In the last day or so, I have turned in my final poetry essay and what I hope will be the final revision of my thesis.  This semester is coming to a close, and I’m having trouble accepting it.  I’ve been charging full speed for so long that I feel as though I’ll crash if I ease up on the accelerator.  I’ll suddenly have thirty spare hours every week.*  My mind reels at the thought.

I look at my spreadsheet of completed pieces.  It’s covered in orange, the color of pieces that are not currently under submission anywhere.  Every one of those pieces needs to go out, to find the right publisher.  Some of them could probably use a little editing.  I keep learning more about writing, and I could apply that new knowledge to old pieces.  Of course, that way can also lie madness, because it can lead to endless revisions of pieces that never go out because they are never just right.

Of course, in some cases, they haven’t been accepted yet because they need that revision.  I won’t know until I go over them again.  I’ll probably read through the lot of them over the next couple of weeks.

I don’t have long for such activities, because the next residency is due to begin on January 6^th, less than a month from now.  Technically, I don’t have to attend.  As of the end of this semester, I have completed all the classes and units required for my graduation in August.  All I need at this point is to finish my thesis and get it approved, which does not require another residency even if the approval does not come this month.  At worst, I would have to take a one-unit thesis extension, which can be handled remotely.

Nevertheless, I will attend the residency, because I am going to take advantage of my MFA program to take one more class: Craft of Writing for Children and Young Adults.  This means I will get to graduate having taken a craft class in all four genres and a class from every faculty member but one (and that one was only prevented by scheduling).  Of course, I did get to sit in on that professor’s class at a residency, so I have studied under him during my time at Whidbey.

That’s only a side benefit, though, not the reason I’m taking the class.  I have a couple of novel ideas that would work well in the Young Adult genre, and the spring semester version of CYA Craft covers writing short stories and novels for Young Adults.  This class will help me explore those ideas as I learn the ropes of the genre.

That brings up another reason I hope to finish my thesis-novel this month.  Not only would I be able to start submitting it to agents and/or publishers in the new year, I would be able to move on to writing my first big post-thesis project: a YA novel.  Funny how these things coincide.  Here’s hoping it works out that way.

*actually, they won’t be spare.  They’ll go right into packing for a move at the end of the month, but that’s beside the point.  They feel spare.

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