I’m hoping 2019 has more actual good news in it than 2018 did, instead of just prospects. 

The Semester’s Wrapping Up

Posted on by kellyvincent

I’m in the final couple weeks of the first semester of the MFA, which is pretty exciting—almost 25% done. I took three “classes”—pedagogy (teaching English comp), elements of prose (basics), and the primary packet exchange (short papers on craft and creative writing). I finished the pedagogy one by sending in my reflective essay earlier this week and today I’m working on finishing up the final packet. For the last class, I have to read short stories by three other students and provide feedback on that, but of course I’m waiting on people to post them (I posted mine last weekend because I’m a big dork). I worked on two stories this semester. The first has turned into a 14,500-word novelette and the second is a 4500-word story (the shortest I’ve managed so far). I’m pretty happy with both, even though I know they’re not done.

The next semester starts in exactly a month and I’m already excited about it. The theme of the feedback I got this semester has been that I don’t go deep enough into my characters’ emotions so readers don’t get enough of a sense of who they really are. So I’ll be working on that more next semester, among other things. I also found out I’m going to get to do a secondary genre study of playwriting, focusing on 10-minute plays. I have to analyze several for three months and then I’ll write my own. I already know the basic premise of the one I’m going to write, though I need to come up with an ending for it. I’m looking forward to this because it will be sort of fun, but also it will help me develop dialogue, since that’s primarily what makes a play.

I’m still waiting to hear on my submissions of Ugly. It’s been less than a month, so I wouldn’t expect anything yet, but still. The waiting game sucks. It’s out with two editors and three agents right now. And Finding Frances is out with one last editor. I should hear within the month on that one. It’s the last gasp for it, at least in its present form.

PNWA 2018 and Ugly

Posted on by kellyvincent

This weekend was the Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s annual conference. I only went for three of the four days because I couldn’t spare the vacation, but it still went really well. Friday day was all about the pitching of Ugly (my first time with this one). I did two 90-minute pitch blocks (tiring) and pitched two editors and four agents, getting requests from all of them. I even more or less memorized my pitch—all 6 sentences of it. Yay me. Both the editors requested fulls and two of the agents did, too, with the other two requesting partials. This was a really good result. I told all of them that I needed about another month to get it ready, so now I have to scramble to make that happen.

Friday night was a panel session with Donald Maass, Dori Hillstead Butler, Christopher Vogler, Cat Rambo, and Chris Fox, with rapid-fire questions from moderator Robert Dugoni. One of my favorite moments was when Maass told us about the bad poetry he wrote as a student and how one of his teachers begged him to just “think of the reader.” We got to here about when they first knew they wanted to become writers, what their first writing jobs were, when they first knew they could make a career of writing, what they like best and least about being a writer, and more. Then Friday night was capped off with this monstrosity (which I couldn’t finish):

Giant Banana Split

Saturday I went to a few sessions, glad the pitching was over. But then I ended up pitching Finding Frances to an editor at a session I was at (I was impressed by my boldness) and she asked to see it. I sent that query off later that afternoon.

Sunday is a short day at the conference. I attended just one session, called “How to Strengthen Your Novel Plot by Implementing Movie Structure.” Since this semester in the MFA I am focusing on plot and structure, this one seemed appropriate.

So in summary, I have Finding Frances with an editor (I also have two partials out with agents from previous queries), have to get Ugly whipped into shape in a month, and then have to send it off to six different people. On top of that, I have deadlines for the MFA for the next three Fridays, so this will be quite a month. Busy, busy, busy.

Things

Posted on by kellyvincent

I’ve been working away for my MFA courses. I’ve read 7 novels, 5 craft books, and 2 nonfiction titles related to YA literature (plus most of a collection of Chekhov stories and chapters from other books) since getting back on July 15th. That’s kind of crazy. I’ve written three short papers and mapped out 3 of the novels to help understand their structure. I temporarily dropped out of one of my writing groups because it just takes too much time that I could be working. Overall, I seem to be off to a good start. I also made it through revision of Ugly. I need to go through it again before I have a new, solid draft, but I should be able to do that over the next few weeks.

I had a lot planned for this weekend but didn’t manage to get as much as I’d hoped done because the worst thing happened Friday night. I came home from Starbucks and found Marvin dead. This has never happened to me before, as with all my other cats, they were sick (and suffering) enough to need to be euthanized. Even though it came up sort of unexpectedly a couple times, I still had a chance to prepare. But Marvin had been his happy self up to the last time I saw him alive. He slept curled up by my feet the night before and took his morning medicine like a champ.

It looked fairly peaceful. I’m pretty sure he just lay down and didn’t wake back up. He had a heart murmur, was on 3 medications, and was 14. But still. Finding him like that was horrible. I ended up wrapping him up in a couple of towels and taking him to the emergency vet, where I paid for a private cremation. I’ve never done that before, but this guy was so special to me that I decided to put his ashes in a wind chime designed for that purpose. I’ll hang it on my deck.

Then, in what was probably a highly unusual move, I went and adopted a new cat Saturday. I figured, I was going to get one eventually, anyway, and it would distract me now. It worked. I went to my favorite shelter and got their only FIV+ cat—a seal point Siamese. He’s very friendly and the listing warned that he was very loud. He is a little loud, but it’s not as bad as I thought it might be. He’s just very open about what he feels and thinks that everyone should know. His name at the shelter was Sparkles, which—just no. So I renamed him Maddox, sticking with the M-theme. Currently I’ve got Maddox locked in the room over my garage because that’s where I sleep in the summer (it has the AC) and Marlowe locked in the upstairs bedroom, though I’ve been letting each of them out into the rest of the house in turns.

Here are the requisite pictures. My favorite of Marvin, because he looks dangerous but was actually super-nice:

Dangerous Marvin

The last one I took of him, chillin’ on the couch on a hot day:

Marvin chillin on the couch

And of course, the new guy, Maddox:

Maddox the cat

I’ll get some better pictures of him later. See that dark spot on his back? He had a benign mass removed in June and they shaved the area, and that’s the color the fur grew back in, rather than the lighter color it should have. Weird. They say it might lighten back up, though there’s no guarantee.

Back to Real Life

Posted on by kellyvincent

The rest of the MFA residency was really good. It was a bit of a shock to the system to return to Seattle. I got home after 10pm and to work the next day at 7:30am. Apparently I needed some kind of break because I was dragging until I took a day off Thursday.

While I was at the residency, I finalized my semester plan and the list of 20 books I’m supposed to read this semester. As far as craft goes, I’m focusing on plot and structure, which is good because I struggle with that. I also decided to do a pedagogy elective so I’ll be learning to teach composition (a retirement plan). I’ll share the book list with you in case you’re curious:

  • Chekhov, Anton, Pevear, Richard, translator, and Volokhonsky, Larissa, translator. Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (2000).
  • Gaitskill, Mary. Bad Behavior: Stories (1988).
  • Munro, Alice. The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose (1978).
  • Paley, Grace. The Collected Stories (1994).
  • Fitch, Janet. White Oleander (1999).
  • Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day (1989).
  • Angel, Ann, editor. Things I’ll Never Say (2015).
  • Bauman, Beth Ann. Jersey Angel (2012).
  • Blume, Judy. Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret (1970).
  • Blume, Judy. Forever… (1975).
  • Blume, Judy. Tiger Eyes (1981).
  • Dessen, Sarah. Just Listen (2008).
  • Downham, Jenny. You Against Me (2011).
  • Green, John. Looking for Alaska (2006).
  • Hoffmann, Kerry Cohen. Easy (2007).
  • Lockhart, E. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (2009).
  • Lockhart, E. Dramarama (2007).
  • Niven, Jennifer. All the Bright Places (2015).
  • O’Neill, Louise. The Surface Breaks: a reimagining of The Little Mermaid (2018).
  • Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park (2013).

About half of them I’ve already read, though I’ll still have to reread those to get some thoughts on craft out of them. I’ve already reread Eleanor & Park because it’s awesome and it had to be the one I went to first. I wrote my first short paper on the first scene of that book, discussing how it works as a strong opening. Now I just need to come up with a topic for the second one…

Fall 2018 books
Precariously balanced…

This is going to be a long 2.5 years for me. But it will be good, I’m sure of it. The only thing is I’m worried I may not be able to keep up the weekly blog posts. So if it gets a little quieter here, you’ll know why.

The MFA Begins

Posted on by kellyvincent

We’ve now finished Day 3 of the MFA residency and the first thing I have to mention is that it is hot here. I wasn’t wrong to expect that. However, I appear to be lucky in that it’s relatively mild right now—only in the low 90s.

The first event on Day 1 was a short one—the director made several announcements and introduced the faculty. Then each of the faculty gave a short talk on the topic of “How to write when you can’t.” They all gave good advice and I was especially happy to hear (from my mentor, though they all agreed) that the whole idea that you have to write every single day to be a writer is bunk. They acknowledged that there are many ways to be a writer and it’s an art so you can’t necessarily force it. I do think that sometimes it is worth making yourself do something because sometimes you’re stuck and if you just force your way past this one thing, you’ll find yourself smoothly moving along again. I’ve had to force my way through scenes to get to the next, easier one (even though what I’ve written is crap—but that’s what editing is for).

Yesterday was all informational sessions. We learned about the various type of “annotations” we have to do. These are basically analysis papers that look at a specific aspect of the writing craft as it relates to a book or two. We have to write 45 short ones (2 pages) in the first three semesters, 1 medium-length (3-5 pages) in each of the first two semesters, and one long one (15-20 pages) that goes into the thesis so it has to be done in the third semester. Plus every month we have to write 10-30 pages, which doesn’t sound bad to me. But I’m going to be working on my short story collection for the degree, so it may be more difficult than to come up with pages from a novel. More brand new material. I finished a draft of the first short story in the collection, which precedes the story that’s posted on this site. The draft is almost 40 pages, so I’m good for a couple months. I’ll probably have to work on the next story for the November submission.

The craft sessions started today. We had one that explored tone and voice. This involves things like diction and word choice (for instance, think of the difference between the words “childish” and ”childlike,” which mean the same thing but have different connotations). We did some interesting and entertaining exercises where we had to change a sentence so that the tone was totally different.

“How stupid do you have to be to not understand that?”

vs.

“Just how far do you think your looks will get you?”

The next workshop was on flash fiction, where we talked about the various types (and concluded that all other subtypes really are just flash fiction, which can be up to around 1000 words) and looked at some good examples. He also had us do an exercise where we wrote our own. I of course failed miserably at that because I 1. suck at writing on command, and 2. can’t write anything short to save my life.

Then we had a workshop on time control, which is a more complicated topic than I thought. I mean, most of what I write is in what’s called “classic time,” which is time that is relatively brief and is expressed in one continuous flow (a day, a month, a year). I haven’t written anything that spans decades or longer, which is called long time. And then there are more weird ones that I won’t go into because at least at this point, they don’t really interest me.

Finally, we had the faculty reading tonight, where the various faculty read from their books/poems. It was really good, even if it did make me feel a bit like a fraud. Oh well, maybe I’ll get better.

Anyway, that’s the update from here.

Stasis

Posted on by kellyvincent

My writing life hasn’t been so rewarding lately. I’ve sent Finding Frances queries off to five more agents, but I have very little hope. This is largely because I entered the manuscript into several RWA (Romance Writers of America) contests. While the book isn’t really a romance, there is an important romance in there (the definition of the genre is a little fuzzy in YA). But I’ve gotten feedback from one the contests and they didn’t like it. And the thing is, I understood their criticisms. Some of the weaknesses they pointed out are things I’ve since learned about the craft. Basically, I need to rewrite it from scratch again and pay attention to word choice as well as dig deeper into the main character’s emotions. I’m going to hold off on this, however. I’ve already burned through almost all the agents out there so there’s no one left to query. Instead, I’ll just revisit it once one of my other books gets picked up.

I’ve made a little more progress on Ugly recently, but not as much as I should have. I’ve also worked on the short story collection. And I’ve been working on my other manuscripts a bit, too. Plodding along. I did also enter Ugly in a grant competition. I had to supply the first 10 pages and a 250-word synopsis. Man, was that synopsis frickin’ hard to write. Easily the hardest of all my books so far. Ugly’s not really about the plot, but all the little details of life, and that’s not stuff you put in a synopsis.

I have been taking a new writing class called The Art of the Personal Essay. I thought it might be good to learn a bit more about it so I can write more than reviews and boring writing updates on this blog. It’s been interesting and fun. I’ve written a couple of short pieces that were well-received. I’ll likely start posting things like that here periodically.

I’m getting closer to starting the MFA, which I’m pretty excited about. A little over three months and I’ll be in the Oklahoma City heat for the 10-day residency. The heat part—oh, joy. The rest should be great.

Writing Update

Posted on by kellyvincent

It’s been a little while since I bored you with an update about what’s going on with my writing.

I’m working away on the third book, whose working title is Ugly. This is the 80,000-word novel I wrote in 28 days in November for NaNoWriMo. I’m taking it through my writing group chapter by chapter and met with them yesterday to go over Chapter 3. I like it and feel like it’s going to end up being a pretty solid book, though it’s going to take a lot of work. The first draft is pretty rough, though there is definitely some good stuff in there.

Sadie Speaks is still currently being neglected as I don’t know what to do with it. It needs major work, but it feels like I need somebody else to tell me what to do with it. A couple of freelance editors have seen it, but they didn’t quite share my editorial vision so I didn’t really agree with their suggestions. So I’m going to have to figure it out on my own.

Finding Frances is still getting nowhere with agents and editors. It’s currently with one of each, but I pinged them both Monday because they’ve had it for 3 months. The editor got back to me to say she had received it and would only contact me if she was interested in more. The agent never responded. So I’m not exactly holding my breath on either of those. I’m pretty worn out with querying it and am not sure I’m going to summon the energy to try again.

In related news, I decided to do an MFA (Master of Fine Arts). I got accepted to both of the ones I applied to, but I decided to go with Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth MFA and its concentration in Young Adult Fiction. I’m pretty excited about this. It starts in July. It’s a low-residency model, which means twice a year I have to go there for an intensive 10-day residency, where there are craft talks, I’ll meet with my faculty mentor for the semester, and I can mingle with other students. Then for the rest of the semester, I’ll send packets of writing in to my mentor, who will send back feedback. I also have to read a lot of books, as some of the writing is critical annotations of genre books or responses to craft books. I have to attend a residency before each of my four semesters and then go to the one immediately after my last semester to wrap things up.

Finally, in unrelated news, I started a new job at work. I’m no longer a software developer and am now a data scientist (my actual job title is Analytics Analyst, which is hilarious, and not deeply meaningful). I will leave you with a picture of my favorite parking space at work:

Parking space blocked by post