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I saw this Google commercial today, and I think there are a lot of cool things going on with it writing-wise, and in only thirty seconds. By only using Google searches, the video manages to convey the story of a teenage girl trying to fit in at a new school, and she ultimately decides that the best way to do this is to be herself—and “herself” is a non-traditional manifestation of the feminine, which makes me really like this video from a social aspect.

One of the most important things I learned from my professional writing degree at Michigan State was the idea that communication extends beyond straight written or verbal communication. There are many ways to tell a story, to convey a message, and while a certain story will not work in an unlimited number of forms, every form of communication has stories that are best conveyed in that way.

Thesis revisions have not been going well this past month. Not only was I super busy and didn’t spend near as much time as I should have on my book, one of my revision tasks threw me for a total loop. I needed to add tenderness to a relationship, because if the reader doesn’t see why the relationship would exist in the first place, you can’t expect them to care if it lasts or not. The problem is that my main female character has a bit of a temper, and I didn’t want to sacrifice her character (as I see it) for plot conventions.

That said, yes, I can see that these revisions needed to be done, and what’s been taking me so long was working these in. I knew, theoretically, that I could accomplish what I needed by adding bits here and there (without, in other words, adding an entire new scene), but my first few tries ended up feeling either really forced or no different than the original. By my calculations I’ve got between eight and ten weeks to finish my thesis, and so the stall that was early- to mid-March really had me panicked. But I am moving again, finally.

My goal for break is to add between fifteen and twenty-five new pages—and that’s in addition to the revisions. It’s going to be a lot of work, and it means I won’t get to relax as much as I’d like, but if I can add twenty-five pages I’ll have the required eighty for the thesis and then will be able to go back to revisions again. That route gives me a more polished thesis but leaves me with more to be written once I graduate. On the other hand, I can aim for a total of forty-five-ish new pages, which would probably get me through the first quarter or so of what will be my final book.

Other than writing, I also want to get through at least two more thesis books. I still need to finish The Sound and the Fury (which I may ultimately leave off my list because I’ve struggled so much with it), and I’ve also started on Amy Hempel’s complete works (through two of her four collections).

So yeah, that’s what’s on my plate right now. Busy busy!

My second-to-last quarter as an MFA student ends next week, which means I’m in a crazy end of quarter crunch right now. Particularly stressful is the portfolio due for my nonfiction class. (As an aside I used to think I was pretty equally talented in essay and fiction writing, but I now know better. Much better.) I’ve really been struggling with the revision on my essay that I’m including in the portfolio. It’s about bras, and it was super fun to write, but I’ve been having serious trouble coming up with a focus. So it’s about the bra, I’ve got that much figured out, but I still have to figure out what the bra is about…if that makes any sense.

Anyway, other than that the deadline for our fiction contest passed, which has meant hours of logging and reading for me, as well as coordinating the team I put together, I’ve also been doing a lot of reading, both for my thesis and class. But the last few nights I’ve been making sure to take at least a few minutes before bed to read something completely unrelated to school stuff. The past two nights the book I’ve picked up has been A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome, which appeals to the history buff in me (I was sick on Tuesday and watched the History channel all day; I can tell you lots about the last Ice Age now). However, this book, while interesting, hasn’t exactly  been the stress-free read I was hoping for. Let me give you an example.

From a chapter on the Imperial Forums: “We go in. We are penetrating the perimeter of the largest basilica the Romans have built thus far. We feel disoriented by its dimensions, and by the height of the ceilings” (229).

The above, in my opinion, is nothing short of bad writing. Even allowing the author the use of the second-person, there are better ways to write those three sentences. Such as

We go in, penetrating the perimeter of the largest basilica the Romans have built thus far. Its dimensions are disorienting, as is the height of the ceiling.

And that was quick; it took me maybe thirty seconds. With a few minutes I think I could clean that up even further. But what’s important to notice is that the exact same information is conveyed. Even the emotions that the author wants to evoke in the reader, though my delivery is less insulting to the reader’s intelligence. It still tells the reader what to feel, but it’s not so blunt.

Have you seen this type of delivery in books before? Did you notice the problem when you first looked at the quote from the book? How would you rewrite those few sentences?

When people find out I’m studying fiction writing, one of the first questions they ask me is what I’m going to do for a job. If they hazard a guess, they mention teaching. Strangely, no one mentions being an author. All those books at Barnes and Noble must just appear out of thin air.

When I was in professional writing, the ideas about what I would do for a career were slightly more varied. Sometimes they’d ask about teaching AND journalism, and never mind the fact that then I could have been a journalism major. The thing is, a lot of people see writing as a sort of cop out major, as hobby instead of career choice. When I switched from engineering to writing, a friend whispered behind my back that I just wasn’t smart enough to handle a “real” program. And really, I don’t choose to write fiction because it’s something that will make me money. Instead it’s something that I enjoy, something I’m good at. It might make me some money; I hope it does, but that’s not why I do it.

So back to those two career choices I seem to have: I’m not all that qualified to teach, and I have no desire to be a journalist. What’s a girl to do?

Well, as it turns out, there are countless jobs open to writers. I could go into editing or publishing (the two fields I’m looking at most strongly). I could do PR or communications work, which right there gives me ins to pretty much every company in the world. I could work for a nonprofit, or the government. As a personal assistant. As an office assistant. I could do copy writing, technical writing, web writing. I could write plot and dialogue for video games. I could write famous people’s books. I could freelance resumes and cover letters, writing them for people who don’t know how.

Look around you, at the sheer quantity of the written word. For now we’ll ignore other means of visual communication. There are cookbooks, instruction manuals, advertisements, product labels, blog posts, fine print, emails, bills, magazines, coupons… And that’s not even counting all those books (they magically appear, remember?). All of that, by writers.

If you can’t tell, I’m starting my job hunt, and each day I’m astounded by the sheer number of opportunities before me. So you tell me, how has your career used the written word?

I’m so excited to be done with this revision!

I just finished revising the first 47 pages of my thesis, and man am I excited! I’ve been working on these revisions for a month now, and I’m very glad to be moving forward again; I never expected the revision to take this long. My original goal was to have the pages to my advisor by the Friday two weeks ago, but that deadline has obviously come and gone.

What I struggled the most with in this, my first real revision ever (I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never revised before), was a particular dinner scene, which I needed to add tension to. It’s the first real moment of direct conflict, but in the original draft it was over in four pages. I initially shied away from the drama because I didn’t want it to sound hokey or melodramatic. I think I found a good balance in this draft and more than doubled the length of the scene.

I also struggled with my character’s motivations and relationships; in the first draft my advisor said he wasn’t sure why my main girl and guy protagonists were together—there was no affection in the relationship. Here, again, I was shying away from what I was afraid of writing. I think I’ll still need to add more of this in the next draft, but I think I’ve been able to add a lot without making it seem like overkill or romance-novel worthy.

In the end, I deleted a lot, added a lot, and ended up with seven new pages and more complex characters, so that’s certainly a good thing. Now I just need to add another strong thirty pages (minimum). Three months to go.

Photo by James Jordan | CC BY-ND 2.0

Today has been a hectic blog day. Somehow between last night and this morning the plugins folder disappeared from my blog and all my plugins, understandably, stopped working. That meant that until I realized what was going on and was able to log on and disable comments, I was getting all sorts of crazy spam. Things should be fixed now and I’ve added a few new plugins that I’m testing out.

Today’s post is something that’s been brewing in my mind for the past month or so and I figured since I blogged about music yesterday, today would be a good day to tackle yet another music post. My apologies if you were hoping for some variety. I’m just happy to have three posts in four days.

Owl City has a song out right now called Fireflies. Other than the strange Death Cab for Cutie sound (for shame impersonating one of my favorite bands!) I have to admit that I kind of like the song. I say kind of because while I find it catchy and usually will listen to it if it comes on the radio, I also think it’s kind of, well, bad. And the badness is in the lyrics. Read more…

Tonight was our last round of galleys before sending Willow Springs 65 to print. It’s been a long two weeks looking for comma splices, debating the usefulness of each and every hyphen, and researching the correct spelling of various proper nouns. And let me say, this issue has some good stuff in it. This might sound weird coming from me, but I really enjoy the poetry.

Then, after the meeting, the management team went out for pizza and beer and we had our last meeting of the term. We’ve got a great staff this year, and I had a great time. We’re moving Willow Springs forward, and it feels wonderful to be a part of that movement.

But now I am officially on break.

I think it’s actually thesis news on my blog here, and if it’s not it should be since I started over in September, and I know I haven’t posted since long before then.

I’m working on a novel for my thesis, one of the few students, I think, who is. And I see why. It’s draining to come back to the same piece day after day, to not get a break from the characters and their lives. Don’t get me wrong–I’m loving writing these characters, and I’ve somehow managed to find a soft spot for each of them–but it’s challenging. Especially when it isn’t going well.

Tonight, however, was one of my best writing nights so far. Yeah, some of the middle of the scene I’m working on is pretty flimsy, but I feel that I’ve always had trouble with conflict. Tonight’s scene dealt with the usage of the word raped to describe, well, things other than actually getting raped. What I found most challenging about this scene was to write it from the point of view of a character who is uncomfortable at how much another is offended by the usage rather than from the point of view of the character whose opinion I share (which, if you know me, you know what it is). I’ll be curious, in my meeting next month, to see how well I pulled off separating my own opinions from those of my characters.

So now my question: What books/stories/films have you read/seen that put you in an uncomfortable situation in regard to your own beliefs? For me it’s currently Lolita, a book which I love and am currently rereading as part of my thesis list.

After my last post, I’ve decided to do a series on résumés.

So tell me, what are your questions/concerns about résumés?

I’ve recently updated both my résumé and cover letter in order to apply for an assistant managing editor position with Willow Springs–something I do generally every three to six months or so. But this edit was for a specific position, and it got me thinking about the problems people commonly run into when writing a résumé. I find things to edit on my résumé every single time I look at it. I pull things off that aren’t as important anymore, I reword lines to make it a bit more punchy, I look at formatting. There’s always something to improve. Maybe it’s my professional writing background.

When I worked at the Writing Center back at MSU, however, I would often see résumés in their early stages, résumés that hadn’t been treated as vital documents, and the mistakes I saw tended to be very similar.

First, lack of consistency. Some sentences would start with active verbs, some wouldn’t. Some sections would have different formatting, some sentences would end with periods while others wouldn’t, etc. I don’t feel that these mistakes will necessarily kill a résumé, but they do show an inattention to detail.

Next–and this is probably the mistake I saw most often–is a lack of prioritization, a failure to give good work proper credit. For example, many students would only want to include paid work in the main section, pushing anything else to a list, maybe, toward the end. Another example is when the writer doesn’t prioritize within an item and lists bullet points in an arbitrary order, pushing important details to the middle or bottom of a disorganized list. This mistake, I feel, is much more costly, since quite frequently employers will scan résumés. And while it is still the accepted norm to list positions in reverse chronological order, incorrectly prioritizing information within that order–not putting the best points in a place where they can shine–can mean the employer misses your skills.

Finally, I often see résumés that are not specifically tailored to a specific position. There are situations where a general résumé is best, but these are, I believe, few, especially as you move through your career life. Again, not tailoring your résumé to a specific position will probably not result in your instant disqualification from consideration, but something that has been purposefully tweaked can often give you a nice step up on the competition. It shows that you understand what they value in an employee and know how to present those specific skills in yourself.

These are just the first few examples that come to my head, but I know there are many more places to misstep. So, readers, what errors do you frequently run into when reviewing résumés? What areas give you trouble when composing your own? Are there any “correct” rules you choose to ignore?