Gearing Up

Stick shift in black and white

Soon, my creative life is going to take a strange little detour - one I never expected. Starting in August, I will be attending school for my Masters degree in English. With a creative writing focus, naturally.

I'm a little scared about what this means for my writing, which might seem ridiculous. Most people in writing go back to school because it's one of the few sanctuaries they can find for their writing. However, right now, I have as much time to work on my craft as I want. I can read, write, and critique to my heart's desire! So why would I go to school - with its language requirements and its essays? Won't that impede my writing?

I'm not 100% sure. The last time I was in school for writing, I learned more than I ever thought I could. My understanding of fiction increased on an accelerated scale that, even venerating the University system as I did, I hadn't expected. I suppose I'm hoping for the same with my masters.

I feel stuck, stylistically, and the going is a bit confusing from here on out. I'm looking for answers that typical writing communities don't seem to have. Of course, school has the benefit of a built-in community likely as obsessed with the topic of creative writing as I am. So that's nice and should help.

In the meantime, I'm already trying to soften the work load by doing some of the prospective reading ahead of time. I'm glad I'm doing it, too, because words like "dialectical" and "monadic" are not in my day-to-day vocabulary, and it takes a bit of time to prime my brain for that kind of language.

I'm not sure yet what this means for Weather Vane Island, or my other works in progress. Doodleman (a digitization of something I did a while ago) will keep going, and I plan to continue writing on my blog as well. Then again, we've seen how well that's worked in the past. I don't know.

I'm hoping to continue to get as much - if not a lot more - work done while in school. I'll either succeed and shoot of into the stratosphere of awesome, or I'll magnificently implode. Either way, it should be a show - so stay tuned!

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